THE COMPLETION OF THE PRINTED BOOK
As we have seen, the typical book during the first quarter of a
century of the history of printing is one in which the printer
supplied the place of the scribe and of the scribe alone. An
appreciable, though not a very large, percentage of early books have
come down to us in the exact state in which they issued from the
press, with a blank space at their beginning for an illumination,
blanks for the initial letters, blanks for the chapter headings, no
head-lines, no title-page, no pagination, and no signatures to guide
the binder in arranging the sheets in the different gatherings. Our
task in the present chapter is to trace briefly the history of the
emancipation of the printer from his dependence on handwork for the
completion of his books. We shall not expect to find this emancipation
effected step by step in any orderly progression. Innovations, the
utility of which seems to us obvious and striking, occur as if by
hazard in an isolated book, are then abandoned even by the printer who
started them, and subsequently reappear in a number of books printed
about the same time at different places, so that it is impossible to
fix the chronology of the revived fashion.
[Illustration]
We have already noted how the anxiety of the earliest Mainz printers
to rival at the very outset the best manuscripts with which they were
acquainted, led them to anticipate improvements which were not
generally adopted till many years afterwards. Among these we must not
reckon the use for the rubrics or chapter headings of red ink, which
appears in the trial leaves of the 42-line Bible, and was to a greater
or less extent employed by Schoeffer in most of his books. Although
red ink has appeared sporadically, and still does so, on the
title-page of a book here or there, more especially on those which
make some pretence to sumptuousness, its use in the fifteenth century
was a survival, not an anticipation. For legal and liturgical works it
was long considered essential; for other books the expense of the
double printing which it involves soon brought it into disfavour and
has kept it there ever since.
The use of a colophon, or crowning paragraph, at the end of a book, to
give the information now contained on our title-pages, dates from the
Mainz Psalter of 1457, and was continued by Schoeffer in most of his
books. A colophon occurs also in the _Catholicon_ of 1460, though it
does not mention the printer's name (almost certainly Gutenberg). There
is an admirably full one in rhyming couplets (set out as prose) to
Pfister's _Buch der vier Historien von Joseph, Daniel, Esther, und
Judith_, and the brothers Bechterm[:u]ntze, who printed the
_Vocabularius ex quo_ at Eltvil in 1467, are equally explicit. In many
cases, however, no colophon of any sort appears, and the year and place
of publication have to be deduced from the information given in other
books printed in the same types, or from the chance entry by a purchaser
or rubricator of the date at which the book came into or left his hands.
We may claim colophons as part of the subject of this book, because
they early received decorative treatment. Schoeffer prints them, as a
rule, in his favourite red ink, and it was as an appendix to the
colophon that the printer's device first made its appearance.
Schoeffer's well-known shields occur in this connection in his Bible of
1462. No other instance of a device is known until about 1470, when they
became common, some printers, like Arnold ther Hoernen of Cologne, and
Colard Mansion of Bruges, imitating Schoeffer in the modest size of
their badges, while others, among whom some Dutch printers are
prominent, made their emblem large enough, if need be, to decorate a
whole page.
Of Schoeffer's coloured capitals enough has already been said. Woodcut
initials for printing in outline, the outline being intended to be
coloured by hand, were used by G[:u]nther Zainer at Augsburg at least as
early as 1471, and involved him in a controversy to which we shall
allude in our next chapter. Their use spread slowly, for it was about
this date that the employment of hand-painted initials was given a
fresh lease of life, by the introduction of the printed 'director,' or
small letter, indicating to the illuminator the initial he was
required to supply. The director had been used by the scribes, and in
early printed books is frequently found in manuscript. It was, of
course, intended to be painted over, but the rubrication of printed
books was so carelessly executed that it often appears in the open
centre of the coloured letter. In so far as it delayed the
introduction of woodcut letters, this ingenious device was a step
backward rather than an improvement.
In the order of introduction, the next addition to a printer's
stock-in-trade which we have to chronicle is the use of woodcut
illustrations. These were first employed by Albrecht Pfister, who in
1461 was printing at Bamberg. Like Schoeffer's coloured initials,
Pfister's illustrated books form an incident apart from the general
history of the development of the printed book, and it will be
convenient, therefore, to give them a brief notice here, rather than
to place them at the head of our next chapter. They are six in number,
or, if we count different editions separately, nine, of which only two
have dates, viz.: one of the two editions of Boner's _Edelstein_,
dated 1461, and the _Buch der vier Historien von Joseph, Daniel,
Esther, und Judith_, dated 1462, with Pfister's name in the rhyming
colophon already alluded to. The undated books are another edition of
the _Edelstein_; the _Belial seu consolatio peccatorum_; a _Biblia
Pauperum_; two closely similar editions of this in German; two
editions of the _Rechtstreit des Menschen mit dem Tode_, also called
_Gespr[:a]ch zwischen einem Wittwer und dem Tode_. Attention was first
drawn to these books by the Pastor Jacob August Steiner of Augsburg in
1792, and when the volume which he described was brought to the
Biblioth[e']que Nationale, with other spoils from Germany, a learned
Frenchman, Camus, read a paper on them before the Institute in 1799.
