evidence that there was no engraving on wood; it is evidence only of
the trivial nature of the work done. To specify the work is to justify
the neglect. It consisted, so far as we know, only of stamps for the
use of notaries, autographs for those who did not write, trade-marks
for merchants’ packages, outlined initials for inexpert scribes, and
engraved blocks for manufacturers of textile fabrics. This paltry
work seems specially inappropriate for the initiation of a great art
destined to make a revolution in literature.
Engraving on wood was not considered as a great art by the earlier
engravers. As it appeared to them, it was but a makeshift, a mechanical
method of evading the labor of difficult drawing or of abridging its
drudgery. To the chroniclers of this period, engraving was entirely
unworthy of notice. No one could see that it had any marked merit. So
far from deserving praise, the art of engraving and printing letters
was [p132] regarded as a confessed acknowledgment of inability to
draw, more deserving of censure than of praise. There were in the
thirteenth century workmen, now unknown, who produced exquisite
workmanship in the carving of wood and stone, in the chasing of gold
and silver, and in the copying of manuscripts. If these men were
thought unworthy of notice, the rude engravers on wood would be
entirely forgotten. The paltriness of the printed matter, and the
perishable nature of the substances on which the printing was done,
will account for the disappearance of most of the early prints. Nobody
cared to preserve a bit of printed cotton cloth as evidence of the
method of printing then in fashion. Nobody could foresee that it would
be of any interest.
The trivial nature of the work cannot be considered as an evidence of
the incompetency of the engravers to do work of merit. They left us no
printing of permanent value, because they knew of no proper substance
to print upon. The only materials available were parchment, papyrus
and stiff cotton paper, all of which were unsuitable. Printing can be
done to advantage only on paper, but paper was sparingly used in the
fourteenth century. When paper came, printing followed.
[p133]
VIII
The Introduction of Paper in Europe.
Paper Invented in China in the First Century . . . Paper-Making
in Japan, with Illustration . . . Description of Process . . . An
Illustration of Oriental Book-Making . . . The European Process like
the Oriental . . . Paper known in Europe in the Fifth Century . . .
Not used for Writing . . . Made of Cotton . . . Earliest Notice of
Linen Paper . . . Differences of Opinion concerning its Introduction
. . . Different Methods of Preparing Pulp . . . Early European
Paper-Mills . . . Illustration of Paper-Mill by Jost Amman . . .
Mills in Spain, France, Sicily and Italy . . . Possible Antiquity
of the European Process . . . Paper not used by Copyists . . . Its
Inferiority . . . Vellum Preferred . . . Palimpsests . . . Government
Interference with Manufacturers of Paper . . . Changes of Fashion in
Paper . . . Paper came in Proper Time.
* * * * *
It is peculiarly characteristic of all the pretended discoveries of
the middle ages, that when the historians mention them for the first
time, they treat them as things in general use. Neither gunpowder, nor
the compass, nor the Arabic numerals, nor paper, are anywhere spoken
of as discoveries, and yet they must have wrought a total change in
war, in navigation, in science and in education.
_Sismendi._
* * * * *
According to Chinese chronology, paper was invented in China at the
close of the first century, or one hundred and forty-five years[57]
after the Chinese invention of printing. All the printing that had been
done before the invention of paper was on sheets or leaves of cotton or
silk. This version of the antiquity of the Chinese invention is in some
degree corroborated by a Japanese chronicle, which says that paper was
exported from the Corea to Japan between the years 280 and 610 A. D.
In time, the Japanese paper was made so superior to the Chinese, that
there was no further need for importation. This superiority has been
maintained to this day. In some branches of paper-making, the Japanese
are [p134] without rivals in either the eastern or western world. Two
hundred and sixty-three kinds of paper are now made in Yeddo. Some of
them may have their origin in reasons of habit, caprice or fashion,
but most of them are made for specific uses. Papers are manufactured
not only for writing and printing, but for hats, umbrellas, lanterns,
clothing, dolls’ dresses, twine, candle-wick, and an endless variety
of useful or ceremonious purposes. An anonymous author has wisely
remarked: “When a people contrive to make saucepans that are used over
charcoal fires, fine pocket-handkerchiefs, and sailors’ water-proof
overcoats out of paper, they may be considered as having pretty
thoroughly mastered the subject.”
