CHAPTER XIII
SPANISH TOWNS
‘Spanish books,’ says Mr. Pollard, ‘are distinguished by the excellence of their initial letters, which are always as plentiful as they are good, the great majority of books after 1485 being fully provided with them.’
Our own experience confirms this statement, but we have found that they are as a rule ornamental rather than historiated, and that there is, moreover, a certain sameness about them.
For this reason we shall only give six specimens of the first variety, but these will serve to give an idea of the initials of this kind usually met with in Spanish books. The C and the M are taken from a volume printed by G. Castilla at Valencia, the E from a _Comento di Eusebio_, printed in 1522 by order of the Reverend Archbishop of Toledo, at the noble town of Salamanca, by Hans Gyffer Aleman di Silgenstat. The origin of the three others, L, P, U, is uncertain, but is referred to further on. The seven smaller initials, or ‘lettrines,’ as they are called, are taken from the Eusebius.
Our historiated specimens are much more numerous. The first set of nine letters is taken from a work of the very greatest rarity, to which Mr. Pollard has called attention, the _Compilacion de Leyes_, printed at Zamora in 1485. This consists of eight different sections and a preface, each of which is preceded by one of the initials.
In the I, which is the first in the book and precedes the preface, there is amongst others a personage with a black rod, probably symbolising the dignity of the Court. On the first page of the text is a P with the King and Queen, Ferdinand and Isabella. ‘The first section of the laws,’ says Mr. Pollard, ‘treating of the _Santa Fé_, has an initial E showing God the Father upholding the Crucified Christ; the second section sets forth the duty of the King to hear causes two days a week, and begins with an L in which he is unpleasantly closely pressed by the litigants. Two knights spurring from the different sides of an S head the laws of chivalry; a canonist and his scholars in A preside over matrimony; money-changers in a D over commerce; while a luckless wretch being hanged in the centre of a T warns evil-doers what they may expect under the criminal law.’
We may add that in the other E there is a representation of what is probably a prison. Unfortunately, the proofs of these initials in the British Museum copy, from which we have reproduced them, are most defective. As Mr. Pollard says, ‘They must have been designed and executed by clever artists whose work is so fine that the printer in most instances has failed to do justice to it.’ In some of these letters there is in parts only the faintest impression of the design, and it has been necessary in this case to have them retouched.
Of our other historiated specimens, some have been reproduced from a collection of initials, some photographed by ourselves, and some are from books no longer at our disposal, and not having been able to refer always to the volumes from which they were taken, we give some of their origins _sous toutes réserves_.
Such is the case with the E and P with Biblical scenes, which, notwithstanding the nature of the subjects, come from a medical book, with another pair of initials with Biblical scenes A and E, the P with a portrait, and the three ornamental letters of the same kind, L, P, U, given above. We can only say that the two first and three last come from one or other of the following books:--
The _Epilogo en Medicina y en cirurgia conveniente a la Salud_, Pampelune, 1495; the _Libro di Medicina llamado_, etc., Cromberger, Seville, 1517; and the _Medicina y cirurgia_ of Burgos, 1495.
The large E with the initials S. M. (St. Mark) is from a book printed by Juan de Varila at Seville; the G by J. Alvera of Coimbra. Of the five others, the S and the T each representing the Almighty, the L with a child on a branched groundwork, and the A and U of the same size with saints, we can only affirm the Spanish origin, without being able to give fuller particulars.
The large P with a scribe at his desk is in the Eusebius of Salamanca already mentioned, the only historiated initial in the four large volumes.
The A with a king kneeling, the N with a doctor exhorting a student, and the T, are from two books printed in the same type, but only one of them has the name of a printer. This, the _Libellus de beneficiis in curia vacantibus_, from which the N is taken, was printed at the most noble and loyal city of Seville by Jacob Cromberger, in 1512. The two others are from a work with a long title beginning _Clarissimi cesarei juris doctor ac in studio Salmantino primarii regentis Didaca de Segura solemnis et elegantissima repetitio_. It is curious as containing a warning on the title-page to dishonest booksellers and printers against infringing the author’s rights: _Cautum est a Serenissimis principibus nostris ut nemo avidus Bibliopola nec quicunque alius audeat imprimere sub poena in privilegio contenta_.
The four letters from an alphabet of Death occur in several books printed in the town of Stella. According to different authorities, Stella corresponds to what is now known as Estella. Deschamps says ‘Voyez Flavonia,’ and under this heading ‘Flavonia (Merula Cosmograph). Compostella (Mariana) Santiago di Compostella. St. Jacques di Compostella, town of Spain in the dependence of La Carogne (Galacie).’ This information is not very explicit, but it is supplemented by the statement that Stella was celebrated amongst other things by a book published in 1693 against the abuse of _escatados_, that is the fashion amongst ladies of cutting their dresses low between the shoulders.
The alphabet of which the E, F, N, and V form part, is a copy not of Holbein’s alphabet of Death, but of the little pictures that illustrate his _Simulachres_ or _faces historiées de la Mort_. Some of them occur in a book entitled _Series totius historiae sacri Evangelii autore Petro Trurozqui Navarro_ (Stellae, Adrian Anverez, 1557), which contains also most of the letters of an alphabet copied from the Biblical series of Froshover of Zurich, mentioned in its place.
Another book without printer’s name, but dated 1555, in which they occur, merits from us a more particular description, inasmuch as it consists almost entirely of initial letters. The title of this typographical curiosity is _Libro Sotilissimo y provechoso para deprender a escrevir y contar el qual lleva la misma orden que lleva un maestro con su discipulo en que estan puestas las cinco reglas mas principales de guarismo y otras cosas sotiles y prouechosas_. Each page of the little volume is surrounded by a woodcut border. On the verso of the title, the notice to the reader begins with the M of the Dance of Death alphabet. The two succeeding pages have little pictures of the saints.
On the verso of the fourth page begins the same Biblical alphabet as in the other volume, the first letter, A, representing Eve and the tempter with the Tree of Knowledge, the alphabet, the letters of which are used as illustrative cuts and not as initials, being continued one letter per page with about five lines of text underneath; B (Abraham), C (Jacob), D (David), E (Absalom), and so on. When the Biblical alphabet is finished, the Dance of Death letters take its place, two on a page with a _cul de lampe_ underneath the border, but no text. They are twenty-three in number, occupying twelve pages, the last being accompanied by the A (Eve and the Tree of Life) of the other series.
Then come the remaining letters of the first alphabet, this time two by two, one under the other, without any text, but with a woodcut border. The last page but one has two little cuts of saints on each side, the last one having four still smaller on the recto which entirely fill it, but nothing on the verso.
In the language of typography the town of Alcala de Henares was styled Complutum, and one of its chief printers was Arnaldus Guilelmus Brocart, who, before coming here, had been established at Pampeluna, where he printed, amongst others, liturgical works.
The two large linear initials are taken from a book of this kind, the _Passionarium cum Lamentationibus Jeremie atque Benedictione cerei Paschalis_, published in 1516. They are the only letters of the size in the volume, the P recurring thrice. There are some smaller initials in the same style, but not of much interest, besides a number of the pen-letters with more or less grotesque profiles in the style, although coarser, of the alphabet of Vérard.