BINDING Vol. VIII
The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original in the British
Museum, and is considered the most artistic mosaic binding design in
existence.
It was executed about 1710, by Antoine Michel Padeloup, Royal Binder of
both France and Portugal.
He presented it to Francoise Marie de Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV and
Madame de Montespan, on the anniversary of her marriage to Philippe, Duke
of Orleans, who afterward became Regent of France.
During the Reign of Terror this volume found its way to England, where it
was sold at a handsome price. It was bequeathed to the British Museum by
Felix Slade, Esq.
THE GREAT EVENTS
BY
FAMOUS HISTORIANS
A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING
THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN
THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS
NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL
ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE
MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF
INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED
NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES,
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D.
_With a staff of specialists
VOLUME VIII
The National Alumni_
1905
CONTENTS
VOLUME VIII
_An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_ CHARLES F. HORNE
_Origin and Progress of Printing (A.D. 1438)_ HENRY GEORGE BOHN
_John Hunyady Repulses the Turks (A.D. 1440-1456)_ ARMINIUS VAMBERY
_Rebuilding of Rome by Nicholas V, the "Builder-pope_" _(A.D. 1447-1455)_
MRS. MARGARET OLIPHANT
_Mahomet II Takes Constantinople (A.D. 1453)_ _End of the Eastern Empire_
GEORGE FINLAY
_Wars of the Roses (A.D. 1455-1485)_ _Death of Richard III at Bosworth_
DAVID HUME
_Ivan the Great Unites Russia and Breaks the Tartar_ _Yoke (A.D.
1462-1505)_ ROBERT BELL
_Culmination of the Power of Burgundy_ _Treaty of Péronne (A.D. 1468)_
P.F. WILLERT
_Lorenzo de'Medici Rules in Florence_ _Zenith of Florentine Glory (A.D.
1469)_ OLIPHANT SMEATON
_Death of Charles the Bold (A.D. 1477) Louis XI Unites Burgundy with
the Crown of France_ PHILIPPE DE COMINES
_Inquisition Established in Spain (A.D.1480),_ WILLIAM H. RULE JAMES
BALMES
_Murder of the Princes in the Tower (A.D.1483)_ JAMES GAIRDNER
_Conquest of Granada_ (A.D.1490) WASHINGTON IRVING
_Columbus Discovers America_ (A.D.1492) CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS FERDINAND
COLUMBUS
_Conspiracy, Rebellion, and Execution of Perkin Warbeck_ (A.D.1492)
FRANCIS BACON
_Savonarola's Reforms and Death_ The French Invade Italy_ (A.D.1494)
PASQUALE VILLARI JEAN C. L. SISMONDI
_Discovery of the Mainland of North America by the Cabots_ (A.D.1497)
SAMUEL EDWARD DAWSO
_The Sea Route to India Vasco da Gama Sails around Africa_ (A.D.1498)
GASPAR CORREA
_Columbus Discovers South America (A.D.1498)_ CLEMENTS ROBERT MARKHAM
_Establishment of Swiss Independence (A.D.1499)_ HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE
_Amerigo Vespucci in America (A.D.1499)_ AMERIGO VESPUCCI
_Rise and Fall of the Borgias (A.D.1502)_ NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
_Painting of the Sistine Chapel (A.D.1508)_ _The Splendor of Renaissance
Art under Michelangelo_ CHARLES CLEMENT
_Balboa Discovers the Pacific (A.D.1513)_ MANUEL JOSE QUINTANA
_Universal Chronology (A.D.1438-1516)_ JOHN RUDD
ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VIII
_Murder of the princes, sons of King Edward IV, in _the Tower of London
(page 194)1_ Painting by Otto Seitz.
_Facsimile of a page from Caxton's_ Recuyell of the Historyes of
Troye--_the first book printed in the English language_
_Louis XI at his devotions in the castle of Péronne while held a prisoner
by Charles the Bold_ Painting by Hermann Kaulbach.
_Pope Sixties V and the Grand Inquisitor_ Painting by Jean Paul Laurens.
AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE
TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF
THE GREAT EVENTS
(THE LATER RENAISSANCE: FROM GUTENBERG TO THE REFORMATION)
CHARLES F. HORNE
The Renaissance marks the separation of the mediaeval from the modern
world. The wide difference between the two epochs of Teutonic history
arises, we are apt somewhat glibly to say, from the fact that our
ancestors worshipped and were ruled by brute force, whereas we follow the
broad light of intellect. Perhaps both statements require modification;
yet in a general way they do suggest the change which by a thousand
different agencies has, in the course of the last four centuries, been
forced upon the world. Mediaeval Europe was a land not of equals, but of
lords and slaves. The powerful nobles regarded themselves as of wholly
different clay from the hapless peasants whom they trampled under foot,
serfs so ignorant, so brutalized by want, that they were often little
better than the beasts with which they herded. Gradually the tradesmen,
the middle classes, forced their way to practical equality with the
nobles. Then came the turn of the masses to do the same. The beginnings
of the merchants' movement we have already traced in the preceding
volumes; the end of the peasants' effort is perhaps even to-day scarce
yet accomplished.