The illustration on the opposite page is the reduced fac-simile of the
engraving of a Japanese artist who has attempted to show how paper was
made in his country in the eighteenth century. The grim old man who
may be seen at the upper part of the illustration, with a leg in one
page, and with head and body in another, is beating paper stock to a
pulp.[58] His only tool is a forked club, with which he pounds on the
stone, and macerates the leaves and inner bark of various trees that
have been previously saturated in an adjoining tub that is supposed to
contain a solution of caustic alkali. How the stock could be reduced to
the requisite smoothness for paper pulp by this rough manipulation is a
problem that no American paper-maker will undertake to solve. We only
know that it is done and well done. The long tank in the centre of the
left-hand page contains the pulp dissolved in water. Two men are taking
out the pulp upon paper-moulds, or sieves of bamboo splints which have
been wire-drawn and boiled in oil. The water taken up with the pulp is
drained through the holes in the sieve, leaving upon the woven splints
a thin and flabby web of paper pulp. The web is then couched on [p136]
a surface of cloth or felt, or of some substitute of similar nature,
on which, in turn, another layer of felt and pulp is placed. When the
pile is of sufficient height it is pressed, until all the water that
can be expelled by pressure is removed. The two attendants on the
paper-makers near the tank are engaged in the work of interleaving the
web and carrying it to be pressed. This done, the sheet is firm enough
to be handled. It is then laid upon a smooth board where it stays until
it is dry. The operation of surfacing or polishing the sheet of paper,
by burnishing it with a smooth shell, is not shown in the engraving.
But this finish was not given to all papers. The neatly corded bales
show that paper was made in large quantities.
[Illustration: The Japanese Method of Making Paper.
[From Breitkopf.]]
This engraving is of service as an illustration of oriental
book-making. These two pages were engraved and printed together on one
side of the paper. The sheet was then folded through the centre: the
folded edge was made the outer edge, while the two cut or raw edges
were neatly stitched together and made the back of the book. This
method of sewing through the cut edges, instead of through the fold,
began with the use of the cut leaves of silk or cotton, which were
used in printing the earliest Chinese books before paper was made. If
the cut edges of silk or cotton were made the outer edges of the book,
the leaves would soon fray or ravel out in threads; if they were made
the inner edges, the integrity of the leaf would necessarily be more
secure. Like other habits and fashions, this curious mode of binding
has been continued when the necessity for it has ceased to exist.
Although this engraving was made in the eighteenth century, it may be
accepted as a correct representation of paper-making as it has always
been practised in China and Japan. Rude as this process may seem, it
is, in its more important features, excepting that of pulp-beating, the
process that was used in Europe until the invention of the cylinder and
Fourdrinier paper-making machines. Nor is this process entirely out of
fashion. There are paper-makers yet living who have [p137] taken pulp
out of the vats with hand moulds and deckle, and have couched it on
felts, substantially by the same method that was in use in Asia fifteen
hundred years ago.
Oriental paper-makers do not use rags nor raw cotton for making their
pulp. They select different kinds of bamboo, and the bark and leaves
of various trees, which they combine in unequal proportions, so as
to produce for different kinds of paper the different qualities of
strength, smoothness and flexibility. These materials are saturated in
lime water, and are sometimes boiled to free them from useless matter.
Barks are sometimes triturated with pestles in a mortar. While the
greatest care is taken to prevent the cutting of the fibres in too
short lengths, every expedient is made use of to split up the fibres in
the finest threads. The result of this care is the production of papers
of wonderful strength and flexibility.
