TO the careless observer of the growth of learning and the state of the mechanical arts at the beginning of the fifteenth century, Italy might be regarded as the nation best prepared to receive and maintain any new method of book-making. The neatly engraved initial letters in manuscript books, the designs printed in many colors on woven fabrics, and the extended manufacture of images and playing cards, prove that the Italians knew how to print from blocks, and that they had mechanical skill in abundance. In spite of her civil wars, Italy was rich and prosperous, and famous all over the world, not only for her universities and learned men, but p172 for the cultured tastes of her people. It would appear that all the conditions for the coming of block-book printing had been filled, and that its introduction should have followed as a consequence. But the conditions were only partly met.

To be ultimately successful, it was requisite that printing should begin with the plainest work, and that it should be adapted to the demands of very plain people; but the tastes of Italians were refined, and they could not tolerate rudeness in any form. With all its skill, wealth and culture, there was in Italy no true middle class, and, consequently, no suitable basis for the upholding of an art like xylography. The spirit which Woltmann has specified as the basis of printing,—“the impulse to make each mental gain a common blessing,”—was entirely wanting. As the professional book-makers, who were of the people, did nothing for the advancement of their order, the development of Italian printing had to stop with printed cards, cloths and images. The skill of Italian engravers culminated, not, as it did in Germany, in popular block-books, but in the more artistic and exclusive branch of copper-plate printing. The efforts of Italian scholars to revive the study of classical authors, however useful they may have been to the people of other countries, ended in Italy with a widening of the gulf that separated the ignorant from the educated. For the benefits of printed books, Italy is indebted to the skill of German printers, whose early productions had been excluded from Venice at the petition of her querulous card-makers.

It may seem equally strange that block-book printing was not invented in Spain, where textile fabrics were printed, and where paper was more largely made and used than in any portion of Europe. We there find schools, libraries, and signs of great mental activity. In poetry, architecture, music and other fine arts, the people of Spain were as advanced as the French or Italians. But the love of books, and the culture that comes only from their study, were not firmly rooted in the life and habits of common people. The education and social elevation of the few had been secured at the expense p173 of the many, and literature and the literary arts had been so refined that they were in decay. Nothing seems to have been done to pave the way for the introduction of xylographic printing by attempts to educate the people.

The intellectual development of France resembled that of Italy and Spain—it was a development of the literature of the church, and of effeminate tastes among the wealthy, but from these the people derived no benefit. France was then passing through the horrors of what French historians call the “Hundred Years’ War” with England, during which her population decreased at an alarming rate, and many of her arts and industries were irreparably injured. The princes and nobles were waging against each other a war of treason and assassination; the peasantry, on whom feudal laws pressed more severely than they did on any other people, broke out in the insurrection of the Jacquerie. In 1407, the pope laid the kingdom under interdict, and the withdrawal of the ministrations of the church were added to the horrors of civil and servile war and the miseries of foreign invasion. It was not a time for cultivating the arts of peace. There is, therefore, no block-book of the fifteenth century in the French language, and there is no reason to believe that any block-book printer ever attempted to establish his business on French territory.

Of all the states of Western Europe, England seems to have been most unfitted for the reception of printing. There were a few ecclesiastics who saw the importance of books, and who tried to found libraries, but the greater part of the clergy were very ignorant. They would not learn, nor would they allow common people to be taught. It was unlawful, even as late as 1412, for laborers, farmers and mechanics to send their children to school. A great opportunity for popular education was presented in Wickliffe’s translation of the Bible, which could have been made an effective means for diffusing the knowledge of letters among a religious people. But in 1415 it was enacted that they who read the Scriptures in the mother tongue should be hanged for treason, and burned for heresy. p174

In spite of all these im­ped­i­ments, there was a slow but pos­i­tive dif­fus­ion of know­ledge among En­glish people. How the know­ledge was com­mun­i­cat­ed is not clear, for notices of com­mon schools in En­gland, and in­deed on the Con­ti­nent, are in­freq­uent and un­sat­is­fac­tory. We have, how­ever, some curious rel­ics of the subs­ti­tutes for books used by the people. One of them is the Horn-Book,82 by which the chil­dren were taught their let­ters and the Lord’s Prayer. The en­grav­ing an­nexed rep­re­sents a book that is of no earlier date than the reign of Charles I, but it is a trust­worthy il­lus­tra­tion of the cons­truc­tion, if not of the mat­ter, of the horn-books in use in the fif­teenth cen­tury. Another of these sub­sti­tutes is the Clog, a rude con­tri­vance for mark­ing the order of coming days, which may be con­sid­ered as the fore­runner of the print­ed al­manac. p175

