theological nature. In a list given by Chevillier of the books sold
in the fourteenth century by the booksellers to the university, are
found in the foremost place, books on the _Canon Law_, the _Homilies
of St. Gregory_, the _Book of Sacraments_, the _Confessions of St.
Augustine_, the _Homilies of St. Augustine_, the _Compendium of Thomas
Aquinas_,[76] and _St. Thomas on Metaphysics_, on _Physics_, on _Heaven
and Earth_, on the _Soul_. Copies of the Gospels or the Scriptures, or
even of the works of classical authors, were not in high request. The
most popular books were elementary works on grammar and philosophy, for
the use of students, and devotional works like creeds, catechisms, and
prayers, which were largely bought by the more pious part of the people
that were able to read.
The copyists made books for the more ignorant priests, books
containing a synopsis of Christian faith and doctrine, or descriptions
of important events recorded in the Scriptures. As an additional
refreshment of the memory, and to make them more enticing to the buyer,
these books were profusely illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings. The
_Bible of the Poor_, and the _Mirror of Man’s Redemption_, afterward
popular as [p163] printed books, are favorable specimens of a class
of illustrated manuscripts in common use among the inferior clergy
as far back as the tenth and eleventh centuries. They were sold to
the unlearned of the laity and to friars who could not read, but
who could understand the allegories taught through the pictures. An
increasing fondness for ornamentation and for pictorial illustration
may be noticed among both learned and unlearned. Manuscripts of every
description were adorned with pictures.[77] Abstruse theological
writings and treatises on geometry and philosophy were often decked out
with floriated borders and gaudily painted illustrations which would
now be considered as suitable only for children. It would seem that it
was through the pictorial attractions of a book, more than through its
text, that men were led to admire literature.
The copyists made books of small size which were sold to students for
trifling sums. Psalters, with leaves no larger than the palm of the
hand, were sold for a sol. Elementary school-books, like the _Logic of
Boethius_, were sometimes copied in a minute style of penmanship, and
were still further contracted with abbreviations until the writing had
the appearance of microscopic stenography. The minute penmanship may
be regarded as evidence of the great scarcity of parchment, and the
abbreviations as indications of the weariness of the writer.
The arbitrary order of the university, which compelled the booksellers
to lend their books to scholars, shows that it was customary for a
student or a poor man of letters to copy the books he needed. The
little books sold for a sol were manifestly made for readers who could
not even buy the vellum [p164] required for a book of the usual
size. It was necessary that books sold at this price should be of
the cheapest materials, and that the text should be abbreviated by
contractions[78] so that it would occupy but little space. The despised
fabric of paper, and the remnants of vellum rejected by professional
copyists after the skin had been cut up for leaves of folio or of
quarto size, were cheerfully accepted by readers who valued a book more
for its contents than for its appearance.
The scarcity of vellum in one century, and its abundance in another,
are indicated by the size of written papers during the same periods.
Before the sixth century, legal documents were usually written upon
one side only; in the tenth century the practice of writing upon both
sides of the vellum became common. During the thirteenth century,
valuable documents were often written upon strips two inches wide and
but three and a half inches long. At the end of the fourteenth century
these strips went out of fashion. The more general use of paper had
diminished the demand for vellum and increased the supply. In the
fifteenth century, legal documents on rolls of sewed vellum twenty feet
in length were not uncommon. All the valuable books of the fourteenth
century were written on vellum. In the library of the Louvre the
manuscripts on [p165] paper, compared to those on vellum, were as one
to twenty-eight; in the library of the Dukes of Burgundy, one-fifth of
the books were of paper. The increase in the proportion of paper books
is a fair indication of the increasing popularity of paper; but it
is obvious that vellum was even then considered as the more suitable
substance for a book of value.
The esteem with which books were regarded by priests and scholars
during the fourteenth century was shared by men of wealth, who coveted
books, not so much for their contents as for their pictures, and as
evidences of wealth and culture. A remarkable impulse had been given to
literature and to the making of books by the troubadours of Southern
France. Their songs of love and devotion to women, their encomiums of
chivalry, and stories of battle and adventure, which were of their
own age, fresh and full of life, and untainted by the influence of
withered classical models, had most unbounded popularity in every
grade of society. Uncultivated people, who would have yawned over the
reading of _Homer_ or the _Odes of Horace_, would listen with a keen
delight to the songs of a Provençal minstrel, or to the reading of
romances about Charlemagne and his Paladins, about Arthur and Merlin,
and the Knights of the Round Table. To men who had regarded books only
as dull treatises about theology, these romances were revelations of
an unsuspected attractiveness in literature. How much these romances
increased the respect for books, and led to the making of new copies,
and to a more general knowledge of reading and writing, cannot be
exactly stated; but their influence on the people was vastly greater
than that of the books of the schools. During the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, books about love and chivalry constituted the
greater part of the secular literature of Europe. The most popular
books of Caxton, the first English printer, and of the early printers
of Paris, were of this character. To the ladies of France, the books of
love and song were especially attractive. It was largely through their
admiration that the workmanship of a new order of book-makers came in
fashion. [p166] To please their dainty tastes, copies were made with
refinements of calligraphy never before attempted; the unwieldy sizes
of folio and quarto were supplanted by small and handy duodecimos, and
bindings of a more delicate character were introduced.
The nature of the new literature, and the effeminate taste of the newly
made class of readers, seemed to call for changes in the old methods
of making books. It was necessary that the massiveness and barbaric
splendor of the monastic books should be supplanted by workmanship
combining elegance, lightness and delicacy. It was necessary that the
illustrations made for the lady’s missal, or for a book of romance,
should be designed, not by some grim old monk whose imagination had
been cramped by his solitary life, and whose narrowness and severity
were visible in all his workmanship, but by a courtier, an artist,
and man of fashion, who knew the world, who knew how to please it,
and how to paint it. To this class of men, the forerunners of courtly
artists like Durer, Holbein and Rubens, the manufacture of the new
books was intrusted. The new artists in book-making organized a nicer
division of labor, and supervised and directed the work at every stage
of its progress. A copyist selected for his skill wrote the text
in prescribed places on the sheets, and, by the uniformity of his
penmanship, gave character and connection to the work; one designer
sketched the borders, and another outlined the initials; an illuminator
filled in the outlines with gold-leaf and bright colors. Then came the
artist, or miniaturist, who drew the illustrations and painted the fine
pictures which gave the book its great charm. The artists were called
miniaturists because their illustrations were miniature pictures, as
artistically designed, and always more carefully painted than larger
paintings made for the adornment of churches, halls and picture
galleries. Avoiding the hard outlines and glaring pigments of the
illuminator, the miniaturist painted in low tints, and with the nicest
attention to harmony of color. The beauty of the work, which has been
but little affected [p167] by time, is recognized to this day. The
sheets which had been so artistically painted were as elegantly bound.
They were covered with silk, velvet, satin, or bright-colored leather,
embroidered with gold and pearls, studded with buttons of gold, banded
on the corners with shields, and secured with clasps of precious metals
engraved and enameled in the very finest style of decorative art.
Admirable as the books are, they do not give us a high opinion of the
intelligence of the artists, nor of the culture of their owners, for
they are full of anachronisms and absurdities in the pictures and in
the text.
This taste for elegant books, which began in the thirteenth century,
became a princely amusement. In 1373, Charles V of France was the
owner of more than nine hundred[79] books, most of which were written
on fine vellum, superbly bound, and adorned with precious stones and
clasps of silver or gold. His brothers fostered the same taste. Philip
the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, gathered around him artists, authors,
copyists, and bookbinders, and established a great library. His son,
John the Fearless, largely increased it, but the most costly additions
were made by Philip the Good, who, at the middle of the fifteenth
century, enjoyed the distinction of possessing the most magnificent
books in Western Europe. Books of equal beauty were also made in Italy,
but there was no part of Europe where calligraphers, miniaturists and
ornamental bookbinders found a higher appreciation of their skill than
in Burgundy and the Netherlands. Nor did this taste for fine [p168]
books soon go out of fashion. The business of making fine manuscript
books was not entirely destroyed by the invention of printing. Lacroix,
a French antiquary,[80] has shown us that copyists, illuminators,
designers and painters found employment in the embellishment of books
even as late as the last quarter of the seventeenth century.
During the middle ages, books of merit were everywhere sold at enormous
prices. Illustrated and illuminated volumes in elegant bindings seem
specially exorbitant, when we consider the greater purchasing capacity
of money. Daunou says, that in a computation of the value of a large
library of the fourteenth century, the average price of each manuscript
book should be fixed at about 450 francs. Didot says that, of three
hundred books contained in the library at Ratisbon, during the year
1231, the average price of each book was 600 francs. What proportion
should be allowed for binding and illumination is not stated, but it
can be proved that copying could not have been the labor of greatest
expense. In the fourteenth century the price of copying a Bible at
Bologna, exclusive of the value of binding, parchment and illumination,
was 80 Bolognese livres. In the fifteenth century, the price of copying
was steadily declining, while the prices of illuminating and binding
were increasing.
Books were expensive, not so much through the labor of the copyist,
who did the simplest and cheapest part of the work, but through the
extravagant ornamentation put on [p169] them by the illuminator and
the binder. The true office of the book was perverted. It was regarded,
not as a medium of instruction, but as a means for the display of
wealth and artistic tastes. The reader was really taught to value it
more for its dress than for its substance; the book-maker was most
appreciated when he made books so expensive that they were out of the
reach of ordinary buyers. To the modern book-buyer, the prices asked
for books of size and merit during the middle ages seem excessive, and
especially so when they are contrasted with the prices then paid for
food or labor.[81]
At the end of the fourteenth century, books of instruction were larger,
more ornamental, and, to the unschooled reader, more pedantic and more
forbidding than ever. We do not find in them any valuable contributions
to knowledge, nor do we discover in the writers or teachers of the
day any disposition to make knowledge easy to be acquired. The love
of great books during this period, frequently noticed as one of
the evidences of a true revival of literature, is, when critically
examined, evidence only of the artistic tastes of book-buyers and of
the exclusiveness of scholars. So far from paving the way for the
introduction of printing, this trifling with [p170] literature was one
of the most formidable impediments in its path. It made despicable even
the thought of an attempt to produce books by the simpler method of
printing, then in its first stage of practical development.
The princely patrons of literature, the learned doctors of the
universities, the copyists and stationers, the illuminators and
miniaturists, must have seen the playing cards and prints then sold
in all large cities, and, to some extent, must have known the process
by which they were made. But they looked on them with a pitying
contempt for the coarse tastes which could be satisfied with such rude
workmanship. The distance in degrees of merit between printed playing
cards and finely illuminated manuscript books seemed infinite. If the
cards conveyed a suggestion of the possibility of printed books, the
suggestion was rejected. To the dainty tastes of book-makers printing
was a barbarous trade; to the wealthy book-buyer, a printed book would
have been the degradation of art and literature. One may look in vain
among the book-makers and scholars of the fourteenth century for any
sign that heralded the coming of printing. Makers and buyers of books
seem to have been fully satisfied with things as they were—with the
established methods of book-making, with the organization of society
and the state of education. And the professed patrons of literature
would have been forever satisfied with this state of affairs. Under
their exclusive patronage, books would have been made more and more
sumptuously, and put more and more out of the reach of the people.
[p171]
X
The Preparations for Printing.
Imperfect Preparation of the People of Southern Europe . . .
Repression of Education in England. Early Gropings after Knowledge by
English People . . . The Horn-Book and Clog . . . Injurious Effects
of the Use of Latin in Books . . . Beginnings of Common Schools . . .
Their Usefulness in Germany and Flanders . . . Indications of Mental
Activity in the Arts . . . Favorable Condition of Germany as Compared
with other States . . . Profligacy of the Clergy . . . Growth of
Heresy . . . Early Translations of the Bible . . . Appreciation of
Pictures by the Illiterate . . . The Dance of Death. Neglect of the
People by their Constituted Teachers . . . Growing use of Paper . . .
Increase of Self-taught Copyists . . . Guilds of Book-Makers in the
North of Europe . . . Printing as an Aid to Writing . . . Printing
Delayed by Considerations of Expense . . . Could not be Introduced
until there were a Multitude of Readers . . . Books of Pictures
preceded Books of Letters.
* * * * *
No great fact, no social state, makes its appearance complete and
at once; it is formed slowly, successively; it is the result of a
multitude of different facts of different dates and origins, which
modify and combine themselves in a thousand ways before constituting a
whole, presenting itself in a clear and a systematic form, receiving a
special name, and standing through a long life.
_Guizot._
* * * * *
To the careless observer of the growth of learning and the state of
the mechanical arts at the beginning of the fifteenth century, Italy
might be regarded as the nation best prepared to receive and maintain
any new method of book-making. The neatly engraved initial letters in
manuscript books, the designs printed in many colors on woven fabrics,
and the extended manufacture of images and playing cards, prove
that the Italians knew how to print from blocks, and that they had
mechanical skill in abundance. In spite of her civil wars, Italy was
rich and prosperous, and famous all over the world, not only for her
universities and learned men, but [p172] for the cultured tastes of
her people. It would appear that all the conditions for the coming of
block-book printing had been filled, and that its introduction should
have followed as a consequence. But the conditions were only partly met.
To be ultimately successful, it was requisite that printing should
begin with the plainest work, and that it should be adapted to the
demands of very plain people; but the tastes of Italians were refined,
and they could not tolerate rudeness in any form. With all its skill,
wealth and culture, there was in Italy no true middle class, and,
consequently, no suitable basis for the upholding of an art like
xylography. The spirit which Woltmann has specified as the basis of
printing,—“the impulse to make each mental gain a common blessing,”—was
entirely wanting. As the professional book-makers, who were of the
people, did nothing for the advancement of their order, the development
of Italian printing had to stop with printed cards, cloths and images.
The skill of Italian engravers culminated, not, as it did in Germany,
in popular block-books, but in the more artistic and exclusive branch
of copper-plate printing. The efforts of Italian scholars to revive
the study of classical authors, however useful they may have been to
the people of other countries, ended in Italy with a widening of the
gulf that separated the ignorant from the educated. For the benefits of
printed books, Italy is indebted to the skill of German printers, whose
early productions had been excluded from Venice at the petition of her
querulous card-makers.
It may seem equally strange that block-book printing was not invented
in Spain, where textile fabrics were printed, and where paper was more
largely made and used than in any portion of Europe. We there find
schools, libraries, and signs of great mental activity. In poetry,
architecture, music and other fine arts, the people of Spain were as
advanced as the French or Italians. But the love of books, and the
culture that comes only from their study, were not firmly rooted in the
life and habits of common people. The education and social elevation
of the few had been secured at the expense [p173] of the many, and
literature and the literary arts had been so refined that they were
in decay. Nothing seems to have been done to pave the way for the
introduction of xylographic printing by attempts to educate the people.
The intellectual development of France resembled that of Italy and
Spain—it was a development of the literature of the church, and of
effeminate tastes among the wealthy, but from these the people derived
no benefit. France was then passing through the horrors of what French
historians call the “Hundred Years’ War” with England, during which
her population decreased at an alarming rate, and many of her arts and
industries were irreparably injured. The princes and nobles were waging
against each other a war of treason and assassination; the peasantry,
on whom feudal laws pressed more severely than they did on any other
people, broke out in the insurrection of the _Jacquerie_. In 1407,
the pope laid the kingdom under interdict, and the withdrawal of the
ministrations of the church were added to the horrors of civil and
servile war and the miseries of foreign invasion. It was not a time for
cultivating the arts of peace. There is, therefore, no block-book of
the fifteenth century in the French language, and there is no reason
to believe that any block-book printer ever attempted to establish his
business on French territory.
Of all the states of Western Europe, England seems to have been most
unfitted for the reception of printing. There were a few ecclesiastics
who saw the importance of books, and who tried to found libraries,
but the greater part of the clergy were very ignorant. They would
not learn, nor would they allow common people to be taught. It was
unlawful, even as late as 1412, for laborers, farmers and mechanics
to send their children to school. A great opportunity for popular
education was presented in Wickliffe’s translation of the Bible, which
could have been made an effective means for diffusing the knowledge
of letters among a religious people. But in 1415 it was enacted that
they who read the Scriptures in the mother tongue should be hanged for
treason, and burned for heresy. [p174]
[Illustration: An English Horn-Book.
[From Chambers.]]
In spite of all these impediments, there was a slow but positive
diffusion of knowledge among English people. How the knowledge was
communicated is not clear, for notices of common schools in England,
and indeed on the Continent, are infrequent and unsatisfactory. We
have, however, some curious relics of the substitutes for books used by
the people. One of them is the _Horn-Book_,[82] by which the children
were taught their letters and the Lord’s Prayer. The engraving annexed
represents a book that is of no earlier date than the reign of Charles
I, but it is a trustworthy illustration of the construction, if not of
the matter, of the horn-books in use in the fifteenth century. Another
of these substitutes is the _Clog_, a rude contrivance for marking the
order of coming days, which may be considered as the forerunner of the
printed almanac. [p175]
[Illustration: The Clog.[83]
[From Chambers.]]
The standard of English education was low, even in the universities.
An eminent Italian man of letters, in England in 1420, complains of
the scarcity of good books, and is not at all respectful to English
scholars.[84] The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had been
established rather more than three hundred years, but they taught
bad Latin. There were few books of merit in the English language:
Wickliffe’s translation of the Bible, and the poems of Chaucer, Lydgate
and Gower, are all that deserve any notice. There was, as yet, no
universally spoken English language: French was the language of the
English nobility and of English courts and books of law, as late as
the year 1362; merchants and mercantile companies kept their books
in French; boys at school were required to translate [p176] Latin
into French.[85] The habitual employment of French as the language of
the nobility, and of Latin as the language of literature, shut the
doors of knowledge on those who spoke English only. In all countries
the elementary text books of the schools were in Latin. To learn
arithmetic, grammar or geography, the scholar must begin with the study
of Latin. The dead language was the path to all knowledge: it was a
circuitous and a wearisome path, but it was traveled by every student
destined for the church, or for the profession of law or medicine.
At a very early period the bishops of the Catholic church tried to
establish schools for children, but not so much for the teaching of
secular as of religious knowledge. In the year 800 a synod at Mentz
ordered that parochial priests should establish schools in all towns
and villages to teach letters to children. These orders were repeated
by other councils, but they could be enforced only in the larger
cities. In many rural districts common schools were entirely unknown.
As the clergy grew corrupt, they were neglected in cities.[86] The
primary schools were not always taught by ecclesiastics, but the church
claimed the right to supervise them, and made sure that its doctrines
and dogmas should be fully taught. [p177]