It is admitted by all historians that the early European practice of
paper-making was derived from Asia. How the knowledge of the art was
transmitted to us from China, Persia or India, and where and when paper
was first made in Europe are questions of controversy. The difficulty
we encounter in an inquiry concerning its derivation is aggravated by
the discovery that two kinds of paper—one, said to be made of cotton,
and another, said to be made of linen or rags—were used in Europe at a
very early period—a period in which we find no traces of the existence
of a European paper-mill. Proteaux says that a thick card or card-like
paper came in use during the fifth century,[59] when the manufacture of
papyrus was declining. But its first use was not as a substitute for
papyrus or parchment. It was called _charta damascena_, the card of
Damascus; _charta gossypina_, or the cotton card; _charta bombycina_,
or the silk-like card; _serica_, or the silky fabric. It was usually
mentioned as a card; for it was so thick, and so unlike papyrus, that
it was regarded as a different thing, and [p138] was defined by a
different name. This cotton card or cotton paper was thick, coarse,
woolly, yellow and somewhat fragile. It was so inferior to papyrus,
parchment or linen paper as a writing surface, and was so generally
neglected by professional copyists, that all the earlier chroniclers of
paper-making have passed it by as unworthy of notice.
The linen paper, so called, came in use at a much later period, but
there is great disagreement among authorities as to the date. Meerman,
the author of a learned book on the origin of printing, offered a
reward for the earliest manuscript on linen paper, which, he decided,
could not have been used in Europe before 1270. Montfaucon, a learned
antiquary, says that he could find no book nor leaf of linen paper of
earlier date, but he thinks that it was known and used in Europe to a
limited extent before 1270. Gibbon, citing the authority of Arabian
historians, says that a linen paper was made in Samarcand in the eighth
century, and leaves his reader to form the inference that not long
after, paper found its way to Europe. Casiri, a Spanish author, who
made a catalogue of the Arabian manuscripts in the Escurial, says that
in this collection are many old manuscripts of the twelfth century
on linen paper, including one of the year 1100. But we are not told
that this paper was made in Spain; it may have been brought from the
East. Tiraboschi, an Italian historian, says that linen paper is the
invention of an Italian, Pace de Fabiano of Treviso, who flourished
about the middle of the fourteenth century. But Peter Mauritius,
abbot of a French monastery at Cluny, in a treatise written by him in
1120 against the Jews, says, “The books we read every day are made of
the skins of sheep, goats and calves [parchment], of oriental plants
[papyrus], or of the scrapings of old rags, or of any other compacted
refuse material.”[60] It would be a hopeless task to attempt to gather
from these discordant [p139] statements a satisfactory explanation of
the origin or of the introduction of paper in Europe.
The modern paper-maker, who produces paper pulp from mixtures in
variable proportions of all kinds of textile rubbish, will doubt the
ability of any antiquary to distinguish linen from cotton paper,
especially when Tiraboschi admits that cotton paper was made in Italy
during the fourteenth century so closely resembling linen paper that
only a paper-maker could perceive the difference. The microscope that
enables the educated investigator to detect the characteristic features
of every kind of vegetable fibre is really the only safe test[61] for
determining the constituents of paper; but it does not appear that
this instrument was ever used by the authors who have undertaken to
discriminate between linen and cotton paper. The explanation of these
contradictory statements must be sought in another quarter.
The peculiarities of the so-called linen and cotton papers are due more
to their distinct methods of manufacture than to the material used. The
earliest notice of the manufacture of paper in Europe clearly specifies
the practice of two unlike methods. We are told that, in the year
1085, a paper-mill at Toledo, which had been operated by the Moors,
passed into the hands of Christians, probably Spaniards, who made great
improvements in the manufacture. The Moors made paper pulp by grinding
the raw cotton, a process which hastened the work, but it shortened and
weakened the fibres, making a paper that was tender and woolly. The
Spaniards stamped the cotton and rags into a pulp, by pestles or stamps
driven by water power, a method which preserved the long fibres that
gave the fabric its strength. This paper, now known as linen paper, was
then known as parchment cloth. The cotton paper of the antiquarians is,
apparently, the paper that had its fibres cut by grinding; the linen
paper was the paper made from pulp that had been beaten. [p140]
The first European paper-mills seem to have been established by the
Moors or Saracens who had direct intercourse with the East. Paper was
made at Xativa, Valencia, and at other towns of Spain, by Moors and
Spaniards, and the paper made at Xativa was much commended for its
whiteness. We find mention, also, of a family of paper-makers in the
island of Sicily in the year 1102. For many years the Moors were not
only the largest manufacturers, but the largest consumers. In various
cities of Spain, seventy libraries were opened for the instruction of
the public, during a period when all the rest of Europe, without books,
without learning and without cultivation, was plunged in the most
disgraceful ignorance.[62]
[Illustration: Paper-Mill of the Sixteenth Century.
