Chapter XIX: Part 19

[15] The text of the _Speculum Durandi_, the book of 1473, is _exculptis ære litteris_; the text of the _Præceptorum Nideri_, the book of 1476, is _litteris exculptis artificiali certe conatu ex ære_. The language is plain and cannot be construed to mean cut types. When these books were printed, the arts of typography and copper-plate printing were new and had not yet received distinctive names. The reading public knew nothing of the theory or practice of either process, and confounded the productions of one art with those of the other. The early printers had to define the respective arts as they best could, with words made from Latin. A close examination of the words selected by Husner will show their propriety. The word _exculptis_, sculptured, or cut out in high relief, is here used in contradistinction to _inculptis_, sculptured in, or cut in, as in an engraving on copper-plate. It defines typographic work from copper-plate printing. The phrase _artificiali certe conatu ex ære_, means something more than skillful engraving; it suggests the use of mechanism, and of a beginning of the work in brass, which can be clearly understood only by construing _ex ære_, from or in a brass mould. The phrase here translated _in_ brass has been rendered _of_ brass, but the language will not bear this construction. The phrase _ex ære_, in, or out of, or from brass, was frequently used by many early printers. I have rarely met the form _æris_, of brass. To represent that early types were of brass is as much a violation of history as it is of grammar.

[16] This book was edited and republished in the form of an octavo pamphlet of fifty-six pages, by Signor P. Vincenzo Fineschi, at Florence, in 1781. The equivalent in American currency of the Tuscan lira is calculated from a formula given with great minuteness by Blades in his _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, vol. II. p. xx.

[17] Heineken, _Idée générale d’une collection complette d’estampesavec une dissertation_, etc., p. 250.

According to the legend, it was the occupation of Saint Christopher to carry people across the stream on the banks of which he lived. He is accordingly represented as a man of gigantic stature and strength. One evening a child presented himself to be carried over the stream. At first his weight was what might be expected from his infant years; but presently it began to increase, and kept increasing, until the ferryman staggered under his burden. Then the child said, “Wonder not, my friend; I am Jesus, and you have the weight of the sins of the whole world on your back.” St. Christopher was thus regarded as a symbol of the church.

[18] The Suabia of the fifteenth century was separated by the Rhine from Switzerland and France on the south and west; its eastern boundary was Bavaria; its northern boundary, Franconia and the Palatinate of the Rhine.

[19] As these three copies have never been compared side by side, it has not been proven that they are impressions from the same block. The copy described on a preceding page has some peculiarities not found in the others.

[20] A book printed at Delft in 1480, says that when St. Gregory was pope, he celebrated mass in the church _Porta Crucis_. As he was consecrating the bread and wine, Christ appeared to him as represented in the engraving, with all the accessories to his passion. Robert of Cologne, who wrote a treatise on indulgences, published at Zutphen in 1518, adds, that Pope Gregory kindly granted 14,000 years of indulgence; that Pope Nicholas V doubled them; that Pope Calixtus, after requiring the repetition five times of the prayers, again doubled the years of indulgence; that Pope Innocent VIII, after adding seven more prayers, two other prayers, and two more of the _Pater Noster_ and the _Ave Maria_, again doubled the length of indulgence—so that the sum total amounted to at least 70,000 years: according to other computations, to 92,000 years, or 112,000 years. Holtrop, _Monuments typographiques_, p. 13. There is but one copy of this print, which recently belonged to the collection of Theodor O. Weigel of Leipsic, who published a fac-simile of it in colors, in his great work, _The Infancy of Printing_, plate 113, vol. I.

[21] Wetter says that all letters of indulgence for thousands of years are spurious; that they were made by monks and ignorant traveling priests for no other purpose than to allure simple people to church.

[22] Sweinheym and Pannartz, who were invited, in 1464, to establish a printing office in the monastery of Subiaco near Rome, were the first printers connected with any ecclesiastical institution. It may be remarked, that they did not thrive under clerical favor, for they soon found it expedient to remove to the city of Rome, where they were equally unfortunate in their efforts to find purchasers for their books.

[23] I have used the translation as I find it in Ottley’s _Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving_, vol. 1, p. 47. The original is given by Temanza, _Lettere Pittoriche_, vol. v, p. 321. Temanza found this decree in an old book of regulations which belonged to a fraternity of Venetian printers.

[24] Weigel, in his _Infancy of Printing_, plate 10, presents the fac-simile of an old printed altar-piece, about eight inches wide and twenty inches long, which contains a representation of the Virgin and the infant Christ. The engraving is in outline only. The interior was colored by stencils, like the image prints.

[25] Temanza had some old Venetian playing cards of unknown date, which he believed were made at or about the time of the publication of this decree. They were of large size, on thick paper, and elaborately decorated with gold and colors. The early Venetian playing cards were, probably, more expensively made, and were offered at higher prices than the German cards. In the field of art and ornament, and even in the trades which called for a higher degree of skill, the Venetians surpassed all their competitors. This pre-eminence was maintained many years after the invention of typography. The earlier books of Venice are famous for the whiteness of their paper and the beauty of their types, as well as for admirable presswork and solid bindings.

[26] Heineken, _Idée générale_, page 245. He does not give the date. The record from which he quotes, the Red Book of Ulm, so called because the initials were in that color, ends with the year 1474.

[27] Singer’s _Researches into the History of Playing Cards_. This book abounds in curious information and has many valuable fac-similes.