The standard of English education was low, even in the uni­ver­si­ties. An eminent Ital­ian man of let­ters, in En­gland in 1420, complains of the scarcity of good books, and is not at all res­pect­ful to English scholars.84 The Un­i­vers­ities of Ox­ford and Cam­bridge had been es­tab­lished rather more than three hun­dred years, but they taught bad Latin. There were few books of merit in the English language: Wick­liffe’s trans­lation of the Bible, and the poems of Chaucer, Lydgate and Gower, are all that de­serve any notice. There was, as yet, no universally spoken English lang­uage: French was the lan­guage of the En­glish nobility and of English courts and books of law, as late as the year 1362; merch­ants and mer­can­tile com­pa­nies kept their books in French; boys at school were re­quired to trans­late p176 Latin into French.85 The ha­bit­ual em­ploy­ment of French as the lan­guage of the no­bil­ity, and of Latin as the language of liter­a­ture, shut the doors of know­ledge on those who spoke En­glish only. In all coun­tries the el­emen­tary text books of the schools were in Latin. To learn arith­metic, gram­mar or geography, the scholar must begin with the study of Latin. The dead language was the path to all know­ledge: it was a circuitous and a wearisome path, but it was traveled by every student destined for the church, or for the profession of law or medicine.

At a very early period the bishops of the Catholic church tried to establish schools for children, but not so much for the teaching of secular as of religious knowledge. In the year 800 a synod at Mentz ordered that parochial priests should establish schools in all towns and villages to teach letters to children. These orders were repeated by other councils, but they could be enforced only in the larger cities. In many rural districts common schools were entirely unknown. As the clergy grew corrupt, they were neglected in cities.86 The primary schools were not always taught by ecclesiastics, but the church claimed the right to supervise them, and made sure that its doctrines and dogmas should be fully taught. p177

These schools seem to have been most useful where they were not overshadowed by great institutions of learning. In the German countries that bordered on the Rhine, and more especially in the Netherlands, where there were no universities, and where the people had a large measure of personal liberty, we find many evidences of a steady progress in education,87 and of improvement in social condition. The simple teachings of the schools were received by a plain but utilitarian people who put the knowledge to practical use. The newly developed mental activity did not run to waste, as it did in the universities, in unprofitable metaphysical speculations; it was at once applied to the varied requirements of art, trade and manufactures. When printing came, the common people were fully prepared for it, prepared not only to read books, but to make them. The invention was developed in proper order, and was preceded by improvements in mechanical arts.

As illustrations of this mental activity, it is not out of place to mention some of the many inventions of the men who had studied books only to aid them in studying things. We find gunpowder and fire-arms, glass windows and mirrors, clocks and watches, and numerous contrivances that add to the comforts of social life, some of which, like the tinning of iron, and the putting of chimneys to fireplaces, have seemed too paltry to deserve notice. Trivial as they may seem, when in contrast with the steam engine and railroad, the chimney and window were of the highest service as aids in bringing men from a qualified barbarism to civilization. It cannot be p178 proved that these contrivances were invented in Germany, but it is certain that they were there appreciated and used when they were entirely unknown in parts of Europe then supposed to be much more enlightened.88

The Germans and Flemings were regarded as a boorish people by the more polished Italians. In the artistic education that can be acquired only from intimate association with men of genius and works of art, the Northern people were deficient; but in the knowledge of useful arts, in originality of invention, in patience and thoroughness as manufacturers, they were superior. The Germans made linen, glass, carved wooden-ware, and useful articles of all kinds needed in home life. In the construction of fine mechanisms, like clocks and curious automatons, they had no rivals. The Flemings were celebrated as weavers, cutlers, goldsmiths, armorers, engravers of silver-ware, and as carvers of wood and stone. They were more than skillful mechanics.89 Hubert and John Van Eyck, founders of the Flemish school of painting, and instructors of eminent Italian artists, may be regarded as representatives of the practical Flemish character, for they considered no branch of the arts of design as unworthy their attention; they painted on glass as well as on wood or canvas; they illuminated missals, and, as many bibliographers believe, made designs on wood for the engravers of block-books. p179

The steady progress made by the people of Flanders and Germany in arts and manufactures was largely due to their liberty. They were not altogether exempt from the bondage of feudalism: there was some discord in Germany, and never-ceasing strife between the nobles and middle class, but the German burgher maintained his independence and lived in comfort.90 The need of peace and personal liberty as preparations for the introduction of printing may be more clearly perceived in a glance at the social condition of the people.

