Part 42
[55] Papillon, _Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_, vol. I, p. 89. His description is very prolix and full of irrelevant matter. I have made use of the translation of Ottley, but have abridged it.
[56] This version of the origin of block-printing in Europe has been accepted by many authors, who find in it, or profess to find in it, the evidence that printing was derived from China and was first used in Italy. The wisest judgment passed upon its merits is that of Lanzi, who merely recites the legend, and concludes that “it is safest to say nothing about it.” But Humphreys (_History of the Art of Printing_, second issue, page 209) submits the substance of a letter from a Russian book-collector, who asserts that, in 1861, he had seen, in the possession of a Mr. Herdegen of Nuremberg, seven prints which agreed precisely with those described by Papillon. I find no other description of these prints.
[57] Du Halde, as quoted by Ottley in his _Inquiry into the Origin of Engraving_, p. 9. There is another version placing the date at 170 B. C.
[58] The artist was not restricted by the scant space that allowed him to show only the leg of the pulp-beater on the first page. He does this, and then, with an amusing unconsciousness of its impropriety, proceeds to draw the head and body on the following page, which, in the Japanese book from which this was taken, is the other side of the leaf.
[59] Proteaux, _Practical Guide for the Manufacture of Paper_, Paine’s translation, p. 17. He does not name his authority for fixing the date in the fifth century, but it is not at all improbable that a card-like paper was then made for some other purpose than that of writing.
[60] The phrase _ex rasuris veterum pannorum_, here translated as the scrapings of old rags, has been construed by many authors as linen paper, in opposition to the “compacted refuse material,” which is supposed to be cotton, or, at least, a mixture of cotton and cordage.
[61] See _The American Encyclopedia of Printing_, p. 329, for engravings of microscopic enlargements of some of the fibres used for paper.
[62] Sismondi, _Literature of the South of Europe_, chap. 2.
[63] The jealousy with which trades were then guarded is illustrated by the policy of Stromer. He obliged all his workmen to take an oath that they would not reveal the process, nor practise it on their own account. He had two rollers and eighteen stampers, and was about to put in another roller, when he was opposed by his Italian workmen, who probably thought that this extension of the works would give him a monopoly, and would deprive them of all opportunity of obtaining work from any rival manufacturer. The mutineers were brought before the magistrates and sent to prison. They afterward submitted and returned to work, but were allowed to renounce their oath of obligation.
[64] Paper, whenever or wherever invented, was very sparingly used, and especially in manuscript books, among the French, Germans or English, or linen paper even among the Italians, until near the close of the fourteenth century. Upon the study of the sciences it could as yet have had very little effect. The vast importance of the invention was just beginning to be discovered. It is to be added that the earliest linen paper was of very good manufacture, strong and handsome, though perhaps too much like card for general convenience. _Literature of Europe in the Middle Ages_, chap. I, sec. 65.
[65] Lewis Beaumont, an illiterate French nobleman, made bishop of Durham in 1330, was so inexpert at reading, that he could not read the bulls written for his people at his consecration. The word _metropoliticæ_ occurred: the bishop paused, tried in vain to repeat it, and at last said, “Let us suppose that read.” Then he came to the word _ænigmate_, before which he stopped in a fine wrath, and said, “By St. Lewis, he was no gentleman who wrote this stuff.”. . . . At an entertainment given at Rome, during the same century, by the bishop of Murray, the papal legate from Scotland, the bishop so blundered in his Latin when he was saying grace, that his holiness and the cardinals could not refrain from laughing. The disconcerted bishop testily concluded in Scotch-English, by wishing “all the false carles to the devil,” to which the company, who did not understand the dialect, unwittingly responded, Amen.