[28] Breitkopf says that the stencil painting of prints was done with great rapidity by the medieval colorist. He alludes to an old German saying of “painting the twelve apostles with one stroke,” which, no doubt, refers to the expeditious painting of a once popular image print, of which there is now no fragment in existence.

[29] Some antiquarians say that this print is a representation of Amman.

[30] Didot, _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 564.

[31] Bibliophile Jacob, _Curiosités de l’histoire des arts_, etc., p. 48.

[32] One of the cards bears the name of the maker, F. Clerc. The costumes of the figures are French, and of the fashion of the court of Charles VII. One of the queens is a rude copy of the well known portrait of the queen Marie of Anjou; another queen is from an authentic portrait of the king’s mistress, Gérarde Cassinel. The robe of one of the kings is plentifully sprinkled with the _fleur-de-lis_; the figure of another king is that of a hairy savage with a torch in his hand. These singular cards illustrate a frightful accident which made a profound impression on the people of France. To divert the half-crazed king Charles VI, a masquerade was planned for a ball given by Queen Blanche, on the 29th of January, 1392, in which masquerade the king and five of the gentlemen of the court took the parts of savages. The costumes were made by encasing the actors in tight-fitting linen garments, covered with warm pitch and tow. In this uncouth attire, and linked together with clanking chains, they danced in the ball-room to the amusement of the men and the terror of the ladies. Wishing to discover one of the maskers, the Duke of Orleans snatched a torch from the hand of a servant, and thrust it too near an unhappy masker’s face. In a moment he was covered with a blaze which quickly spread to his fellows. The king was rescued in time, but four of the masqueraders were burned to death.

[33] Breitkopf, _Versuch den Ursprung der Spielkarten_, p. 9, note g. The fac-similes of playing cards in this book are exceedingly grotesque.

[34] Cards are not mentioned in a specification of popular games in the Stadtholdt Book of Augsburg for the year 1274. The ordinances of the town of Nuremberg for the period between the years 1286 and 1299 prohibit gambling, but they do not mention cards. For the period between 1380 and 1384, they are both mentioned and permitted.

[35] In Singer’s _Researches into the History of Playing Cards_ may be found many fac-similes of early Hindostanee cards, some of which, we are told, were engraved on plates of ivory. These fac-similes show that the primitive game was a modification of the old Indian game of chess.

[36] The industry of Jost Amman was as remarkable as his skill. The old historian of early printers, Sandraart, says, on the authority of his pupil George Keller, that during the four years in which Keller lived with him, Amman produced designs enough to load a wagon.

[37] The ordinances of Nuremberg between the years 1380 and 1384 permitted gambling and betting, but in moderation: “Always excepting horse-racing, shooting with cross-bows, _cards_, shovel boards, tric-trac and bowls, at which a man may bet from two pence to a groat.” Von Murr, as quoted by Chatto, _Treatise on Wood Engraving_, p. 42.

[38] Having visited many convents in Franconia, Suabia, Bavaria, and the Austrian States, I everywhere discovered in their libraries many image prints engraved on wood and pasted either in the beginning or the end of old volumes of the fifteenth century. These facts taken together confirm me in the opinion that the next step of the engraver on wood, after playing cards, was the engraving of figures of saints, which, distributed and lost among the laity, were carefully preserved by the monks, who pasted them on the inner covers of the books with which they furnished their libraries. After the engravers had succeeded in making prints of saints, they found it very easy to engrave historical subjects, with explanations in words. Heineken, _Idée générale_, etc., p. 251.

[39] Wood-cuts of sacred subjects were known to the common people of Suabia, and the adjacent districts, by the name of _Halgen_ or _Halglein_, saints or little saints, a word which, in course of time, was also applied to prints of all kinds. In France also, the earliest prints were known as _dominos_, or lords, a word which was intended to convey the same meaning. The maker of prints was known as a _dominotier_, whether he made profane cards or pious images. In time the word so far declined from its first meaning that it was applied not only to printers of cards and images, but to the makers of fancifully colored wall-papers. _Versuch der Ursprung der Spielkarten_, etc., vol. II, p. 174.

[40] This method is still in use in many parts of the East Indies. A dried leaf is written on with a pointed steel which scratches the smooth surface. A bit of charcoal is then rubbed over the leaf; the places scratched are filled with atoms of charcoal, which make the writing as legible as it would have been if written with fluid ink.

[41] In support of this opinion he quotes the following from Pliny:

It would be improper to omit the notice of a new invention. We have been accustomed to preserve in our libraries, in gold, silver, or bronze, the personages whose immortal spirits speak to us from distances of leagues and centuries. We create statues of those who are no longer living. Our regrets invest them with features which have not been given to us by tradition, as, for example, is shown in the bust of Homer. The idea of making a collection of these portraits is due to Asinius Pollio, who was the first to throw open his library, and to make these men of genius the property of the public. That the love for portraits has always existed is sufficiently proven by Atticus, the friend of Cicero, who published a book on the subject, and also by Marcus Varro, who had the enlarged idea of inserting in his numerous books not only the names, but, by the aid of a certain invention, the images of seven hundred illustrious persons. Varro wished to save their features from oblivion, so that the length of centuries would not prevail against them. As the inventor of a benefit which will fill even the gods with jealousy, he has clothed these persons with immortality. He has made them known over the wide world, so that everywhere one can see them as if they were present. Pliny, book XXXV, chap. I.

