and princes, we must look for the history of bookbinding in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Fig. 383). We shall limit ourselves
to giving a description of some costly bindings, taken from the
inventories of the magnificent libraries of the Dukes of Burgundy and of
Orleans, now partly destroyed, and partly scattered about among the
great public collections of France and other countries.
[Illustration: Fig. 382.--Banner of the Corporation of
Printers-Booksellers of Angers.]
Belonging to the Dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, Jean sans Peur, and
Philip the Good, we see a small Book of the Gospels and of the “Heures
de la Croix” (a kind of prayer-book), with “a binding embellished with
gold and fifty-eight large pearls, in a case made of camlet, with one
large pearl and a cluster of small pearls;” the romance of the “Moralité
des Hommes sur le Ju (jeu) des Eschiers” (the game of chess), “covered
in silk, with white and red flowers, and silver-gilt nails, on a green
ground;” a Book of Orisons, “covered in red leather, with silver-gilt
nails;” a Psalter, “having two silver-gilt clasps, bound in blue, with a
golden eagle with two heads and red talons, to which is attached a
little silver-gilt instrument for turning over the leaves, with three
escutcheons of the same arms, covered with a red velvet _chemise_.”[59]
[Illustration: Fig. 383.--Fragment of an engraved and stamped Binding in
an unknown Material (Fifteenth Century), representing the mystical Chase
of the Unicorn, which is taking refuge in the lap of the Virgin.
(Public Library, Rouen.)]
The _chemise_ was a sort of pocket in which certain valuable books were
enveloped. The “Heures de St. Louis” (St. Louis’s Prayer-book), now in
the Musée des Souverains, is still in its _chemise_ of red sandal-wood.
Belonging to the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI., we find
Végèce’s book, “On Chivalry,” “covered in red leather inlaid, which has
two little brass clasps;” the book of “Meliadus,” “covered in green
velvet, with two silver-gilt clasps, enamelled with the arms of his
Royal Highness;” the book of Boèce, “On Consolation,” “covered in
figured silk;” “The Golden Legend,” “covered in black velvet, without
clasps;” the “Heures de Notre-Dame,” “covered in white leather.”
The same inventories give an account of the prices paid for some
bindings and their accessories. Thus, in 1386, Martin Lhuillier, a
bookseller at Paris, received from the Duke of Burgundy 16 francs
(equivalent to about 114 francs French money of the present time), “for
binding eight books, of which six were covered in grained leather;” on
Sept. 19, 1394, the Duke of Orleans paid to Peter Blondel, goldsmith, 12
livres 15 sols, “for having _wrought_, besides the duke’s silver seal,
two clasps” for the book of Boèce; and on Jan. 15, 1398, to Émelot de
Rubert, an embroideress at Paris, 50 _sols tournois_, “for having cut
out and worked in gold and silk two covers of green Dampmas cloth, one
for the Breviary, the other for the Book of Hours of the aforesaid
nobleman, and for having made fifteen markers (_sinets_) and four pair
of silk and gold straps for the said books.”
The old style of thick, heavy, in some sort armour-plated, binding,
could not exist long after the invention of printing, which, while
multiplying books, diminished their weight, reduced their size, and,
moreover, gave them a less intrinsic value. Wooden boards were replaced
by compressed cardboard, nails and clasps were gradually laid aside, and
stuffs of different kinds no longer used; only skin, leather, and
parchment were employed. This was the beginning of modern binding; but
bookbinders were as yet but mechanics working for the booksellers, who,
when they had on their premises a bookbinding-room (Fig. 384), assumed,
in their editions, the double title of _libraire-relieur_
(bookseller-bookbinder) (Fig. 385). In 1578, Nicholas Eve still placed
on his books and his sign-board, “Bookseller to the University of Paris
and Bookbinder to the King.” No volume was sold unbound.
