OTHER INCUNABULA
In August, 1462, the struggle between its rival Archbishops led to Mainz
being sacked. Very little more printing was done there until 1465, and
we need not doubt the tradition that journeymen trained by Gutenberg and
Fust and Schoeffer, finding no work for them at Mainz, carried such
experience as they had gained to other towns and countries, where they
appear, after a few years spent in manufacturing presses and types, in
all the glory of "prototypographers."
But even before 1462 two other cities possessed the art--Bamberg and
Strassburg. At Bamberg it was practised possibly by Gutenberg, who may
have printed there the Thirty-six Line Bible about 1457, certainly by
Albrecht Pfister, who is found in possession of the type of this Bible,
and may himself have had copies for sale. The books he himself printed
at Bamberg are nine in number,[25] and three or four bound volumes seem
to have preserved all the remnants of them that we possess, and all of
these have found their way to public libraries.
The large and stately folios produced by the early Strassburg printers
have naturally resisted the ravages of time better than the Bamberg
popular books. Certainly clumsier than the contemporary Mainz books,
they yet have a dignity and character of their own which command
respect. The first Strassburg printer, Johann Mentelin, was at work
there in or before 1460, and was helped during his life and succeeded
after his death (1477) by his son-in-law, Adolf Rusch, who never put his
name to a book, and most of whose impressions pass under the name of
"the R-printer," from the peculiar form of that letter found in one of
his types. Mentelin himself did not place his name at the end of a book
till he had been at work more than a dozen years; Heinrich Eggestein,
who began work about 1464, was equally reticent, and throughout the
'seventies and 'eighties a large proportion of the books printed at
Strassburg were anonymous. Heinrich Knoblochtzer, who started about
1476, combines some of the charm of the earlier printers with greater
literary interest and the attraction of illustrations and ornamental
capitals and borders. Of him we shall have to speak in a later chapter.
But after 1485 the bulk of Strassburg printing was dull and commercial.
In the fifteenth century Basel was not yet, as it became in 1501, a
member of the Swiss Confederacy, and typographically its relations with
Mainz, Strassburg, Nuremberg and other German towns were very close. In
what year printing began there is not known. There is no dated book from
a Basel press until as late as 1474, but the date of purchase, 1468, in
a book (S. Gregory's _Moralia in Job_), printed by Berthold Ruppel, of
Hanau, takes us back six years, and it is possible that Ruppel was at
work even before this. He is identified with reasonable certainty with
one of the servants of Gutenberg mentioned in connection with the
lawsuit ended in 1455, and he printed Latin Bibles and other large works
such as appealed to the ambition of the German prototypographers.
[Illustration: VI. COLOGNE, ULRICH ZELL, 1465-66
CICERO. DE OFFICIIS (7^b)]
The second and more interesting Basel printer, Michael Wenssler, seems
to have taken Schoeffer as his model, and reprinted many of Schoeffer's
editions, following the wording of his colophons and investing them
with the same glories of red ink. Whereas, however, from about 1476
Schoeffer's activity was much less conspicuous, Wenssler for the next
ten years poured out edition after edition of all the heaviest legal and
theological works, until he must have overstocked the market. Then he
devoted himself almost exclusively to liturgical printing, but his
affairs became hopelessly involved, and in 1491 he fled from his
creditors at Basel, and became a wandering printer, finding commissions
at Cluny and Macon, and then settling for a time at Lyon. Many of the
early printers in Italy made this mistake of flooding the market with a
single class of book, but Wenssler is almost the only notable example in
Germany of this lack of business instinct.
Travelling along the Rhine from Mainz in the opposite direction we come
to Cologne, and here Ulrich Zell, like Berthold Ruppel, a native of
Hanau, but who calls himself in his books a "clerk of the diocese of
Mainz," enrolled his name on the register of the University in June,
1464, doubtless for the sake of the business privileges which the Senate
had it in its power to confer. The first dated book from his press, S.
John Chrysostom, _Super psalmo quinquagesimo_ (Psalm li., according to
our English reckoning), was issued in 1466, but before this appeared he
had almost certainly produced an edition of the _De Officiis_ (see the
frontispiece to this chapter, Plate VI), the most popular of Cicero's
works in Germany, which Fust and Schoeffer had printed in 1465 and
reprinted the next year. Avoiding the great folios on which the early
printers of Mainz, Strassburg, and Basel staked their capital, Zell's
main work was the multiplication of minor theological treatises likely
to be of practical use to priests. Of these he issued countless editions
in small quarto, along with a comparatively few small folios, in which,
however, his skill as a printer is seen to better advantage. He
continued in active work until 1494, gave, as we have seen (Chapter
III.), his version of the origin of printing to the compiler of the
Cologne Chronicle published in 1499, and was still alive as late as
1507.
Zell's earliest rival at Cologne was Arnold ther Hoernen, who printed
from 1470 to 1482. He may very likely have been self-taught, for his
early work is very uneven, but he developed into an excellent craftsman.