This invention has never been clearly explained. A new invention, which exhibited in books the features of seven hundred men, which multiplied them so that they were known over the wide world, and preserved them for posterity, should have been the invention of printing. Pliny speaks of it as a well-known fact, but no other writer of his age makes any mention of it. Why did not Pliny describe the new art instead of praising it?

[42] Didot, _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 563.

[43] American engravers on wood use box which has been cut across the fibres in flat disks, ninety-two hundredths of an inch thick. Wood so cut, with its fibres like columns, perpendicular to the touch of the graver and to the line of impression, can be engraved with more delicacy, and, for printing, has more strength than wood cut in line with the fibres.

[44] The buff-tinted wrappers around fire-crackers and Chinese silks will fairly represent the quality of the paper used for Chinese books.

[45] I have before me a thick Chinese pamphlet which is bound in this style. In the essential points of strength, flexibility and convenience, this binding is much superior to that of American or European sewed pamphlets. The most famous bookbinder would be justly proud of the combination of firmness and elasticity in the sewing.

[46] To this description of Chinese typography is usually added the untrue statement that the types were made of copper. Why the Jesuit missionaries, who were amateurs in type-founding, should add to their labors by the use of such a troublesome and slowly melted metal as copper, when European type-founders preferred lead, tin and antimony, cannot be explained. I cannot find a copy of the original statement, which was, no doubt, in Latin. The phrase, types of copper, is, probably, an incorrect translation, a repetition of the error explained in a note on page 65 of this book. The missionaries intended to say, and no doubt did say, that they made types _in_ copper, or in copper matrices.

[47] _American Encyclopædia of Printing_, p. 104.

[48] Polo was more deeply interested in the simplicity of the financial method by which the Emperor filled his impoverished treasury.

He transferred the bark of the mulberry-tree into something resembling sheets of paper, and these into money, which cost him nothing at all: so that you might say he had the secret of alchemy to perfection. And these pieces of paper he made to pass current universally over all his kingdoms and provinces and territories, and whithersoever his power and sovereignty extended. And nobody, however important he thought himself, durst refuse them on pain of death. _The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian._ Translated and edited by Henry Vale, London, 1871.

With all his power, the Great Khan met the fate which comes to every financier who tries to fill up a depleted treasury by the issue of paper money. In a very short time the notes were worth but one-half of their original value. But the Emperor was equal to the emergency: when the notes fell to one-fifth of the nominal value, he called them in, and exchanged five old for one new note of the same denomination.

[49] Papillon, _Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_, vol. I, pp. 76, 77. Papillon does not name this student. Lanzi describes him as the ecclesiastic Padre della Valla. Passavant (_Le peintre-graveur_, p. 18) says that the initials of like character which have been found in German manuscript books of the twelfth century, were printed.

[50]. . . If he was a wool-stapler, he stamped it on his packs; or if a fish-curer, it was branded on the end of his casks. If he built himself a new house, his mark was frequently placed between his initials over the principal doorway, or over the fireplace of the hall; if he made a gift to a church or a chapel, his mark was emblazoned on the windows, beside the knight’s or the nobleman’s shield of arms; and when he died, his mark was cut upon his tomb. Jackson and Chatto, _Treatise on Wood Engraving_, pp. 17, 18.

[51] The letters in the most meritorious manuscript books of the middle ages were not made with running hand, closely connected, like the letters of modern penmanship. The form of writing most in fashion was a spurred or pointed Gothic of remarkable blackness. Each letter was separate, carefully drawn, angled and painted, by many strokes of the reed.

[52] The text of the _Codex_ is a translation of the four Gospels, written in the Gothic character, by Ulphilas, bishop of the Goths, about the year 370. This book, which is supposed to have been made not later than the sixth century, was discovered in the year 1587, in an abbey in Westphalia, and was taken to Prague. When that city was captured by the Swedes in 1648, the book was sent as one of the trophies of war to Queen Christina. It has ever since been regarded as a great curiosity.

[53] Moorish authors tell us that in the days of the last Norman kings of Sicily, ten thousand silk looms were in active operation in Palermo; but this statement is an oriental exaggeration of a fact that required no embellishment. Others say that Jewish and Italian traders carried these silks to Italy, Germany, and the North of Europe. The earliest silk-weavers of Palermo were the captured inhabitants of Greece who had been taken there in 1147.

[54] Pliny says that the colors were produced by dyeing, but the garments described by Herodotus could not have been made by this process. We have to infer that they used some form of impression. Breitkopf tells us that the colored cloths of the Egyptians were made by printing. His conclusions seem reasonable when we consider how largely engraved stamps were used by the Egyptians for printing upon clay, and how short was the step from printing on clay to printing on cloth. The art of staining, printing or stenciling cloth with bright colors by different processes, has been practised in Hindostan from a very early period. The antiquity of the Indian manufacture may be inferred from the European adoption of Indian names. The English word _chintz_, and its German synonym _zitz_, are derived from a Hindostanee word that means both a colored printed cloth and a flower. The word _calico_ is from Calicut, the town on the Malabar coast from which calico was first exported to Europe.

[55] Papillon, _Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_, vol. I, p. 89. His description is very prolix and full of irrelevant matter. I have made use of the translation of Ottley, but have abridged it.

