Date

The date is the year placed at the bottom of the title of books, indicating the year the book was published. Originally, manuscripts were very rarely dated. Xylographs bore no date. During the second half of the 15th century, books were also very rarely dated, or if they were, the year had to be sought in the colophon at the end.

• The earliest dates were indicated in Roman numerals; only in the 16th century were Arabic numerals used.
• Publishers and printers sometimes concealed dates in an enigmatic or chronographic form.

^{Contribution by Bertrand Galimard Flavigny}