England, for 50 marks, equal to about 33 pounds. At this time a
laborer’s wages were 1-1/2d. per day, and a sheep could be had for a
shilling.—Roger Bacon, who died in 1292, said that he had spent more
than 2,000 pounds for books. At this time the annual income of an
English curate was £3 6s. 8d.—In 1305, the priory of Bolton gave 30
shillings for _The Book of Sentences_, by Peter Lombard. Hallam says
that the accounts of the priory show that the jolly monks bought but
three books in forty years. He estimates the equivalent in modern money
of this 30 shillings at near 40 pounds.—_The Mirror of History_, a work
in four volumes, was sold at Paris in 1332, with great formalities,
for 40 livres of Paris.—In 1357, _The Scholastic History_ was sold to
the Earl of Salisbury for 100 marks, or about 67 pounds. At this time
the pay of the king’s surgeon was fixed at £5 13s. 4d. per annum and a
shilling a day besides.—Wickliffe’s translation of the _New Testament_
was sold in 1380 for 4 marks and 40 pence.—Pierre Plaont bequeathed, in
1415, to the regents of the University of Paris, a big quarto Bible,
which he said was worth 15 pounds. Chevillier says that a printed Bible
of the same size in the seventeenth century could be had for 6 francs.
[82] The horn-book was the primer of our ancestors, established by
common use. It consisted of a single leaf, containing on one side
the alphabet, large and small, in black letter or in Roman, with,
perhaps, a small regiment of monosyllables, and the words of the Lord’s
Prayer. This leaf was usually set in a frame of wood, with a slice of
diaphanous horn in front—hence the name horn-book. Generally, there
was a handle to hold it by, and this handle had usually a hole for a
string, whereby the horn-book was slung to the girdle of the scholar.
It was frequently noticed by early chroniclers. Chambers, _Book of
Days_.
[83] It was a square stick of hard wood, and about eight inches long.
The entire series of days constituting the year was represented by
notches running along the angles of the square block, each side and
angle thus presenting three months; the first day of a month was marked
by a notch having a patulous stroke turned up from it, and each Sunday
was distinguished by a notch somewhat broader than usual. The feasts
were denoted by symbols resembling hieroglyphics. Chambers, _Book of
Days_.
[84] Men given up to sensuality we may find in abundance, but very few
lovers of learning, and those barbarous, skilled more in quibbles and
sophisms than in literature. Poggio, as quoted by Hallam.
[85] An entry in the books of the Brewers’ Company during the reign of
Henry V (1415–1430), states the reasons why this change was made from
French to English.
Whereas our mother tongue, to wit, the English language, hath in modern
days begun to be honorably enlarged and adorned, for that our most
excellent King Henry V hath, in his letters missive, and in divers
affairs, touching his own person, more willingly chosen to declare the
secrets of his will; and, for the better understanding of the people,
hath, with a diligent mind, procured the common idiom, setting aside
others, to be commended by the exercise of writing; and there are many
of our craft of brewers who have the knowledge of writing and reading
in the same English idiom, but in others, to wit, the Latin and French,
before these times used, they do not in any wise understand; for which
causes, with many others, it being considered how that the greater
part of the lords and trusty commons have begun to make their matters
to be noted down in our mother tongue, so we also, in our own craft,
following in some manner their steps, have decreed in future to commit
to memory the needful things which concern us.
[86] In 1446, a petition was presented to the English parliament, to
consider the great number of grammar schools that sometime were in
divers parts of this realm, besides those that were in London, and how
few there are in these days. Knight, _The Old Printer and Modern Press_.
[87] In the Netherlands we find the earliest development of the high
school. The schools of the Brethren of the Life-in-Common, founded by
Gerard Groot of Deventer, in 1385, which were forty-five in number
in 1435, and double that number in 1460, were the first nurseries of
literature in Germany. The fruits of this attention to education were
freely gathered in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The entire
Bible was printed in the Flemish or Dutch language within the first
thirty-six years of the sixteenth century in fifteen editions. . . .
Thirty-four editions of the New Testament in that language alone
appeared within the same period. . . . . There can be no sort of
comparison between the number of these editions, and consequently the
eagerness of the people of the Low Countries for biblical knowledge,
considering the limited extent of their language, and anything that
could be found in the Protestant States of the [German] Empire. Hallam,
_Literature of Europe_, chap. VI, sec. 38.