[56] This version of the origin of block-printing in Europe has been accepted by many authors, who find in it, or profess to find in it, the evidence that printing was derived from China and was first used in Italy. The wisest judgment passed upon its merits is that of Lanzi, who merely recites the legend, and concludes that “it is safest to say nothing about it.” But Humphreys (_History of the Art of Printing_, second issue, page 209) submits the substance of a letter from a Russian book-collector, who asserts that, in 1861, he had seen, in the possession of a Mr. Herdegen of Nuremberg, seven prints which agreed precisely with those described by Papillon. I find no other description of these prints.

[57] Du Halde, as quoted by Ottley in his _Inquiry into the Origin of Engraving_, p. 9. There is another version placing the date at 170 B. C.

[58] The artist was not restricted by the scant space that allowed him to show only the leg of the pulp-beater on the first page. He does this, and then, with an amusing unconsciousness of its impropriety, proceeds to draw the head and body on the following page, which, in the Japanese book from which this was taken, is the other side of the leaf.

[59] Proteaux, _Practical Guide for the Manufacture of Paper_, Paine’s translation, p. 17. He does not name his authority for fixing the date in the fifth century, but it is not at all improbable that a card-like paper was then made for some other purpose than that of writing.

[60] The phrase _ex rasuris veterum pannorum_, here translated as the scrapings of old rags, has been construed by many authors as linen paper, in opposition to the “compacted refuse material,” which is supposed to be cotton, or, at least, a mixture of cotton and cordage.

[61] See _The American Encyclopedia of Printing_, p. 329, for engravings of microscopic enlargements of some of the fibres used for paper.

[62] Sismondi, _Literature of the South of Europe_, chap. 2.

[63] The jealousy with which trades were then guarded is illustrated by the policy of Stromer. He obliged all his workmen to take an oath that they would not reveal the process, nor practise it on their own account. He had two rollers and eighteen stampers, and was about to put in another roller, when he was opposed by his Italian workmen, who probably thought that this extension of the works would give him a monopoly, and would deprive them of all opportunity of obtaining work from any rival manufacturer. The mutineers were brought before the magistrates and sent to prison. They afterward submitted and returned to work, but were allowed to renounce their oath of obligation.

[64] Paper, whenever or wherever invented, was very sparingly used, and especially in manuscript books, among the French, Germans or English, or linen paper even among the Italians, until near the close of the fourteenth century. Upon the study of the sciences it could as yet have had very little effect. The vast importance of the invention was just beginning to be discovered. It is to be added that the earliest linen paper was of very good manufacture, strong and handsome, though perhaps too much like card for general convenience. _Literature of Europe in the Middle Ages_, chap. I, sec. 65.

[65] Lewis Beaumont, an illiterate French nobleman, made bishop of Durham in 1330, was so inexpert at reading, that he could not read the bulls written for his people at his consecration. The word _metropoliticæ_ occurred: the bishop paused, tried in vain to repeat it, and at last said, “Let us suppose that read.” Then he came to the word _ænigmate_, before which he stopped in a fine wrath, and said, “By St. Lewis, he was no gentleman who wrote this stuff.”. . . . At an entertainment given at Rome, during the same century, by the bishop of Murray, the papal legate from Scotland, the bishop so blundered in his Latin when he was saying grace, that his holiness and the cardinals could not refrain from laughing. The disconcerted bishop testily concluded in Scotch-English, by wishing “all the false carles to the devil,” to which the company, who did not understand the dialect, unwittingly responded, Amen.

[66] At a period when the fine arts may be said to have been almost extinct in Italy and in other parts of the Continent, namely, from the fifth to the end of the eighth century, a style of art had been established and cultivated in Ireland absolutely distinct from that of all other parts of the civilized world. In the sixth and seventh centuries the art of ornamenting manuscripts of the sacred scriptures, and more especially of the gospels, had attained a perfection in Ireland almost marvelous. Westwood, _Palæographia Sacra Pictoria_, Book of Kells, page 1. Westwood further says, that in delicacy of handling, and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palæography offers nothing that can be compared to these early Irish manuscripts, and those that were produced by their pupils in England. Wyatt, in a curt description of the famous Book of Kells, says that he tried to make a copy of some of its ornaments, but broke down in despair. “In one space of about a quarter of an inch superficial, he counted, with a magnifying glass, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a very slender ribbon pattern, formed of white lines, edged by black ones, upon a black ground.” In this book, which he studied for hours, he never detected a false line or an irregular interlacement. Giraldus Cambrensis, a learned Welsh ecclesiastic of the twelfth century, who had carefully examined some of the Irish manuscripts at Kildare, says that the writer of this Book of Kells made the drawings from designs furnished by angels through the intercession of St. Bridget. Timms and Wyatt, _Art of Illumination_, p. 14.

[67] The text as it now appears in authorized copies of the Vulgate is: _Erat autem homo ex Pharisæis, Nicodemus nomine, princeps Judæorum. Hic venit ad Jesum nocte, et dixit ei._ John 1, 3.

[68] Petrarch’s detestation of pointed letters and their admirers is amusing. After complaining of the difficulty he met in getting a fair copy of his writings, he commends the workmanship of a copyist to whom he applied, a penman who wrote Roman letters with great neatness.