He is the first notable example of a printer getting into touch with a
contemporary author, and regularly printing all his works, the author in
this case being Werner Rolewinck, a Carthusian of Cologne, who wrote
sermons and historical works, including the _Fasciculus Temporum_, an
epitome of history, which found much favour all over Europe. Ther
Hoernen used to be credited with the honour of having printed the first
book with a titlepage, the _Sermo ad populum predicabilis In festo
presentacionis Beatissime Marie semper virginis_ of 1470. Schoeffer,
however, had preceded him by some seven years by devoting a separate
page to the title of each of his editions of a Bull of Pius II (see p.
93), and as neither printer continued the practice these isolated
instances must be taken as accidental. In the same book, ther Hoernen
for the first time placed printed numbers on the leaves, but this
improvement also was not followed up. The third Cologne typographer,
Johann Koelhoff the Elder, was the first (in 1472) to place printed
"signatures" on the quires of a book, so as to show the binder the order
in which they were to be arranged. Hitherto the quires had been marked
by hand, and this improvement was not suffered to drop for a time like
the others, but quickly spread all over Europe.
At Augsburg Gunther Zainer completed his first book, an edition of the
Latin Meditations on the Life of Christ taken from the works of S.
Bonaventura, on the 13th March, 1468. Though he followed this with three
heavy books which had found favour at Mainz and Strassburg, Zainer had
the wisdom to strike out a line for himself. Augsburg had long been the
chief centre of the craftsmen who cut and printed the woodcuts of
saints, for which there seems to have been a large sale in Germany, and
also the pictures used for playing-cards. The cutters were at first
inclined to regard the idea of book-illustrations with suspicion, as
likely to interfere with their existing business. It was decided,
however, by the local Abbot of SS. Ulrich and Afra, an ecclesiastic with
typographical tastes, that illustrated books might be printed so long as
members of the wood-cutters' guild were employed in making the blocks.
With this as a working agreement, illustrated books greatly prospered at
Augsburg, not only Gunther Zainer, but Johann Bamler and Anton Sorg (a
very prolific printer), turning them out with much success throughout
the 'seventies.
At Nuremberg printing was introduced in 1470 by Johan Sensenschmidt, who
for a short time had as his partner Heinrich Kefer, of Mainz, another of
Gutenberg's servants. Much more important, however, was the firm of
Anton Koberger, who began work the next year, and speedily developed the
largest business of any printer in Germany. Koberger was able to deal
successfully in all the heavy books, which after 1480 other firms found
it wiser to leave alone, and seems to have employed Adolf Rusch at
Strassburg and perhaps other printers elsewhere, to print for him. He
also printed towards the end of the century some very notable
illustrated books. Next to Koberger, Friedrich Creussner, who started in
1473, had the largest business in Nuremberg, and Georg Stuchs made
himself a reputation as a missal printer, a special department from
which Koberger held aloof.
At Speier, after two anonymous firms had worked in 1471 and 1472 without
much success, Peter Drach (1477) developed an important business. At Ulm
Johann Zainer, a kinsman of Gunther Zainer, of Augsburg, began in 1473
by printing illustrated books, which were subsequently taken up in the
'eighties by Leonhard Holle, Conrad Dinckmut, and Johann Reger, while
Zainer himself became a miscellaneous printer. At Lubeck Lucas Brandis
produced a universal history called the _Rudimentum Nouitiorum_ in 1475
and a fine _Josephus_, important liturgical work being subsequently done
by Bartholomaeus Ghotan, Matthaeus Brandiss and Stephan Arndes, similar
work being also produced at Magdeburg partly by some of these Lubeck
printers. Fine liturgical work was also done at Wurzburg by Georg
Reyser, who may previously have printed anonymously at Speier, and who
started his kinsman Michel in a similar business at Eichstatt. At
Leipzig, where Marcus Brandis printed one or two books in 1481, and the
following years, a sudden development took place about 1490, and a flood
of small educational works was poured out by some half a dozen printers,
of whom Conrad Kachelofen and Martin Landsberg were the most prolific.
Presses were also set up in numerous other places, so that by the end of
the century at least fifty German cities, towns and villages had seen a
printer at work. In many of these the art took no root, and in some the
printer was only employed for a short time to print one or more books
for a particular purpose. But the total output of incunabula in Germany
was very large, and leaving out of count the fugitive single sheets, the
scanty remnants of which can bear no relation to the thousands which
must have been produced, out of about 25,000 different books and
editions printed in the fifteenth century registered as extant at the
time of writing probably nearly a third were produced in Germany. If, as
is likely, a large proportion of the eleven thousand undescribed
incunabula (among which, however, there must be many duplicates and
triplicates) reported to have been discovered by the agents of the
German Royal Commission for a General Catalogue of Incunabula are
German, this rough estimate must be largely increased, and it may be
proved that Germany was as prolific as Italy itself.
Considerable as was this output of German printing at home, it was
probably nearly equalled by the work done by German printers in the
other countries of Europe to which they hastened to carry the new art.