In dealing with modern history, therefore, every writer is apt to begin
with a different date. Some go back as far as Petrarch, who reintroduced
the study of ancient art and learning; that is, they regard our world as
a direct continuation of the Roman, with the thousand years of the Middle
Ages gaping between like an earthquake gulf of barbarism, that was
bridged at last. Some take the invention of printing as a starting-point,
feeling that the chief element of our progress has been the gathering of
information by the poorer classes. Some, looking to political changes,
turn to the reign of Louis XI of France, noting him as the first modern
king, or to the downfall of Charles the Bold, the last great feudal
noble. Others name later starting-points such as the establishment of
modern art by Michelangelo and Raphael at Rome, the discovery of America,
with its opening of vast new lands for the pent-up population of narrow
Europe, or the Reformation, which has been called man's revolt against
superstition, the establishment of the independence of thought.
All of these epochs fall within the limits of the Renaissance, and all,
except that of Petrarch, within the later Renaissance which we are now
considering. The period is therefore worth careful study.
INTELLECTUAL SUPREMACY OF ITALY
Gutenberg's invention had no immediate effect upon his world.[1] Indeed,
so little enthusiasm did it arouse that while the inventor's plans were
probably evolved as early as 1438, it was not until 1454 or thereabouts
that the first completed book was issued from his press. His business
partner, Faust, sold his wares in wealthy Paris without explaining that
these were different from earlier hand-written books; and when their
cheapness, as well as their exact similarity, was discovered, the
merchant was suspected of having sold himself to the devil. Hence
probably originated the Faust legend. Superstition, it is evident, had
still an extended course to run.
It is worth noting that to sell his books Faust left Germany for Paris,
and that while printing-presses multiplied but slowly in the land of
their origin, the new art was instantly seized upon in Italy, was there
made widest use of and pushed to its perfection. In fact, through all the
Middle Ages the Romance or semi-Teutonic peoples of Italy, France, and
Spain were intellectually in advance of the more wholly Teutonic races of
the North. Many of their descendants believe half contemptuously that the
difference has not even yet been overcome.
Italy at this time held clearly the intellectual supremacy of the western
world, and Florence under the Medici, Cosmo and then Lorenzo, held the
supremacy of Italy.[2] Not only in thought, but in art, was there an
outburst brilliant beyond all earlier times. A friend and pupil of Cosmo
de' Medici was made pope at Rome, and under the name of Nicholas V
originated vast schemes for the rebuilding and beautifying of his city of
ruins.[3] Modern Rome with all its beautiful churches and wonders of art
rose from the hands of Nicholas and his immediate successors. It was
their idea that the city should no longer be remembered by its heathen
greatness, but by its Christian splendor; that the sight of it should
impress upon pilgrims not the decay of the world, but the glory and
majesty of the Church. Nicholas also continued the work of Petrarch,
gathering vast stores of ancient manuscripts, refounding and practically
beginning the enormous Vatican Library. He established that alliance of
the Church with the new culture of the age which for a century continued
to be an honor and distinguishment to both.
In his pontificate occurred the fall of Constantinople, bringing with
it the definite establishment of the Turks in Europe and the final
extinction of that Roman Empire of the East which had originated with
Constantine. For this reason the date of its fall (1453) is also employed
as marking the beginning of modern Europe. It was at least the closing of
the older volume, the final not undramatic exit of the last remnant of
the ancient world, with its long decaying arts and arrogance, its wealth,
its literature, and its law.[4]
Greek scholars fleeing from the sack of their city brought many
marvellous old manuscripts to Western Europe and were eagerly welcomed by
Pope Nicholas and all of Italy. Nicholas even preached a crusade against
the terrible Turks, and tried once more to rouse Europe to ancient
enthusiasms. But he failed, and died, they say, heartbroken at his
helplessness.
THE CLASH OF RACES IN THE EAST
The Turks had recovered from their defeat by the Tartars of Timur, and
became once more an active menace. With Constantinople in their power,
they attacked the Venetians and compelled those wealthy traders to pay
them tribute. Venice by sea and Hungary on land remained for a century
the bulwarks of Christendom, and were forced, almost unaided, to
withstand all the assaults of the East. They wellnigh perished in the
effort. In Hungary this was the period of the great hero, Hunyady, a
man of unknown birth and no official rank, who roused his countrymen to
repeated effort and led them to repeated victories and defeats against
the vastly more numerous invaders.[5]
Hunyady died, worn out with ceaseless warfare, and his son, Matthias,
was elected by acclamation to be monarch of the land the father had
preserved. This was the proudest era in the history of the Hunnish race.
Under Matthias they even resumed their German warfare of five centuries
before, and won from a Hapsburg emperor his city of Vienna, ancient
capital of Austria, the eastmark or borderland which had been erected by
Otto the Great to hold the Huns in check. For a few years Matthias placed
his kingdom amid the foremost states of Europe; but with his death came
renewed disunion and disorder to his lawless people, and the fierce,
fanatic Turks returned again to their assaults.
