indefatigable ardour. In 1462 they completed a new edition of the Bible,
much more perfect than that of 1456, and of which copies were probably
sold, as were those of the first edition, as manuscripts, especially in
countries where, as in France, printing did not already exist. It seems
that the appearance in Paris of this Bible, (called the Mayence Bible),
greatly excited the community of scribes and booksellers, who saw in the
new method of producing books, _without the aid of the pen_, “the
destruction of their trade.” They charged, it is said, the sellers of
these books with magic; but it is more probable the latter were
proceeded against, and condemned to fine and imprisonment, for having
omitted to procure from the University authority for the sale of their
Bible; such permission being then indispensable for the sale of every
kind of book.
In the meantime the town of Mayence had been taken by assault and given
up to pillage (October 27, 1462). This event, in consequence of which
the printing-office of Fust and Schœffer remained shut up for two years,
resulted in the dissemination over the whole of Europe of printers and
the art of printing. Cologne, Hamburg, and Strasbourg appear to have
been the first towns in which the emigrants established themselves.
When these printers left Mayence, and carried their art elsewhere, it
had never produced any book of classic literature; but it had proved by
important publications, such as the Bible and the “Catholicon,” that it
could create entire libraries, and thus propagate, _ad infinitum_, the
masterpieces of human genius. It was reserved for the printing-office of
Fust and Schœffer to set the example in that direction, and of printing
the first classical work. In 1465, Cicero’s treatise “De Officiis,”
issued from the press of these two faithful associates, and marked, as
we may say, the commencement of the printing of books for libraries,
and with so great success that in the following year a new edition of
the treatise was published, in quarto.
At this period, Fust himself came to Paris, where he established a dépôt
of printed books, but left the management of the concern to one of his
own fellow-countrymen. This person dying soon afterwards, the books
found in his house, being the property of a foreigner, were sold by
right of forfeiture, for the king’s benefit. But upon the petition of
Peter Schœffer, backed up by the Elector of Mayence, the King, Louis
XI., granted to the petitioners a sum of 2,425 golden dollars, “in
consideration of the trouble and labour which the said petitioners had
taken for the said art and trade of printing, and of the benefit and
utility which resulted and may result from this art to the whole world,
as well by increasing knowledge as in other ways.” This memorable decree
of the King of France bears date April 21, 1475.
We must mention, however, that about the year 1462, Louis XI.,
inquisitive and uneasy at what he had heard of the invention of
Gutenberg, sent to Mayence Nicholas Jenson, a clever engraver, attached
to the mint at Tours, “to obtain secret information of the cutting of
the points and type, by means of which the rarest manuscripts could be
multiplied, and to carry off surreptitiously the invention and introduce
it into France.” Nicholas Jenson, after having succeeded in his mission,
did not return to France (it was never known why), but went to Venice
and established himself there as a printer. It would seem, however, that
Louis XI., not discouraged at the ill success of his attempt,
despatched, it is said, another envoy, less enterprising but more
conscientious than the first, to discover the secrets of printing. In
1469, three German printers, Ulric Gering, Martin Crantz, and Michael
Friburger, began to print in Paris, in a room of the Sorbonne, of which
their fellow-countryman, John Heylin, named De la Pierre, was then the
prior; in the following year they dedicated to the king, “their
protector,” one of their editions, revised by the learned William
Fichet; and in the space of four years they published about fifteen
works, quartos and folios, the majority being printed for the first
time. Then, when they were forced to leave the Sorbonne, because John de
la Pierre, who had returned to Germany, had no longer authority over the
institution, they set up in the Rue Saint-Jacques a new printing
establishment, whose sign-board was the “Soleil d’Or,” from which,
during the next five years, were issued twelve other important works.
The Sorbonne then, like the University, was the cradle and the
foster-mother in Paris of the art of printing, which soon attained to a
nourishing condition, and produced, during the last twenty years of the
fourteenth[61] century, numerous fine books of history, poetry,
literature, and devotion, under the direction of the able and learned
Pierre Caron, Pasquier Bonhomme, Anthony Vérard, Simon Vostre (Fig.
398), &c.
After the capture of Mayence, two workmen, who had been dismissed from
the establishment of Fust and Schœffer, Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold
Pannartz, carried beyond the Alps the secret that had been confided to
them under the guarantee of an oath. They remained for a time in the
Convent of Subiaco, near Rome, in which were some German monks, and
there they organised a printing apparatus, and printed many fine
editions of Lactantius, Cicero, St. Augustine, &c. They were soon
invited to Rome, and met with an asylum in the house of the illustrious
family of Massimi; but they found an opponent in the city in one of
their own workmen from the convent, who had come to Rome and engaged
himself as printer to the cardinal John of Torquemada. Henceforward
sprang up between the two printing establishments a rivalry which showed
itself in unparalleled zeal and activity on both sides. In ten years the
greater number of the writings of the ancient Latin authors, which had
been preserved in manuscripts more or less rare, passed through the
press. In 1476 there were in Rome more than twenty printers, who
employed about a hundred presses, and whose great object was to surpass
each other in the rapidity with which they produced their publications;
so that the day soon arrived when the most precious manuscripts retained
any value only because they contained what had not been already made
public by printing. Those of which printed editions already existed were
so universally disregarded, that we must refer to this period the
destruction of a large number. They were used, when written on
parchment, for binding the new books; and to this circumstance may be
attributed the loss of certain celebrated works which printing in nowise
tended to preserve from the knife of the binder.
While printing was displaying such prodigious activity in Rome, it was
[Illustration: Fig. 398.--Fac-simile of a page of a “Livre d’Heures”
printed in Paris, in 1512, by Simon Vostre.]
not less active in Venice, where it seems to have been imported by that
Nicholas Jenson whom Louis XI. had sent to Gutenberg, and whom for a
long time even the Venetians looked on as the inventor of the art with
which he had clandestinely become acquainted at Mayence. From the
[Illustration: Fig. 399.--The Mark of Gérard Lecu, Printer at Gouwe
(1482).]
[Illustration: Fig. 400.--The Mark of Fust and Schœffer, Printers.
(Fifteenth Century.)]
year 1469, however, Jenson had no longer the monopoly of printing in
Venice, where John de Spire had arrived, bringing also from Mayence all
the improvements Gutenberg and Schœffer had obtained. This art having
ceased to be a secret in the city of the Doges, great
[Illustration: Fig. 401.--Mark of Arnold de Keyser, Printer at Ghent.
(1480.)]
competition arose among printers, who flocked to Venice, where they
found a market for their volumes which a thousand ships carried to all
parts of the world. At this period important and admirable publications
issued from the numerous rival printing establishments in Venice.
Christopher Waltdorfer, of Ratisbon, published in 1471 the first edition
of the “Decameron” of Boccaccio, of which a copy was sold for £2,080 at
the Roxburgh sale; John of Cologne published, in the same year, the
first dated edition of “Terence;” Adam of Amberg reprinted, from the
Roman editions, “Lactantius” and “Virgil,” &c. Finally, Venice already
possessed more than two hundred printers, when in 1494 the great Aldo
Manuzio made his appearance, the precursor of the Estiennes,[62] who
were the glory of French printing. From every part of Europe printing
spread itself and flourished (Figs. 399 to 411); the printers, however,
often neglected, perhaps intentionally, to date their
[Illustration: Fig. 402.--Mark of Colard Mansion, Printer at Bruges.
(1477.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 403.--Mark of Trechsel, Printer at Lyons. (1489.)]
productions. In the course of 1469 there were only two towns, Venice and
Milan, that revealed, by their dated editions, the time at which
printing was first established within their walls; in 1470, five
towns--Nuremberg, Paris, Foligno, Treviso, and Verona; in 1471, eight
towns--Strasbourg, Spires, Treviso, Bologna, Ferrara, Naples, Pavia, and
Florence; in 1472, eight others--Cremona, Felizzano, Padua, Mantua,
Montreuil, Jesi, Munster, and Parma; in 1473, ten--Brescia, Messina,
Ulm, Bude, Lauingen, Mersebourg, Alost, Utrecht, Lyons, and St. Ursio,
near Vicenza; in 1474, thirteen towns, among which are Valentia (in
Spain) and London; in 1475, twelve towns, &c. Each year we find the art
gaining ground, and each year an increase in the number of books newly
edited, rendering science and literature popular by considerably
diminishing the price of books. Thus, for example, at the beginning of
the fifteenth century, the illustrious Poggio sold his fine manuscript
of “Livy,” to raise money enough to buy himself a villa near Florence;
Anthony of Palermo mortgaged his estate in order to be able to purchase
a manuscript of the same historical writer, valued at a hundred and
twenty-five dollars; yet a few years later the “Livy,” printed at Rome
by Sweynheim and Pannartz, in one folio volume on vellum, was worth only
five golden dollars.
[Illustration: Fig. 404.--Mark of Simon Vostre, Printer at Paris, in
1531, living in the Rue Neuve Nostre-Dame, at the Sign of St. John the
Evangelist.]
[Illustration: Fig. 405.--Mark of Galliot du Pré, Bookseller at Paris.
(1531.)]
The largest number of the early editions resembled each other, for they
were generally printed in Gothic characters, or _lettres de
somme_--letters which bristled with points and angular appendices. These
characters, when printing was only just invented, had preserved in
Holland and in Germany their original form; and the celebrated printer
of Bruges, Colard Mansion, only improved on them in his valuable
publications, which were almost contemporaneous with Gutenberg’s
“Catholicon;” but they had already under-gone in France a semi
metamorphosis in getting rid of their angularities and their most
extravagant features. These _lettres de somme_ were then adopted under
the name of _bâtarde_ (bastard) or _ronde_ (round), in the first books
printed in France, and when Nicholas Jenson established himself in
Venice
[Illustration: Fig. 406.--Mark of Philippe le Noir, Printer, Bookseller,
and Bookbinder, at Paris, 1536, living in the Rue St. Jacques, at the
sign of the “Rose Couronnée.”]
[Illustration: Fig. 407.--Mark of Temporal, Printer at Lyons, 1550-1559,
with two devices; one in Latin, “And in the meanwhile time flieth,
flieth irreparably;” the other in Greek, “Mark, or know, Time.” (Observe
the play upon the words _tempus_, καιρὁς and Temporal.)]
he used the _Roman_, which were only an elegant variety of the _lettres
de somme_ of France (Gothic characters). Aldo Manuzio, with the sole
object of insuring that Venice should not owe its national type to a
Frenchman, adopted the _Italic_ character, renewed from the writing
called cursive or _de chancellerie_ (of the chancellor’s office), which
was never generally used in printing, notwithstanding the fine editions
of Aldo. Hereafter the Ciceronean character was to come into use, so
called because it had been employed at Rome in the first edition of the
“Epistolæ Familiares” (Familiar Letters) of Cicero, in 1467. The
character called “St. Augustinian,” which appeared later, likewise owes
its name to the large edition of the works of St. Augustine, published
at Basle in 1506. Moreover, during this first period in which each
printer engraved, or caused to be engraved under his own directions,
[Illustration: Fig. 408.--Mark of Robert Estienne, Printer at Paris,
1536.
“Do not aspire to know high things.”]
[Illustration: Fig. 409.--Mark of Gryphe, Printer at Lyons, 1529.
“Virtue my Leader, Fortune my Companion.”]
the characters he made use of, there was an infinite number of different
types. The _register_, a table indicative of the quires which composed
the book, was necessary to point out in what order these were to be
arranged
[Illustration: Fig. 410.--Mark of Plantin, Printer, at Antwerp, 1557.
“Christ the true Vine.”]
[Illustration: Fig. 411.--Mark of J. Le Noble, Printer at Troyes.
(1595.)]
and bound together. After the _register_ came _the catchwords_, which,
at the end of each quire or of each leaf, were destined to serve an
analogous purpose; and the _signatures_, indicating the place of quires
or of leaves by letters or figures; but signatures and catchwords
existed already in the manuscripts, and typographers had only to
reproduce them in their editions. There was at first a perfect identity
between the manuscripts and the books printed from them. The typographic
art seems to have considered it imperative to respect the abbreviations
with which the manuscripts were so encumbered as often to become
unintelligible; but, as it was not easy to transfer them precisely from
the manuscripts, they were soon expressed in such a way, and in so
complicated a manner, that in 1483 a special explanatory treatise had to
be published to render them intelligible. The punctuation was generally
very capriciously presented: here, it was nearly _nil_; there, it
admitted only of the full stop in various positions; the rests were
often indicated by oblique strokes; sometimes the full stop was round,
sometimes square, and we find also the star or asterisk employed as a
sign of punctuation. The new paragraphs, or breaks, are placed
indifferently in the same line with the rest of the text, projecting
beyond it or not reaching to it.
[Illustration: Fig. 412.--Border from the “Livre d’Heures” of Anthony
Vérard (1488), representing the Assumption of the Virgin in the presence
of the Apostles and Holy Women, and at the bottom of the page two
Mystical Figures.]
The book, on leaving the press, went, like its predecessor the
manuscript, first into the hands of the _corrector_, who revised the
text, rectifying wrong letters, and restoring those the press had left
in blank; then into the hands of the _rubricator_, who printed in red,
blue, or other colours, the initial letters, the capitals, and the new
paragraphs. The leaves, before the adoption of signatures, were numbered
by hand.
At first, nearly all books were printed in folio and quarto sizes, the
result of folding the sheet of paper in two or in four respectively; but
the length and breadth of these sizes varied according to the
requirements of typography and the dimensions of the press. At the end
of the fifteenth century, however, the advantages of the octavo were
already appreciated, which soon became in France the sex-decimo, and in
Italy the duo-decimo.
[Illustration: Fig. 413.--Border taken from the “Livre d’Heures” of
Geoffroi Tory (1525).]
Paper and ink employed by the earliest printer seem to have required no
improvement as the art of printing progressed.
[Illustration: Fig. 414--“Livre d’Heures,” by Guillaume Roville (1551),
a composition in the style of the school of Lyons, with Caryatides
representing female Saints semi-veiled.]
The ink was black, bright, indelible, unalterable, penetrating deeply
into the paper, and composed, as already were the colours, of oil-paint.
The paper, which was certainly rather grey or yellow, and often coarse
and rough, had the advantage of being strong, durable, and was almost
fit, in virtue of these qualities, to replace parchment and vellum, both
of which materials were scarce and too expensive. Editors contented
themselves with having struck off on _membrane_ (a thin and white
vellum) a small number of copies of each edition; never exceeding three
hundred. These sumptuous copies, rubricated, illuminated, bound with
care, resembling in every respect the finest manuscripts, were generally
presented to kings, princes, and great personages, whose patronage or
assistance the printer sought. Nor was any expense spared to add to
typography all the ornaments which wood-engravings could confer upon it;
and from the year 1475, numerous illustrated editions, of which an
example was found in the first “Specula,” especially those printed in
Germany, were enriched with figures, portraits, heraldic escutcheons,
and a multitude of ornamented margins (Figs. 412 to 415). For more than
a century the painters and engravers worked hand in hand with the
printers and booksellers.
[Illustration: Fig. 415.--Border employed by John of Tournes, in 1557,
ornamented with Antique Masks and Allegorical Personages bearing Baskets
containing Laurel Branches.]
The taste for books spread over the whole of Europe; the number of
buyers and of amateurs was every day increasing. In the libraries of
princes, scholars, or monks, printed books were collected as formerly
were manuscripts. Henceforth printing found everywhere the same
protection, the same encouragements, the same rivalry. Typographers
sometimes travelled with their apparatus, opened a printing-office in a
small town, and then went on elsewhere after they had sold one edition.
Finally, such was the incredible activity of typography, from its origin
till 1500, that the number of editions published in Europe in the space
of half a century amounted to _sixteen thousand_. But the most
remarkable result of printing was the important part it played in the
movement of the sixteenth century, from which resulted the
transformation of the arts, of literature, and science; the discoveries
of Laurent Coster and of Gutenberg had cast a new light over the world,
and the press made its appearance to modify profoundly the conditions of
the intellectual life of peoples.
[Illustration: Fig. 416.--Mark of Bonaventure and Abraham Elsevier,
Printers at Leyden, 1620.]
LONDON: PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Dorserets_, covers to backs of chairs, beds, &c.
[2] Richard I., surnamed _Sans-peur_, third Duke of Normandy,
was natural son of William I., and grandson of Rollo. He died in
996.--[ED.]
[3] Charles le Brun, a distinguished painter of the French school,
flourished during the seventeenth century. The son of a sculptor, who
placed him under Simon Vouet, the young artist made such progress
that at the age of fifteen he painted a remarkable picture, “Hercules
Destroying the Horses of Diomede,” which brought him at once into
public notice. Le Brun’s patron, the Chancellor Seguier, sent him to
Italy, with an introduction to Nicholas Poussin, whose pure and correct
taste, however, seems to have had little influence on the French
artist, who, though possessing an inventive and somewhat elevated
genius, often showed himself a mannerist.--[ED.]
[4] “Historical Topography of Ancient Paris in the district of the
Louvre and Tuileries.” By Berty and Legrand.
[5] Probably an abbreviation, or corruption, of
cap-mail.--[ED.]
[6] Or _brassarts_--pieces to protect the upper part of the
arms.--[ED.]
[7] This title is not chronologically correct. Henry of Bolingbroke
had been created Duke of Hereford nearly a year before his intended
combat with Norfolk, at Coventry, in 1398; when the king, Richard II.,
interfered, and banished both nobles from the kingdom.--[ED.]
[8] _Anglicè_, partisan--a kind of pike or lance.--[ED.]
[9] _Martel-de-fer_--a weapon combining a hammer and pick; used by
cavalry in the Middle Ages, to damage and destroy armour. It was
generally hung at the saddle-bow.--[ED.]
[10] _Tassets_--parts of the cuirass.
[11] _Morion_--a kind of helmet, usually worn by
foot-soldiers.--[ED.]
[12] So called, it may be presumed, from its form and
make.--[ED.]
[13] Latin, _Luteus_--muddy.--[ED.]
[14] Quincunx order is a method of arranging five objects, or pieces,
in the form of a square; one being in the centre, and one at each
corner.--[ED.]
[15] _Limousine_--a term applied to enamelling, and derived, as some
writers assume, from Leonard Limousin, a famous artist in this kind of
work, resident at Limoges. It is, however, more probable it came from
the province Limousin, or Limosin, of which Limoges was the capital;
and that Leonard acquired the surname of Limousin from his place of
birth or residence; just as many of the old painters are best known by
theirs.--[ED.]
[16] _Ogivale_--a term used by French architects to denote the Gothic
vault, with its ribs and cross-springers, &c. It is also employed
to denote the pointed arch.--GWILT’S _Encyclopædia of
Architecture_.--[ED.]
[17] This is a literal rendering of the text of M. Labarte; but the
artists to whom allusion is made were only two, Niccola and Giovanni,
sculptors and architects of Pisa. According to Vasari, Niccola, father
of Giovanni (Jean or John), first worked under certain Greek sculptors
who were executing the figures and other sculptural ornaments of the
Duomo of Pisa and the Chapel of San Giovanni.--[ED.]
[18] Andrea di Cione Orcagna.--[ED.]
[19] _Autochthone_--relating to the aboriginal inhabitants
of a country: the use of the word here is not very intelligible.--[ED.]
[20] _Gnomon_--literally the upright piece of wood or metal which
projects the shadow on the plane of the dial.--[ED.]
[21] This clock, as many readers doubtless know, was removed
some years ago, when St. Dunstan’s Church, in Fleet Street, was
rebuilt.--[ED.]
[22] The reader will notice a discrepancy between this description
of the _chorus_ and that given in a preceding paragraph. We have
retained both, mainly because it is now impossible to determine what
the instrument really was: no mention of it appears in any book we have
consulted.--[ED.]
[23] _Nabulum_--a name evidently derived from the Hebrew word _nebel_,
generally translated in the Scriptures as a psaltery.--[ED.]
[24] The Welsh or Scotch _Crwd_.--[TR.]
[25] In German _Geige_, “fiddle.”--[TR.]
[26] Henry IV., born at Pau, in the Béarn.--[ED.]
[27] The English “knave” is only our old equivalent for the German
_knabe_, and had originally the same meaning of _servant_; it is also
nearly similar in sense to the French _valet_.--[TR.]
[28] _Paul, the Silentiary_, is so named from holding in the court of
Justinian the office of chief of the Silentiarii, persons who had the
care of the palace. He wrote a poem on the rebuilding of St. Sophia,
at Constantinople, which was translated from Greek into Latin, and
published with notes, by Du Cange, of Paris, in 1670. It is this to
which M. Lecroix refers in the text.--[ED.]
[29] _Amandaire_--almond-shaped. Strictly speaking, the aureola is the
nimbus of the whole body, as the nimbus is the aureola of the head. In
Fairholt’s “Dictionary of Terms in Art” is an engraving showing a saint
standing in the centre of an almond-shaped aureola--[ED.]
[30] _Grisaille_--white and black.--[ED.]
[31] Probably Alfonso is thus designate!.--[ED.]