Part 15

The other antitype, on the right, represents an Angel addressing St. John, having beneath it this verse:

‹f›Sponsus amat sponsam,‹/f› ‹f›Christus nimis et speciosam.‹/f›

And Christ, the bridegroom, far above Conception, the fair bride doth love.

And in the bottom space is this verse:

Tunc gaudent anime sibi quando bonum datur omne.

Then souls rejoice with great delight, When given is the diadem bright.

The first edition of the book contains forty engravings on wood, printed on one side only of the leaf. The prints face each other; two pages of illustrations are always followed by two pages of blank paper. The book was put together in sections of two leaves, a method of making a book contrary to prevailing usage. Manuscript books of that period were usually made up in sections of four double leaves, which were nested together in one section. This deviation from established usage was, apparently, caused through the error of the engraver, who cut, on the same block, the two pages which faced each other. It was, consequently, impossible to nest [p203] the leaves, or make them up in thick sections. Cracks in the wood block, which have made open seams or white gaps in the print, and which extend in straight lines over both pages, show conclusively that two pages were engraved on one block.

The book is without folios or paging figures to guide the reader, and also without signatures to guide the binder. The proper order of the pages was made manifest by engraving on each page a letter of the alphabet. Pages 1 to 20 are marked in alphabetical order from _a_ to _v;_ pages 21 to 40 have the same letters, but with a dot before and after each, _.a._ to _.v._

The paper of the fifteen known copies of this edition of the book is of variable quality. Of itself, this variability is not sufficient indication that the paper was made by different makers, and printed at different times, but the different designs of the paper-marks lead directly to such a conclusion. Some copies have but one kind of paper-mark; others have two and three kinds; taking all copies together, there are at least fourteen distinct paper-marks. If each decided variation of the same design could be considered the mark of a different maker, the number could be doubled.

That the substance used for these engravings was wood, is clearly indicated by the occasional feathering or flatting out of border-lines, which, when crushed, show the fibres of wood in the impression. It seems that the engravings were cut on flat plates or blocks, that had been sawed or split on a line parallel with the fibres.

The ink is of a dull or rusty-brown color; on some pages light, and on others of darker tint, rarely ever of uniform tint on the same page. It has the appearance of a paste or a thick water color. This unevenness in color was produced by some imperfect method of inking the block—possibly by a hard-faced brush which shed color irregularly.

The shining appearance of the backs of the prints, in all places where the raised lines of the wood-cut have indented the paper, has been considered as sufficient evidence that the impressions were taken, not by a press, but by means of a [p204] frotton, or by friction, or by rubbing in some form or other. One writer of rare simplicity has hazarded the opinion that the back of the paper, or the frotton, may have been soaped to facilitate the work. But these methods of printing books are imaginary and entirely impracticable. The shining appearance on the back of the paper does not prove that the prints were made by friction. The gloss could have been produced by any press which gave a hard impression against a harder surface. It could have been produced by rubbing or smoothing down with a burnisher the indentations of the lines on the back of the paper, as is sometimes done by pressmen of this day when they take too hard an impression. Some copies of the book show the results of hard impression. Two of the four copies of the _Bible of the Poor_ in the possession of the British Museum present lines deeply sunk in the paper, as if they had been printed from a press. Jackson, a practical engraver on wood, who had large experience in proving wood-cuts, has unwillingly accepted the unauthorized tradition of presswork by friction, but he has candidly stated its difficulties.

“Considering the thickness of the paper on which the block-books are printed—if I may apply this term to them—and the thin-bodied ink which has been used, I am at a loss to conceive how the early wood engravers have contrived to take off their impressions so correctly; for in all the block-books which I have seen, where friction has evidently been the means employed to obtain the impression, I have noticed only two subjects in which the lines appear double in consequence of the shifting of the paper. From the want of body in the ink, which appears in the _Apocalypse_ to have been little more than water color, it is not likely that the paper could be used in a damp state, otherwise the ink would run or spread; and even if this did not exist, the paper in a damp state could not have borne the excessive rubbing which it appears to have received in order to obtain the impression. Even with such printer’s ink as is used in the present day—which, being tenacious, renders the paper in taking an impression by means of friction, much less liable to slip or shift—it would be difficult to obtain clear impressions on thick paper from blocks the size of those which form each page of the _Apocalypse_, or the _History of the Virgin_. ... A block containing only two pages [of the _History of the Virgin_, a block of smaller size than that used for the [p205] _Bible of the Poor_] would be about seventeen inches by ten, allowing for inner margins; and to obtain clear impressions from it by means of friction, on dry thick paper, and with mere water color ink, would be a task of such difficulty that I cannot conceive how it could be performed. No traces of points, by which the paper might be kept steady on the block, are perceptible; and I unhesitatingly assert, that no wood engraver of the present day could, by means of friction, take clear impressions from such a block on equally thick paper, and using mere distemper, instead of printer’s ink. As the impressions in the _History of the Virgin_ have unquestionably been taken by means of friction, it is evident to me that if the blocks were of the size that Mr. Ottley supposes, the old wood engravers, who did not use a press, must have resorted to some contrivance to keep the paper steady with which we are unacquainted.”[109]