From the end of the fifteenth century, although bookbinding was always
considered as an adjunct to the bookseller’s shop, certain amateurs who
had a taste for art required richer and more _recherché_ exteriors for
their books. Italy set us the example of beautiful bindings in morocco,
stamped and gilt; imitated, however, from those of the Koran and other
Arabian manuscripts, which Venetian navigators frequently brought back
with them from the East. The expedition of Charles VIII. and the wars of
Louis XII. introduced into France not only Italian bindings, but Italian
binders also. Without renouncing, however, at least for the _livres
d’heures_, the bindings ornamented with goldsmith’s work and gems,
France had very soon binders of her own, surpassing those who had been
to them as initiators or masters. Jean Grollier, of Lyons, loved books
too much not to wish to give them an exterior ornamentation worthy of
the wealth of knowledge they contained. Treasurer of War, and Intendant
of the Milanese before the battle of Pavia, he had begun to create a
library, which he subsequently transported into France, and did not
cease to enlarge and to enrich till his death, which happened in 1565.
His books were bound in morocco from the Levant, with such care and
taste that, under the supervision of this exacting amateur, bookbinding
seemed to have already attained perfection.
[Illustration: Fig. 384.--Bookbinders’ Work-room, drawn and engraved in
the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.]
Princes and ladies of the court prided themselves on their love of books
and the desire to acquire them; they founded libraries, and encouraged
the works and inventions of good bookbinders who produced masterpieces
of patience and ability in decorating the covers of books, either with
enamelled paintings, or with mosaics made of different pieces inlaid, or
with plain gildings stamped on the surface with small irons. It would be
impossible to enumerate the splendid bindings in all styles that the
French bookbinders of the sixteenth century have left us, and which have
never been surpassed since. The painter, the engraver, and even the
goldsmith, co-operated with the bookbinder in his art, by furnishing him
with designs for ornaments. We now see reappearing some plates obtained
from hot or cold dies, representing various subjects, and the designs
from which they were taken, reproduced from those that had been in
fashion towards the beginning of the sixteenth century, were often drawn
by distinguished artists, such as Jean Cousin, Stephen de Laulne, &c.
[Illustration: Fig. 385.--Mark of William Eustace (1512), Bookseller and
Binder, Paris.]
Nearly all the French kings, especially the Valois, were passionately
fond of splendid bindings. Catherine de Medicis was such a connoisseur
of finely-bound books, that authors and booksellers, who eagerly
presented her with copies of their works, tried to distinguish
themselves in the choice and beauty of the bindings which they had made
expressly for her. Henry III., who appreciated handsomely-bound books no
less than his mother, invented a very singular binding, when he had
instituted the Order of “Penitents;” this consisted of death’s heads and
cross bones, tears, crosses, and other instruments of the Passion, gilt
or stamped on black morocco leather, and having the following device,
“Spes mea Deus” (“God is my hope”), with or without the arms of France.
It is impossible to associate these superb bindings with the usual and
common work executed at the booksellers’ shops, and under their
superintendence. Some booksellers of Paris and of Lyons, the houses of
Gryphe and Tournes, of Estienne and Vascosan, paid a little more
attention, however, than others of the fraternity, to the binding of
books which they sold to the reading public; they adopted patterns of
dun-coloured calf, in compartments; or white vellum, with fillets and
arabesques in gold, fine specimens of which are now very rare.
At this period Italian bookbinding had reached the most complete state
of decadency, while in Germany and other parts of Europe the old massive
bindings,--bindings in wood, leather, and parchment, with fastenings of
iron or brass,--still held their ground. In France, however, the
binders, whom the booksellers kept in a state of obscurity and
servitude, had not even been able to form themselves into a guild or
fraternity. They might produce masterpieces of their art, but were not
allowed to append their names to their works; and we must come down as
far as the famous _Gascon_ (1641) before we can introduce the name of
any illustrious bookbinder.
[Illustration: Fig. 386.--Banner of the Corporation of
Printers-Booksellers of Autun.]