[From Jost Amman.]]
In this illustration, which was first published by Jost Amman in his
_Book of Trades_, we see something of the mechanism always used for
preparing the pulp for paper. Large water-wheels, partially seen
through the window, set in motion a wooden cylinder evenly spiked
with projections. As the cylinder revolved, these projections tilted
up, and then dropped heavy stampers of hard wood that beat against
the torn and well-soaked rags lying within the tank. The stamping
was continued until the macerated rags were of the consistency of
cream. The stuff thus made was then transferred to tubs, at one of
which a [p141] paper-maker is at work. The dipping out of the pulp
with hand mould and deckle, the couching of the web on interleaving
felts, and its transfer to be pressed by the brisk little boy, are the
same processes in all points as those that have been described in the
Japanese engraving. The processes of sorting and washing the rags, and
of bleaching the half-made stuff are not shown in the cut, but they
were not neglected. The screw press behind the paper-moulder is the
only innovation of importance.
The development of paper-making in Europe cannot be traced with any
degree of certainty. There are Italian authors who assert that linen
paper was made in Lombardy and Tuscany as early as the year 1300, and
that the Italian knowledge of the art was derived not from Spain or
Sicily, but through the Greeks at Constantinople, who had been taught
how to make paper by the Saracens. The earliest authentic mention of
an Italian paper-mill is that concerning the mill of Fabiano, which
had been in operation for some years before 1340, and which produced
at that time nothing but the cotton card-paper. There is no record of
paper-mills in the Netherlands during the fourteenth century. Paper
was made at Troyes, France, in the year 1340. In the British Islands
there was no paper-mill before that of John Tate, who is supposed to
have established it in the year 1498. In Germany, a paper-mill was
established at Nuremberg by Ulman Stromer about the year 1390.[63] But
the different paper-marks in the home-made paper of German manuscripts
of this period are indications that there were paper-mills in many
German towns. [p142]
The gradual development of paper-making in Europe is but imperfectly
presented through these fragmentary facts. Paper may have been made
for many years before it found chroniclers who thought the manufacture
worthy of notice. The Spanish paper-mills of Toledo which were at work
in the year 1085, and an ancient family of paper-makers which was
honored with marked favor by the king of Sicily in the year 1102, are
carelessly mentioned by contemporary writers as if paper-making was
an old and established business. It does not appear that paper was a
novelty at a much earlier period. The bulls of the popes of the eighth
and ninth centuries were written on cotton card or cotton paper, but
no writer called attention to this card, or described it as a new
material. It has been supposed that this paper was made in Asia, but
it could have been made in Europe. A paper-like fabric, made from the
barks of trees, was used for writing by the Longobards in the seventh
century, and a coarse imitation of the Egyptian papyrus, in the form of
a strong brown paper, had been made by the Romans as early as the third
century. The art of compacting in a web the macerated fibres of plants
seems to have been known and practised to some extent in Southern
Europe long before the establishment of Moorish paper-mills.
The Moors brought to Spain and Sicily not an entirely new invention,
but an improved method of making paper, and what was more important, a
culture and civilization that kept this method in constant exercise.