This last hypothesis of an imaginary contrivance that kept the paper steady, is as untenable as the proposition that blocks were unquestionably printed by friction. The feat which is impossible now was impossible then. There is nothing in the appearance of the presswork of the block-books really inconsistent with the theory, that the books were printed under a rude press which was deficient in many attachments that are needed by the printer. The peculiar appearance of the presswork of this and of other block-books will be most satisfactorily explained by the hypothesis that they were printed on a press. The hypothesis of printing by friction is a conjecture for which there is no good authority. It seems to have been invented for a purpose. If the early chroniclers of printing had not been so anxious to magnify the merits of the early typographers, and to belittle the printers of block-books, we should have heard nothing of printing by friction.

The designs of the first edition have more merit than those of the earlier manuscript copies—more than those of subsequent editions printed by imitators. Neither the rudeness of the engravings, nor the flagrant anachronisms in architecture and in the costumes of the figures, are gross enough to conceal the ability of the designer, whose skill in grouping figures is manifest on almost every page. [p206]

The illustrations have merit, but they are in the realistic and commonplace style of the designers of Germany and of Flanders during the fifteenth century. The want of ideality is painful. The designer certainly had no thought of irreverence, but many of the designs are really ludicrous. Some of the anachronisms are: Gideon arrayed in plate armor, with medieval helmet and visor and Turkish scimitar; David and Solomon in rakish, wide-brimmed hats bearing high conical crowns; the translation of Elijah in a four-wheeled vehicle resembling the modern farmer’s hay-wagon. Slouched hats, puffed doublets, tight-legged breeches and pointed shoes are seen in the apparel of the Israelites who are not represented as priests or soldiers. Some houses have Italian towers and some have Moorish minarets, but in none of the pictures is there an exhibition of pointed Gothic architecture. The old Dutch stair-like gable is often delineated, and so is the round arch and latticed window of the Flemish house of the fourteenth century. With all its absurdities, this edition of the _Bible of the Poor_ commanded the respectful attention of great artists like Albert Durer and Lucas von Leyden, who did not scruple to appropriate many of its designs.

One of the most puzzling peculiarities of the first edition of the _Bible of the Poor_ is the dissimilarity of the copies. In some copies the dissimilarity is in the details of the frame-work; in others, it is in the foliage of trees, but it is, for the most part, confined to a few immaterial points. These differences seem to warrant the opinion stated by Sotheby that there were six distinct editions, each printed from a separate set of blocks; but this opinion cannot be reasonably defended. In all important features the copies are alike. The pages of the so-called different editions have the marks, even in little blemishes, of impressions from the same block—a uniformity which could not have been produced if each block had been re-engraved for each new edition. Why the various copies of the book should be alike in important, and unlike in minor features, cannot be explained. It has been suggested that the [p207] dissimilarities are the evidences of accident and repair; that when the block was injured, it was plugged, as is frequently done with wood-cuts in our own day, and the newly inserted plug was re-engraved with a new design. The explanation is not plausible. The differences generally appear in the same relative position on every page, and there are too many of them to be attributed to accident; they seem to have been made for some unknown purpose. Irregularities of like nature have been noticed in copies of the typographic books of the fifteenth century which are known to be of the same edition.

We do not certainly know when and where these blocks were engraved, but we do know when they were destroyed. Two books, published by Peter Van Os of Zwoll, in Holland, in 1488 and 1489, contain seventy-seven engravings on wood which were certainly cut from the blocks that had been used to print the original edition of the _Bible of the Poor_. To get the little cuts he needed to illustrate texts of movable type, Van Os must have partly destroyed the original blocks. In this act of destruction, we have a fact and a date which give a clue to the origin of the book. Copies of the first edition in folio form must have been printed before 1488. At this date, and perhaps for some time before, the blocks in folio form had no mercantile value; there was no longer any demand for the book in the neighborhood in which it had been made. That the country in which this first edition was printed and sold was Holland, seems probable when we find that the blocks were used for the last time, and in a mutilated form, in a town of Holland. This opinion is strengthened by the facts that the _Bible of the Poor_ in folio form was then, and afterward, a salable book in Germany and in other countries, but it was not subsequently reprinted in the Netherlands in any form. The Dutch and Flemish architectural features in the designs, and the legends which attribute the work to Dutch engravers and printers, are of themselves unsatisfactory evidences of the origin of the book; but they cannot be entirely overlooked. They lead to the conclusion that the book was printed in [p208] Holland, but they do not fix the date of printing, which may have been as early as the year 1425, or as late as 1450.[110]