Further north the yellow races were less successful. Along the shifting
borderlands of Asia which mark the line of demarcation between the two
mightier families of man, the tide turned ever more steadily in the
Aryans' favor. The Russians, under their chief, Ivan III, threw off the
galling Tartar yoke which they had borne for over two hundred years.
Ivan concentrated in his own hands the power of all the little Russian
duchies, overthrew the celebrated Russian republic of Novgorod the Great,
and defied the Tartars. Equally noteworthy to modern eyes was his wedding
with Sophia, heiress of the last of the emperors of the East. When that
outworn empire perished with the fall of Constantinople, Ivan succeeded
nominally at least to its heirship. Hence it is that his successors have
assumed the title of caesar or kaiser or czar and have grown to look upon
themselves as inheritors of the ancient supremacy of Rome.[6]
The fifteenth century was thus a time of many changes in Eastern Europe.
Not only did the Eastern Empire disappear at last, not only did Hungary
rise to the brief zenith of her glory, there was a sort of general
movement, sometimes spoken of as the "Slavonic reaction," against the
hitherto successful Teutons. The Slavic Bohemians in their "Hussite" wars
repelled all the religious fighting strength of Europe. The Poles began
to win back territory from the German empire, and especially from their
hereditary foes the "Teutonic Knights" of Prussia. And Russia, greatest
of all the Slav countries, grew into a strong kingdom. She and Turkey,
rising as twin menaces to the West, assumed at almost the same period
that threatening aspect which Turkey has only lately lost, and Russia, to
some statesmen's eyes, still holds.
POLITICAL CHANGES IN WESTERN EUROPE
Turn now to the affairs of Western Europe. The feebleness of the German
empire continued. For over half a century it was nominally ruled by
Frederick III (1440-1493), the lazy and feeble emperor who let Matthias
of Hungary expel him from Vienna, and never made any vigorous effort to
recover his capital. He was succeeded by his son Maximilian, a man of far
other temper, full of courage, energy, and hardihood. Maximilian has been
called "the last of the knights," and indeed his whole career may well
exemplify the changing times. The one achievement of his life was the
recovery of Vienna from the Hungarians, and in that he was successful
only because the heirs of Matthias were being overwhelmed by the Turks.
The remainder of his career was spent in learning bitterly how little
real power he had as emperor. He attempted to bring the Swiss once more
under the imperial dominion, but the little armies he could scrape
together against them were repeatedly defeated.[7] He was always
declaring war against this kingdom or that, and summoning his great
lords to aid him in upholding the glory of the empire. They persistently
declined; and he was helpless. At one time having pledged his alliance to
the English king, Henry VII, against France, he preserved his knightly
word by going alone and serving as a volunteer in Henry's army, whither
his people would not follow him. Instead they stayed at home and demanded
from him constitutions and courts of law and other internal reforms,
uninteresting matters about which the gallant soul of Maximilian cared
not a straw and which he gave his subjects under protest.
To the westward of him a far subtler monarch, by far subtler means, was
strengthening the power of France and making smooth her way toward that
supremacy over European affairs which she was later to assert. Louis XI
(1461-1483) is called the first modern king, though it is little flattery
to modern statecraft to compare its methods with his, and perhaps our
recent governments have truly outgrown them. Louis was no warrior,
although under compulsion he showed possibilities of becoming an able
general. He preferred to send others who should do his fighting for him,
to embroil his opponents one with another, and then reap the fruit of
their mutual exhaustion. He was passed master of all falsity and craft;
and by his shrewdness he brought to his country peace and prosperity.
Typically does he represent his age in which intellectual ability, though
sometimes wholly divorced from nobleness of soul, began to dominate brute
force.
Charles the Bold stands as the representative of this brute force. He was
the mightiest of the French nobles. His ancestors, a younger branch
of the royal family, had been made dukes of Burgundy, and by skilful
alliances and rapid changes of side through the long Hundred Years' War,
they had steadily added to their possessions and their powers. The father
of Charles found himself stronger than his king, possessor not only of
Burgundy, but of many other fiefs from Germany as well as France, and
lord of the Netherlands as well.[8]
Charles was thus the last of those great, overgrown vassals so
characteristic of feudal times. Like Hugh Capet in France, like William
the Conqueror in England, he hoped to establish himself as an independent
king. He opened negotiations for this purpose with the Emperor Frederick,
Maximilian's father. He made himself practically independent of France.
He wielded a military power greater than that of any other prince of the
moment, and he knew it and charged like a mad bull at whoever seemed to
interpose in his designs.
Over such a man Louis XI's cunning had full play. He involved Charles in
fights with every neighbor. Finally he lured him into conflict with the
Swiss, and those hardy mountaineers won the repute of being the best
soldiers of Europe by defeating Charles again and again till they left
him slain on the field of Nancy (1477).[9] Louis promptly seized most of
his dead vassal's domains. Maximilian, having wedded Charles' daughter,
inherited the remainder; and the old Burgundian kingdom, so nearly
revived to stretch as a permanent dividing land between France and
Germany, disappeared forever.