His writing is not labored and tortured. It is suitable for our age, and, indeed, for all ages. Young people, always giddy, admirers of frivolity, despisers of useful things, have adopted the fashion of writing in bristling and undecipherable letters, of which accomplishment they are very proud. To me, these medleys and jumbles of angled letters, riding one on another, make nothing but a mess of confusion which the writer himself must read with difficulty. Whoever buys work of this character, buys not a book, but an unreadable farrago of letters.

[69] These boards were sometimes paneled from the inside of the cover. Scaliger tells us that his grandmother had a printed psalter, the cover of which was two fingers thick, containing in an interior panel a silver crucifix. Hansard says that he had seen an old book which contained in a similar recess a human toe, obviously a sacred relic of value.

[70] This is one of the finest existing specimens of antique bookbinding in the National Library at Paris. It is a work of the eleventh century, and encases a book of prayers in a mass of gold, jewels and enamels. The central object is sunk like a framed picture, and represents the Crucifixion, the Virgin and St. John on each side of the cross, and above it the veiled busts of Apollo and Diana; thus exhibiting the influence of the older Byzantine school, which is, indeed, visible throughout the entire design. This subject is executed on a thin sheet of gold, beaten up from behind into high relief, and chased upon its surface. A rich frame of jeweled ornament surrounds this object, portions of the decoration being further enriched with colored enamels; the angles are filled in with enameled emblems of the evangelists; the ground of the whole design enriched by threads and foliations of delicate gold wire. Chambers, _Book of Days_.

[71] Wickliffe says that, in 1380, there were in England many “unable curates that kunnen not the ten commandments, ne read their sauter, ne understand a verse of it.” The author of the _Plowman’s Tale_ accuses the clergy of faults worse than that of ignorance.

[72] Boccaccio, one of the enthusiasts of the fourteenth century in the labor of collecting the forgotten manuscripts of classical authors, has told the following characteristic story about the neglect of libraries and the abuse of books by the constituted conservators of literature. When traveling in Apulia, Boccaccio was induced to visit the convent of Mount Cassino and its then celebrated library. He respectfully addressed a monk who seemed the most approachable, begging that he would open to him the library. But the monk, pointing to a high staircase, said, in a harsh voice, “Go up; the library is open.” Ascending the staircase with gladness, Boccaccio came to a hall, to which there was neither door nor bar to protect the treasures of the library. What was his astonishment when he saw that the windows were obstructed with plants which had germinated in the crevices, and that all the books and all the shelves were thickly covered with dust. With still greater astonishment, he took up book after book, and discovered that in a large number of classical manuscripts entire sections had been torn out. Other books had their broad, white margins cut away to the edges of the text. Full of grief, and with eyes filled with tears, at this sad spectacle of the destruction of the works of wise and famous men, he descended the staircase. Meeting a monk in a cloister, he asked why the books were so mutilated. The monk answered, “This is the work of some of the monks: to earn a few sous, they tear out the leaves and make little psalters, which they sell to the children. With the white margins they make mass-books, which they sell to the women.” Benvenuto da Immola, as quoted by Didot, _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 567.

[73] The word stationer which has been adopted in the English language has lost its first meaning in the French. It is here used to define a trader who sold books and all kinds of writing materials in a station, shop or store, in contradistinction to a class of peddlers or clerks who had no store or place of business, but who acted as couriers or agents between the buyer and maker.

[74] The prices allowed to stationers in 1303 for the use of their copies seem pitiably small. A treatise on the _Gospel of Matthew_, 37 pages, was priced at 1 sol; _Gospel of Mark_, 20 pages, at 17 deniers; _St. Thomas on Metaphysics_, 53 pages, at 3 sols; a treatise on _Canon Law_, 120 pages, at 7 sols; _St. Thomas on the Soul_, 19 pages, at 13 deniers.

[75] If the book was objectionable, it was burned and the author was imprisoned. According to the Roman law, the condemnation of death attached not only to the author and buyer of a proscribed book, but to him who chanced to find it and did not burn it. In 1328, Pope John XXII condemned two authors who had written a book in eight chapters, full of grievous heresies—for they had undertaken to prove that the Emperor Louis of Bavaria had the right to discipline, install or depose the pope at his own pleasure, and that all the property of the church was held by it through the sufferance of the Emperor. Lacroix, _Histoire de l’imprimerie_, p. 26.

[76] Erasmus, caustically, but truthfully, said of this huge book, “No man can carry it about with him, nor even get it in his head.”

[77] The National Library at Paris possesses two manuscript Bibles, of which one volume contains 5,122 pictures. Each picture is explained by two lines, one in Latin and one in French; each line is decorated by an initial and a finial in gold and bright colors. If the cost of each picture with its lines be estimated at sixteen francs (Didot’s valuation), the value of this book would be 82,000 francs, exclusive of the cost of parchment, binding and copying. By the same estimate, the value of the second volume would be 50,000 francs. Didot pertinently asks the question: Where can we find, in the printed work of our day, an equal prodigality in illustration? _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 715.

[78] Abbreviations which deformed written language to such an extent that it is almost undecipherable to modern readers, were once esteemed a positive merit. The habit of making them was continued after printing was invented. In 1475, a printer of Lubec said, in commendation of one of his own books, that he had made free use of abbreviations, to get the whole work in one volume instead of two—a procedure, he thought, that deserved special praise, for he said that the contractions made the book more readable. The modern reader will be of a different opinion. The _Logic of Ockham_, in folio, printed at Paris in 1488, by Clos-Bruneau, contains, among other abbreviations, this bewildering passage:

(The text as printed.)

‹f›Sic hic e fal sm qd ad simplr a e pducible a Deo g a et silr hic a n g a n e pducible a Do.‹/f›

(With words in full.)

Sicut hic est fallacia secundum quid ad simpliciter. A est producibile a Deo. Ergo A est. Et similiter hic. A non est. Ergo A non est producibile a Deo.

In 1498, John Petit, of Paris, published a dictionary which professed to be _A Guide to the Reading of Abbreviations_. It was not published too soon, for the practice of making contractions had increased to such an extent that books with abbreviations were legible only to experts.

[79] From a catalogue still extant, it appears that this library was composed chiefly of romances, legends, histories, and treatises on astrology, geometry and chiromancy. It was then valued at 2,223 French livres, rather more than the same number of pounds sterling. At this time, the price of a cow was about eight shillings, and of a horse about twenty shillings.—It is difficult to ascertain the real value of the money of the middle ages. Coins were frequently clipped to light weight by knavish traders, and were oftener debased at the mint when the royal treasury was low. Sellers everywhere knew that the value of a coin was not in its stamp, but in its quantity of silver, and they altered prices to meet the altered value of coin. But even in its most debased form, the silver coin of the middle ages had a very high purchasing capacity.

[80] He has given an extract from an ecclesiastical account book in which are found the items of expense for the making, binding, and presentation of the manuscript book _Royal Chants_ to Princess Louise of Savoy.

To Jacques Plastel, for sketching the designs for forty-eight pictures, 45 livres; to Jehan Pichou, illuminator, for coloring the designs, 80 livres; to workmen of Jehan Pichou, 50 sols, and for _vin du marché_ (in colloquial English, _treating_ or drink money) with illuminator Pichou, 24 sols; to Jean de Béguines, priest, for engraving the ballads, 12 livres; to Guy-le-Flamenc, for illuminating the large initial letters, 13 livres, 3 sols; for vellum, 3 livres, 12 sols; for the binding, expenses of presentation to Louise of Savoy, and the journey to Amboise, 68 livres, 8 sols. Sum total, 366 livres. Lacroix, _Histoire de l’imprimerie_, p. 47.

[81] Stow says that a Bible “fairly written” was sold in 1274, in England, for 50 marks, equal to about 33 pounds. At this time a laborer’s wages were 1-1/2d. per day, and a sheep could be had for a shilling.—Roger Bacon, who died in 1292, said that he had spent more than 2,000 pounds for books. At this time the annual income of an English curate was £3 6s. 8d.—In 1305, the priory of Bolton gave 30 shillings for _The Book of Sentences_, by Peter Lombard. Hallam says that the accounts of the priory show that the jolly monks bought but three books in forty years. He estimates the equivalent in modern money of this 30 shillings at near 40 pounds.—_The Mirror of History_, a work in four volumes, was sold at Paris in 1332, with great formalities, for 40 livres of Paris.—In 1357, _The Scholastic History_ was sold to the Earl of Salisbury for 100 marks, or about 67 pounds. At this time the pay of the king’s surgeon was fixed at £5 13s. 4d. per annum and a shilling a day besides.—Wickliffe’s translation of the _New Testament_ was sold in 1380 for 4 marks and 40 pence.—Pierre Plaont bequeathed, in 1415, to the regents of the University of Paris, a big quarto Bible, which he said was worth 15 pounds. Chevillier says that a printed Bible of the same size in the seventeenth century could be had for 6 francs.

[82] The horn-book was the primer of our ancestors, established by common use. It consisted of a single leaf, containing on one side the alphabet, large and small, in black letter or in Roman, with, perhaps, a small regiment of monosyllables, and the words of the Lord’s Prayer. This leaf was usually set in a frame of wood, with a slice of diaphanous horn in front—hence the name horn-book. Generally, there was a handle to hold it by, and this handle had usually a hole for a string, whereby the horn-book was slung to the girdle of the scholar. It was frequently noticed by early chroniclers. Chambers, _Book of Days_.

[83] It was a square stick of hard wood, and about eight inches long. The entire series of days constituting the year was represented by notches running along the angles of the square block, each side and angle thus presenting three months; the first day of a month was marked by a notch having a patulous stroke turned up from it, and each Sunday was distinguished by a notch somewhat broader than usual. The feasts were denoted by symbols resembling hieroglyphics. Chambers, _Book of Days_.

[84] Men given up to sensuality we may find in abundance, but very few lovers of learning, and those barbarous, skilled more in quibbles and sophisms than in literature. Poggio, as quoted by Hallam.

[85] An entry in the books of the Brewers’ Company during the reign of Henry V (1415–1430), states the reasons why this change was made from French to English.

Whereas our mother tongue, to wit, the English language, hath in modern days begun to be honorably enlarged and adorned, for that our most excellent King Henry V hath, in his letters missive, and in divers affairs, touching his own person, more willingly chosen to declare the secrets of his will; and, for the better understanding of the people, hath, with a diligent mind, procured the common idiom, setting aside others, to be commended by the exercise of writing; and there are many of our craft of brewers who have the knowledge of writing and reading in the same English idiom, but in others, to wit, the Latin and French, before these times used, they do not in any wise understand; for which causes, with many others, it being considered how that the greater part of the lords and trusty commons have begun to make their matters to be noted down in our mother tongue, so we also, in our own craft, following in some manner their steps, have decreed in future to commit to memory the needful things which concern us.