Turning first to Italian incunabula we find that the first book printed
in Italy has perished utterly. The cruel little Latin grammar which
passed under the name of _Donatus_ had, as we have seen, been frequently
printed in Holland and by the first Mainz printers, and there are
several later instances of an edition of it being produced as soon as a
press was set up, merely to show the printer's types. This was done by
Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, the two Germans who began printing
at the monastery of Saint Scholastica at Subiaco, some forty miles from
Rome, in 1465, or perhaps in the previous year. Being a school-book, the
_Donatus_ was thumbed to pieces, so that no copy now survives, and it is
only known from the printer's allusion to it as the book "_unde
imprimendi initium sumpsimus_" in a list of their publications drawn up
in 1472. Of the three other books printed by them at Subiaco, Cicero's
_De Oratore_ has no printed date, but a copy described by Signor
Fumagalli bears a manuscript note dated Pridie Kal. Octobres M.cccclxv.,
i.e. 30 September, 1465, the authenticity of which has, however, been
challenged, though probably without good reason. The two others both
bear printed dates, the works of _Lactantius_, that of 29 October, 1465,
and S. Augustine's _De Ciuitate Dei_, 12 June, 1467. Probably even
before this last book was completed the printers were already moving
some of their material to Rome, where they found shelter in the palace
of Pietro de' Massimi, for their edition of the _Epistulae Familiares_
of Cicero was completed there in the same year, probably in or before
November. Even so it is not certain that this was the first book printed
at Rome, for Ulrich Han, a native of Vienna and citizen of Ingolstadt,
whose later work, like that of Michael Wenssler at Basel, shows a
tendency to imitate Schoeffer, completed an edition of the
_Meditationes de vita Christi_ of Cardinal Turrecremata on the last day
of the same year, and Mr. Proctor (after the publication of his _Index_)
assigned to Han's press and to an even earlier date than the
_Meditationes_ a bulky edition of the Epistles of S. Jerome, which must
certainly have taken a year to print.
The career of Sweynheym and Pannartz in partnership at Rome lasted but
little over six years, their latest book bearing the date 31 December,
1473. Already in March, 1472, they were in difficulties, and printed a
letter to Pope Sixtus IV begging for some pecuniary aid. They had
printed, they said, no fewer than 11,475 volumes, and gave a list of the
different books and of the numbers printed of each. Four of these
editions were of 300 copies, the rest of 275, and we can see from the
list that there had been three editions of the _Lactantius_ and _De
Ciuitate Dei_ and two each of Cicero's _Epistulae Familiares_, _De
Oratore_, and _Opera Philosophica_, and also of Virgil, so that clearly
some of their books had shown a profit. But the list is entirely made up
of Latin classics, "profane" and theological, and by March, 1472,
printing had been introduced into at least ten other Italian cities
(Venice, Foligno, Trevi, Ferrara, Milan, Florence, Treviso, Bologna,
Naples, and Savigliano), and in most, if not all of these, the one idea
of the first printers was to produce as many Latin classics as possible,
as though no other firm in Italy were doing the same thing. Unable to
obtain help from the Pope, Sweynheym and Pannartz dissolved partnership,
the former devoting himself to engraving maps for an edition of
Ptolemy's _Geographia_, which he did not live to see (it was printed by
Arnold Bucking in 1478), while Pannartz resumed business on a somewhat
smaller scale on his own account, and died in 1476.
At Venice, the first printer, Johann of Speier, seems to have had some
foreboding of what might happen, and thoughtfully protected himself
against competition by procuring from the Senate an exclusive privilege
for printing at Venice during the space of five years. This might
seriously have retarded the development of the press at Venice. Johann,
however, after printing two editions of Cicero's _Epistulae ad
familiares_ and Pliny's _Historia naturalis_ in 1469, was carried off by
death while working on his fourth book, S. Augustine's _De Ciuitate
Dei_, in 1470, and his brother Wendelin, or Vindelinus, who took over
the business, had no privilege to protect him from competition.
In 1470, the way thus being left clear, a Frenchman, Nicolas Jenson, set
up the second press in Venice, and by the beauty of his fine Roman type
speedily attained a reputation which has lasted to this day. Another
fine printer, Christopher Valdarfer, produced his first book in the same
year. In 1471 three other firms (an Italian priest, Clemente of Padua,
and two Germans, Adam of Ammergau and Franz Renner of Heilbronn) began
publishing, and in 1472 yet seven more (three Germans and four
Italians). But the pace was impossible, and by this time men were
rapidly falling out. As we have seen, Sweynheym and Pannartz, after
their ineffectual attempt to obtain a subsidy from the Pope, dissolved
their partnership at Rome after 1473, and Ulrich Han in 1471 had taken a
moneyed partner, with whose aid he weathered the storm. At Venice
Wendelin, after producing thirty-one books in the previous two years,
reduced his output to six in 1473, and soon after seems to have ceased
to work for himself. Jenson's numbers sank from twenty-eight in 1471-2
to six in 1473-4. Valdarfer gave up after 1471, and is subsequently
found at Milan. Other Venetian printers also dropped out, and only two
new firms began work in 1473.
