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Оглавление1 Even Mr. Carnegie will only help to found new libraries, not to make old ones more efficient.
2 During the Civil War itself presses were also set up temporarily at Newcastle-on-Tyne, at Shrewsbury, and perhaps elsewhere.
CHAPTER II
BLOCK-BOOKS
The collector of the time of George III, whose heart was set on Typographical Antiquities, and who was ambitious enough to wish to begin at the beginning, must have hungered after a block-book. Even in the days of Bagford, at the very outset of the eighteenth century, interest had been aroused in the block-printed editions of the Speculum Humanae Saluationis, so that Bagford himself travelled from Amsterdam to Haarlem on purpose to see a copy of one of the Dutch editions, and set an English wood-cutter to work, with very poor success, to manufacture a bogus specimen of it, wherewith “to oblige the curious.” This, with a similar imitation of a page in the Biblia Pauperum, was intended to illustrate the History of Printing which Bagford had the temerity to plan, although such of his smaller dissertations as have been preserved show conclusively that he was quite incapable of carrying it out.
The interest thus early shown in block-books sprang from an entirely reasonable, but probably incorrect, view of the part which they had played in the development of printing with movable type. It was known that woodcuts without letterpress were printed in Germany quite early in the fifteenth century, the cut of S. Christopher, formerly in the Spencer Collection, now in the John Rylands Library, bearing the date 1423.3 On the other hand, printing with movable type was practised at Mainz in the fifties, and about 1461 Albrecht Pfister published at Bamberg several books with woodcut illustrations and printed letterpress. In the logical order of development nothing could be more reasonable than the sequence:
| i. | Woodcut pictures. |
| ii. | Woodcut pictures and woodcut text. |
| iii. | Woodcut pictures and text printed from movable type. |
Facts, however, do not always arrange themselves with the neatness which commends itself to an a priori historian, and the most recent students of block-books are unable to discover sufficient justification for the early dates which their predecessors assigned to them. On the old theory, in order to put it in front of the invention of printing with movable types, the Biblia Pauperum, which appears to be the oldest of the block-books, was placed about 1430 or 1440, and the Ars Moriendi and the other chief specimens of block-printing were all supposed to have been produced before 1460, the main period of block-printing thus coinciding with the interval between the S. Christopher of 1423 and Pfister’s activity at Bamberg about 1461. Positive evidence in favour of this chronology there was none. It rested solely on the idea, at which bibliographers had jumped, that the block-books were necessary “steps towards the invention of printing,” as they have often been called, and on what seemed the improbability that any one, when the art of printing with movable type had once been invented, would have troubled himself laboriously to cut letterpress on wood.
So far from block-printing being unable to co-exist with printing from movable type, it was not till nearly a century after printing had been invented that block-books finally ceased to be produced. The example generally quoted as the latest4 is the Opera nova contemplativa per ogni fedel christiano laquale tratta de le figure del testamento vecchio: le quale figure sonno verificate nel testamento nuovo. As its title implies, this, curiously enough, is an adaptation of the Biblia Pauperum, which was thus the last, as it may have been the first, of the block-books. It is undated, but has the name of its publisher, Giovanni Andrea Vavassore, who worked at Venice about 1530.
The Opera nova contemplativa was from one point of view a mere survival, but Vavassore is not likely to have produced it solely to cause twentieth century antiquaries surprise. He must have had a business reason for having recourse to block-printing, nor is that reason very hard to find. From the frequency with which the early printers changed and recast their types, and the short intervals at which popular books printed with types were set up afresh, it is clear (1) that the type-metal5 employed was much softer and less durable than that now in use, and that only small impressions6 could be taken from the same setting up; (2) that only a small amount of type was cast at a time, and that type was quickly distributed and used again, never kept standing on the chance that another edition would be wanted. Now when we come to the illustrations in printed books, we find the same woodblocks used for five or six successive editions, and then, in many cases, enjoying a second lease of life as job-blocks, used at haphazard by inferior printers. It is clear, therefore, that while it was a much more difficult and laborious business to cut the letterpress of a book on blocks of wood than to set it up with movable types, when the blocks were once made much more work could be got out of them. In a word, in the case of a small book for which there was a steady demand, a printer might be tempted to have it cut as a block-book for the same reasons as might cause a modern publisher to have it stereotyped. The labour of cutting the letterpress on wood was much greater than that now involved in stereotyping, and the result clumsier. Hence it was only to short books intended for unexacting purchasers that the process was applied and with two or three exceptions it was used only for illustrated books with a small amount of text. But within this restricted field it had its own commercial possibilities, and there is thus nothing surprising in its coexistence with printing from movable type.