[86] In 1446, a petition was presented to the English parliament, to consider the great number of grammar schools that sometime were in divers parts of this realm, besides those that were in London, and how few there are in these days. Knight, _The Old Printer and Modern Press_.

[87] In the Netherlands we find the earliest development of the high school. The schools of the Brethren of the Life-in-Common, founded by Gerard Groot of Deventer, in 1385, which were forty-five in number in 1435, and double that number in 1460, were the first nurseries of literature in Germany. The fruits of this attention to education were freely gathered in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The entire Bible was printed in the Flemish or Dutch language within the first thirty-six years of the sixteenth century in fifteen editions. . . . Thirty-four editions of the New Testament in that language alone appeared within the same period. . . . . There can be no sort of comparison between the number of these editions, and consequently the eagerness of the people of the Low Countries for biblical knowledge, considering the limited extent of their language, and anything that could be found in the Protestant States of the [German] Empire. Hallam, _Literature of Europe_, chap. VI, sec. 38.

[88] Æneas Sylvius (subsequently Pope Pius II), writing near the middle of the fifteenth century, said that the kings of Scotland would rejoice to be as comfortably lodged as the second class of citizens of Nuremberg. Hallam says that Pope Pius also praised their well-furnished and splendid dwellings, their easy mode of living, the security of their rights and the just equality of their laws.

[89] Flanders, during the fifteenth century, was the richest and most densely populated part of Europe. It was famous for the extent of its foreign trade and the variety of its industry. It was not uncommon for one hundred and fifty ships in one day to enter the port of Bruges, in which city were mercantile agents from seventeen different nations. Flanders was full of industries, but its great business was the making of cloth. All the world, wrote an enthusiastic chronicler of the period, is clothed by Flanders. Ghent had fifteen thousand workmen employed on stuffs of wool; Ypres had four thousand makers of cloth; Courtray had six thousand drapers.

[90] As early as the twelfth century, the emperor Henry V undertook to curb the exactions of feudalism by the establishment of free cities, and by the grant of extraordinary privileges to mechanics and manufacturers. To the nobility and petty princes of Germany these privileges were a constant offense, and the occasion of many local strifes; but the burghers were industrious and public-spirited, and took care of their rights. To protect their trade from the rapacity of the princes on the Elbe and the coast, the cities of Germany, in the year 1249, established a mercantile organization, known as the Hanseatic League. In the fifteenth century, this league was constituted of traders from all parts of the Netherlands and Germany. It was so powerful that it monopolized the trade of Northern Europe: by threat of war it compelled Edward VI of England to grant extraordinary concessions; it made successful war against Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The Hanseatic League is a wonderful example of the sudden development of successful legislative and executive ability among men of little or no culture, who till then had been excluded from every position of honor in the state.

[91] Peasants could not claim exemption from arbitrary arrest or military servitude. They had no liberty to choose a residence, to learn a trade, to travel, to go to school, to marry, to keep property, to transact business, or to associate with others in any peaceable enterprise. Practically, they were but little better than slaves. Beaumanoir, a French jurist of the thirteenth century, defines the nature of their servitude in the plainest words. He says that:

The third estate of man is that of such as are not free; and these are not all of one condition, for some are so subject to their lord, that he may take all they have, alive or dead, and imprison them whenever he pleases, being accountable to none but God; from others the lord can take nothing but the customary payments, though at their death all they have escheats to him.

[92] The determination to keep the peasants enslaved was stronger than all enmities. During the insurrection of the _Jacquerie_, the English knights who accompanied King Edward III in his invasion of France made truce with the French nobles, and joined them in putting down this rebellion. Froissart, the chronicler of chivalry, admired this exhibition of magnanimity. For the sufferings of the peasants he has no sympathy.

[93] “Villeins you have been, villeins you are, and shall be,”—said King Richard to the miserable peasantry of Essex, after the killing of Wat Tyler,—“not as before, but in a bondage much more bitter.”

[94] The ecclesiastical history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, says Hallam, teems with sectaries and schismatics, various in their aberrations of opinion, but all concurring in detestation of the established church. The heresy which began during the twelfth century, or earlier, with the Manichees of Bulgaria, was made more and more formidable by the Albigenses of Languedoc, by the Waldenses of France and Germany, by the Vaudois of the Alps, by the Lollards of the Netherlands and England, and afterward by the disciples of John Huss of Bohemia, until the faith of the mass of the people was uprooted from its foundation. In Germany, enthusiastic but mystical priests like Eckhardt, Tauler and Suso, keeping themselves within the pale of the church, weakened its rigid discipline by preaching against the arrogant prerogatives of the clergy, and by commanding a higher worship of the heart and life.

[95] The British Museum contains a Bible in Flemish verse, known as the _Rym Bible_, written by Jacob von Maerlandt of Damne, near Bruges in Flanders. It is a manuscript of the fifteenth century, upon vellum, with ornamented capitals, and is one of many copies of a version of the Scriptures made in the year 1270.

Except the Waldensian translation in the Provençal language, this version is, consequently, the most ancient in existence, in the vernacular, and must have preceded by a century the versions of Raoul de Presles, of John Trevisa or the Hermit of Hampole. . . . . . The British Museum had another manuscript in prose, of parts of a Bible in Flemish, written in the fifteenth century. It is part of a translation made in the early part of the fourteenth century, and was the text used for the Bible printed in Delft in 1477. Sotheby, _Principia Typographica_, vol. III, p. 123.