The illustration on the following page is a fac-simile, but reduced in size, of the first page of the edition published in the year 1470, at Nordlingen, by Walther and Hurning. The panel in the centre of this fac-simile represents the Annunciation; on the left is the Temptation of Eve; on the right is Gideon with the Fleece. The busts at the top are those of Isaiah and David; at the foot, Hezekiah and Jeremiah. This edition, like the one previously noticed, was printed in rusty brown ink upon one side of the paper. The adherence of the printers to a rough method of printing seems strange when we consider that typographic books, printed with black ink and on both sides of the paper, were then known and sold in every part of civilized Europe. Walther and Hurning were, probably, printers of cards and images who tried to compete with typography.[111] Incompetent to practise the new art, and unable to make fine books, they made a German translation of the _Bible of the Poor_, and tried to sell it to German people. The Nordlingen edition is an obvious imitation of the Latin edition previously described, but it is a very feeble imitation. The designer was incompetent to his task, and the engraver was clumsy. The workmanship of this book is one of many [p210] evidences which might be offered to prove that coarseness of engraving in undated block-books is by no means proof of their greater age. The facts point the other way. The block-books which contain engravings of high merit are, as a rule, the oldest; those made in the third or fourth quarter of the fifteenth century show decided decline in skill. Mean as this book is, it does not fully show the degradation that printing subsequently suffered from the hands of unskillful engravers.

THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN.

This is the name of an early block-book almost as famous as the _Bible of the Poor_, and of which there are at least six distinct xylographic editions. Some of them have fifty, and others have forty-eight leaves, printed upon one side only of the leaf. The dissimilarities in the designs and the engraving of these editions are decided and unmistakable: they are, no doubt, impressions from different suites of blocks, and each edition may be regarded as the work of a different printer.

As a literary production, the _Apocalypse_ has small merit. It is not, as might be supposed, the text or an abridgment of the _Book of Revelation_. It is, in fact, only a book of pictures, and these pictures in many points border very closely on the ridiculous. One cannot shut his eyes to the ludicrous points, but neither can he overlook the fact that the designs of the book are not the work of an ignorant artist. Rudely as they have been cut, and badly as they were printed, there is strong character in the faces, and much artistic skill in the grouping of the figures. The designs are vigorous, but they are unlike the works of Van Eyck, or of the German artists of the period. There is nothing in the costumes or architecture which can be rated as decidedly German or Dutch. Chatto says the designs were probably intended to represent Mahomet as the Antichrist of the _Book of Revelation_, and that they may have been made by an exiled Byzantine artist who had been driven out of Constantinople after the taking of that city by the Turks in 1453. But this conjecture is not [p211] approved by careful bibliographers. It is generally supposed that the designs are of an earlier period. Maittaire, who says that it is the oldest[112] of all block-books, calls attention to the singular simplicity of the engraving, which is in almost plain outline. In this particular the _Apocalypse_ is much inferior to the _Bible of the Poor_, for we see no attempt to give appearance of roundness to the limbs by curved shading lines, nor are there proper marks to indicate the shadows and folds in a dress. But the ruder workmanship of the engraver is more clearly shown in the letters. It may be that they were badly drawn upon the block, but it is plain that the engraver has frequently broken connecting lines. Bad presswork and bad ink have materially aggravated the fault; as printed, the lines of the engraver appear thicker than they were cut.

Each page has two illustrations with explanatory legends. Some of these illustrations represent the visions of St. John, but the designer has drawn them with the same disregard of time and place which may be noticed in the wood-cuts of the _Bible of the Poor._ The architecture is that of Germany in the fourteenth century; the men wear breeches and coats, conical, flat-topped and broad-brimmed hats; the soldiers are in chain or in plate armor, with the helmets and battle-axes of the middle ages. Nor do the improprieties stop here: many of the illustrations represent events in the life of the apostle which the artist did not find in the _New Testament._

The illustration on page 213, which is a reduced copy of the first page in one edition of the _Apocalypse_, seems to have been derived from the fabulous life of St. John, supposed to have been written by Abdias, bishop of Babylon. Drusiana, a [p212] married lady of Ephesus, and one of the many converts of St. John, is an important personage in this fabulous life and in the illustration annexed. In the upper picture, St. John is represented as preaching to a magnate, whose robe or mantle is held by two attendants. Drusiana stands behind them. This picture is described in the legend:

‹f›Conversi ab idolis per predicacionem beati Johannis Drusiana et cetera.‹/f›

Through the preaching of St. John, I have turned from idols Drusiana and others.

In the lower picture, St. John is represented as baptizing Drusiana in the Christian temple of Ephesus. Drusiana is judiciously abbreviated to suit the size of the baptismal font. Six armed men are before the barred door, endeavoring, by violence, to gain entrance, or to witness the ceremony. The picture is explained by the words:

‹f›Sts Johannes baptisans Drusiana.‹/f›

‹f›Cultores ydolorum explorantes facta ejus.‹/f›

St. John baptizing Drusiana.

The worshipers of idols watching his [St. John’s] proceedings.

The edition of the _Apocalypse_ named by Heineken as the first was planned by a practical book-maker, and was made up in sections of eight double leaves. The first and last pages of each section were probably engraved together on one block. They were certainly printed together by the following plan:

1—16 3—14 5—12 7—10 2—15 4—13 6—11 8—9

Page 1 was engraved on the right, and page 16 on the left end of the block. Page 2 was on the left, and 15 on the right. This alternation was maintained on all sheets of the section.[113] The printed sheets, 1, 3, 5 and 7 were folded with the printed work on the inside; while sheets 2, 4, 6 and 8 were folded with the printed work on the outside. When the sheets were properly collected, two printed pages faced each other, and were followed by two pages of blanks. This method of making [p214] up the book must have given the printer and the binder a great deal of trouble, but it was an efficient method, and the only one that should have been employed.

In most editions of the book, the ink is of the same rusty brown color that has been observed in the _Bible of the Poor_. In some copies it is almost gray; in others, nearly black. The first edition has engravings of the greatest merit, but it is badly printed. The paper-mark is a bunch of grapes, similar in design to that of a print in the collection of M. Weigel, entitled _The Adoration of the Three Kings_, which, it is claimed, was printed about the year 1425. But paper-marks are misleading evidences. We do not certainly know the date nor the country in which any edition of the book was printed. German bibliographers say that it was printed in Southern Germany; Dutch bibliographers say that it was printed in the Netherlands, probably by Coster of Haarlem; but all evidences that have been adduced to establish a certain date for the earlier editions of the book, or to prove that they were done at any time or by any printer, are unsatisfactory. Some copies of the book are interleaved with manuscript explanations, which are sometimes in the Dutch, and sometimes in the German language. The greater part of the copies have been found in Germany, and it is the opinion of the most eminent bibliographers that the first edition of the book, and most of the editions, were printed in Germany.

The catalogue of the library of Dr. Kloss contains the following note under the specification of a ragged copy of the _Apocalypse_: “At the end of this volume is a short note, written by Pope Martin V, who occupied the papal chair from 1417 to 1431.” This indirect attestation to the age of the book has never been considered as trustworthy.

Another copy of the book, known as the Spencer copy, is bound up with a copy of the _Bible of the Poor_, and has on the binding an inscription to this effect: “Bound in the year of our Lord 1467 by me, John Reichenbach, in Gyllingen.” The inscription is undoubtedly authentic. [p215]

Dibdin[114] alludes to an English clergyman who said that he was once the owner of one copy each of the _Apocalypse_, the _Bible of the Poor_, and the _Ars Moriendi_, all bound in one volume, on the cover of which was stamped an inscription certifying that “this volume was bound for the curate of the church in 142—.” The last figure the clergyman had forgotten, but he was sure that the book was in its original binding, and that it must have been bound, and consequently printed, before 1430. The testimony is unsatisfactory.

THE CANTICLES.

This is a block-book[115] of sixteen pages, of small folio size. It is one of the few block-books which may be unhesitatingly pronounced as of Netherlandish origin. In general appearance it closely resembles the books previously noticed. The impressions are in brown ink, and on one side of the sheet; there are two illustrations on each page, and the two printed pages face each other; the explanations of the designs are in Latin, and are engraved in scrolls that surround the figures. According to some bibliographers, there are three editions of the book; according to others, the trifling variations which have been seized upon to justify the existence of a second and a third edition are only alterations or repairs that have been sustained by the original block. One edition contains at the head of the first page an engraved line, in the low Dutch or Flemish language, which may be translated thus: “This is the Prefiguration of Mary, the Mother of God, which, in Latin, is called _The Canticles_.” Explanatory titles in block-books, and even in the earlier typographic books, are unusual. For this reason the genuineness of the inscription has been challenged, but it has been generally accepted as a true part of the original block. [p216]

The illustration opposite is the fac-simile, reduced in size, of the first page of the _Canticles_. The design is imperfectly explained by the legends in the engraving.