overshadowed by great institutions of learning. In the German countries
that bordered on the Rhine, and more especially in the Netherlands,
where there were no universities, and where the people had a large
measure of personal liberty, we find many evidences of a steady
progress in education,[87] and of improvement in social condition.
The simple teachings of the schools were received by a plain but
utilitarian people who put the knowledge to practical use. The newly
developed mental activity did not run to waste, as it did in the
universities, in unprofitable metaphysical speculations; it was at once
applied to the varied requirements of art, trade and manufactures. When
printing came, the common people were fully prepared for it, prepared
not only to read books, but to make them. The invention was developed
in proper order, and was preceded by improvements in mechanical arts.
As illustrations of this mental activity, it is not out of place
to mention some of the many inventions of the men who had studied
books only to aid them in studying things. We find gunpowder and
fire-arms, glass windows and mirrors, clocks and watches, and numerous
contrivances that add to the comforts of social life, some of which,
like the tinning of iron, and the putting of chimneys to fireplaces,
have seemed too paltry to deserve notice. Trivial as they may seem,
when in contrast with the steam engine and railroad, the chimney and
window were of the highest service as aids in bringing men from a
qualified barbarism to civilization. It cannot be [p178] proved that
these contrivances were invented in Germany, but it is certain that
they were there appreciated and used when they were entirely unknown in
parts of Europe then supposed to be much more enlightened.[88]
The Germans and Flemings were regarded as a boorish people by the more
polished Italians. In the artistic education that can be acquired
only from intimate association with men of genius and works of art,
the Northern people were deficient; but in the knowledge of useful
arts, in originality of invention, in patience and thoroughness as
manufacturers, they were superior. The Germans made linen, glass,
carved wooden-ware, and useful articles of all kinds needed in home
life. In the construction of fine mechanisms, like clocks and curious
automatons, they had no rivals. The Flemings were celebrated as
weavers, cutlers, goldsmiths, armorers, engravers of silver-ware,
and as carvers of wood and stone. They were more than skillful
mechanics.[89] Hubert and John Van Eyck, founders of the Flemish
school of painting, and instructors of eminent Italian artists, may
be regarded as representatives of the practical Flemish character,
for they considered no branch of the arts of design as unworthy their
attention; they painted on glass as well as on wood or canvas; they
illuminated missals, and, as many bibliographers believe, made designs
on wood for the engravers of block-books. [p179]
The steady progress made by the people of Flanders and Germany in
arts and manufactures was largely due to their liberty. They were not
altogether exempt from the bondage of feudalism: there was some discord
in Germany, and never-ceasing strife between the nobles and middle
class, but the German burgher maintained his independence and lived in
comfort.[90] The need of peace and personal liberty as preparations for
the introduction of printing may be more clearly perceived in a glance
at the social condition of the people.
The discontent of common people at their treatment by constituted
authorities was never greater than during the last twenty years of
the fourteenth century. Southern Europe was afflicted by sanguinary
wars, into which the rulers of the people dragged their unwilling
peasantry.[91] Armed bands of [p180] discharged soldiers roamed about,
robbing and murdering at will. Nobles secure in their castles sent out
soldiers to make forays in adjacent districts, with no more pretext
of law than is claimed by pirates. Outside of large cities there was
no safety for life or property. To add to the general misery, famine
desolated the most fruitful countries, and in some districts, the awful
pestilence of the black death swept away half the population. Where
the suffering was greatest, the people rebelled, but to no purpose.