When the theory that block-books were “Steps towards the Invention of Printing” is thus opposed by the rival theory that they were forerunners of stereotyped plates, we are left free to consider, uncoerced by supposed necessities, such evidence as exists as to the dates of the specimens of block-printing still extant. Putting aside the late Italian block-book as a mere survival, we find two7 broadly distinguished groups, one earlier, the dates of members of which can only be conjectured, the other later, several of which can only be definitely connected with the years 1470 to 1473. The characteristics of the earlier group are that they are printed (1) with a watery brown ink; (2) always on one side of the paper only; (3) without mechanical pressure;8 (4) two consecutive pages at a time, so that they cannot be arranged in quires, but must be folded and stitched separately, and the book thus formed9 begins and ends with a blank page and has a pair of blank pages between each pair of printed ones. This arrangement in some extant copies has been altered by modern binders, who have divided the sheets, mounted each leaf on a guard, and then gathered them, at their own will, into quires. The inconvenient intervention of the blank pages has also sometimes been wrestled with (at an early date) by gluing the leaves together, so that all the leaves, except the first and last, are double, and the printed pages follow each other without interruption. These expedients, however, are easily detected, and the original principle of arrangement is free from doubt.
In the later block-books, on the other hand, we note one or more of the following characteristics: (1) the use of the thick black ink (really a kind of paint) employed in ordinary printing; (2) printing on both sides of the paper; (3) marks of pressure, showing that the paper has been passed through a printing-press; (4) the arrangement of the blocks in such a way as to permit the sheets to be gathered into quires.
In the case of the more popular block-books which went through many issues and editions10 we can trace the gradual substitution of later characteristics for earlier ones. At what intervals of time these changes were made we have bibliographically no adequate grounds even for guessing. Analogies from books printed with movable types may be quoted on both sides. On the one hand, we find the blocks for book-illustrations enjoying an amazingly long life. Thus blocks cut at Venice and Florence between 1490 and 1500 continued in use for fifteen or twenty years, were then laid aside, and reappear between 1550 and 1560, certainly the worse for wear, but yet capable by a lucky chance of yielding quite a fair impression. The fact that one issue of a block-book can be positively assigned to 1470 or 1473, thus does not of itself forbid an earlier issue being placed as far back in the fifteenth century as any one may please to propose. On the other hand, when a printed book was a popular success editions succeeded each other with great rapidity, and one centre of printing vied with another in producing copies of it. The chief reason for the current disinclination to assume a date earlier than 1450 or 1460 for any extant block-book is the total absence of any evidence demanding it. If such evidence were forthcoming, there would be no inherent impossibility to set against it. But in the absence of such evidence twenty years seems an ample time to allow for the vogue of the block-books, and (despite the neatness of the a priori theory of development mentioned at the beginning of this chapter) this fits in better with the history both of printing and of book-illustration than any longer period.
The first attempt to describe the extant block-books was made by Carl Heinrich von Heinecken in 1771, in his Idée générale d’une collection d’estampes. This held the field until the publication in 1858 of Samuel Legh Sotheby’s Principia Typographica: the block-books issued in Holland, Flanders and Germany, during the fifteenth century, a painstaking and well-illustrated work in three folio volumes. The most recent and probably the final treatment of the subject is that by Dr. W. L. Schreiber, in Vol. IV of his Manuel de l’Amateur de la Gravure sur bois et sur métal au xve siècle, published in 1902 (facsimiles in Vols. VII and VIII, 1895–1900). Dr. Schreiber enumerates no fewer than thirty-three works as existing in the form of block-books, the number of extant issues and editions of them amounting to over one hundred. Here it must suffice to offer brief notes on some of the more important.
BIBLIA PAUPERUM
A series of forty composite pictures, the central compartment in each representing a scene from the life of Christ, while on each side of it is an Old Testament type, and above and below are in each case two half-figures of prophets. The explanatory letterpress is given in the two upper corners and also on scrolls. Schreiber distinguishes ten issues and editions, in addition to an earlier German one of a less elaborate design and with manuscript text, which belongs to a different tradition. The earlier of these ten editions appear to have been made in the Netherlands. An edition with German text was published with the colophon, “Friederich walther Mauler zu Nördlingen vnd Hans Hurning habent dis buch mitt einender gemacht,” and a second issue of this (without the colophon) is dated 1470. In the following year another edition, with copied cuts, was printed with the device of Hans Spoerer.
ARS MORIENDI
Twenty-four leaves, two containing a preface, and the remaining twenty-two eleven pictures and eleven pages of explanatory letterpress facing them, showing the temptations to which the dying are exposed, and the good inspirations by which they may be resisted, and, lastly, the final agony. The early editions are ascribed to the Netherlands or district of the Rhine; the later to Germany. There are also editions with German text, one of them signed “hanns Sporer,” and dated 1473. A set of engravings on copper by the Master E. S. (copied by the Master of S. Erasmus) may be either imitations or the originals of the earliest of these Ars Moriendi designs. (See Lionel Cust’s The Master E. S. and the Ars Moriendi.) The designs were imitated in numerous printed editions in various countries. In addition to a copy of the edition usually regarded as the earliest extant, the British Museum possesses one with the same characteristics, but of a much smaller size (the blocks measuring 137 by 100 mm. instead of 226 by 162), and from this, as much less known, a page is here given as an illustration.