At Florence after the first printer Bernardo Cennini and his sons had
produced a Virgil in 1471, and Johann Petri of Mainz Boccaccio's
_Philocolo_ and Petrarch's _Trionfi_ in 1472, printing ceased for some
years. Presses started at Foligno, Trevi, and Savigliano came to a
speedy end. At Treviso, where Gerardus Lisa had published four books in
1471, there was, according to Mr. Proctor, a gap from December in that
year till the same month in 1474, though Dr. Copinger quotes one book
each for the intervening years. Only one book was published at Ferrara
in 1473. What happened at Naples is hard to say, since Sixtus
Riessinger, the first printer there, issued many books without dates. At
Bologna trade seems to have been stationary. At Milan, where both
Antonius Larotus in 1471 and Philippus de Lavagna in 1472 had begun with
extreme caution, there was healthy progress, and these two firms
continued issuing editions of the classics, and with the great falling
off of competition may have found it profitable to do so. But of the
reality of the crisis in the Italian book trade in 1472-3, although
little is said of it in histories of printing, there can be no doubt.
When it was over there were symptoms of a similar over-production of
some of the great legal commentaries. But this danger was avoided. There
was a steady increase in the range of the literature published, and the
bourgeois book-buyer was remembered as well as the aristocratic student.
Soon there came a great extension, not only of the home but of the
foreign market, and Italy settled down to supply the world with books, a
task for which Venice, both from its geographical position and its
well-established commercial relations, was peculiarly fitted. But it is
the books printed before 1474 that form the real Italian incunabula. In
the subsequent work within the limits of the fifteenth century Rome took
no very important part. Ulrich Han continued to print till 1478. Joannes
Philippi de Lignamine, Papal Physician and native of Sicily, produced
some exceptionally interesting books between 1470 and 1476, and again in
1481-4, and Georg Lauer, who worked from 1470 to 1481, and completed an
edition of S. Jerome's Letters, left unfinished by Pannartz at the time
of his death, showed himself a good craftsman. The later printers,
especially Stephan Plannck and Eucharius Silber, had some good types,
but produced few notable books, the bulk of the Roman output after 1480
being editions in small quarto of official documents and speeches at the
Papal Court.
To devise any summary description of fifteenth century printing at
Venice is wellnigh impossible. Some 150 firms were at work there; at a
low estimate some four thousand extant books and editions must be
credited to them, and these embraced almost every kind of literature for
which readers could be found in the fifteenth century, and many
varieties of craftsmanship. From a decorative point of view, the firm of
Erhard Ratdolt did exceptionally good work, and it is also remarkable
for specializing mainly on astronomy, mathematics, and history.
Liturgical printing began somewhat late (there seems to have been a
prejudice against printed service books in Italy, and I can remember
none printed at Rome); in the fifteenth century Johann Hammann or Herzog
and Johann Emerich were its chief exponents. Franz Renner produced
chiefly Latin theology, a department much less predominant at Venice
than in Germany. Several firms, e.g. Jacques Le Rouge, Baptista de
Tortis, Andreas Torresanus (father-in-law of Aldus and a very fine
printer), and Georgius Arrivabene devoted themselves like Jenson first
mainly to Latin classics and then to law; others, such as Filippo di
Pietro mingled Latin and Italian classics. Filippo's kinsman, Gabriele
di Pietro, was one of the earliest vernacular printers. Many firms, such
as that of Bonetus Locatellus, who seems to have had a University
connection, and printed all kinds of learned Latin books, despised the
vernacular altogether. The brothers Giovanni and Gregorio dei Gregorii
were perhaps the most prolific and miscellaneous printers in both Latin
and Italian. Johannes Tacuinus, a learned printer towards the end of the
century, is notable for adorning his books with pictorial capitals,
mostly of boys at play. Aldus Manutius will be spoken of in a later
chapter.
While all this activity was displayed at Venice other cities were not
idle. At Milan upwards of eight hundred incunabula were produced,
mostly by its earliest printer, Antonius Zarotus, and two Germans,
Leonhard Pachel and Ulrich Scinzenzeler. Ferrara seems to have been able
to support only one press at a time, and at Florence it was some years
before printing flourished, but in the last quarter of the century many
interesting books were printed there, both learned and vernacular, as to
the illustrations in which much will have to be said later on. Some of
the early Treviso books from the press of Gerard Lisa are distinctly
pretty. Bologna produced about three hundred incunabula. Naples probably
not so many, but of much better quality. Altogether well over ten
thousand Italian incunabula must still be extant, and these were
produced at no fewer than seventy different places, though many of these
were of no typographical importance, and only find their way into
histories of printing from having sheltered a wandering printer for a
few weeks as he was on his way from one large town to another.
In France also the earliest books were addressed to students of the
classics, though they were produced on a much more limited scale. There
the first printers, three Germans, had been invited to set up their
presses at Paris in the Sorbonne by two of its professors, Guillaume
Fichet and Jean Heynlin, of Stein, better known in his own day as
Johannes de Lapide. Between the summer of 1470 and the autumn of 1472
eighteen works were printed at the Sorbonne, mostly of the kind which
would be of use to its students. Among them was Sallust, three works of
Cicero, Virgil's Bucolics and Georgics, the Satires of Juvenal and
Persius, Terence, some text books, the _Speculum Humanae Vitae_ of
Bishop Roderic of Zamora, and the Orations of Fichet's patron, Cardinal
Bessarion. In August, 1472, the Cardinal arrived in France on a
fruitless mission to rouse the king to a crusade against the Turks. He
was rebuffed and ordered to leave France. Fichet accompanied him, and
never returned to Paris. As early as the previous March Heynlin seems to
have been called away, and now the imported German printers, Michael
Freiburger, Ulrich Gering, and Martin Crantz, were left wholly to their
own devices. Thus abandoned they printed four books of a less special
character, for which they sought princely instead of scholarly
patronage, and then in April, 1473, moved from the Sorbonne and set up
for themselves at the sign of the Soleil d'Or in the Rue S. Jacques.