What Louis had done with Burgundy he attempted with his other
semi-independent duchies. The Hundred Years' War had almost destroyed
central government in France. Louis, by means as secret and varied as his
cunning could suggest, gradually reestablished an undisputed leadership
above his lords. Fortunately for France, perhaps, England was prevented
by a long series of civil wars from interfering in her neighbor's
affairs. These wars, though they originated before Louis' time, were
constantly fomented and kept alive by him, and England thus paid dearly
for having become a source of danger to France.
The Wars of the Roses,[10] as they are called, caused deep-seated changes
in England's life and society. They mark for her the transition from the
mediaeval to the modern era which was everywhere taking place. Beginning
as a contest between two rival branches of the Plantagenets for the
kingship, these wars remained aristocratic throughout. That is to say,
the common people took little interest in them, while the nobles,
espousing sides, fought savagely and murderously, giving one another
no quarter, sparing the lesser folk, but executing as traitors their
prisoners of rank. When one side seemed hopelessly overcome, Louis would
lend them arms and money wherewith to seek revenge once more. Thus almost
all the old nobility of England perished; and both lines of kings became
extinct, Richard III, their last representative, being accused of
murdering all his relatives or possible rivals.[11] At last, Richard too
was slain, and a new family of rulers, only remotely connected with the
old, was inaugurated by Henry Tudor, grandson of a private gentleman of
Wales. This new king, Henry VII (1485-1509), found no powerful lords to
oppose his will. One or two impostors were raised against him,[12] France
making anxious efforts to prolong the troubles of her dangerous
neighbor; but the attempts failed through the utter completeness of the
aristocracy's exhaustion.
Thus in England as in France, though by widely differing chances, the
kingly power had triumphed over feudalism. Monarchs began to come into
direct contact, not always pleasant, with the entire mass of their
subjects, the "third estate," the common people.
RISE OF SPANISH POWER
Spain also was to pass through a similar experience. Indeed, one of the
most striking facts of this age of the Renaissance is the swift and
spectacular rise of Spain from a land of feebleness and internal strife
into the most powerful kingdom of Europe. We have seen the Spanish
peninsula in previous ages the seat of endless strife between Saracens
and Christians. Gradually the Moors had been driven back, and the little
independent Christian states had been united by the fortunes of war and
marriage into three--Portugal on the Atlantic coast, Castile occupying
the larger part of the mainland, and Aragon, a maritime kingdom, less
extensive in Spain, but extending its sovereignty over many of the
Mediterranean isles, over Sicily and southern Italy. In 1469 Isabella,
heiress of Castile, and Ferdinand, heir of Aragon, were wedded; and
soon afterward their countries were united under their joint rule. The
combined strength of both was then devoted to a long religious war
against the Moors. Granada, the last and most famous of the Moorish
capitals and strongholds, was finally captured in 1492.[13] The followers
of Mahomet were driven out of Western Europe during the same period that,
under Turkish leadership, they had at last won Constantinople in the
East.
The whole Spanish peninsula with the exception of Portugal was thus
united under Ferdinand and Isabella, greatest of the sovereigns of
Spain. The ages of battle with the Moors had bred a nation of cavaliers,
intensely loyal, passionately religious. They were splendid fighters, but
stern, hard-hearted, merciless men. Isabella, "the Saint," most holy and
pure-souled of women, herself introduced into her country the terrible
Inquisition.[14] Jews and Moors were given little peace in life unless
they turned Christian. Heretics and relapsed converts from the other
faiths were burned to death. The Queen declared she would approve all
possible torture to men's bodies, when necessary in order to save their
souls.
If such were the women of Spain, what was to be expected of the men? How
could even Ferdinand, "the Wise," keep them employed now that there
were no longer Moors to fight against? Uprisings, rebellions, began to
threaten Spain with such desolation as England had endured. But a higher
Providence solved for Ferdinand his impossible problem: the age of
maritime discovery began.[15]
THE ERA OF DISCOVERY
The Portuguese from their Atlantic seaboard had already begun to explore
southward along the African coast. In 1402 they had settled the Canary
Isles. In 1443 they reached southward beyond the sands of the Sahara and
saw Cape Verd, discovered that Africa was not all burning desert,
that heat would not forever increase as they went southward. In 1487
Bartholomew Diaz, after almost a year of sailing, reached the Cape of
Good Hope, the southern point of the vast African continent; and in 1497
Vasco da Gama rounded the cape and sailed on to India[16]. He had found a
way of bringing Indian spices, silks, and jewels to Europe, bringing them
in quantities and without paying tribute to the Turks, without crossing
the deadly deserts of Arabia. He had made his little country wealthy.
Meanwhile, stimulated by Portuguese success, the mariners of other
nations began to brave the giant storms of the Atlantic. The Turks had
made trade with the far East wellnigh impossible. Portugal was not the
only land to seek a sea-route to India. Venice and Genoa saw before them
the threat of ruin to their most profitable commerce. So we may even say
that it was the Turks who set the Genoese captain Columbus to planning
his great voyage; it was the conquest of the Moors that set Isabella free
to listen to him, and offer her crown jewels for the expedition which
should convert other heathen, establish other inquisitions; and it was
the downfall of the Moors which left the Spanish warriors so eager to
throng to adventure and warfare in the West, once Columbus had shown the
way.