CANTICA CANTICORUM
Sixteen leaves, each containing two woodcuts, illustrating the Song of Songs as a parable of the Blessed Virgin. Produced in the Netherlands.
APOCALYPSIS SANCTI JOHANNIS
Fifty leaves, or in some editions forty-eight, showing scenes from the life of S. John and illustrations of the Apocalypse, mostly with two pictures on each leaf. The early editions are assigned to the Netherlands, the later to Germany. A copy of the edition regarded as the fourth, lately sold by Herr Ludwig Rosenthal, bears a manuscript note, most probably as to the writer, just possibly as to the book, entering the household of the Landgrave Heinrich of Hesse in 1463.
| III. ARS MORIENDI, BLOCKBOOK, C. 1465 INSPIRATIO CONTRA VANAM GLORIAM |
SPECULUM HUMANAE SALUATIONIS
Scenes from Bible history, arranged in pairs, within architectural borders, with explanatory text beneath. No complete xylographic, or block-printed, edition is known, but twenty leaves printed from blocks are found in conjunction with forty-four leaves printed from type, and have not unreasonably been held to prove the previous production of a complete block-printed edition now lost. In like manner, the fact that two different types are used in different parts of a Dutch printed edition has encouraged Dr. Hessels to believe that this “mixed edition” should be regarded as proving the production of two complete editions, one in each type. On this theory we have (1) a hypothetical Latin block-printed edition; (2–4) three Dutch editions, each printed in a different type; (5) a Latin edition, entirely printed from type; (6) a Latin edition, printed partly from type, partly from some of the blocks of No. 1. The copy of this “mixed Latin edition,” as it is called, in the University Library at Munich, is dated in manuscript 1471, and the hypothetical complete block-printed edition may be as much earlier than this as any one pleases to imagine. But other bibliographers recognize only four editions and arrange them differently.
ANTICHRISTUS
Thirty-eight leaves, with two pictures on each leaf, illustrating the Legends relating to the Coming of Antichrist, and the Fifteen Signs which were to precede the Last Judgment. The text is in German, and the block-book was executed in Germany, probably about 1470.
FRANCISCUS DE RETZA. DEFENSORIUM INVIOLATAE CASTITATIS VIRGINIS MARIAE
Sixteen leaves, mostly with four pictures and four pieces of explanatory letterpress on each leaf, concerning marvels in the natural world which were supposed to be equally wonderful with that of the Virgin Birth, and therefore to render faith in this easier. Unfortunately the marvels are so very marvellous that they do not inspire belief, e.g. one story relates how the sun one day drew up the moisture from the earth with such rapidity that an ox was drawn up with it and subsequently deposited out of a cloud in another field. One edition was issued by a certain F. W. in 1470, another at Ratisbon by Johann Eysenhut the following year.
JOHANN MÜLLER (JOHANNES REGIOMONTANUS). KALENDER
Thirty-two leaves, containing lunar tables, tables of the eclipses for fifty-six years (1475–1530), other astronomical information, and a figure of the human body with notes of the signs of the zodiac by which it was influenced. Composed by the famous astronomer, Johann Müller, and sold by Hans Briefftruck, probably Hans Spoerer, about 1474–5, at Nuremberg and elsewhere.
JOHANN HARTLIEB. DIE KUNST CHIROMANTIA
Forty-four figures of hands, with a titlepage and page of text and a printed wrapper. Early issues are printed on one side of the paper only, later on both. The printer appears to have been Jorg Schaff, of Augsburg, and the date of issue about 1475. The date 1448 found in the book is that of composition, and it probably circulated in manuscript for many years before being printed.
MIRABILIA ROMAE
A German guide-book for visitors to Rome. Ninety-two leaves, printed with black ink on both sides of the leaf, with only a few illustrations. It was perhaps first published to meet the rush of German pilgrims to Rome at the Jubilee of Pope Sixtus IV, 1475. The blocks were probably cut in Germany, and the printing done at Rome. Some of the ornaments are said to have been used in type-printed editions by Stephan Plannck. This suggests that the book may have been published by his predecessor, Ulrich Han.
In addition to these block-books of Low Country and German origin, mention must also be made of a very curious Italian one, a Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi, fully described by the Prince d’Essling. The copy of this at Berlin contains eighteen leaves, and was probably executed at Venice about the middle of the fifteenth century. Some of the blocks were subsequently used (after a scroll at the foot had been cut off) for an edition of the Devote Meditatione sopra la Passione del Nostro Signore (attributed to S. Bonaventura), published at Venice in 1487 by Jeronimo di Sancti e Cornelio suo Compagno, and a page from this is reproduced as a frontispiece to our chapter on Italian Illustrated Books.
Mention has already been made of the Opera nova contemplativa, an adaptation of the Biblia Pauperum, printed as a block-book at Venice about 1530.
The only extant French block-book, if it can be called one, is that of the “Nine Worthies” (Les Neuf Preux). This consists of three sheets, the first showing three heathen worthies—Hector, Alexander, and Julius Cæsar; the second, three from the Old Testament—Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabæus; the third, three from medieval romance—Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Boulogne. Under each picture are six lines of verse. These three triple woodcuts, with the woodcut text, are assigned to about 1455.
No English block-book has yet been discovered, nor is it in the least likely that one ever existed, though there are a few single woodcuts.
Block-books possess two permanent attractions in addition to their supposed historical importance in the development of the invention of printing on which doubt is now cast—the attraction of popular literature and the attraction of the illustrated book. As we have seen, it would not have been worth any one’s while to cause a block-book to be laboriously engraved, or cut, unless a large and speedy sale could be expected for it. The most famous block-books are nearly all of a religious character, and they prove a widespread desire for simple instruction as to the incidents of the life of Christ and the events in the Old Testament history which were regarded as prefigurements of them, as to the dignity of the Blessed Virgin and the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, as to the end of the world and the coming of Antichrist, and as to the spiritual dangers and temptations of the dying and the means by which they might be resisted. As early specimens of book-illustration the value of the block-books varies very greatly. The majority of them are more curious than beautiful, but the pictures of the Cantica Canticorum, the Speculum Humanae Saluationis, and the Ars Moriendi have all very great merit. The tall, slender figures in the Song of Songs have a charm as great as any Dutch book-illustrations of the fifteenth century; the cuts of the Speculum are full of vigour, while the serene dignity of the scenes in the Ars Moriendi illustrating the Inspirations of the Good Angel is as impressive as the grotesque force used in depicting the diabolic suggestions. If we must grant, as the weight of authority now bids us, that these woodcuts are copies from the copper engravings of the Master E. S., it can hardly be disputed that the wood-cutter was the better artist of the two.
The block-books are a striking example of the difficulty of gleaning where the earlier collectors have reaped, a difficulty to which we shall often have to call attention. They vary greatly in positive rarity. Of the Biblia Pauperum and Ars Moriendi, which in their different issues and editions enjoyed the longest life and early attracted attention, Dr. Schreiber (if I have counted rightly) was able to enumerate in the one case as many as eighty-three copies—many of them, it is true, mere fragments—in the other sixty-one. Of the Apocalypse fifty-seven copies were known to him, of the Speculum twenty-nine, of the Antichrist thirteen, of the Defensorium twelve, and of the Mirabilia Romae six. But of these 261 copies and fragments no fewer than 223 are recorded as being locked up in public libraries and museums, the ownership of thirteen was doubtful, and only twenty-five are definitely registered as being in the hands of private collectors, viz. of the Apocalypse, eight copies or fragments; of the Biblia Pauperum, six; of the Speculum and Ars Moriendi, four each; of the Defensorium, two; and of the Cantica Canticorum, one. The chief owners known to Dr. Schreiber were the Earl of Pembroke, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, and Major Holford, to whom must now be added Mr. Pierpont Morgan and Mr. Perrins. No doubt the copies in public institutions are much more easily enumerated than those in private hands, and probably most of the untraced copies are owned by collectors. But when allowance has been made for this, it remains obvious that this is no field where an easy harvest can be reaped, and that the average collector may think himself lucky if he obtains one or two single leaves. The last great opportunity of acquiring such treasures was at the sale in 1872 of the wonderful collection formed by T. O. Weigel,11 at which the British Museum bought a very fine copy of the first edition of the Ars Moriendi, the first edition, dated 1470, of the Biblia Pauperum, in German, a block-book illustrating the virtues of the hymn Salve Regina, and the compassion of the Blessed Virgin, printed at Regensburg about 1470, besides fragments and woodcut single sheets. The foundation of the Museum collection of block-books had been laid by George III, added to by Mr. Grenville, and completed by a series of purchases from 1838 to this final haul of 1872, since when there have been few opportunities for new acquisitions. It is now quite adequate for purposes of study, though not so rich as that of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.
3 The authenticity of a still earlier date, 1418, on a cut of the Blessed Virgin at Brussels is disputed.
4 The Libro di M. Giovanbattista Palatino, printed at Rome in 1548, is spoken of by Mr. Campbell Dodgson as a “belated specimen” of a block-book. But this was a writing-book, and hardly counts.
5 Numerous references in colophons show that the metal mostly used was brass, e.g. “Primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis Vrbe libros Spira genitus de stirpe Johannes,” and the use of Chalcographi as a name for printers. But there are one or two references to printing “stanneis typis,” with types of tin.
6 Of the first book printed at Venice only 100 copies were struck off, but the number was trebled in the case of its immediate successors. At Rome Sweynheym and Pannartz mostly printed 275 copies, only in a few instances as many as 300. But at the end of the century Pynson was printing at least 600 copies of large books and as many as 1000 of small ones.
7 A very small third group, earlier than either of these, consists of woodcuts with manuscript text. The most important of these is a German Biblia Pauperum quite distinct from those started in the Netherlands.
8 Some early woodcuts were printed by pressing the block down on the paper by hand; for the early block-books, however, the usual method seems to have been to press the paper on to the face of the block by rubbing it on the back with a burnisher. The paper was thus quite as strongly indented as if passed through a press, but the impression is usually less even. The friction on the back of the paper often gives it a polished appearance. As long as this method continued in use it was, of course, impossible to print on both sides of the paper.
9 It is possible that the earliest specimens of block-printing were intended not to be bound in books but to be pasted on walls. In the case of the Biblia Pauperum, for instance, the space between the two woodcuts placed on each sheet is so small in some issues that the sheets cannot be bound without concealing part of the pictures.
10 Different issues are distinguished by the signs of wear in the blocks, or occasionally by their being differently arranged, or with changes made in the blocks. In a different edition we have to deal with a new set of blocks.
11 Since this was written the interesting collection formed by Dr. Schreiber himself has been dispersed.
CHAPTER III
THE INVENTION OF PRINTING—HOLLAND
Up to the year 1465 only one firm of printers evinced any appreciation of the uses of advertisement. In 1457 Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, of Mainz, set their names at the end of the liturgical Psalter which they were issuing from their press, and stated also the date of its completion, “In vigilia Assumpcionis,” on the vigil of the feast of the Assumption, i.e. August 14th. Save in the case of a few unimportant books this preference for publicity remained the settled practice of the firm until Peter Schoeffer’s death early in the sixteenth century, and later still when it was in the hands of his son Johann. With other printers at first the tendency was all the other way. Albrecht Pfister placed his name in one or two of the handful of popular illustrated books which he printed at Bamberg about 1461. No other book before 1465 contains its printer’s name, and both at Strassburg and at Basel the practice of publishing anonymously continued in fashion throughout the ’seventies—in Strassburg, indeed, for the best part of another decade.
| IV. EARLY DUTCH PRESS ALEXANDER GALLES, DOCTRINALE (3a) |
While printing continued mainly anonymous chroniclers took no note of it, but in the ten years which began in 1465 the progress of the art was rapid and triumphant. Printers, mostly Germans, invaded the chief cities of Europe, and boasted in their books of having been the first to practise it in this place or that. Curiosity as to the beginnings of the invention was thus aroused, and from 1470 onwards we meet with numerous attempts, not always accurate, to satisfy it. The earliest of these attempts is in a letter from Guillaume Fichet, a Professor at the Sorbonne, who was mainly responsible for bringing the first printers to Paris, to his friend Robert Gaguin. This is contained in one copy of the second Paris book, the Orthographia of Gasparinus Barzizius, printed in 1470, Fichet having a fondness for giving individuality to special copies by additions of this kind. In this letter he speaks of the great light which he thinks learning will receive from the new kind of bookmen whom Germany, like another Trojan Horse, has poured forth.
Ferunt enim illic, haut procul a ciuitate Maguncia, Ioannem quendam fuisse cui cognomen bonemontano, qui primus omnium impressoriam artem excogitauerit, qua non calamo (ut prisci quidem illi) neque penna (ut nos fingimus) sed æreis litteris libri finguntur, et quidem expedite, polite et pulchre. Dignus sane hic uir fuit quem omnes musæ, omnes artes, omnesque eorum linguæ qui libris delectantur, diuinis laudibus ornent, eoque magis dis deabusque anteponant, quo propius ac presentius litteris ipsis ac studiosis hominibus suffragium tulit. Si quidem deificantur Liber et alma Ceres, ille quippe dona Liei inuenit poculaque inuentis acheloia miscuit uuis, hæc chaoniam pingui glandem mutauit arista. Atque (ut poeta utamur altero) prima Ceres unco glebam dimouit aratro, prima dedit fruges alimenta mitia terris. At bonemontanus ille, longe gratiora diuinioraque inuenit, quippe qui litteras eiusmodi exculpsit, quibus quidquid dici, aut cogitari potest, propediem scribi ac transcribi & posteritatis mandari memoriæ possit.
The good Fichet is absurdly rhetorical, but here in 1470 is a quite clear statement that, according to report, there (i.e. in Germany), not far from12 the city of Mainz, a certain John, surnamed Gutenberg, first of all men thought out the printing art, by which books are fashioned not with a reed or pen, but with letters of brass, and thus deserved better of mankind than either Bacchus or Ceres, since by his invention whatever can be said or thought can forthwith be written and transcribed and handed down to posterity.