Here they printed still in Latin, but a much more popular class of
books, and soon had to contend with two rival firms, that of Pieter de
Keysere and Johann Stol, and the printers at the sign of the "Soufflet
Vert" or Green Bellows. The finest of the subsequent printers was Jean
Dupre, who used excellent capitals and issued many illustrated books,
but three prolific printers, Antoine Caillaut, Gui Marchand, and Pierre
Levet, along with many dull books issued some very interesting ones.
Towards the end of the century an enterprising publisher, Antoine
Verard, kept many of the Paris printers busy, and Paris became noted
typographically for its fine illustrated editions of the Hours of the
Blessed Virgin, issued by Verard, Dupre, Pigouchet (and his publisher,
Simon Vostre), and Thielman Kerver. But these with the publications of
Verard belong to another chapter.
At Lyon printing was introduced by the enterprise of one of its
citizens, Barthelemi Buyer, who engaged Guillaume Leroy (a native of
Liege) to print for him, and subsequently employed other printers as
well. The first Lyon book was a little volume of popular religious
treatises, containing among other things the _De miseria humanae
conditionis_ of Pope Innocent III. It was completed 17 September, 1473.
Until nearly 1490 the books printed at Lyon were mainly popular in
character with a considerable proportion of French books, many of them
illustrated. From 1490 onwards learned Latin books occur more
frequently, and printing rapidly became as general or miscellaneous as
at Paris itself, although only a single attempt was made,
unsuccessfully, to rival the Paris _Horae_. The two cities between them
probably produced more than three-fourths of the three thousand
incunabula, which at a rough guess may be attributed to French presses,
the share of Paris being about twice as great as that of Lyon. According
to the stereotyped phrase, printing was introduced into no fewer than
thirty-seven other French towns during the fifteenth century, but as a
rule the printers were but birds of passage, and it was only at Poitiers
(1479) and Rouen (1487) that it took root and flourished continuously,
though on but a small scale. In other towns the struggle to maintain a
press continued for several years, as at Toulouse, or was abandoned
after the fulfilment of a single commission.
In Holland the first books which bear the name of their printer and date
and place of imprint are those produced at Utrecht by Nicolaus Ketelaer
and Gerardus Leempt, who began work in 1473. It is tolerably certain,
however, that some of the so-called "Costeriana" (see Chap. II) preceded
this date, and they are at least as likely to have been printed at
Haarlem as at Utrecht, there being no decisive evidence in favour of
either place. No namable printer appears at Haarlem until the end of
1483, when Jacob Bellaert set up a short-lived press there. For some
seven years (1477-84) excellent work was done at Gouda by Gerard Leeu,
who then moved to Antwerp. At Delft, where a fine Bible was printed by
Jacob Jacobszoen and Mauricius Yemantszoen in 1477, printing was kept up
continuously by Jacobszoen, Christian Snellaert, and Hendrik Eckert till
the end of the century, though there seems to have been only work enough
for one firm at a time. At Zwolle, Pieter van Os, who began work in
1479, was able to maintain himself, with a brief interval about 1482,
till past the magic date 1500. Lastly, at Deventer, where Richardus
Pafraet started in the same year, an output was speedily attained
greater than in any other Dutch town, and for the latter years of the
century a rival firm, that of Jacobus de Breda, shared Pafraet's
prosperity. The great majority of the Deventer books, however, belong
to the minor literature of ecclesiasticism and education, and are far
from exciting.
The beginnings of printing are much more interesting in the Southern
Netherlands, which correspond roughly to what we now call Belgium. Here
also the first positive date is 1473, the year in which Johann of
Paderborn in Westphalia, best known to English collectors as John of
Westphalia, printed three books at Alost. A fourth followed in May,
1474, but by the following December John had removed to Louvain, a
University town, where he remained doing excellent and abundant work
till nearly the end of the century. At Louvain he had found another
printer, Jan Veldener, already in the field, and seems to have hustled
him away not very honourably. Veldener, however, was not ruined, but is
subsequently found at Utrecht and Kuilenburg, and again for a short time
at Louvain.
At Bruges the first printers were Colard Mansion and William Caxton,
names well known to English book-lovers, though not all the labours of
Mr. William Blades and Mr. Gordon Duff have made it quite clear which of
the two was the leader. Only two English books were printed, the
_Recuyell of the Histories of Troy_ and _The Game and Play of the
Chess_, when Caxton returned to England and set up his presses in the
Almonry at Westminster. Whether he had any pecuniary interest in the
French _Recueil_ and the _Quatre Dernieres Choses_, and whether
printings at Bruges began with the _Recuyell_, or, as Mr. Proctor
contended, with the French Boccaccio _De la ruine des nobles hommes et
femmes_ of 1476, are points of controversy. From 1477 till his flight
from Bruges to avoid arrest for debt in 1484, Mansion worked steadily by
himself, and the total output of his press amounts to twenty-five French
works and two in Latin.