For a time the theatre of great events shifts to the new continent.
The Portuguese explorers had doubled the size of the known world. The
Spaniards doubled it again. But the credit must not be given wholly
to Spain. Though it was the liberality of her monarchs which had made
discovery possible, and though it was the daring of her warriors that
laughed at danger and made conquest sure, yet the Spaniards were not
sailors. It was to Italy, the home of commerce, that they turned for
their captains and their pilots. Columbus, the Genoese, had discovered
the islands along the coast. England, wishing to have a share in this
world of wonders, sent a Venetian mariner, John Cabot; and he and his son
sailed along our northern mainland in English ships.[17] Columbus touched
the coast of South America in 1498.[18] A Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci,
was the first to cruise far along this southern coast, probably in 1499,
and it was his name which Europe gave to the new lands.[19]
Following the discovery came settlement, warfare with the unhappy
Indians, a fierce and frantic search for gold. It was while engaged in
this work that Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama, saw the vast
waters of the Pacific, and riding out into them upon his warhorse took
possession, in the name of Spain, of the largest ocean of the globe.[20]
Men recognized at last that these were not the Asiatic shores, but a
wholly new continent which they had found.
RELIGIOUS CHANGES
Let us pause to recapitulate the wonders which this age of the
Renaissance had seen--a new world of Africa discovered in the South, a
new world of America in the West, the rise of Spain, the conquest of the
last of the western Saracens at Granada and the rise of the Turks in the
East, the rise of Russia, the downfall of the last vestige of the ancient
empire of Rome, the last expiring effort of feudalism in Charles the
Bold, and of errant knighthood in Maximilian; the beginning of modern
statecraft in Louis XI of France, Henry VII of England, and Ferdinand the
Wise of Spain; the spread of printing and with it the spread of thought
and knowledge among the masses; and, sometimes accounted greatest of all,
came the wonderful awakening of art in Italy. We have traced the early
part of this under the Medici and Pope Nicholas. Lorenzo de'Medici was
the centre of its later development.[21] From his court went forth that
galaxy of artists which the world of art unites in calling the unequalled
masters of all ages--Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and a host of
others.[22]
Unfortunately in Italy at least the great movement in art and literature
took an antireligious, sometimes an antipatriotic, tone. Lorenzo was
openly defiant and scornful of the teachings of the Church, and after his
death a French king, Charles VIII, was able to enter Italy and march from
end to end of it without opposition. Religion seemed dying there, and
love of country dead.
Florence underwent an extravagant though brief religious revival. The
monk Savonarola preached against wickedness in high places, and thundered
at the Florentines for their presumption and vanity. The impressionable
people wept, they appointed a "day of vanities" and laid all their rich
robes and jewels at Savonarola's feet. They made him ruler of the city.
But, alas! they soon tired of his severities, sighed for their vanities
back again, and at last burned the reformer at the stake.[23]
In Rome itself there arose popes, Lorenzo's followers, who preferred
art to Christianity, or others like the terrible Alexander Borgia, who
adopted the maxims of the new statecraft. Alexander, a worthy disciple of
Louis XI, admired falsehood before truth, and sought to win his aims by
poisoning his enemies. The career of his nephew Caesar Borgia has supplied
history with its most awful picture of successful crime, and the book
written in his praise by Macchiavelli has given us a new word for Satanic
subtlety and treachery. We call it Macchiavellian. The rest of Europe
shrank from Italy in fear, and named it "poisoning Italy."[24]
Against the spiritual dominance of such a land the world was surely ready
for revolt. The mind of man, so long and slowly awakening, and at last so
intensely roused, seeing great discoveries on every hand, was no longer
to be controlled by authority. The time was ripe for the Reformation.
[FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME IX]
[Footnote 1: See _Origin and Progress of Printing_, page 5.]
[Footnote 2: See _Beginning and Progress of the Renaissance_, vol. ix, p.
110.]
[Footnote 3: See _Rebuilding of Rome by Nicholas V_, page 46.]
[Footnote 4: See _Mahomet II Takes Constantinople_, page 55.]
[Footnote 5: See _John Hunyady Repulses the Turks_, page 30.]
[Footnote 6: See _Ivan the Great Unites Russia_, page 109.]
[Footnote 7: See _Establishment of Swiss Independence_, page 336.]
[Footnote 8: See _Culmination of the Power of Burgundy_, page 125.]
[Footnote 9: See _Death of Charles the Bold_, page 155.]
[Footnote 10: See _Wars of the Roses_, page 72.]
[Footnote 11: See _Murder of the Princes in the Tower_, page 192,]
[Footnote 12: See _Conspiracy, Rebellion, and Execution of Perkin
Warbeck_, page 250.]
[Footnote 13: See _Conquest of Granada_, page 202.]
[Footnote 14: See _Inquisition Established in Spain_, page 166.]
[Footnote 15: See _Columbus Discovers America_, page 224.]