It was chiefly for the lack of ability and lack of disposition to put
paper to proper use that the earlier European knowledge of paper-making
was so barren of results. The art of book-making as it was then
practised was made subservient to the spirit of luxury more than to the
desire for knowledge. Vellum was regarded by the copyists as the only
substance fit for writing on, even when it was so scarce that it could
be used only for the most expensive books. The card-like cotton paper
once made by the Saracens was certainly known in Europe for many years
[p143] before its utility was recognized. Hallam says that the use of
this cotton paper was by no means general or frequent, except in Spain
or Italy, and perhaps in the South of France, until the end of the
fourteenth century. Nor was it much used in Italy for books.[64]
Paper came before its time and had to wait for recognition. It was
sorely needed. The Egyptian manufacture of papyrus, which was in a
state of decay in the seventh century, ceased entirely in the ninth or
tenth. Not many books were written during this period, but there was
then, and for at least three centuries afterward, an unsatisfied demand
for something to write upon. Parchment was so scarce that reckless
copyists frequently resorted to the desperate expedient of effacing the
writing on old and lightly esteemed manuscripts. It was not a difficult
task. The writing ink then used was usually made of lamp-black, gum,
and vinegar; it had but a feeble encaustic property, and it did not
bite in or penetrate the parchment. The work of effacing this ink was
accomplished by moistening the parchment with a weak alkaline solution
and by rubbing it with pumice-stone. This treatment did not entirely
obliterate the writing, but made it so indistinct that the parchment
could be written over the second time. Manuscripts so treated are
now known as palimpsests. All the large European public libraries
have copies of the palimpsests which are melancholy illustrations of
the literary tastes of many writers or book-makers during the middle
ages. More convincingly than by argument, they show the utility of
paper. Manuscripts of the _Gospels_, of the _Iliad_, and of works of
the highest merit, often of great beauty and accuracy, are dimly seen
underneath stupid sermons, and theological writings of a nature so
paltry [p144] that no man living cares to read them. In some instances
the first writing has been so thoroughly scrubbed out that its meaning
is irretrievably lost.
Much as paper was needed, it was not at all popular with copyists.
Their prejudice was not altogether unreasonable, for it was thick,
coarse, knotty, and in every way unfitted for the display of ornamental
penmanship or illumination. The cheaper quality, then known as cotton
paper, was especially objectionable. It seems to have been so badly
made as to need governmental interference. Frederick II of Germany, in
the year 1221, foreseeing evils that might arise from bad paper, made a
decree by which he made invalid all public documents that should be put
on cotton paper, and ordered them within two years to be transcribed
upon parchment. Peter II, of Spain, in the year 1338, publicly
commanded the paper-makers of Valencia and Xativa to make their paper
of a better quality and equal to that of an earlier period.
The better quality of paper, now known as linen paper, had the merits
of strength, flexibility and durability in a high degree, but it was
set aside by the copyists because the fabric was too thick and the
surface was too rough. The art of calendering or polishing papers until
they were of a smooth, glossy surface, which was then practised by
the Persians, was unknown to, or at least unpractised by, the early
European makers. The changes of fashion in the selection of writing
papers are worthy of passing notice. The rough hand-made papers so
heartily despised by the copyists of the thirteenth century are now
preferred by neat penmen and draughtsmen. The imitations of medieval
paper, thick, harsh, and dingy, and showing the marks of the wires
upon which the fabric was couched, are preferred by men of letters for
books and correspondence, while highly polished modern plate papers,
with surfaces much more glossy than any preparation of vellum, are now
rejected by them as finical and effeminate.
There is a popular notion that the so-called inventions of paper and
xylographic printing were gladly welcomed by [p145] men of letters,
and that the new fabric and the new art were immediately pressed into
service. The facts about to be presented in succeeding chapters will
lead to a different conclusion. We shall see that the makers of playing
cards and of image prints were the men who first made extended use of
printing, and that self-taught and unprofessional copyists were the men
who gave encouragement to the manufacture of paper. The more liberal
use of paper at the beginning of the fifteenth century by this newly
created class of readers and book-buyers marks the period of transition
and of mental and mechanical development for which the crude arts of
paper-making and of block-printing had been waiting for centuries.
We shall also see that if paper had been ever so cheap and common
during the middle ages, it would have worked no changes in education
or literature; it could not have been used by the people, for they
were too illiterate; it would not have been used by the professional
copyists, for they preferred vellum and despised the substitute.
[p146]
IX
The Book-Makers of the Middle Ages.