[88] Æneas Sylvius (subsequently Pope Pius II), writing near the
middle of the fifteenth century, said that the kings of Scotland would
rejoice to be as comfortably lodged as the second class of citizens of
Nuremberg. Hallam says that Pope Pius also praised their well-furnished
and splendid dwellings, their easy mode of living, the security of
their rights and the just equality of their laws.
[89] Flanders, during the fifteenth century, was the richest and most
densely populated part of Europe. It was famous for the extent of its
foreign trade and the variety of its industry. It was not uncommon for
one hundred and fifty ships in one day to enter the port of Bruges, in
which city were mercantile agents from seventeen different nations.
Flanders was full of industries, but its great business was the making
of cloth. All the world, wrote an enthusiastic chronicler of the
period, is clothed by Flanders. Ghent had fifteen thousand workmen
employed on stuffs of wool; Ypres had four thousand makers of cloth;
Courtray had six thousand drapers.
[90] As early as the twelfth century, the emperor Henry V undertook
to curb the exactions of feudalism by the establishment of free
cities, and by the grant of extraordinary privileges to mechanics and
manufacturers. To the nobility and petty princes of Germany these
privileges were a constant offense, and the occasion of many local
strifes; but the burghers were industrious and public-spirited, and
took care of their rights. To protect their trade from the rapacity
of the princes on the Elbe and the coast, the cities of Germany, in
the year 1249, established a mercantile organization, known as the
Hanseatic League. In the fifteenth century, this league was constituted
of traders from all parts of the Netherlands and Germany. It was so
powerful that it monopolized the trade of Northern Europe: by threat
of war it compelled Edward VI of England to grant extraordinary
concessions; it made successful war against Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
The Hanseatic League is a wonderful example of the sudden development
of successful legislative and executive ability among men of little
or no culture, who till then had been excluded from every position of
honor in the state.
[91] Peasants could not claim exemption from arbitrary arrest or
military servitude. They had no liberty to choose a residence, to
learn a trade, to travel, to go to school, to marry, to keep property,
to transact business, or to associate with others in any peaceable
enterprise. Practically, they were but little better than slaves.
Beaumanoir, a French jurist of the thirteenth century, defines the
nature of their servitude in the plainest words. He says that:
The third estate of man is that of such as are not free; and these are
not all of one condition, for some are so subject to their lord, that
he may take all they have, alive or dead, and imprison them whenever
he pleases, being accountable to none but God; from others the lord
can take nothing but the customary payments, though at their death all
they have escheats to him.
[92] The determination to keep the peasants enslaved was stronger than
all enmities. During the insurrection of the _Jacquerie_, the English
knights who accompanied King Edward III in his invasion of France
made truce with the French nobles, and joined them in putting down
this rebellion. Froissart, the chronicler of chivalry, admired this
exhibition of magnanimity. For the sufferings of the peasants he has no
sympathy.
[93] “Villeins you have been, villeins you are, and shall be,”—said
King Richard to the miserable peasantry of Essex, after the killing of
Wat Tyler,—“not as before, but in a bondage much more bitter.”
[94] The ecclesiastical history of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, says Hallam, teems with sectaries and schismatics, various
in their aberrations of opinion, but all concurring in detestation
of the established church. The heresy which began during the twelfth
century, or earlier, with the Manichees of Bulgaria, was made more and
more formidable by the Albigenses of Languedoc, by the Waldenses of
France and Germany, by the Vaudois of the Alps, by the Lollards of the
Netherlands and England, and afterward by the disciples of John Huss of
Bohemia, until the faith of the mass of the people was uprooted from
its foundation. In Germany, enthusiastic but mystical priests like
Eckhardt, Tauler and Suso, keeping themselves within the pale of the
church, weakened its rigid discipline by preaching against the arrogant
prerogatives of the clergy, and by commanding a higher worship of the
heart and life.
[95] The British Museum contains a Bible in Flemish verse, known as
the _Rym Bible_, written by Jacob von Maerlandt of Damne, near Bruges
in Flanders. It is a manuscript of the fifteenth century, upon vellum,
with ornamented capitals, and is one of many copies of a version of the
Scriptures made in the year 1270.