The three tracts which the volume contained were restored to the
library at Wolfenb[:u]ttel in 1815, but the Biblioth[e']que has since
acquired another set of three and a separate edition of the German
_Biblia Pauperum_. The only other copies known are those in the
Spencer Collection, one of the _Belial_ at Nuremberg, and a unique
example of the undated _Edelstein_ at Berlin.[3]
These four books contain altogether no less than 201 cuts, executed in
clumsy outline. One hundred and one of these cuts belong to the
_Edelstein_, a collection of German fables written before 1330. The
book which contains them is a small folio of 28 leaves, and with a
width of page larger by a fourth than the size of the cuts. To fill
this gap, Pfister introduced on the left of the illustration a figure
of a man. In the dated copy, in which the cuts are more worn, this
figure is the same throughout the book; in the undated there are
differences in the man's headgear, and in the book or tablet he is
holding, constituting three different variations. In the _Buch der
vier Historien_ the cuts number 55, six of which, however, are
repeated, making 61 impressions. In the impossibility of obtaining
access to the originals, while the Spencer Collection was in the
course of removal, the careful copy of one of these, made for Camus in
1799, was chosen for reproduction as likely to be less familiar than
the illustrations from Pfister's other books given by Dibdin in his
_Bibliotheca Spenceriana_. The subject is the solemn sacrifice of a
lamb at Bethulia after Judith's murder of Holofernes. The _Biblia
Pauperum_ is in three editions, two in German, the third in Latin;
each consists of 17 printed leaves, with a large cut formed of five
separate blocks illustrating different subjects, but joined together
as a whole, on each page.
The last book of Pfister's we have to notice, the _Complaint of the
Widower against Death_, is probably earlier than either of his dated
ones. It contains 24 leaves, with five full-page cuts, showing (1)
Death on his throne, and the widower and his little son in mourning;
(2) Death and the widower, with a pope, a noble, and a monk vainly
offering Death gold; (3) two figures of Death (one mounted) pursuing
their victims; (4) Death on his throne, with two lower compartments
representing monks at a cloister gate, and women walking with a child
in a fair garden,--this to symbolise the widower's choice between
remarriage and retiring to a monastery; (5) the widower appearing
before Christ, who gives the verdict against him, since all mortals
must yield their bodies to Death and their souls to God. The cuts in
this book are larger and bolder than the other specimens of Pfister's
work which we have noticed, but they are rude enough.
[Illustration: From Pfister's _Buch der vier Historien_.]
[Illustration--transcription as follows:
Sermo ad populum predicabilis [.] In festo presentacionis. Beatissime
marie semper virginis nouiter cum magna diligencia. ad communem vsum
multorum sacerdotum presertim curatorum collectus. Et idcirco per
impressonem multiplicatus. sub hoc currente. Anno domini M^o cccc^o
.lxx^o. cuiusquidem collectionis atque etiam multiplicacionis eius non
paruipendenda racio si placet [.] videri poteret. In folii laterem
sequenti]
After the introduction of woodcut illustrations, the next innovation
with which we have to concern ourselves is the adoption of the
title-page. What may be called accidental title-pages are found on
both the Latin and the German edition of a Bull of Pope Pius II.
printed by Fust and Schoeffer in 1463. After this Arnold ther Hoernen
of Cologne appears to have been the first printer lavish enough to
devote a whole page to prefixing a title to a book. A facsimile is
here given, from which we see that this 'sermon preachable on the
feast of the presentation of the most blessed Virgin' was printed in
1470 at the outset of ther Hoernen's career. The printer, however,
seems to have understood no better than Schoeffer the commercial
advantage of what he was doing, and the next title-page which has to
be chronicled is another of the same kind, reading the 'Tractatulus
compendiosus per modum dyalogi timidis | ac deuotis viris editus
instruens non plus curam | de pullis et carnibus habere suillis quam
quo modo | verus deus et homo qui in celis est digne tractetur. |
Ostendens insuper etiam salubres manuductiones quibus | minus
dispositus abilitetur,' etc. What we may call the business title of
this book is much more sensibly set forth in the brief colophon:
'Explicit exhortacio de celebratione misse per modum dyalogi inter
pontificem et sacerdotem, Anno Lxx[et],' &c. Still, here also, the
absence of an incipit, and of any following text must be taken as
constituting a title-page. Three years later two Augsburg printers,
Bernardus 'pictor' and Erhardus Ratdolt, who had started a
partnership in Venice with Petrus L[:o]slein of Langenzenn in Bavaria,
produced the first artistic title-page as yet discovered. This appears
in all the three editions of a Calendar which they issued in Latin and
Italian in 1476, and in German in 1478. The praises of the Calendar
are sung in twelve lines of verse, beginning in the Latin edition:--
Aureus hic liber est: non est preciosior ulla
Gemma kalendario quod docet istud opus.