[Footnote 16: See _The Sea Route to India_, page 299.]
[Footnote 17: See _Discovery of the Mainland of North America by the
Cabots_, page 282.]
[Footnote 18: See _Columbus Discovers South America_, page 323.]
[Footnote 19: See _Amerigo Vespucci in America_, page 346.]
[Footnote 20: See _Balboa Discovers the Pacific_, page 381.]
[Footnote 21: See _Lorenzo de'Medici Rules in Florence_, page 134.]
[Footnote 22: See _Painting of the Sistine Chapel_, page 369.]
[Footnote 23: See _Savonarola's Reforms and Death_, page 265.]
[Footnote 24: See _Rise and Fall of the Borgias_, page 360.]
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING
A.D. 1438
HENRY GEORGE BOHN
It was perhaps not altogether fortuitous that the invention of printing
came concurrently with the Revival of Learning. Men's minds were turned
toward practical experiment in that art by the very influences made
active through the labors of those scholars who ushered in the
Renaissance. "The art preservative of all other arts" has also preserved
the records of its own beginnings and development, although of its
earlier sources our knowledge is very obscure, and even the modern
achievement, which antiquity in various ways foreshadowed, is itself a
subject of uncertainty and dispute.
Bohn, in his admirable survey of the origin and progress of modern
printing, gives us a full and accurate account, from the earliest
evidences and conjectures relating to antiquity to the latter part of the
nineteenth century, confining himself, however, to European developments.
But before the middle of the sixteenth century printing was introduced
into Spanish America. Existing books show that in Mexico there was a
press as early as 1540; but it is impossible to name positively the first
book printed on this continent. North of Mexico the first press was used,
1639, by an English Non-conformist clergyman named Glover. In 1660 a
printer with press and types was sent from England by the corporation for
propagating the gospel among the Indians of New England in the Indian
language. This press was taken to a printing-house already established at
Cambridge, Mass. It was not until several years later that the use of a
press in Boston was permitted by the colonial government, and until near
the end of the seventeenth century no presses were set up in the colonies
outside of Massachusetts.
In 1685 printing began in Pennsylvania, a few years later in New York,
and in Connecticut in 1709. From 1685 to 1693 William Bradford, an
English Quaker, conducted a press in Philadelphia, and in the latter
year he removed his plant to New York. He was the first notable American
printer, and became official printer for Pennsylvania, New York, New
Jersey, Rhode Island, and Maryland. His first book was an almanac for
1686. In 1725 he founded the _New York Gazette_, the first newspaper in
New York. But the first newspaper published in the English colonies was
the _Boston News-Letter_, founded in 1704 by John Campbell, a bookseller
and postmaster in Boston. Only four American periodicals had been
established when, in 1729, Benjamin Franklin, who was already printer
to the Pennsylvania Assembly, became proprietor and editor of the
_Pennsylvania Gazette_.
Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century the progress of printing
in America was slow. But in 1784 the first daily newspaper, the _American
Daily Advertiser_, was issued in Philadelphia, and from this time
periodical publications multiplied and the printing of books increased,
until the agency and influence of the press became as marked in the
United States as in the leading countries of Europe.
Even since the time when Bohn wrote, the progress made in various
branches of the printer's art has been such as might have astonished
that famous publisher of so many standard works. Recent improvements
for increasing the capacity of the press, and often the quality of its
productions, are quite comparable to those which our own time has seen in
other departments of industry, as in the applications of electricity and
the like. In addition to the further development of stereotyping, there
has been marvellous improvement in nearly all the machinery and processes
of printing. This is especially marked in rapid color-printing, and in
the successors of inadequate typesetting-machines--in the linotype, the
monotype, the typograph, etc.
Most wonderful of all, perhaps, is the improved printing-press itself,
in various classes, each adapted to its special purpose. The sum of all
improvements in this department of mechanical invention is seen in the
great cylinder-presses now in general use, especially the one known as
the web perfecting press. This is a machine of great size and intricate
construction, which yet does its complex work with an accuracy that
almost seems to denote conscious intelligence. It prints from an immense
roll of paper, making the impression from curved stereotype plates, runs
at high speed, prints both sides of the paper at one run, and folds,
pastes, and performs other processes as provided for. By doubling and
quadrupling the parts, the ordinary speed of about twenty-four thousand
impressions an hour may be increased to one hundred thousand an hour.
The multicolor web perfecting press prints four or more colors at one
revolution of the impression cylinder.
To meet the demands of such an enormous consumption of paper as the
modern press requires, it was necessary to invent other processes and to
utilize more abundant and cheaper material for paper-making than those
formerly employed. This requirement has been supplied in recent years
mainly through the extensive manufacture of paper from wood-pulp. This
method, together with improved processes in the use of other materials,
has removed all fear of a paper famine such as has sometimes threatened
the printing industry in the past.
"Nature does not advance by leaps," says an old proverb; neither does her
offspring, Art. All the great boons vouchsafed to man by a munificent
providence are of gradual development; and though some may appear to have
come upon us suddenly, reflection and inquiry will always show that they
have had their previous stages.
Indeed, nothing in this great world which concerns the well-being of man
takes place by accident, but is brought forward by divine will, precisely
at the moment most suitable to our condition. So it was with astronomy,
the mariner's compass, the steam-engine, gas, the electric telegraph, and
many other of those blessings which have progressed with civilization.
The elements were there and known, but the time had not arrived for their
fructification.
And so it is with printing: although its invention is placed in the
middle of the fifteenth century, and almost the very year fixed, this can
only be regarded as a matured stage of it. To illustrate this, I propose
to begin with a cursory view of its primitive elements, of which the very
first were no doubt initiative marks and numerals.
The use of numerals has been denominated "the foundation of all the arts
of life"; and we know with certainty that several nations, and among them
the Mexicans, had numerals before they were acquainted with letters. The
first method of reckoning was with the fingers, but small stones were
also used--hence the words "calculate" and "calculation," which are
derived from _calculus_, the Latin for a pebble-stone.
The Chinese counted for many years with notched sticks; and even in
England, in comparatively modern times, accounts were kept by tallies, in
which notches were cut alike in two parallel pieces of wood. Shakespeare
alludes to "the score and the tally" in his _Henry VI_; and this mode
of keeping accounts is still adopted by some of the bakers and dyers in
Warwickshire and Cheshire. And tallies are occasionally produced in the
small-debt courts, where they are admitted as authentic proofs of debt.
Hence the origin and name of the "tally court of the exchequer." The
Peruvians, at the time they were conquered by Pizarro, counted with
knotted strings.
After numerals, came picture-writing, hieroglyphics, and symbolic
characters, such are were used by the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the
Mexicans; which, however unconnected they may be with each other, are
of the same general character. Indeed, the Chinese have never advanced
beyond symbolic characters, of which it is said they have more than one
hundred thousand combinations or varieties.
Rude as these conditions of humanity may seem, they are matched in modern
England, even at a very recent date, if we may credit a well-known story:
A rustic shopkeeper in a remote district, being unable to read or write,
contrived to keep his accounts by picture-writing, and charged his
customer, the miller, with a cheese instead of a grindstone, from having
omitted to mark a hole in the centre.
After picture and symbolic writings would follow phonetic characters,
or marks for sounds; that is, the alphabet. Even the alphabet, which in
civilized countries has now existed for more than three thousand years,
was perfected by degrees; for it has been clearly ascertained that
the earliest known did not comprise more than one-half or, at most,
two-thirds of the letters which eventually formed its complement. Thus,
the Pelasgian alphabet, which is derived from the Phoenician, and is the
parent of the Greek and Roman, consisted originally of only twelve or
thirteen letters.
The invention of the alphabet, which, in a small number of elementary
characters, is capable of six hundred and twenty sextillions of
combinations, and of exhibiting to the sight the countless conceptions of
the mind which have no corporeal forms, is so wonderful that great men of
all ages have shrunk from accounting for it otherwise than as a boon of
divine origin. This feeling is strengthened by the singular circumstance
that so many alphabets bear a strong similarity to each other, however
widely separated the countries in which they arose.
In Egypt the invention of the alphabet is by some ascribed to Syphoas,
nearly two thousand years before the Christian era, but more commonly
to Athotes, Thoth, or Toth, a deity always figured with the head of the
ibis, and very familiar in Egyptian antiquities. Cadmus is accredited
with having introduced it from Egypt into Greece about five centuries
later.
From the alphabet the gradation is natural to compounds of letters and
written language, and, though speech is one of the greatest gifts to man,
it is writing which distinguishes him from the uncivilized savage. The
practice of writing is of such remote antiquity that neither sacred nor
profane authors can satisfactorily trace its origin. The philosopher may
exclaim with the poet:
"Whence did the wondrous mystic art arise. Of painting speech and
speaking to the eyes? That we, by tracing magic lines, are taught How
both to color and embody thought?"
The earliest writing would probably have been with chalk, charcoal,
slate, or perhaps sand, as children from time immemorial have been taught
to read and write in India. The Romans used white walls for writing
inscriptions on, in red chalk--answering the purpose of our
posting-bills--of which several instances were found on the walls of
Pompeii. Plutarch informs us that tradesmen wrote in some such manner
over their doors, and that auction bills ran thus:
"Julius Proculus will this day have an auction of his superfluous goods,
to pay his debts."
Next seems to have followed writing or engraving on stone, wood, ivory,
and metals, of which we have many early evidences. The Decalogue, or the
Ten Commandments, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, was originally,
we are told in the Bible, written upon two tables of stone; the pillars
of Seth were of brick and stone; the laws of the Greeks were graven on
tables of brass, which were called _cyrbes_. Herodotus mentions a letter
written with a style on stone slabs, which Themistocles, the Athenian
general, sent to the Romans about B.C. 500; and we have another evidence
of the same period still existing--the so-called Borgian inscription,
which is a passport graven in bronze, entitling the holder to hospitable
reception wherever he demanded it. Upward of three thousand of such
engraved tablets, including the famous Roman laws of the Twelve Tables,
were consumed in the great fire which destroyed the Capitol in the time
of Vespasian.
I could cite a great many other evidences of early writing on stone or
brass, but will merely recommend you to see the Rosetta[25] inscription,
which is conspicuously placed in the British Museum. It is this very
interesting stone which, being partly Greek and partly Egyptian, has
enabled us to decipher so many Egyptian monuments.
Pliny informs us that table-books of wood--generally made of box or
citron wood--were in use before the time of Homer, that is, nearly three
thousand years ago; and in the Bible we read of table-books in the time
of Solomon. These table-books were called by the Romans _pugillares_,
which may be translated "hand-books"; the wood was cut into thin slices,
finely planed and polished, and written upon with an iron instrument
called a _stylus_. At a later period, tables, or slices of wood, were
usually covered with a thin layer of hard wax, so that any matter written
upon them might be effaced at pleasure, and the tables used again. Such
practice continued as late as A.D. 1395. In an account roll of Winchester
College of that year we find that a table covered with green wax was kept
in the chapel for noting down with a style the daily or weekly duties
assigned to the officers of the choir. Ivory also was used in the same
way.
Wooden table-books, as we learn from Chaucer, were used in England as
late as the fifteenth century. When epistles were written upon tables of
wood they were usually tied together with cord, the seal being put upon
the knot. Some of the table-books must have been large and heavy, for
in Plautus a schoolboy seven years old is represented as breaking his
master's head with his table-book.
Writing seems also to have been common, at a very early period, on palm
and olive leaves, and especially on the bark of trees--a material used
even in the present time in some parts of Asia. The bark is generally cut
into thin flat pieces, from nine to fifteen inches long and two to four
inches wide, and written on with a sharp instrument. Indeed, the tree,
whether in planks, bark, or leaves, seems in ancient times to have
afforded the principal materials for writing on. Hence the word _codex_,
originally signifying the "trunk or stem of a tree," now means a
manuscript volume. _Tabula_, which properly means a "plank" or "board,"
now also signifies the plate of a book, and was so used by Addison, who
calls his plates "tables." _Folium_ ("a leaf") has given us the word
"folio"; and the word _liber_, originally meaning the "inner bark of a
tree," was afterward used by the Romans to signify a book; whence we
derive our words, "library," "librarian," etc. One more such etymology,
the most interesting of all, is the Greek name for the bark of a tree,
_biblos_, whence is derived the name of our sacred volume.
Before I leave this stage of the subject, I will mention the way in which
the Roman youth were taught writing. Quintilian tells us that they were
made to write through perforated tablets, so as to draw the stylus
through a kind of furrow; and we learn from Procopius that a similar
contrivance was used by the emperor Justinian for signing his name. Such
a tablet would now be called a stencil-plate, and is what to the present
day is found the most rapid and convenient mode of marking goods, only
that a brush is used instead of an iron pen or style.
Writing and materials have so much to do with the invention of printing
that I feel obliged to tarry a little longer at this preliminary stage.
The most important of all the ancient materials for writing upon were
papyrus, parchment, and vellum; and on these substances nearly all our
most valuable manuscripts were written. Papyrus, or paper-rush, is a
large fibrous plant which abounds in the marshes of Egypt, especially
near the borders of the Nile. It was manufactured into a thick sort of
paper at a very early period, Pliny says three centuries before the reign
of Alexander the Great; and Cassiodorus, who lived in the sixth century,
states that it then covered all the desks of the world. Indeed, it had
become so essential to the Greeks and Romans that the occasional scarcity
of it is recorded to have produced riots. Every man of rank and education
kept _librarii_, or book-writers, in his house; and many _servi_, or
slaves, were trained to this service, so that they were a numerous class.
Papyrus is a very durable substance, made of the innermost pellicles of
the stalk, glued together transversely, with the glutinous water of
the Nile. It was for many centuries the great staple of Egypt, and was
exported in large quantities to almost every part of Europe and Asia, but
never, it would appear, to England or Germany. After the seventh century
its use was gradually superseded by the introduction of parchment; and
before the end of the twelfth century it had gone generally out of use.
From "papyrus" the name of "paper," which, with slight variations, is
common to many languages, is no doubt derived.
Parchment and vellum--which are made from the skin of animals, the former
from sheep or goat, the latter from calf, both prepared with lime--were
in use at a very early period, long before their accredited introduction.
It has been by some supposed that Eumenes, King of Pergamus, who lived
about B.C. 190, was the inventor of parchment; but it was known much
earlier, as may be seen by several references to it in the Bible (Isaiah,
viii. i; Jeremiah, xxxvi. 2; Ezekiel, xi. 9). It is, however, very
probable that it may have been brought to perfection at Pergamus, as it
was one of the principal articles of commerce of that kingdom.
Parchment, in early times, was not only expensive, but often very
difficult to procure; whence arose the practice of erasing old writing
from it, and engrossing it a second time. Such manuscripts are called
"palimpsests." Modern art has found the means of discharging the more
recent ink, and thus restoring the original writing, by which means we
have recovered many valuable pieces, particularly Cicero's lost book, _de
Republica_ and some fragments of his _Orations_.