Except the Waldensian translation in the Provençal language, this
version is, consequently, the most ancient in existence, in the
vernacular, and must have preceded by a century the versions of Raoul
de Presles, of John Trevisa or the Hermit of Hampole. . . . . . The
British Museum had another manuscript in prose, of parts of a Bible in
Flemish, written in the fifteenth century. It is part of a translation
made in the early part of the fourteenth century, and was the text
used for the Bible printed in Delft in 1477. Sotheby, _Principia
Typographica_, vol. III, p. 123.
The British Museum has, also, a manuscript in Flemish of five books of
the Old Testament, made in the fourteenth century.
[96] It is a noteworthy fact that the first complaint of an
unauthorized reading of the Bible came from the city where the Bible
was first printed. Pope Innocent III, alarmed at the consequences
of this innovation, and writing at the beginning of the thirteenth
century, says he had been informed by the bishop of Mentz that:
No small multitude of laymen and women, having procured the
translation of the Gospels, Epistles of St. Paul, the Psalter, Job
and other books of Scripture to be made for them into French, meet in
secret conventicles to hear them read and to preach to each other, and
having been reprimanded for this by some of their parish priests, have
withstood them, alleging reasons from the Scriptures why they should
not be so forbidden. Some of them, too, deride the ignorance of their
ministers, and maintain that their own books teach them more than
they can learn from the pulpit, and that they can express it better.
Although, Innocent proceeds, the desire of reading the Scriptures is
rather praiseworthy than reprehensible, yet they are to be blamed for
frequenting secret assemblies, for usurping the office of preaching,
for deriding their own ministers, and for scorning the company of
those who do not concur in their novelties. He presses the bishop and
chapter to discover the author of this translation, which could not
have been made without a knowledge of letters. He wished to know what
were his intentions, and what degree of orthodoxy and respect for
the holy see those who used it possessed. In another letter Innocent
complains that some of the members of this association continued
refractory, and refused to obey either the bishop or the pope. Hallam,
_Middle Ages_.
[97] At the beginning of the fifteenth century, paintings of the
_Dance of Death_ were in all the large cities of Europe. Woltmann has
distinctly stated the causes which gave popularity to these horrible
compositions.
The misery and unhappiness which at this period more than any other
visited the nations of the West, increased more and more the ascetic
views on the subject of death. The great aims and ideas of medieval
life had passed away, and the ideas of the new period were now fast
beginning to form themselves. . . . . Licentiousness prevailed in
all lands; immoderate festivity and boundless excesses of sensuality
gained more and more the upper hand. . . . . Upon this life of
self-will and self-indulgence, of riot and revelry, the terrors of
death burst all the more fearfully. In addition to the constant wars,
the acts of violence and the shedding of blood which prevailed among
men, we find the most various alarms in nature. Famine and desolating
pestilences, and in the middle of the fourteenth century the Black
Death, made their fearful and triumphal progress through Europe. To
escape the dread and thought of this misery, men gave themselves up
on the one side all the more passionately to the intoxication of
the senses; but on the other they believed themselves struck by the
vengeance of God, and sought for safety in contrition and repentance,
which often led them into the most repulsive forms of ecstasy. But
the most forcible sermons exhorting to repentance, the sermons that
spoke to the people in the most intelligible form, were the figurative
representations which proclaimed the almighty power of death. _Holbein
and his Time_ (Bunnèt’s translation), p. 248.
[98] _Tailleres ymagiers_, the words of the record, may be construed
as engravers on wood, or as carvers of wooden statuettes; but the
_tailleres_ were, probably, engravers. The fraternity of St. Luke
consisted chiefly of men who made or contributed to the making
of books: an engraver would properly belong to the guild. The
words _tailleres ymagiers_ suggest engraving quite as clearly as
_formschneider_ does in German.
[99] Laborde, a brilliant French writer on early printing, who traces
the origin of printing to playing cards, acknowledges its very ignoble
origin with evident mortification:—“What a mother for such a son!”