[66] At a period when the fine arts may be said to have been almost extinct in Italy and in other parts of the Continent, namely, from the fifth to the end of the eighth century, a style of art had been established and cultivated in Ireland absolutely distinct from that of all other parts of the civilized world. In the sixth and seventh centuries the art of ornamenting manuscripts of the sacred scriptures, and more especially of the gospels, had attained a perfection in Ireland almost marvelous. Westwood, _Palæographia Sacra Pictoria_, Book of Kells, page 1. Westwood further says, that in delicacy of handling, and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palæography offers nothing that can be compared to these early Irish manuscripts, and those that were produced by their pupils in England. Wyatt, in a curt description of the famous Book of Kells, says that he tried to make a copy of some of its ornaments, but broke down in despair. “In one space of about a quarter of an inch superficial, he counted, with a magnifying glass, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a very slender ribbon pattern, formed of white lines, edged by black ones, upon a black ground.” In this book, which he studied for hours, he never detected a false line or an irregular interlacement. Giraldus Cambrensis, a learned Welsh ecclesiastic of the twelfth century, who had carefully examined some of the Irish manuscripts at Kildare, says that the writer of this Book of Kells made the drawings from designs furnished by angels through the intercession of St. Bridget. Timms and Wyatt, _Art of Illumination_, p. 14.
[67] The text as it now appears in authorized copies of the Vulgate is: _Erat autem homo ex Pharisæis, Nicodemus nomine, princeps Judæorum. Hic venit ad Jesum nocte, et dixit ei._ John 1, 3.
[68] Petrarch’s detestation of pointed letters and their admirers is amusing. After complaining of the difficulty he met in getting a fair copy of his writings, he commends the workmanship of a copyist to whom he applied, a penman who wrote Roman letters with great neatness.
His writing is not labored and tortured. It is suitable for our age, and, indeed, for all ages. Young people, always giddy, admirers of frivolity, despisers of useful things, have adopted the fashion of writing in bristling and undecipherable letters, of which accomplishment they are very proud. To me, these medleys and jumbles of angled letters, riding one on another, make nothing but a mess of confusion which the writer himself must read with difficulty. Whoever buys work of this character, buys not a book, but an unreadable farrago of letters.
[69] These boards were sometimes paneled from the inside of the cover. Scaliger tells us that his grandmother had a printed psalter, the cover of which was two fingers thick, containing in an interior panel a silver crucifix. Hansard says that he had seen an old book which contained in a similar recess a human toe, obviously a sacred relic of value.
[70] This is one of the finest existing specimens of antique bookbinding in the National Library at Paris. It is a work of the eleventh century, and encases a book of prayers in a mass of gold, jewels and enamels. The central object is sunk like a framed picture, and represents the Crucifixion, the Virgin and St. John on each side of the cross, and above it the veiled busts of Apollo and Diana; thus exhibiting the influence of the older Byzantine school, which is, indeed, visible throughout the entire design. This subject is executed on a thin sheet of gold, beaten up from behind into high relief, and chased upon its surface. A rich frame of jeweled ornament surrounds this object, portions of the decoration being further enriched with colored enamels; the angles are filled in with enameled emblems of the evangelists; the ground of the whole design enriched by threads and foliations of delicate gold wire. Chambers, _Book of Days_.
[71] Wickliffe says that, in 1380, there were in England many “unable curates that kunnen not the ten commandments, ne read their sauter, ne understand a verse of it.” The author of the _Plowman’s Tale_ accuses the clergy of faults worse than that of ignorance.
[72] Boccaccio, one of the enthusiasts of the fourteenth century in the labor of collecting the forgotten manuscripts of classical authors, has told the following characteristic story about the neglect of libraries and the abuse of books by the constituted conservators of literature. When traveling in Apulia, Boccaccio was induced to visit the convent of Mount Cassino and its then celebrated library. He respectfully addressed a monk who seemed the most approachable, begging that he would open to him the library. But the monk, pointing to a high staircase, said, in a harsh voice, “Go up; the library is open.” Ascending the staircase with gladness, Boccaccio came to a hall, to which there was neither door nor bar to protect the treasures of the library. What was his astonishment when he saw that the windows were obstructed with plants which had germinated in the crevices, and that all the books and all the shelves were thickly covered with dust. With still greater astonishment, he took up book after book, and discovered that in a large number of classical manuscripts entire sections had been torn out. Other books had their broad, white margins cut away to the edges of the text. Full of grief, and with eyes filled with tears, at this sad spectacle of the destruction of the works of wise and famous men, he descended the staircase. Meeting a monk in a cloister, he asked why the books were so mutilated. The monk answered, “This is the work of some of the monks: to earn a few sous, they tear out the leaves and make little psalters, which they sell to the children. With the white margins they make mass-books, which they sell to the women.” Benvenuto da Immola, as quoted by Didot, _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 567.