The British Museum has, also, a manuscript in Flemish of five books of the Old Testament, made in the fourteenth century.

[96] It is a noteworthy fact that the first complaint of an unauthorized reading of the Bible came from the city where the Bible was first printed. Pope Innocent III, alarmed at the consequences of this innovation, and writing at the beginning of the thirteenth century, says he had been informed by the bishop of Mentz that:

No small multitude of laymen and women, having procured the translation of the Gospels, Epistles of St. Paul, the Psalter, Job and other books of Scripture to be made for them into French, meet in secret conventicles to hear them read and to preach to each other, and having been reprimanded for this by some of their parish priests, have withstood them, alleging reasons from the Scriptures why they should not be so forbidden. Some of them, too, deride the ignorance of their ministers, and maintain that their own books teach them more than they can learn from the pulpit, and that they can express it better. Although, Innocent proceeds, the desire of reading the Scriptures is rather praiseworthy than reprehensible, yet they are to be blamed for frequenting secret assemblies, for usurping the office of preaching, for deriding their own ministers, and for scorning the company of those who do not concur in their novelties. He presses the bishop and chapter to discover the author of this translation, which could not have been made without a knowledge of letters. He wished to know what were his intentions, and what degree of orthodoxy and respect for the holy see those who used it possessed. In another letter Innocent complains that some of the members of this association continued refractory, and refused to obey either the bishop or the pope. Hallam, _Middle Ages_.

[97] At the beginning of the fifteenth century, paintings of the _Dance of Death_ were in all the large cities of Europe. Woltmann has distinctly stated the causes which gave popularity to these horrible compositions.

The misery and unhappiness which at this period more than any other visited the nations of the West, increased more and more the ascetic views on the subject of death. The great aims and ideas of medieval life had passed away, and the ideas of the new period were now fast beginning to form themselves. . . . . Licentiousness prevailed in all lands; immoderate festivity and boundless excesses of sensuality gained more and more the upper hand. . . . . Upon this life of self-will and self-indulgence, of riot and revelry, the terrors of death burst all the more fearfully. In addition to the constant wars, the acts of violence and the shedding of blood which prevailed among men, we find the most various alarms in nature. Famine and desolating pestilences, and in the middle of the fourteenth century the Black Death, made their fearful and triumphal progress through Europe. To escape the dread and thought of this misery, men gave themselves up on the one side all the more passionately to the intoxication of the senses; but on the other they believed themselves struck by the vengeance of God, and sought for safety in contrition and repentance, which often led them into the most repulsive forms of ecstasy. But the most forcible sermons exhorting to repentance, the sermons that spoke to the people in the most intelligible form, were the figurative representations which proclaimed the almighty power of death. _Holbein and his Time_ (Bunnèt’s translation), p. 248.

[98] _Tailleres ymagiers_, the words of the record, may be construed as engravers on wood, or as carvers of wooden statuettes; but the _tailleres_ were, probably, engravers. The fraternity of St. Luke consisted chiefly of men who made or contributed to the making of books: an engraver would properly belong to the guild. The words _tailleres ymagiers_ suggest engraving quite as clearly as _formschneider_ does in German.

[99] Laborde, a brilliant French writer on early printing, who traces the origin of printing to playing cards, acknowledges its very ignoble origin with evident mortification:—“What a mother for such a son!”

[100] The history of literature, like that of Empire, is full of revolutions; our public libraries are cemeteries of departed reputation; the dust accumulating upon these untouched volumes speaks as forcibly as the grass that waves over the ruins of Babylon. Hallam, _Middle Ages_.

[101] The University of Paris made no opposition to the free sale of paper. It was not subjected to taxes or duties in France, not even when oppressive taxes were levied on most manufactures. Didot, _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 730.

[102] A school ordinance of Bautzen in Saxony, dated 1418, gives the names and prices of some of these books. For an _A B C_ and _Pater Noster_, etc., 1 groschen; for a good _Donatus_, or child’s grammar, 10 groschen; for a complete _Doctrinal_, 1 half-mark; for the _First Part_, 8 groschen. There has also been preserved the advertisement of one Dypold Lauber, a teacher and copyist of books at Hagenau in Germany, who lived during the middle of the fifteenth century, from which we may gather a clear notion of the books that were most salable among the people. His catalogue begins with the _Deeds of the Romans_, with illustrations. Then follow poetical works, romances of chivalry, biblical and legendary works, edifying books, religious books, books for the people, fortune-telling books, and other works of like character. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend of the Invention of Printing_, pp. 2, 3.

[103] Bernard Quaritch, _Catalogue of Block-Books_, 8vo. October, 1873, pp. 1373–1375. The title of the book, as he gives it, is _Ein Vorrede das Puch haist wochenlich Andach zu Seligkayt der weltlichen Menschen_.

[104] They were common during the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Bernard, _De l’origine de l’imprimerie_, vol. I, p. 102. Fournier, _De l’origine et des productions de l’imprimerie_, p. 176. Papillon, _Traité historique et pratique de la gravure sur bois_, vol. I, p. 101. Guichard, _Notice sur le Speculum_, p. 118. They have been noticed also by Passavant. It is plain that copyists everywhere recognized the utility of engraving.