In France, the insurgents of the _Jacquerie_, in 1358, were massacred
with savage ingenuity in cruelty;[92] in England, the Wat Tyler revolt
of 1385 was put down with violence, and the people were remanded to
the old villeinage.[93] In countries where there was no outbreak, a
sullen resentment grew up against all authority, but more especially
against that of the established church. The exactions and scandalous
manners of the superior clergy afforded a sufficient provocation. There
were two popes—one at Rome and one at Avignon; in many dioceses were
rival bishops, holding authority under the rival popes. The heads of
the church were at enmity with each other, and they ruled over God’s
heritage with the weapons and the spirit of temporal princes. The
tribute of money which had been delayed or refused by recusant bishops,
and the tribute of homage which had been denied by excommunicated
kings or emperors, were paid in the misery and blood of the people. In
the prolonged disputes between pope and king, and pope and anti-pope,
the pious and loyal, who had been taught to honor those who were in
authority, were unable to discern which of the two contestants was the
true and which the false pope or bishop. [p181] From the teachings
of each pretender the good turned away. The religious sentiment which
had been shocked at the outrageous behavior of the anointed teachers
forsook the old altars. It sought out new faiths and founded new
sects.[94]
The teachers of the new sects were unwittingly preparing the people for
the coming of printing by enforcing the duty of more careful reading
and study of the Holy Scriptures. In the year 1380, Wickliffe completed
a translation in English of the entire Bible. At the beginning of
the thirteenth century, copies of a translation of the Scriptures
in Provençal French, made by or under the direction of Peter Waldo,
a wealthy merchant of Lyons, and the founder of the Waldenses, were
circulated in Burgundy and upon the borders of the Rhine. There were
many new translations, or at least of the gospels and psalms, in
other European languages.[95] Men and women [p182] gathered together
in secret places to hear them read.[96] The timid and irresolute,
alienated from the church, and deterred from frequenting prohibited
associations, set up altars of the most unpretentious character within
their own houses. Too poor to buy books, and perhaps too ignorant
to read them, they sought from the formschneiders and image-makers
the emblems they needed as visible symbols of their faith. In this
hungering after the instruction or consolation afforded by religious
pictures, we see the origin of the block-books. A growing fondness for
pictures is a marked peculiarity in the intellectual development of
the age. It was not confined to the buyers of printed images: it was
manifested in the paintings on the walls and windows of magnificent
churches, in the pictorial playing cards then in the hands of all
people, gentle and simple, and more than all in the fearful pictures
of the _Dance of Death_ upon the walls of convents, in the arcades of
burying-grounds, and in market-places and town halls. In these hideous
paintings, the saint saw the necessity of preparation for death; the
sinner interpreted them as an assertion of the equality of all men
and the final punishment of the [p184] unjust. In the inexorable
impartiality of the grinning and stalking skeleton who rudely dragged
away the resisting noble and protesting priest, there was a ghastly
irony which was keenly appreciated even by the illiterate.
[Illustration:
The Abbot.
Death despoils the Abbot of his mitre and crozier, and drags him away.
The Abbot resists, and is about to throw his breviary at his adversary.
The Mendicant Friar.
He is about to enter his convent with his money-box and wallet, when
Death seizes him by the cowl, and compels him to leave the world.
The Preacher.
Death, with a stole about his neck, stands behind the Preacher, and
holds a jaw-bone over his head, intimating that he is the more forcible
teacher.
The Knight.
After escaping perils in numerous combats, the Knight ineffectually
resists the onset of Death, and is vanquished by one thrust of the
spear.
Holbein’s Illustrations of the Dance of Death. [From Douce.]]
The signs of awakening intelligence, as manifested in the general
appreciation of pictures, images, playing cards and books, were
entirely disregarded by the authorized teachers of the age, who
could have used the method of xylographic printing by which images
and playing cards were made, and could have led people from the
contemplation of images and allegories of the _Dance of Death_,[97] to
the study of books and letters. They had all the means within reach.
There were engravers and printers in Venice in 1400; there is an
obscure notice of image-cutters or engravers on wood in the records of
the fraternity of St. Luke in Paris[98] for the year 1391. But [p185]
neither the doctors of the universities nor the book-makers of Paris
ever attempted to print books or pictures. Nor can it be shown that any
one of the many persons laboring for the revival of literature at the
beginning of the fifteenth century had anything to do with printing.