[73] The word stationer which has been adopted in the English language has lost its first meaning in the French. It is here used to define a trader who sold books and all kinds of writing materials in a station, shop or store, in contradistinction to a class of peddlers or clerks who had no store or place of business, but who acted as couriers or agents between the buyer and maker.
[74] The prices allowed to stationers in 1303 for the use of their copies seem pitiably small. A treatise on the _Gospel of Matthew_, 37 pages, was priced at 1 sol; _Gospel of Mark_, 20 pages, at 17 deniers; _St. Thomas on Metaphysics_, 53 pages, at 3 sols; a treatise on _Canon Law_, 120 pages, at 7 sols; _St. Thomas on the Soul_, 19 pages, at 13 deniers.
[75] If the book was objectionable, it was burned and the author was imprisoned. According to the Roman law, the condemnation of death attached not only to the author and buyer of a proscribed book, but to him who chanced to find it and did not burn it. In 1328, Pope John XXII condemned two authors who had written a book in eight chapters, full of grievous heresies—for they had undertaken to prove that the Emperor Louis of Bavaria had the right to discipline, install or depose the pope at his own pleasure, and that all the property of the church was held by it through the sufferance of the Emperor. Lacroix, _Histoire de l’imprimerie_, p. 26.
[76] Erasmus, caustically, but truthfully, said of this huge book, “No man can carry it about with him, nor even get it in his head.”
[77] The National Library at Paris possesses two manuscript Bibles, of which one volume contains 5,122 pictures. Each picture is explained by two lines, one in Latin and one in French; each line is decorated by an initial and a finial in gold and bright colors. If the cost of each picture with its lines be estimated at sixteen francs (Didot’s valuation), the value of this book would be 82,000 francs, exclusive of the cost of parchment, binding and copying. By the same estimate, the value of the second volume would be 50,000 francs. Didot pertinently asks the question: Where can we find, in the printed work of our day, an equal prodigality in illustration? _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 715.
[78] Abbreviations which deformed written language to such an extent that it is almost undecipherable to modern readers, were once esteemed a positive merit. The habit of making them was continued after printing was invented. In 1475, a printer of Lubec said, in commendation of one of his own books, that he had made free use of abbreviations, to get the whole work in one volume instead of two—a procedure, he thought, that deserved special praise, for he said that the contractions made the book more readable. The modern reader will be of a different opinion. The _Logic of Ockham_, in folio, printed at Paris in 1488, by Clos-Bruneau, contains, among other abbreviations, this bewildering passage:
(The text as printed.)
‹f›Sic hic e fal sm qd ad simplr a e pducible a Deo g a et silr hic a n g a n e pducible a Do.‹/f›
(With words in full.)
Sicut hic est fallacia secundum quid ad simpliciter. A est producibile a Deo. Ergo A est. Et similiter hic. A non est. Ergo A non est producibile a Deo.
In 1498, John Petit, of Paris, published a dictionary which professed to be _A Guide to the Reading of Abbreviations_. It was not published too soon, for the practice of making contractions had increased to such an extent that books with abbreviations were legible only to experts.
[79] From a catalogue still extant, it appears that this library was composed chiefly of romances, legends, histories, and treatises on astrology, geometry and chiromancy. It was then valued at 2,223 French livres, rather more than the same number of pounds sterling. At this time, the price of a cow was about eight shillings, and of a horse about twenty shillings.—It is difficult to ascertain the real value of the money of the middle ages. Coins were frequently clipped to light weight by knavish traders, and were oftener debased at the mint when the royal treasury was low. Sellers everywhere knew that the value of a coin was not in its stamp, but in its quantity of silver, and they altered prices to meet the altered value of coin. But even in its most debased form, the silver coin of the middle ages had a very high purchasing capacity.
[80] He has given an extract from an ecclesiastical account book in which are found the items of expense for the making, binding, and presentation of the manuscript book _Royal Chants_ to Princess Louise of Savoy.
To Jacques Plastel, for sketching the designs for forty-eight pictures, 45 livres; to Jehan Pichou, illuminator, for coloring the designs, 80 livres; to workmen of Jehan Pichou, 50 sols, and for _vin du marché_ (in colloquial English, _treating_ or drink money) with illuminator Pichou, 24 sols; to Jean de Béguines, priest, for engraving the ballads, 12 livres; to Guy-le-Flamenc, for illuminating the large initial letters, 13 livres, 3 sols; for vellum, 3 livres, 12 sols; for the binding, expenses of presentation to Louise of Savoy, and the journey to Amboise, 68 livres, 8 sols. Sum total, 366 livres. Lacroix, _Histoire de l’imprimerie_, p. 47.
[81] Stow says that a Bible “fairly written” was sold in 1274, in England, for 50 marks, equal to about 33 pounds. At this time a laborer’s wages were 1-1/2d. per day, and a sheep could be had for a shilling.—Roger Bacon, who died in 1292, said that he had spent more than 2,000 pounds for books. At this time the annual income of an English curate was £3 6s. 8d.—In 1305, the priory of Bolton gave 30 shillings for _The Book of Sentences_, by Peter Lombard. Hallam says that the accounts of the priory show that the jolly monks bought but three books in forty years. He estimates the equivalent in modern money of this 30 shillings at near 40 pounds.—_The Mirror of History_, a work in four volumes, was sold at Paris in 1332, with great formalities, for 40 livres of Paris.—In 1357, _The Scholastic History_ was sold to the Earl of Salisbury for 100 marks, or about 67 pounds. At this time the pay of the king’s surgeon was fixed at £5 13s. 4d. per annum and a shilling a day besides.—Wickliffe’s translation of the _New Testament_ was sold in 1380 for 4 marks and 40 pence.—Pierre Plaont bequeathed, in 1415, to the regents of the University of Paris, a big quarto Bible, which he said was worth 15 pounds. Chevillier says that a printed Bible of the same size in the seventeenth century could be had for 6 francs.
[82] The horn-book was the primer of our ancestors, established by common use. It consisted of a single leaf, containing on one side the alphabet, large and small, in black letter or in Roman, with, perhaps, a small regiment of monosyllables, and the words of the Lord’s Prayer. This leaf was usually set in a frame of wood, with a slice of diaphanous horn in front—hence the name horn-book. Generally, there was a handle to hold it by, and this handle had usually a hole for a string, whereby the horn-book was slung to the girdle of the scholar. It was frequently noticed by early chroniclers. Chambers, _Book of Days_.
[83] It was a square stick of hard wood, and about eight inches long. The entire series of days constituting the year was represented by notches running along the angles of the square block, each side and angle thus presenting three months; the first day of a month was marked by a notch having a patulous stroke turned up from it, and each Sunday was distinguished by a notch somewhat broader than usual. The feasts were denoted by symbols resembling hieroglyphics. Chambers, _Book of Days_.
[84] Men given up to sensuality we may find in abundance, but very few lovers of learning, and those barbarous, skilled more in quibbles and sophisms than in literature. Poggio, as quoted by Hallam.
[85] An entry in the books of the Brewers’ Company during the reign of Henry V (1415–1430), states the reasons why this change was made from French to English.
Whereas our mother tongue, to wit, the English language, hath in modern days begun to be honorably enlarged and adorned, for that our most excellent King Henry V hath, in his letters missive, and in divers affairs, touching his own person, more willingly chosen to declare the secrets of his will; and, for the better understanding of the people, hath, with a diligent mind, procured the common idiom, setting aside others, to be commended by the exercise of writing; and there are many of our craft of brewers who have the knowledge of writing and reading in the same English idiom, but in others, to wit, the Latin and French, before these times used, they do not in any wise understand; for which causes, with many others, it being considered how that the greater part of the lords and trusty commons have begun to make their matters to be noted down in our mother tongue, so we also, in our own craft, following in some manner their steps, have decreed in future to commit to memory the needful things which concern us.
[86] In 1446, a petition was presented to the English parliament, to consider the great number of grammar schools that sometime were in divers parts of this realm, besides those that were in London, and how few there are in these days. Knight, _The Old Printer and Modern Press_.
[87] In the Netherlands we find the earliest development of the high school. The schools of the Brethren of the Life-in-Common, founded by Gerard Groot of Deventer, in 1385, which were forty-five in number in 1435, and double that number in 1460, were the first nurseries of literature in Germany. The fruits of this attention to education were freely gathered in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The entire Bible was printed in the Flemish or Dutch language within the first thirty-six years of the sixteenth century in fifteen editions. . . . Thirty-four editions of the New Testament in that language alone appeared within the same period. . . . . There can be no sort of comparison between the number of these editions, and consequently the eagerness of the people of the Low Countries for biblical knowledge, considering the limited extent of their language, and anything that could be found in the Protestant States of the [German] Empire. Hallam, _Literature of Europe_, chap. VI, sec. 38.
[88] Æneas Sylvius (subsequently Pope Pius II), writing near the middle of the fifteenth century, said that the kings of Scotland would rejoice to be as comfortably lodged as the second class of citizens of Nuremberg. Hallam says that Pope Pius also praised their well-furnished and splendid dwellings, their easy mode of living, the security of their rights and the just equality of their laws.
[89] Flanders, during the fifteenth century, was the richest and most densely populated part of Europe. It was famous for the extent of its foreign trade and the variety of its industry. It was not uncommon for one hundred and fifty ships in one day to enter the port of Bruges, in which city were mercantile agents from seventeen different nations. Flanders was full of industries, but its great business was the making of cloth. All the world, wrote an enthusiastic chronicler of the period, is clothed by Flanders. Ghent had fifteen thousand workmen employed on stuffs of wool; Ypres had four thousand makers of cloth; Courtray had six thousand drapers.
[90] As early as the twelfth century, the emperor Henry V undertook to curb the exactions of feudalism by the establishment of free cities, and by the grant of extraordinary privileges to mechanics and manufacturers. To the nobility and petty princes of Germany these privileges were a constant offense, and the occasion of many local strifes; but the burghers were industrious and public-spirited, and took care of their rights. To protect their trade from the rapacity of the princes on the Elbe and the coast, the cities of Germany, in the year 1249, established a mercantile organization, known as the Hanseatic League. In the fifteenth century, this league was constituted of traders from all parts of the Netherlands and Germany. It was so powerful that it monopolized the trade of Northern Europe: by threat of war it compelled Edward VI of England to grant extraordinary concessions; it made successful war against Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The Hanseatic League is a wonderful example of the sudden development of successful legislative and executive ability among men of little or no culture, who till then had been excluded from every position of honor in the state.
[91] Peasants could not claim exemption from arbitrary arrest or military servitude. They had no liberty to choose a residence, to learn a trade, to travel, to go to school, to marry, to keep property, to transact business, or to associate with others in any peaceable enterprise. Practically, they were but little better than slaves. Beaumanoir, a French jurist of the thirteenth century, defines the nature of their servitude in the plainest words. He says that:
The third estate of man is that of such as are not free; and these are not all of one condition, for some are so subject to their lord, that he may take all they have, alive or dead, and imprison them whenever he pleases, being accountable to none but God; from others the lord can take nothing but the customary payments, though at their death all they have escheats to him.