[100] The history of literature, like that of Empire, is full
of revolutions; our public libraries are cemeteries of departed
reputation; the dust accumulating upon these untouched volumes speaks
as forcibly as the grass that waves over the ruins of Babylon. Hallam,
_Middle Ages_.
[101] The University of Paris made no opposition to the free sale of
paper. It was not subjected to taxes or duties in France, not even when
oppressive taxes were levied on most manufactures. Didot, _Essai sur la
typographie_, p. 730.
[102] A school ordinance of Bautzen in Saxony, dated 1418, gives the
names and prices of some of these books. For an _A B C_ and _Pater
Noster_, etc., 1 groschen; for a good _Donatus_, or child’s grammar,
10 groschen; for a complete _Doctrinal_, 1 half-mark; for the _First
Part_, 8 groschen. There has also been preserved the advertisement
of one Dypold Lauber, a teacher and copyist of books at Hagenau
in Germany, who lived during the middle of the fifteenth century,
from which we may gather a clear notion of the books that were most
salable among the people. His catalogue begins with the _Deeds of the
Romans_, with illustrations. Then follow poetical works, romances of
chivalry, biblical and legendary works, edifying books, religious
books, books for the people, fortune-telling books, and other works
of like character. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend of the Invention of
Printing_, pp. 2, 3.
[103] Bernard Quaritch, _Catalogue of Block-Books_, 8vo. October, 1873,
pp. 1373–1375. The title of the book, as he gives it, is _Ein Vorrede
das Puch haist wochenlich Andach zu Seligkayt der weltlichen Menschen_.
[104] They were common during the first quarter of the fifteenth
century. Bernard, _De l’origine de l’imprimerie_, vol. I, p. 102.
Fournier, _De l’origine et des productions de l’imprimerie_, p. 176.
Papillon, _Traité historique et pratique de la gravure sur bois_,
vol. I, p. 101. Guichard, _Notice sur le Speculum_, p. 118. They have
been noticed also by Passavant. It is plain that copyists everywhere
recognized the utility of engraving.
[105] The engraver or the printer of the book published it, as all
other books of this kind were published, without a printed title. It
has been described by different authors under these titles: _Types
and Antitypes of the Old and the New Testament_; _The Histories and
the Prophecies of the Old Testament_; _The Typical Harmony of the
Bible_; _Typical Illustrations of the Old Testament, and Antitypical
Illustrations of the New, or the Story of Jesus Christ as told by
Engravers_. Chatto calls it the _Bible for Poor Preachers_, and claims
that it was written especially for their use. He objects to the title,
_Bible of the Poor_, as leading to the erroneous opinion that the
book was bought by the poor of the laity, who, he says, were unable
to read in their own language, much less in Latin. This observation
is true, yet Chatto’s addition to the old title is not really needed.
He overlooks the fact that the charm of the book was in its pictures,
which could be appreciated by the poor of the laity as well as by poor
preachers. In this sense, it was truly the _Bible of the Poor_.
[106] The British Museum has a French manuscript, entitled _Figures
de la Bible_, in which the illustrations occupy nearly all the page,
leaving room for little more than the text that describes the cuts.
The same library has two copies in Latin verse of an abridgment of
the Bible, in which the text occupies nearly all the page, while the
illustrations are in miniature. These manuscripts of the fourteenth
century are not _Bibles of the Poor_, but they show the fondness for
books with biblical pictures.
[107] 1. An edition in Latin, of fifty pages, and supposed to have been
engraved and printed by Melchior Wohlgemuth of Nuremberg, between the
years 1450 and 1460. Only one copy of this book is known. 2. An edition
in German, of forty pages, by Friedrich Walther and Hans Hürning, at
Nordlingen, 1470. 3. An edition in German, attributed to Sporer, at
Erfurth, in 1475.
[108] Fifteen copies are known of the edition here specified as
the first. Heineken, noticing little dissimilarities of design and
engraving in many of these copies, says that they prove the existence
of five distinct editions. For similar reasons, Sotheby says that there
are six editions. The weight of authority favors the classification of
these fifteen copies in one edition.
[109] Jackson and Chatto, _Treatise on Wood Engraving_, pp. 78–80.