The significance of this fact should be fairly considered, for it is
the proper explanation of the curious and childish literature of the
block-books which followed the printed images.
[Illustration: Reduced Fac-simile of the Dance of Death, as shown in
the Nuremberg Chronicle.
[Photographed from Mr. Bruce’s Copy.]]
Early printed work was the outgrowth, not of scholarship, but of
comparative ignorance. The first block-printers were men outside the
pale of literature, and not indebted to any school or scholar for the
suggestion of printing. The first merchantable products of printing
on paper were not books, but playing cards and images. The earliest
purchasers of [p186] printing were men who could neither read nor
write. The card-makers, who labored for the amusement of boyish
tastes, were the ignorant nurses of an art which has preserved the
learning of the world. They have had grand success. The once despised
fabric of paper has displaced vellum; types do the work of reed and
pen, and the work of perpetuating the literature of the world is done
by mechanics.[99] Nor has this great revolution been restricted to
mechanical processes in book-making. Medieval books are more than
out of date: they are dead, beyond all revival. They are known to
book-lovers chiefly by reputation. The writings of Anselm, Dun Scotus,
Abelard, Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Ockham, are
read only through curiosity; they are as obsolete as the works of the
old Greek philosophers.[100]
Although much had been done to prepare Germany and Flanders for the
reception of printing, one thing was lacking. Printing waited for a
wise appreciation of the utility of paper. For centuries paper had
been regarded as a plebeian writing surface, unfitted for books, but
good enough for shopkeepers, mechanics, and children who had or sought
a smattering of education. It was necessary that the prejudices in
favor of vellum should be uprooted, and that the practical superiority
of paper should be recognized by men of higher authority than
card-printers or poor scholars. This change in fashion was effectually
made by the rich merchants of Flanders and Germany. The paper rejected
of professional book-makers was not so strong nor so attractive as
parchment, but it was flexible, durable, and much cheaper. There was
no legislative intermeddling with its sale[101] as there had been
with parchment. [p187] Everybody was free to buy and use it at his
pleasure. The consequences of this contemptuous abandonment of paper
to the people, who were supposed to be almost unfit to use it, were
unexpected. Those who knew how to read and write found in paper a ready
means of communicating their knowledge. The number of readers grew.
With this increase of readers came also an increase of self-taught
copyists and of unprofessional book-makers. In the commercial
cities, where copyists were not subjected to the censorship of the
universities, the practice of making books became as common as it had
been exclusive. Book-making became a distinct trade, and shops were
established for the sale of alphabets, primers, prayer books, creeds,
and elementary text books for schools, all adapted, both in price
and in subject, to the very humblest readers.[102] The names of some
nooks and corners in London, Paternoster Row, Creed Lane, Amen Corner,
Ave Maria Lane, show that these were the places in that city where
manuscripts of a religious character were largely made and sold.
As the sale of these books and tracts increased, Northern copyists
combined with each other for purposes of mutual protection, after the
usage of all the tradesmen of the middle ages. We find a mention of the
existence of the Company of Stationers of London in 1405. There were
guilds of book-makers at Augsburg in 1418, at Nordlingen in 1428, at
Ulm in 1441, at Antwerp in 1441, at Bruges in 1454. These are the years
in which the guilds were first mentioned; but it is probable they were
incorporated at earlier dates. The [p188] book-making fraternities
of St. Luke, in Venice and in Paris, were constituted of copyists,
calligraphers, illuminators and bookbinders; but the more practical
Northern guilds admitted to membership printers and engravers, and
every worker, however humble his work, who contributed to the making of
a book. But this combination of copyists with engravers and printers
did not at once lead to the printing of books. It did no more than pave
the way for its introduction, by making people familiar with paper
and printing. For a long time the workmanship of the rival arts was
kept distinct; the copyist transcribed books, while the printers made
images. But the time came when the copyist had to ask help from the
printer.