Aureus hic numerus; lune solisque labores
Monstrantur facile: cunctaque signa poli.
Then follows the date, then the names of the three printers in red
ink. This letterpress is surrounded by a border in five pieces, the
uppermost of which shows a small blank shield (see p. 19), while on
the two sides skilfully conventionalised foliage is springing out of
two urns. The two gaps between these and the printers' names are
filled up by two small blocks of tracery. It is noteworthy that this
charming design was employed by printers from Augsburg, the city in
which wood-engraving was first seriously employed for the decoration
of printed books. But the design itself is distinctly Italian in its
spirit, not German.
Like its two predecessors, the title-page of 1476 was a mere
anticipation, and was not imitated. The systematic development of the
title-page begins in the early part of the next decade, when the
custom of printing the short title of the book on a first page,
otherwise left blank, came slowly into use.[4] The two earliest
appearances of these label title-pages in England are (1) in 'A
passing gode lityll boke necessarye & behouefull agenst the
Pestilens,' by 'Canutus, Bishop of Aarhus,' printed by Machlinia,
probably towards the close of his career [1486-90?]; and (2) in one of
the earliest works printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's foreman, after
his master's death. Here, in the centre of the first page, we find a
three-line paragraph reading:
The prouffytable boke for ma[~n]es soule And right comfortable to
the body and specially in aduersitee & tribulation, which boke
is called The Chastysynge of goddes Chyldern.
Other countries were earlier than England both in the adoption of the
label title-page and in filling the blank space beneath the title with
some attempt at ornament. In France the ornament usually took the form
of a printer's mark, more rarely of an illustration; in Italy and
Germany usually of an illustration, more rarely of a printer's mark.
Until the first quarter of the sixteenth century was drawing to a
close the colophon still held its place at the end of the book as the
chief source of information as to the printer's name and place and
date of publication. The author's name, also, was often reserved for
the colophon, or hidden away in a preface or dedicatory letter.
Title-pages completed according to the fashion which, until the
antiquarian revival by William Morris of the old label form, has ever
since held sway, do not become common till about 1520.
Perhaps the chief reason why the convenient custom of the title-page
spread so slowly was that soon after 1470 the Augsburg printers began
to imitate in woodcuts the elaborate borders with which the
illuminators had been accustomed to decorate the first page of the
text of a manuscript or early printed book. When they first appear
these woodcut borders grow out of the initial letter with which the
text begin, and extend only over part of the upper and inner margins.
In other instances, however, they completely surround the first page
of text, and this is nearly always the case with the very beautiful
borders which are found, towards the close of the century, in many
books printed in Italy. In these they are mostly preceded by a 'label'
title-page. The use of borders to surround every page of text was
practically confined[5] to books of devotion, notably the Books of
Hours, whose wonderful career began in 1487 and lasted for upwards of
half a century. Head-pieces are found in a few books, chiefly Greek,
printed at Venice towards the close of the fifteenth century. In the
absence of any previous investigations on the subject, it is
dangerous to attempt to say where tail-pieces first occur, but their
birthplace was probably France.
Pagination and head-lines are said to have been first used by Arnold
ther Hoernen at Cologne in 1470 and 1471; printed signatures by John
Koelhoff at the same city in 1472. The date of Koelhoff's book, an
edition of Nider's _Expositio Decalogi_, has been needlessly held to
be a misprint, though it is a curious coincidence that we find
signatures stamped by hand in one edition of Franciscus de Platea's
_De restitutionibus_, Venice, 1473, and printed close to the text in
the normal way in another edition issued at Cologne the following
year. None of these small matters have any direct bearing on the
decoration of books, but they are of interest to us as pointing to the
printer's gradual emancipation from his long dependence on the help of
the scribe. It is perhaps worth while, for the same reason, to take as
a landmark G[:u]nther Zainer's 1473 edition of the _De regimine
principum_ of Aegidius Columna. This book is possessed of printed
head-lines, chapter headings, paragraph marks, and large and small
initial letters. From first page to last it is untouched by the hand
of the rubricator, and shows that Zainer at any rate had won his
independence within five years of setting up his press. Curiously
enough, to this particular specimen of his work he did not give his
name, though it is duly dated.
[Illustration: From Ptolemy's _Cosmographia_, Ulm, 1482.]
* * * * *
[3] A leaf of the _Rechtstreit_ is in the Taylorian Institute at
Oxford.
[4] It may be noted that in a few books, alike in Germany, Italy, and
France, issued about 1490, a label title is printed on the back of the
last leaf, either instead of, or in addition to, that on the recto of
the first.
[5] They are found also in some Books of Emblems, and in a few books
printed at Lyons in the middle of the sixteenth century.