PRINTING
Who was the Inventor of Printing?--Movable Letters in Ancient
Times.--Block Printing.--Laurent Coster.--_Donati_ and
_Specula_.--Gutenberg’s Process.--Partnership of Gutenberg and
Faust.--Schoeffer.--The Mayence Bible.--The Psalter of 1457.--The
“Rationale” of 1459.--Gutenburg prints by himself.--The
“Catholicon” of 1460.--Printing at Cologne, Strasbourg, Venice, and
Paris.--Louis XI. and Nicholas Jenson.--German Printers at
Rome.--_Incunabula._--Colart Mansion.--Caxton.--Improvement of
Typographical Processes up to the Sixteenth Century.
Fifteen towns have laid claim to the honour of being the birthplace of
printing, and writers who have applied themselves to search out the
origin of this admirable invention, far from coming to any agreement on
the point in their endeavours to clear up the question, have only
confused it. Now, however, after many centuries of learned and earnest
controversy, there only remain three antagonistic propositions, with
three names of towns, four names of inventors, and three different
dates. The three places are Haarlem, Strasbourg, and Mayence; the four
inventors, Laurent Coster, Gutenberg, Faust, and Schoeffer; the three
dates which are assigned to the invention of printing are 1420, 1440,
1450. In our opinion these three propositions, which some try to combat
and destroy by opposing each to the other, ought, on the contrary, to be
blended into one, and combined chronologically in such a manner as to
represent the three principal periods of the discovery of printing.
There is no doubt that printing existed in the germ in ancient times;
that it was known and made use of by the ancients. There were stamps and
seals bearing legends traced the wrong way, from which positive
impressions were obtained on papyrus or parchment, in wax, ink, or
colour. We are shown, in museums, plates of copper or of cedar-wood,
covered with characters carved or cut out in them, which seem to have
been intended for the purpose of printing, and which resemble the block
plates of the fifteenth century.
[Illustration: Fig. 387.--Ancient Wood-block Print, cut in Flanders
before 1440, representing Jesus Christ after his Flagellation.
(Delbecq’s Collection, Ghent.)]
Something very much like the process of printing in movable type is
described by Cicero in a passage in which he refutes the doctrine of
Epicurus on the creation of the world by atoms: “Why not believe, also,
that by throwing together, indiscriminately, innumerable forms of
letters of the alphabet, either in gold or in any other substance, one
can _print_ with these letters, on the ground, the _Annals_ of Ennius?”
The movable letters possessed by the ancients were carved in box-wood or
ivory; but they were only employed for teaching children to read, as
Quinctilian testifies in his “Oratorical Institutions,” and St. Jerome
in his “Epistles.” There was then only wanting a fortunate chance to
cause this carved alphabet to create the typographic art fifteen
centuries earlier than its actual birth.
[Illustration: Fig. 388.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood, by an
ancient Flemish Engraver (about 1438); which was inserted, after the
manner of a Miniature, in a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century,
containing Prayers for the use of the People. (Delbecq’s Collection,
Ghent.)]
“The art of taking impressions once discovered,” says M. Léon de
Laborde, “and applied to engraving in relief, gave rise to printing,
which was only the perfection to which a natural and rapid progression
of attempts and efforts would naturally lead.” “But it was only,” adds
M. Ambroise-Firmin Didot, “when the art of making paper--that art
familiar to the Chinese from the beginning of our era--spread in Europe
and became generally known, that the reproduction, by pressing, of
texts, figures, playing-cards, &c., first by the tabular process,
called _xylography_ (block-printing), then with movable types, became
easy, and was consequently to appear simultaneously in different
places.”
[Illustration: Fig. 389.--Wood-block, cut in France, about 1440,
representing an Image of St. James the Great, with one of the
Commandments as a Text. (Imperial Library, Paris, Collection of
Prints.)]
But, at the end of the fourteenth century, at Haarlem, in Holland,
wood-engraving had been discovered, and consequently _tabular
impression_, with which the Chinese, it is said, were already acquainted
three or four hundred years before the modern era. Perhaps it was some
Chinese book or pack of cards brought to Haarlem by a merchant or a
navigator, that revealed to the cardmakers and printsellers of the
industrious Netherlands a process of impressing more expeditious and
more economical. Xylography began on the day when a legend was engraved
on a wood-block; this legend, limited at first to a few lines, very soon
occupied a whole page; then this page was not long in becoming a volume
(Fig. 387 to 389).
Here is an extract from the account given by Adrian Junius, in his Latin
work entitled “Batavia,” of the discovery of printing at Haarlem,
written in 1572:--“More than one hundred and thirty-two years ago there
lived at Haarlem, close to the royal palace, one John Laurent, surnamed
Coster (or governer), for this honourable post came to him by
inheritance, being handed down in his family from father to son. One
day, about 1420, as he was walking after dinner in a wood near the town,
he set to work and cut the bark of beech-trees into the shape of
letters, with which he traced, on paper, by pressing one after the
other upon it, a model composed of many lines for the instruction of his
children. Encouraged by this success, his genius took a higher flight,
and then, in concert with his son-in-law, Thomas Pierre, he invented a
species of ink more glutinous and tenacious than that employed in
writing, and he thus printed figures (_images_) to which he added his
wooden letters. I have myself seen many copies of this first attempt at
printing. The text is on one side only of the paper. The book printed
was written in the vulgar tongue, by an anonymous author, having as its
title ‘Speculum nostræ Salutis’ (‘The Mirror of our Salvation’). Later,
Laurent Coster changed his wooden types into leaden, then these into
pewter. Laurent’s new invention, encouraged by studious men, attracted
from all parts an immense concourse of purchasers. The love of the art
increased, the labours of his workshop increased also, and Laurent was
obliged to add hired workmen to the members of his family, to assist in
his operations. Among these workmen there was a certain John, whom I
suspect of being none other than Faust, who was treacherous and fatal to
his master. Initiated, under the seal of an oath, into all the secrets
of printing, and having become very expert in casting type, in setting
it up, and in the other processes of his trade, this John took advantage
of a Christmas evening, while every one was in church, to rifle his
master’s workshop and to carry off his typographical implements. He fled
with his booty to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and afterwards to
Mayence, where he established himself; and calculating upon safety here,
set up a printing-office. In that very same year, 1422, he printed with
the type which Laurent had employed at Haarlem, a grammar then in use,
called ‘Alexandri Galli Doctrinale,’ and a ‘Treatise of Peter the
Spaniard’ (‘Petri Hispani Tractatus’).”
This account, which came, indeed, rather late, although the author
referred to the most respectable authorities in support of it, met at
first with nothing but incredulity and contempt. At this period the
right of Mayence to be considered the birthplace of printing could only
be seriously counterbalanced by the right Strasbourg had to be so
considered. The three names of Gutenberg, of Faust, and of Schœffer were
already consecrated by universal gratitude. Everywhere, then, except in
Holland, this new testimony was rejected; everywhere the new inventor,
whose claim had just been made for a share of the honour, was rejected
as an apocryphal or legendary being. But very soon, however, criticism,
raising itself above the influences of nationality, took up the
question, discussed the account given by Junius, examined that famous
“Speculum” which no one had yet pointed out, proved the existence of
xylographic impressions, sought for those which could be attributed to
Coster, and opposed to the Abbé Tritheim (or Trithemius), who had
written on the origin of printing from information furnished by Peter
Schœffer himself, the more disinterested testimony of the anonymous
chronicler of Cologne in 1465, who had learned from Ulric Zell, one of
Gutenberg’s workmen, and the first printer of Cologne in 1465, this
important peculiarity:--“Although the typographic art was invented at
Mayence,” says he, “nevertheless the first rough sketch of this art was
invented in Holland, and it is in imitation of the ‘Donatus’ (the Latin
syntax by Cœlius Donatus, a grammarian of the fourth century, a book
then in use in the schools of Europe), which long before that time was
printed there; it is in imitation of this, and on account of it, that
the said art began under the auspices of Gutenberg.”