The printing of books began, not as an independent art, but as an aid
to the art of writing. A publisher[103] of London recently described
and offered for sale a curious old book, partly printed and partly
written, which illustrates the close alliance of labor once maintained
between the copyist and the engraver. He describes the book as a folio
of 17 leaves of vellum, on which are printed 69 engravings, twelve of
them bearing legends, “representing scenes of Christian mythology,
figures of patriarchs, saints, devils, and other dignitaries of the
church, all colored and illuminated with oxidized gold, impressed in
the midst of a manuscript text in German.” The engravings of this
book are small, about 3 inches long and 2-1/4 inches broad. They are
enclosed by a double border of black lines, and are printed on the left
side of the page. The designer of the illustrations was obviously an
inexpert, not accustomed to drawing the letters of the inscriptions
in reverse order on the block, for some of the letters are turned the
wrong way. The engravings were printed before the descriptive text was
written. The language of the text, old High German, contains obsolete
words which were out of use before typography was invented. Quaritch
attributes this [p189] book to unknown monks of Southern Germany,
“about the year 1400.” This copy of the _Weekly Meditations_ is a
favorable specimen of the combined workmanship of the copyist and the
printer; but it is not the only one. Copies or fragments of manuscript
books[104] with printed illustrations are in the British Museum, and in
many European libraries.
These specimens of book-making during the period of its transition
from writing to printing, give us some notions of the estimation in
which the process of printing was held by the men who manufactured
chap-books. It does not appear that they made use of printing because
they thought it was a labor-saving process. They used it mainly, if not
entirely, to supplement the deficient skill of the copyist. It was then
as it is now—many could write, but few could draw. If the copyist who
wrote the text had been competent to draw, the pictures would not have
been engraved. Nor would these engravings have been made for one nor
even for one dozen copies. We may properly suppose that enough copies
were printed to justify the expense of engraving.
While it was expedient to engrave the pictures, it was inexpedient to
engrave the text of a book. In many books, the letters constituted the
largest part of the work, and to the engraver it was the more difficult
part—the expense of engraving would more than offset all the advantages
that might have been gained from printing. A full suite of blocks
for the text would cost more than the writing of a hundred copies.
To the stationer who could sell but few books, xylographic printing
was not an economical process: the preliminary cost of engraving was
too great. It would be an extravagant estimate to assume that the
writer of the _Weekly Meditations_ made one hundred copies of this
book; but one [p190] hundred copies would have been an edition much
too small to justify the engraving of its text of seventeen pages. We
must accept this as the reason why printing was so sparingly used by
the early book-makers. They did not engrave blocks and print books,
because there were not enough book-buyers to warrant the expense. This
feature of printing—its entire dependence upon a very large number of
book-buyers—may require a more extended explanation.
The small prices for which all popular modern books and newspapers
are sold lead many into the error that printing is, necessarily and
under all circumstances, a much cheaper method of making books than
that of writing. As compared with writing, presswork, or the operation
of impressing the types on the sheet, is much the quicker and cheaper
process; but presswork is not the main branch of the art of printing.
Before one impression can be taken, or one copy be made, types must be
composed or blocks engraved at very great expense. The composition and
stereotyping of the pages of an ordinary duodecimo book may be worth
six hundred dollars. On an edition of ten copies the cost of such a
book would be, for making plates only, sixty dollars per copy. If there
were but one hundred copies, the expense of the plates would be six
dollars per copy. Under these conditions few books would be published.
But if an edition of one thousand copies should be printed, the cost of
the plates would be only sixty cents a copy. In this instance, printing
would be much cheaper than writing, but this reduced rate would not
necessarily justify the expenses of printing. The risk of sale must
be hazarded. No publisher would undertake at his own risk to print
even one thousand copies,—much less a smaller number,—if he did not
fully believe that the edition could be promptly sold. But the early
book-maker did not have this confident belief in large and speedy sale.
There were, comparatively, few book-buyers, and the publication of a
book by the method of engraving and printing must have seemed very
hazardous speculation. [p191]
It can be clearly seen that the cost of printing a book is in inverse
ratio with the number printed. When the number is small, the cost per
copy is great; when the number is great, the cost per copy is small.