Four years later in his continuation of the Chronica Summorum Pontificum, begun by Riccobaldus, Joannes Philippi de Lignamine, the physician of Pope Sixtus IV, who had set up a press of his own at Rome, wrote as one of the events of the pontificate of Pius II (1458–64), how “Jakob Gutenberg, a native of Strassburg, and a certain other whose name was Fust, being skilled in printing letters on parchment with metal forms, are known each of them to be turning out three hundred sheets a day at Mainz, a city of Germany, and Johann Mentelin also, at Strassburg, a city of the same province, being skilled in the same craft, is known to be printing daily the same number of sheets.”13 A little later De Lignamine records the arrival at Rome of Sweynheym and Pannartz, and also of Ulrich Han, and credits them also with printing three hundred sheets a day. Other references follow in later books without adding to our knowledge, save by proving the widespread recognition in the fifteenth century that printing was invented at Mainz; but there is nothing specially to detain us until the publication by Johann Koelhoff in 1499 of the Cologne Chronicle—Die Cronica van der hilliger Stat Coellen—in which occurs a famous passage about printing, which may be translated or paraphrased as follows:—
“This right worthy art was invented first of all in Germany, at Mainz, on the Rhine. And that is a great honour to the German nation that such ingenious men are found there. This happened in the year of our Lord 1440, and from that time until 1450 the art and all that pertains to it was investigated, and in 1450, which was a Golden Year, men began to print, and the first book that was printed was the Bible in Latin, and this was printed with a letter as large as that now used in missals.
“Although this art was invented at Mainz, as far as regards the manner in which it is now commonly used, yet the first prefiguration (Vurbyldung) was invented in Holland from the Donatuses which were printed there before that time. And from and out of these the aforesaid art took its beginning, and was invented in a manner much more masterly and subtler than this, and the longer it lasted the more full of art it became.
“A certain Omnibonus wrote in the preface to a Quintilian, and also in other books, that a Walloon from France, called Nicolaus Jenson, was the first inventor of this masterly art—a notorious lie, for there are men still alive who bear witness that books were printed at Venice before the aforesaid Nicolaus Jenson came there, and began to cut and make ready his letter. But the first inventor of printing was a Burgher at Mainz, and was born at Strassburg, and called Yunker Johann Gutenberg.
“From Mainz the art came first of all to Cologne, after that to Strassburg, and after that to Venice. The beginning and progress of the art were told me by word of mouth by the Worshipful Master Ulrich Zell of Hanau, printer at Cologne in this present year 1499, through whom the art came to Cologne.”14
Zell, or his interviewer, ignores the books printed anonymously at Strassburg by Mentelin and Eggestein, and also the handful printed by Albrecht Pfister at Bamberg; he also is misled by Gutenberg’s long residence at Strassburg into calling him a native of that city; in other respects, so far as we are able to check this account, it is quite accurate. It tells us emphatically that “this right worthy art was invented first of all in Germany, at Mainz, on the Rhine”; and again, that “the first inventor of printing was a Burgher at Mainz named Junker Johann ‘Gudenburch’ ”; but between these two unqualified statements is sandwiched a reference to a prefiguration which took shape in Holland in Donatuses, printed there before the Mainz presses were at work, and much less masterly and subtle than the books which they produced. He connects no name with this “Vorbildung,” and, unhappily, he gives no clue as to how it foreshadowed, and was yet distinct from, the real invention.
Sixty-nine years15 after the appearance of this carefully balanced statement, the facts as to Dutch “prefigurations” which had inspired it moved a Dutch chronicler, Hadrianus Junius, in compiling his Batavia (not published till 1588), to write the well-known passage as to the invention of printing, which has been summarized as follows:—
There lived, about 1440, at Haarlem, in the market-place opposite the Town Hall, in a respectable house still in existence, a man named Lourens Janszoon Coster, i.e. Laurence, son of John Coster. The family name was derived from the hereditary office of Sacristan, or Coster of the Church—a post both honourable and lucrative. The town archives give evidence of this, his name appearing therein many times, and in the Town Hall are preserved his seal and signature to various documents. To this man belongs the honour of inventing Printing, an honour of which he was unjustly robbed, and which afterwards was ascribed to another. The said Laurence Coster, one day after dinner, took a walk in the wood near Haarlem. While there, to amuse himself, he began to cut letters out of some beech-bark. The idea struck him to ink some of these letters and use them as stamps. This he did to amuse his grandchildren, cutting them in reverse. He thus formed two or three sentences on paper. The idea germinated, and soon with the help of his son-in-law, and by using a thick ink, he began to print whole pages, and to add lines of print to the block-books, the text of which was the most difficult part to engrave. Junius had seen such a book, called Spieghel onzer Behoudenisse. It should have been said that Coster was descended from the noble house of Brederode, and that his son-in-law was also of noble descent. Coster’s first efforts were of course very rude, and to hide the impression of the letters on the back, they pasted the leaves, which had one side not printed, together. His letters at first were made of lead, which he afterwards changed for tin. Upon his death these letters were melted down and made into wine-pots, which at the time that Junius wrote were still preserved in the house of Gerrit Thomaszoon, the grandson of Coster. Public curiosity was greatly excited by Coster’s discovery, and he gained much profit from his new process. His trade, indeed, so increased that he was obliged to employ several workmen, one of whom was named John. Some say this was John Faust, afterwards a partner with Gutenberg, and others say he was Gutenberg’s brother. This man when he had learnt the art in all its branches, took the opportunity one Christmas eve, when all good people are accustomed to attend Church, to break into the rooms used for printing, and to pack up and steal all the tools and appliances which his master, with so much care and ingenuity, had made. He went off by Amsterdam and Cologne to Mainz, where he at once opened a workshop and reaped rich fruit from this theft, producing several printed books. The accuracy of this story was attested by a respectable bookbinder, of great age but clear memory, named Cornelis who had been a fellow-servant with the culprit in the house of Coster, and indeed had occupied the same bed for several months, and who could never talk of such baseness without shedding tears and cursing the thief.
Written nearly a hundred and thirty years after the supposed events which it narrates, this story is damned by its circumstantiality. It is thus that legends grow, and it is not difficult to imagine Haarlem bookmen picking up ideas out of colophons in old books and asking the “respectable bookbinder of great age” whether it was not thus and thus that things happened. Many of the details of the story are demonstrably false; its one strong point is the bookbinder, Cornelis, for a binder of this name is said to have been employed as early as 1474 and as late as 1514 to bind the account-books of Haarlem Cathedral, and in the two years named, and also in 1476, to have strengthened his bindings by pasting inside them fragments of Donatuses printed on vellum in the type of the Speculum Humanae Saluationis. The fragment in the account-book for 1474 is rubricated, and must thus either have been sold or prepared for selling, i.e. it is not “printer’s waste,” but may have been bought by Cornelis for lining his covers in the ordinary way of trade. But we have here a possible link between Zell’s story of early Dutch Donatuses and the story of Junius about Coster and his servant Cornelis, since we find fragments of a Donatus in the possession of this particular man.
There were plenty of such Donatuses in existence in the Netherlands about 1470. In 1887 Dr. Hessels, in his Haarlem the Birthplace of Printing, not Mentz, enumerated fragments of twenty different editions, printed in eight types, of which the type used in the Speculum Humanae Saluationis (see p. 26) is one, while the other seven are linked to it, or to each other, in such a way that we may either suppose them to have all belonged to the same printer, or distribute them among two or more anonymous firms. Besides these twenty editions of Donatus on the Eight Parts of Speech, Dr. Hessels enumerated eight editions of the Doctrinale of Alexander Gallus16 (another school book popular in the fifteenth century), three of the Distichs of Dionysius Cato (the work from which Dame Pertelote quoted to convince Chantecleer of the futility of dreams), and one or two editions each of a few other works, the Facetiae Morales of Laurentius Valla (twenty-four leaves), the Singularia Juris of Ludovicus Pontanus, with a treatise of Pope Pius II (sixty leaves), and the De Salute Corporis of Gulielmus de Saliceto with other small works (twenty-four leaves). These latter books offer no very noticeable features; some of the Donatus fragments, on the other hand, have printing only on one side of the leaf (whence they are called by the barbarous term “anopisthographic,” “not printed on the back”) and have a very rude and primitive appearance. This may have been caused in part at least by their having been pasted down, and possibly scraped, by binders, for almost all of them have been found in bindings; but it counts for something.
Not one of the books or fragments of which we have been speaking makes any mention of its printer, or of the place or date at which it was produced. A copy of one of the later books, the De Salute Corporis of Gulielmus de Saliceto, was purchased by Conrad du Moulin while abbot of the Convent of S. James at Lille, a dignity which he held from 1471 to 1474. The earliest Haarlem account-book which contained Donatus fragments was for the year 1474. It is entirely a matter of opinion as to how much earlier than this any of the extant fragments can be dated. There is no reason why some of them should not be later.
As to the place or places at which these books were printed, there is no evidence of any weight. But, as has been already said, the whole series can be closely or loosely connected with the types used in editions of the Speculum Humanae Saluationis, and in 1481 Jan Veldener, a wandering printer, while working at Utrecht, introduced into an edition of the Epistles and Gospels in Dutch two woodcuts, each of which was a half of one of the double pictures in the Speculum. Two years later, when at Kuilenburg, he printed a quarto edition of the Speculum itself (Dutch version), in which he used a large number of the original Speculum blocks, all cut up into halves, so as to fit a small page. As Veldener (as far as we know) used the Speculum blocks first at Utrecht, it is supposed that it was at Utrecht that he obtained them. If the blocks were for sale at Utrecht, this may have been the place at which the earlier editions of the Speculum were issued, and thus, in the absence of any evidence which they were willing to recognize in favour of any other place, Henry Bradshaw and his disciples attributed the whole series of editions of the Speculum, Donatus, Doctrinale, etc., to Utrecht, about, or “not after,” 1471–1474. Bradshaw himself clearly indicated that this attribution was purely provisional. He felt “compelled to leave” the books at Utrecht, so he phrased it, i.e. the presumption that Veldener found the blocks of the Speculum there constituted a grain of evidence in favour of Utrecht; and if a balance is sufficiently sensitive and both scales are empty, a grain thrown into one will suffice to weigh it down. It would have been better, in the present writer’s opinion, if the grain had been disregarded, and no attempt made to assign these books and fragments to any particular place. As it is, Bradshaw’s attribution of them to Utrecht has been repeated without any emphasis on its entirely provisional character, even without any mention of this at all, and perhaps with a certain humorous enjoyment of the chance of prejudicing the claims of Haarlem by an unusually rigorous application of the rules as to bibliographical evidence.
In the eyes of Dr. Hessels, on the other hand, the legend narrated by Junius offers a sufficient reason for assigning all these books to Haarlem, and to Lourens Janszoon Coster as their printer. Dr. Hessels was even ill-advised enough to point out that, as there are twenty editions of Donatus in this group of types, we have only to allow an interval of a year and a half between each to take back the earliest very close to 1440, the traditional date of the invention of printing. This is perfectly true, but as no reason can be assigned for fixing on this particular interval the value of such a calculation is very slight.
One result of all this controversy is that the whole series of books and fragments have been dubbed “Costeriana,” and the convenience of having a general name for them is so great that it has been generally adopted, even by those who have no belief in the theory which it implies. All that is known of Lourens Janszoon Coster is that he resided at Haarlem from 1436 to 1483, and that contemporary references show him to have been a chandler and innkeeper, without making any mention of his having added printing to his other occupations.
It is difficult to claim more for the story told by Junius than that it represents an unknown quantity of fact with various legendary additions. It is difficult to dismiss it as less than a legend which must have had some element of fact as its basis. In so far as it goes beyond the statements of the Cologne Chronicle, it is supported only by the evidence that Coster and the venerable bookbinder Cornelis existed, and that the latter bound the account-books of Haarlem Cathedral. But no indiscretion of Hadrianus Junius writing in 1568 can affect the credit of the statements made in the Cologne Chronicle in 1499 on the authority of Ulrich Zell, and we have now to mention an important piece of evidence in favour of Zell’s accuracy. This is the entry in the diaries of Jean de Robert, Abbot of Saint Aubert, Cambrai, of the purchase in 1446 and again in 1451 of a copy of the Doctrinale of Alexander Gallus, jeté en moule, a phrase which, while far from satisfactory as a description of a book printed from movable type, cannot possibly refer to editions printed from woodblocks, even if these existed. The Doctrinale, which was in verse, was a less popular school-book than the Donatus. It is significant that among the so-called “Costeriana” there are eight editions of the one against twenty of the other. Where the Doctrinale was used we may be sure that the Donatus would be used also, and in greater numbers, so that this mention of a “mould-casted” Doctrinale as purchased as early as 1446 is a real confirmation of Zell’s assertion. We have no sufficient ground for believing that any of the fragments, either of the one book or the other, now in existence were produced as early as this. It is of the nature of school-books to be destroyed, and every improvement in the process of production would help to drive the earlier experiments out of existence. But taking Zell’s statement and the entries in the Abbot’s diaries together, it seems impossible to deny that there is evidence of some kind of printing being practised in Holland not long after 1440.
An ingenious theory as to the form which these “prefigurements” may have taken has lately been suggested, viz. that the earliest types may have consisted simply of flat pieces of metal, without any shanks to them, and that they were “set up” by being glued upon wood or stiff paper in the order required. They would thus be movable, but with a very low degree of movability, so that we can easily understand why short books like the Donatus and Doctrinale were continually reprinted without any attempt being made to produce a large work such as the Bible. It is curious, however, that in the description of a “ciripagus” by Paulus Paulirinus, of Prag,17 “we have a reference” to a Bible having been printed at Bamberg “super lamellas,” a phrase which might very well refer to types of this kind, though the sentence is usually explained as referring to either the Latin or German edition of the Biblia Pauperum issued by Albrecht Pfister. I think it just possible myself that the reference is really to the Latin Bible known as the Thirty-six Line Bible, which seems certainly to have been sold, if not printed, at Bamberg a little before 1460, and that Paulirinus, having seen books printed “super lamellas,” supposed (wrongly) that this was printed in that way. But the statement that it was printed in four weeks is against this.
Whether the Dutch “Vorbildung” of the Art of Printing subsequently invented at Mainz took the form of experiments with shankless types, or fell short of the fully developed art in some other way, does not greatly concern the collector. It is in the highest degree improbable that the claim put forward on behalf of the so-called “Costeriana” will ever be decisively proved or disproved. They are likely to remain as perpetual pretenders, and as such will always retain a certain interest, and a specimen of them always be a desirable addition to any collection which aims at illustrating the history of the invention of printing. Such a specimen will not be easy to procure, because many of the extant fragments have been found in public libraries, more especially the Royal Library at the Hague, and have never left their first homes. On the other hand, the number of fragments known has been considerably increased by new finds. Thus there is no reason to regard a specimen as unattainable.