At Brussels the Brothers of the Common Life, who worked also as printers
in other places, published numerous popular Latin works between 1476
and 1487, about which time their press seems to have stopped. But the
removal of Gerard Leeu's business from Gouda to Antwerp in 1484 soon
gave that town a typographical importance which (except for a few years
at the end of the century) it long maintained.
The true incunabula of the Netherlands are, of course, the "Costeriana."
Whatever view we may take of their date and birthplace, they were
undoubtedly home products, with a strongly marked individuality.
Ketelaer and Leempt, however, at Utrecht, Veldener at Louvain and
elsewhere, Caxton and Mansion at Bruges, were real pioneers. In a sense
this is true also of John of Westphalia and Gerard Leeu, notably of the
former, who had learnt his art in Italy and by the type which he had
brought thence raised the standard of printing in his new home. It is,
indeed, almost exclusively at Deventer that we get the dull commercial
work which has nothing primitive or individual about it, and thus,
perhaps because their grand total is so much smaller than in the case of
Germany, Italy, or even France, the special interest of incunabula
attaches to rather a high proportion of the early books of the
Netherlands.
If this be true of the Netherlands, it is even truer of the two
countries with which we have still to deal in this rapid survey, Spain
and England. Of Spanish incunabula about seven hundred are now
registered; of English, three hundred is a fairly liberal estimate of
the grand total still extant. Within the limits of the fifteenth century
neither country reached the purely mechanical stage of book production
to which so many German and Italian books belong after about 1485. In
England, indeed, this stage was hardly reached until the general
downfall of good printing towards the end of the sixteenth century.
The first book printed in Spain was a thin volume of poems in honour of
the Blessed Virgin, written by Bernardo Fenollar and others on the
occasion of a congress held at Valentia in March, 1474. It offers no
information itself on any bibliographical point, but it was presumably
printed not long after the congress, at Valentia where the congress was
held, and by Lambertus Palmart (or Palmaert), who on 18 August, 1477,
completed there the third part of the _Summa_ of S. Thomas Aquinas and
duly described it as "impressa Valentie per magistrum Lambertum Palmart
Alemanum, anno M.CCCC.LXXVII, die vero xviii. mensis Augusti." Palmart
is supposed to have been a Fleming (a nationality to which the
description _Alemannus_ is often applied), but nothing is known of him.
He printed a work called _Comprehensorium_ and the _Bellum Jugurthinum_
of Sallust in February and July, 1475, without putting his name to them,
and these with the Fenollar and other anonymous books now attributed to
him are in roman type. In 1478 he completed a Catalan Bible in
conjunction with a native Spaniard, Alonzo Fernandez de Cordoba, and
thereafter worked by himself until 1490, using gothic types in these
later books. Seven other firms worked at Valentia during the fifteenth
century, but none of these attained much importance.
Another Fleming, of the name of Matthew or Matthaeus, printed the
_Manipulus Curatorum_ of Guido de Monte Rotherii at Saragossa in
October, 1475, and five other presses were established there before
1500, that of Paul Hurus being the most prolific. At Tortosa a single
book (the _Rudimenta Grammaticae_ of Perottus) was printed by Nicolaus
Spindeler and Pedro Brun early in 1477, and in August of the same year
Antonio Martinez, Alonso del Puerto, and Bartolome Segura completed the
first fully dated book (the _Sacramental_ of Sanchez de Vercial) at
Seville, where printing subsequently throve as much as anywhere in
Spain. The following year Spindeler and Brun, having moved from Tortosa,
introduced printing into Barcelona, a date MCCCCLXVIII in a treatise by
Bartholomaeus Mates, _Pro condendis orationibus_, being obviously a
misprint, though to what it should be corrected cannot positively be
shown.[26]
At Salamanca printing was introduced as early as 1481, and continued
more actively after 1492, mainly for the production of educational
works. At Burgos Friedrich Biel, who had been trained under Michael
Wenssler at Basel, began printing in 1485, and a native of the place,
Juan de Burgos, brought out his first book in 1490, both of these firms
doing excellent work. Altogether, twenty-four towns and places in Spain
possessed presses during the fifteenth century, but in many cases only
for a short time.
The outline of the story of printing in England during the fifteenth
century may be very quickly sketched, fuller treatment being reserved
for a later chapter. At Michaelmas, 1476, Caxton rented premises in the
Almonry from the Abbot of Westminster, and here he stayed till his death
in 1491, printing, as far as we know, about a hundred books and
documents. In 1478 a press was set up at Oxford, presumably by Theodoric
Rood of Cologne, whose name, however, does not appear in any book until
1481. By 1485 Rood had been joined by an English stationer, Thomas
Hunte, but in 1486 or the following year the press was closed after
printing, as far as we know, only seventeen books.
The few books printed at Oxford were all more or less scholastic in
character, and six out of eight works printed by Caxton's second rival
(apparently a friendly one), the Schoolmaster-Printer at St. Albans,
belonged to the same class, his two more popular books being Caxton's
_Chronicles of England,_ with a new appendix, and the famous _Book of
St. Albans_. Of these eight works, the earliest bearing a date was
issued in 1480, the latest in 1486.