Printing is an economical process only for books of many copies. If
there were not a very great number of book-readers and book-buyers,
printing could not be practised to advantage.
In the fourteenth century this multitude of book-readers had not been
created. One hundred copies would have been considered a great edition,
and the engravers or printers who took such a hazard would have waited
many years for purchasers. Their unwillingness to take an unwise risk
has been often regarded as an evidence, not of their sagacity, but of
their stupidity. There are writers who have taught that the project of
a printed book was a grand conception, not to be imagined by any but a
great inventor—an idea far above the capacity of any printer of playing
cards or images; but the legends in the image prints teach us that the
early engravers knew how to engrave the letters, and that they could
have engraved entire books of letters if they had thought it expedient.
The advantages or disadvantages of engraving books were considered
by them as they would be by publishers of our own time, purely as an
economical question. The early engravers decided that books of letters
could be appreciated, and would be purchased, only by the educated, a
class too small to reward the labor of the engraver. For the making of
books, printing was not regarded as an economical process, and books
were consequently made by the cheaper process of writing.
While it was unprofitable to engrave letters for books, it was
profitable to engrave designs for printed fabrics, images and playing
cards. On work of this character, the relations of cost and sale were
completely reversed. The expenses for engraving one design, one image,
or one suite of cards, was small; but the sale of the work printed from
the blocks was generally very large. Fabrics that could be worn, cards
that [p192] could amuse, and images that would serve as decorations
or as aids to devotion, had attractions for all people, and especially
for the poor and illiterate. Whoever printed merchandise of this nature
could rightfully expect that it would be sold in such large quantities
that the cost of engraving would be inappreciable.
The world was not ready at the beginning of the fifteenth century to
apply its knowledge of printing with ink to the making of books. It was
regarded as too expensive a process. It bided its time, waiting for
more readers and book-buyers, for paper in greater supply and of better
quality, for higher skill on the part of the engravers, printers and
ink-makers. If there were no other evidences than those afforded by the
partly printed and written books, it could be safely assumed that when
the early engravers did begin to print books, they would be, not books
of letters, but books of pictures.
[p193]
XI
Block-Books of Images without Text.
General Appreciation of Pictures . . . Beginning of the Block-Books
. . . Popularity during the Fifteenth Century . . . Neglected
afterward . . . Childish in Character . . . The Bible of the Poor
. . . Its Age as a Manuscript . . . Its Popularity . . . The First
Edition . . . Its Designs and Engravings . . . Explanations of
Fac-similes . . . Description of Printing . . . Not Printed by the
Frotton . . . Anachronisms in Design . . . Dissimilarity of the Copies
. . . Blocks destroyed in 1488 . . . Price of Copies . . . Description
of German Edition of 1470 . . . The Apocalypse . . . Description of
Illustrations . . . Probably of German Origin . . . The Canticles
. . . Description of Fac-simile . . . Its Anachronisms . . . Its
object . . . Quality of Engraving . . . The Story of the Blessed
Virgin . . . Its Object . . . Description of Fac-simile . . . Its
Absurdities . . . Exercise on the Lord’s Prayer . . . Description of
Fac-simile . . . Singular Perversion of the Prayer . . . The Book of
Kings . . . Description and Fac-simile . . . The Grotesque Alphabet
. . . A Mysterious Book . . . The Apostles’ Creed . . . The Eight
Rogueries.
* * * * *
I presume that nothing is in this life more useful to a man than to
acknowledge his Creator, his condition, his own being. Scholars may
learn this from the Scriptures, and the laymen shall be taught by the
books of the laymen, that is by the pictures. Wherefore I have thought
fit, with the help of God, to compile this book for laymen to the
glory of God, and as an instruction for the unlearned, in order that
it may be a lesson both to clerks and to laymen.
_Preface to the Speculum Salutis._
* * * * *