THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED IN ITALY. They left Germany while still young, in the 1460s, with a specific destination in mind, perhaps Rome. Presumably summoned by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the German printers Konrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz, who were clerics of the dioceses of Mainz and Cologne respectively, traveled from Germany to Rome between 1464 and 1465 to establish a printing press. The unexpected death of Nicholas of Cusa in the summer of 1464, and perhaps other reasons that today escape us, convinced the two German clerics to settle in Subiaco, in one of the most important Benedictine monasteries. At Santa Scolastica they found a rich library and monks, mostly German, willing to collaborate in the enterprise of establishing that "divina ars...artificialiter scribendi" in Italy, the cradle of Christianity and humanism. They worked there for several years, choosing to adapt their graphic sensibility to the Italian one: which meant redesigning the Gothic typeface to match the curves of Roman. The true innovation in printing lay in the design/creation of a movable-type alphabet that could adapt to the infinite combinations created by the letters, giving life to infinite pages/books. After an initial experiment with a few sheets intended for the study of young people, that Donatus vanished into thin air, they published three works by Lactantius in October 1465. The text was not chosen at random, as these works perfectly responded to the cultural and religious climate of those years, between Ciceronianism, Christian providentialism, and the fusion of classical and Christian culture. They printed 275 copies, over 40 of which still survive. Some, like the present one, were enriched in Rome with a standardized set of illustrations that included the canonical bianchi girari decoration of the capitals, decoration created in one of the many highly active illuminators' workshops in the capital. But Subiaco was forced to give way to Rome, where their new patron Giovanni Andrea Bussi eagerly awaited the opportunity to showcase his marvelous new invention to the world—which had always gathered there. They took with them all the copies of the incunabula printed in Subiaco to their care and moved to Rome at the end of 1467. And already in November, the bishop of Massa, Leonardo Dati, declared that he had purchased a copy of St. Augustine's De civitate Dei in Rome, "from those same Teutonic monks who live there, who do not write books but print them with molds." The Lactantius of Subiaco is undoubtedly the most famous book in the history of Italian typography. It is the first dated book ever printed in Italy and one of only four editions printed by Gutenberg's students in their first printing press, that of Subiaco, which was also the first outside Germany to have a printing press equipped with entirely locally made equipment. The importance of this edition also lies in the fact that it is "the second Italian printing with Greek characters. The use of Greek characters had become necessary because Lactantius in De divinis institutionibus had reported some quotations in the original language, such as those from the Asclepius or Lógos téleios; the Greek types, however, must have been supplied, or manufactured, only during composition, since the first leaves still show the corresponding spaces blank, while subsequently the Greek text regularly alternates with the Latin" (S. Gentile - C. Gilly, Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Ermete Trismegisto, Florence 2001, pp. 160-61). Goff L1; HC 9806*; Pr 3288; BMC IV 2; IGI 5619. This copy is sold with a Certificate of Free Circulation.