[110] The Bible of the Poor has always been considered as one of the
most valuable of block-books, but copies have been sold at widely
varying prices, as may be seen in the annexed statement, compiled from
Sotheby’s _Principia Typographica_:
Willet copy, 1813 245 guineas.
Inglis copy, 1826 36_l._ 15_s._
Willet copy, 1833 36_l._ 15_s._
Lucca copy, 1848 89_l._ 5_s._
Stevens copy, 1849 11_l._ 12_s._
Sykes copy, 1824 18_l._ 17_s._ 6_d._
Rendorp copy, 1825 17_l._ 8_s._ 6_d._
Devonshire copy, 1815 210_l._
[111] Three typographic editions of the _Bible of the Poor_ have been
printed:—1. An edition by Albert Pfister, at Bamberg, in 1461. In this
edition, the engravings are small and coarsely cut. 2. An edition
by Anthoine Vérard, in Paris, about 1500. This edition is a close
imitation, beautifully printed, of the first xylographic edition,
with explanations in French on the back of the engraved pages and on
supplementary leaves. 3. An edition of very different arrangement,
having 118 small wood-cuts, printed by Giovanni Andrea Vavassore detto
Vadagnino of Venice, between 1515 and 1520. Berjeau, _Biblia Pauperum_,
p. 17.
[112] The great prices paid for copies of the book seem to show that
this is a very general belief. Sotheby has wisely put some of them on
record in his _Principia Typographica._
Gaignat copy 300 francs.
La Vallière copy 800 francs.
Crevenna copy 510 florins.
Wilks copy, 1847 74_l._
Brienne-Laire copy 600 francs.
Lang copy, 1828 45_l._
Verdussen copy 240 florins.
Corser copy, 1873 (Quaritch) 550_l._
Inglis copy 47_l._ 5_s._
British Museum copy, 1845 160_l._
Quaritch’s, 1873 200_l._
Stowe copy, 1849 91_l._
[113] A section consists of two or more sheets folded together, so that
one leaf will be within another, as sheets of folded letter paper are
nested. If five quarter quires of letter paper were sewed together, and
bound, the book so bound, in binders’ phrase, would have five sections.
[114] _Bibliotheca Spenceriana_, vol. I, p. 4, as quoted by Ottley, p.
99.
[115] This book is sometimes described as _The History of the Virgin
Mary, or The Prefiguration of the Virgin Mary from the Song of Songs_.
[116] It is probable that the cowled farmers represent the lay
brothers, then very numerous in nearly every thrifty monastery. The
farmers, butchers, bakers, carpenters and useful mechanics were often
permitted to wear the dress and share some of the privileges of the
monks, on condition that they should do the servile work, and accept as
a full reward the rich blessings of monastic prayers and masses.
[117] These devices give us no certain clue to the engraver or printer
of the book, but they are of value in assisting us to ascertain the
purpose for which the book was made. There are no old manuscript
copies of the book, but there are many evidences that it was designed
and produced for the first time in the fifteenth century. It would
seem that this pictorial version of the _Canticles_ was designed, not
so much to illustrate the prefiguration of the Virgin Mary, as the
termination of a great schism which had divided the Catholic church
between the years 1378 and 1449. Christendom had been scandalized by
the rule of two, and, for a short period, of three rival popes. It
was believed that this schism in the church would have been closed by
the action of the Council of Constance, which terminated in 1418; but
this result was not accomplished until 1449, when Nicholas V became
the only pope. The designer of the pictures has treated the return of
Christendom to the rule of one pope as the reconciliation of Christ
with the church. To give special significance to the subject, he has
introduced the armorial shields of the magnates at the councils. It may
be that the engravings were made in 1420, but it could be maintained
with plausibility that they were made after the dissolution of the
Council of Basle in 1448.
[118] The full title of the book is, as given by Heineken, _The Story
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, collected from the Evangelists and the
Fathers, and Illustrated by Engravings_. Dibdin calls it, _The Defense
of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary_.
[119] The reading should be, _Mon cœur avez_,—you have my heart,—the
word heart being represented not by letters, but by a drawing.
[120] The following synopsis of the work is condensed from the
translation of the text of the book, as given by Sotheby in his
_Principia Typographica_, vol. II, pp. 38–45: