The Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum (British Library), generally referred to as BMC, is a monument in the history of the book. BMC followed on from the rearrangement of the Museum's incunabula begun by Robert Proctor on the basis of the comprehensive survey of printing types and presses of the fifteenth century that he had published in 1898 as an 'Index' of the incunabula in the Museum and the Bodleian Library. The Index represented a working-out of the system he had developed for the identification of printers of the incunabula period on the basis of typographical material. The volumes of BMC extend Proctor's principles by providing full descriptions of the incunabula in the collections of the British Museum and making revisions where necessary. The first part appeared in 1908, prepared by A.W. Pollard after Proctor's death in 1903. The most recent part was published in 1985.

The present catalogue seeks to provide a comprehensive record of the 1,532 editions printed in the 15th and 16th centuries held in the legal historical section of the Biblioteca di Scienze Sociali of the Università degli Studi di Firenze. This library is the successor to that of the Facoltà di Giurisprudenza, the nucleus of which remains the historic collection of the Collegio degli Avvocati di Firenze acquired in 1924. Supplemented by further important acquisitions, including the library of the Corte di Appello di Firenze, the collection has come to be numbered among the foremost in its fi eld in Italy. It exhibits a wide range not only of the famous medieval authors of the ius commune, but also of the growing number of contemporary 16th century jurists.