A more formidable competitor to Caxton than either the Oxford or the St.
Albans printer began work in the City of London in 1480. This was John
Lettou, i.e. John the Lithuanian, who, as Mr. Gordon Duff notes, used
type identical save in a single letter with a fount used at Rome in 1478
by Johann Bulle of Bremen. Lettou appears to have been financed in the
first instance by a Londoner, William Wilcock. In 1482 he was joined by
William Machlinia (presumably a native of Malines), and after five law
books had been printed in partnership, Lettou dropped out, and Machlinia
continued working by himself, possibly until as late as 1490 or 1491,
when his stock seems to have been taken over by Richard Pynson, a
Norman, from Rouen. On Caxton's death in 1491 his business passed into
the hands of his foreman, Wynkyn de Worde, a native of Lorraine. The
only other press started in the fifteenth century was that of Julyan
Notary, who worked at first with two partners, I.B. and I.H. Of these
I.B. was certainly Jean Barbier, and I.H. probably Jean Huvin of Rouen.
We have no information as to the nationality of Notary, but if, as seems
probable, he was a Frenchman, printing in England for some twenty years
after Caxton's death was wholly in the hands of foreigners.
* * * * *
Meagre and bare of details as is this sketch of the beginnings of
printing in the chief countries of Europe, it should yet suffice to
prove that the purely arbitrary date 1500 and the slang word
_incunabula_, used to invest all fifteenth century impressions with a
mystic value, are misleading nuisances. By the time that printing
reached England it was beginning to pass into its commercial stage in
Germany and Italy. In both of these countries, and in a less degree in
France, scores and hundreds of books were printed during the last
fifteen years of the century which have little more connection with the
invention of printing, or the story of its diffusion, than English or
Spanish books a century later. From the point of view of the history of
literature and thought there is much to be gained from the collection in
large libraries of all books printed before 1501. From the point of view
of the history of printing every decade of book-production has its
interest, and the decade 1490 to 1500 among the rest. Incidentally it
may be noted that in respect of book-illustration this particular decade
in Italy is one of exceptional interest. But books of the third
generation of German or Italian printers, men like Flach, for instance,
at Strassburg, or Plannck at Rome, should not be collected under the
idea that they are in any true sense of the word incunabula.
What constitutes a true incunable cannot be defined in a sentence. We
must consider the country or city as well as the book, the individual
man as well as the art of which he was perhaps a belated exponent. The
same piece of printing may have much more value and interest if we can
prove that it was produced in one place rather than another. After the
publication of his _Index_, Mr. Proctor satisfied himself that some
anonymous books in roman type which he had classed as the work of an
unidentified press at Naples were really among the earliest specimens of
Palmart's typography in Spain, and one does not need to be a Spaniard to
appreciate the distinction thus added to them. If sentiment is to count
for anything we must admit the interest of the first books printed in
any country which possesses an important history and literature--if only
because we may legitimately be curious to know on what books a printer,
with all the extant literature to choose from, ventured his capital as
likely in that particular country and time to bring him the quickest and
most profitable return. That the first large book in Germany was a
Bible, the first books in Italy Latin classics, the first produced for
the English market one that we must call an historical romance, cannot
be regarded as merely insignificant. Nor are the differences in the
types and appearance of the page unimportant, for these also help to
illustrate national characteristics.
If this is true of the early books printed in any country, it is also
true in only slightly less degree of those which first appeared in any
great city which afterwards became a centre of printing. Strassburg,
Cologne, and Nuremberg, Rome, Venice, and Florence, Paris and Lyon,
Antwerp and London (if we may be permitted for once to ignore the
separate existence of Westminster), each has its own individuality, and
in each case it is interesting to see with what wares, and in what form,
the first printers endeavoured to open its purse-strings. But when we
come to towns and townlets some distinction seems needed. I may be
misled by secret sympathy with that often scholarly, too often
impecunious figure, the local antiquary. To him the first book printed
in his native townlet, though by a printer merely stopping on his way
between one great city and another, must needs be of interest, and it is
hard that its price should be forced beyond his reach by the competition
between dealers keen to do business with a rich collector to whom the
book will have none of the fragrance it would possess for him.
Typographical itinerancy, this printing by the roadside, as we may
almost call it, must needs be illustrated in great collections, like any
other habit of the early printers. But the ordinary private collector
can surely dispense with buying books because they have been printed in
places which have no associations for him, of which perhaps he has never
heard.
As for the individual man, if we would keep any oases green in what may
easily become a sandy desert, we must surely treasure every trace of his
personality. One large element in the charm of incunabula is the human
interest of difficulties overcome, and wherever a craftsman began work
by cutting a distinctive type to suit the calligraphic fashion of the
neighbourhood, at whatever date he started, his books will still have
some interest. When he becomes articulate and tells us of his
difficulties, or boasts of how they have been overcome, we may value his
work still higher. As the first book printed at Florence, the Commentary
of Servius on Virgil needs no added attraction, and yet how much its
charm is enhanced by its printers' addresses to the reader. Here is the
second of them roughly Englished:
To the Reader. Bernardino Cennini, by universal allowance a most
excellent goldsmith, and Domenico his son, a youth of very good
ability, have been the printers. Pietro, son of the aforesaid
Bernardo, has acted as corrector, and has made a collation with many
very ancient copies. His first anxiety was that nothing by another
hand should be ascribed to Servius, that nothing which very old copies
showed to be the work of Honoratus should be cut down or omitted.
