The Secundo Folio and its Uses, Medieval and Modern.

The cataloguing device known in the middle ages as the secundo folio, being the opening words of the second leaf of a book, was a means by which a medieval book could be matched to its record in a list. First used in the early thirteenth century, it came to be universally employed in England and elsewhere, and continued to be used until the early sixteenth century, for printed books as well as for manuscripts without discrimination. While the secundo folio has long had a meaning and usefulness to modern manuscript cataloguers, for whom it has been a means of matching a surviving book to its medieval institutional home, its usefulness has escaped the attention of incunabulists. While it is true that the diagnostic cannot be used to identify an individual printed book as it can an individual manuscript, it can be used to identify the edition (or editions), and thereby offers a new source of evidence for the acquisition and ownership of incunabula at an early date, making a contribution to studies on the development and reach of the early booktrade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]