If Gutenberg imitated the “Donatus,” which was printed in Holland before
the time he himself printed at Mayence, Gutenberg was not the inventor
of printing. It was in 1450 that Gutenberg began to print at Mayence
(Fig. 390); but from as early a date as 1436 he had tried to print at
Strasbourg; and, before his first attempts, there had been printed in
Holland,--at Haarlem, and Dordrecht,--“Specula” and “Donati” on wooden
boards; a process known by the name of _xylography_ (engraving on wood),
while the attempts at _typography_ (printing with movable type) made by
Gutenberg entirely differed from the other; since the letters, engraved
at first on steel points (_poinçons_), and afterwards forced into a
copper matrix reproduced by means of casting in a metal more fusible
than copper the impress of the point on shanks (_tiges_) made of pewter
or lead, hardened by an alloy (Fig. 391).
Now, a rather singular circumstance comes to corroborate what was said
by Adrian Junius. A Latin edition of the “Speculum,” an in-folio of
sixty-three leaves, with wood engravings in two compartments at the head
of each leaf, consists of a mixture of twenty xylographic leaves, and of
forty-one leaves printed with movable type, but very imperfect, and cast
in moulds which were probably made of baked earth: an edition of a
Dutch “Speculum,” in folio, has also two pages in a type smaller and
closer than the rest of the text. How are we to explain these anomalies?
On the one hand, a mixture of xylography and typography; on the other, a
combination of two different kinds of movable type. My hypothesis is, if
indeed the details given by Junius, open to suspicion as they are, be
correct, that the dishonest workman who, according to his own account,
stole the implements
[Illustration: Fig. 390.--Fac-simile of a Page of the most ancient
Xylographie “Donatus” (Chapter on Prepositions), printed at Mayence, by
Fust and Gutenberg, about 1450.]
employed in the workshop of Laurent Coster, and who must have acted with
a certain amount of precipitation, contented himself with carrying off
some forms of the “Speculum” just ready for the press. The type employed
for twenty or twenty-two pages was sufficient to serve as models for a
counterfeit edition, and also for a book of small extent, such as the
“Alexandri Galli Doctrinale,” and the “Petri Hispani Tractatus.” It is
probable that the Latin and Dutch editions of the “Speculum” were both
entirely composed, set up, and prepared for the text to be struck off,
when the thief took at hazard the twenty-two forms, which he determined
to turn to account, at any rate as a model for the counterfeit edition
he intended to publish. In cast-iron type, these forms could not have
weighed more than sixty pounds; in wooden type, not half as much; if we
add to these the composing-sticks, the pincers, the galleys, and other
indispensable elements of the trade, we shall find that the booty was
not beyond the strength of a man to carry easily on his shoulders. As
for the press, about that there could be no question, since the
impressions produced at Haarlem were made with a pad and by hand, as is
still the case with playing-cards and prints.
[Illustration: Fig. 391.--Portrait of Gutenberg, from an Engraving of
the Sixteenth Century.
(Imperial Library of Paris, Print Room.)]
It remains now to discover who was this John who appropriated the secret
of printing, and took it from Haarlem to Mayence. Was it John Fust or
Faust, as Adrian Junius suspected? Was it John Gutenberg, as many Dutch
writers have alleged? or was it not rather John Gensfleisch the elder, a
relation of Gutenberg, as, from a very explicit passage of the learned
Joseph Wimpfeling, his contemporary, the latest defenders of the Haarlem
tradition think? The question is still undecided.
The “Speculum,” however, is not the only book of the kind which
[Illustration: Fig. 392.--Fac-simile of the Twenty-eighth Xylographic
Page of the “Biblia Pauperum;” representing, with Texts taken from the
Old Testament, David slaying Goliath, and Christ causing the Souls of
the Patriarchs and Prophets to come out of Purgatory.]
had appeared in the Low Countries before the period assigned to the
discovery of printing in Holland. Some of these were evidently
xylographic, others show signs of having been printed with movable type
of wood, not of metal. All have engravings of the same character as
those of the “Speculum,” especially the “Biblia Pauperum” (“Poor Men’s
Bible”) (Fig. 392), the “Ars Moriendi” (“The Art of Dying”) (Fig. 393)
the “Ars Memorandi” (“The Art of Remembering”), which had a very wide
circulation.