Since it pleases many readers to insert Greek words with their own
hand, and in their own fashion, and these in ancient codices are very
few, and the accents are very difficult to mark in printing he
determined that spaces should be left for the purpose. But since
nothing of man's making is perfect, it must needs be accounted enough
if these books (as we earnestly hope) are found exceptionally correct.
The work was finished at Florence on October 5, 1472.
It is impossible to read a colophon such as this without feeling
ourselves in the very atmosphere of the printing house, with the various
members of the printer's family at work around us. Blank spaces are
found in many early books where Greek quotations occurred in the
manuscripts from which they were printed. But it was not every printer
who took so much trouble as Cennini to justify the omission.
As many as twenty-one years later, when printing in the great towns was
becoming merely mechanical, we find the same personal note in a little
grammar-book printed at Acqui. Here the colophon tells us:
The Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu (God be praised!) comes to a
happy end. It has been printed amid enough inconveniences, since of
several things belonging to this art the printer, in making a
beginning with it, could obtain no proper supply, owing to the plague
raging at Genoa, Asti and elsewhere. Now this same work has been
corrected by the prior Venturinus, a distinguished grammarian, and
that so diligently that whereas previously the Doctrinale in many
places seemed by the fault of booksellers too little corrected, now by
the application of his care and diligence it will reach men's hands in
the most correct form possible. After this date books will be printed
in type of another kind, and elegantly, I trow; for both artificers
and a sufficiency of other things of which hitherto the putter forth
has been in need he now possesses by the gift of God, Who disposes all
things according to the judgement of His will.
Late as he appeared and small as was the town at which he produced his
one book--his hopes and promises as to others seem to have come to
naught--this man had the true pioneer spirit, and deserves to be
remembered for it.
Of a different kind, but no less, is the interest in what is perhaps my
own favourite colophon, that recording the death of Gerard Leeu at
Antwerp, while engaged in printing an edition of _The Chronicles of
England_ for the English market.
Here ben endyd the Cronycles of the Reame of Englond, with their
apperteignaunces. Enprentyd in the Duchy of Braband in the towne of
Andewarpe In the yere of our Lord M.cccc.xciij. By maistir Gerard de
leew a man of grete wysedom in all maner of kunnyng: whych nowe is
come from lyfe unto the deth, which is grete harme for many [a] poure
man. On whos sowle God almyghty for hys hygh grace haue mercy. Amen.
Leeu had been killed accidentally by one of his workmen in the course of
a dispute, and this testimonial to him in the colophon, which reads as
if the compositor had slipped it in of his own accord, is very gracious
and touching in its simplicity.
Just as the possession of a personal colophon brings a book within a
circle of interest to which it otherwise would not have approached, so
we may justly value a piece of printing all the more if it chances,
through any accident, to throw light on the printer's methods. I have
felt a peculiar affection for an edition of Valerius Maximus, printed by
Schoeffer in 1471, ever since I discovered that a change in the form of
the punctuation at certain points of the book makes it possible to work
out the number of presses on which it was being printed, the order in
which the sheets were being set up, and how quickly the type of the
worked pages was distributed. The slowness of the presswork in the
simple form of press at first used obliged the printers to keep several
presses, sometimes as many as six, occupied with different sections of
the same book, and the trouble they were given to make the end of one
section join neatly to the beginning of the next has left many traces.
Any book which thus lets us into the secrets of the early printing
offices possesses in a very high degree the charm which should attach to
an incunable, if that hardly used word is to retain, as it should, any
reference to the infancy of printing. But more will be said as to this
aspect of early books in our next chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Two editions of Boner's _Edelstein_, both illustrated with over
a hundred woodcuts, one dated 14th February, 1461 (copy at
Wolfenbuttel), the other undated (Royal Library, Berlin); _Die
Historij von Joseph, Danielis, Judith, Hester,_ dated in rhyming
verse 1462 "nat lang nach Sand Walpurgentag" (Rylands Library and
Bibliotheque Nationale); the _Belial seu Consolatio peccatorum_ of
Jacobus de Theramo (Rylands and Germanisches Museum, Nuremberg); two
issues of a German _Biblia Pauperum_ with thirty-four woodcuts (both
at the Bibliotheque Nationale, the first also at Rylands and
Wolfenbuttel); the same work in Latin (Rylands); lastly two editions
of a poem called _Rechtstreit des Menschen mit dem Tode_ (both at
Wolfenbuttel, the second also at the Bibliotheque Nationale).
[26] In its colophon the book is said to have been "a docto viro
Bertolommeo Mates conditus et per P. Johannem Matoses Christi
ministrum presbiterumque castigatus et emendatus sub impensis
Guillermi ros et mira arte impressa per Johannem Gherlinc alamanum."
Gherlinc is only heard of again in 1494, and then not at Barcelona.