The discontent of common people at their treatment by constituted authorities was never greater than during the last twenty years of the fourteenth century. Southern Europe was afflicted by sanguinary wars, into which the rulers of the people dragged their unwilling peasantry.91 Armed bands of p180 discharged soldiers roamed about, robbing and murdering at will. Nobles secure in their castles sent out soldiers to make forays in adjacent districts, with no more pretext of law than is claimed by pirates. Outside of large cities there was no safety for life or property. To add to the general misery, famine desolated the most fruitful countries, and in some districts, the awful pestilence of the black death swept away half the population. Where the suffering was greatest, the people rebelled, but to no purpose. In France, the insurgents of the Jacquerie, in 1358, were massacred with savage ingenuity in cruelty;92 in England, the Wat Tyler revolt of 1385 [anc180] was put down with violence, and the people were remanded to the old villeinage.93 In countries where there was no outbreak, a sullen resentment grew up against all authority, but more especially against that of the established church. The exactions and scandalous manners of the superior clergy afforded a sufficient provocation. There were two popes—one at Rome and one at Avignon; in many dioceses were rival bishops, holding authority under the rival popes. The heads of the church were at enmity with each other, and they ruled over God’s heritage with the weapons and the spirit of temporal princes. The tribute of money which had been delayed or refused by recusant bishops, and the tribute of homage which had been denied by excommunicated kings or emperors, were paid in the misery and blood of the people. In the prolonged disputes between pope and king, and pope and anti-pope, the pious and loyal, who had been taught to honor those who were in authority, were unable to discern which of the two contestants was the true and which the false pope or bishop. p181 From the teachings of each pretender the good turned away. The religious sentiment which had been shocked at the outrageous behavior of the anointed teachers forsook the old altars. It sought out new faiths and founded new sects.94

The teachers of the new sects were unwittingly preparing the people for the coming of printing by enforcing the duty of more careful reading and study of the Holy Scriptures. In the year 1380, Wickliffe completed a translation in English of the entire Bible. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, copies of a translation of the Scriptures in ProvenÇal French, made by or under the direction of Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyons, and the founder of the Waldenses, were circulated in Burgundy and upon the borders of the Rhine. There were many new translations, or at least of the gospels and psalms, in other European languages.95 Men and women p182 gathered together in secret places to hear them read.96 The timid and irresolute, alienated from the church, and deterred from frequenting prohibited associations, set up altars of the most unpretentious character within their own houses. Too poor to buy books, and perhaps too ignorant to read them, they sought from the formschneiders and image-makers the emblems they needed as visible symbols of their faith. In this hungering after the instruction or consolation afforded by religious pictures, we see the origin of the block-books. A growing fondness for pictures is a marked peculiarity in the intellectual development of the age. It was not confined to the buyers of printed images: it was manifested in the paintings on the walls and windows of magnificent churches, in the pictorial playing cards then in the hands of all people, gentle and simple, and more than all in the fearful pictures of the Dance of Death upon the walls of convents, in the arcades of burying-grounds, and in market-places and town halls. In these hideous paintings, the saint saw the necessity of preparation for death; the sinner interpreted them as an assertion of the equality of all men and the final punishment of the p184 unjust. In the inexorable impartiality of the grinning and stalking skeleton who rudely dragged away the resisting noble and protesting priest, there was a ghastly irony which was keenly appreciated even by the illiterate.

The signs of awakening intelligence, as manifested in the general appreciation of pictures, images, playing cards and books, were entirely disregarded by the authorized teachers of the age, who could have used the method of xylographic printing by which images and playing cards were made, and could have led people from the contemplation of images and allegories of the Dance of Death,97 to the study of books and letters. They had all the means within reach. There were engravers and printers in Venice in 1400; there is an obscure notice of image-cutters or engravers on wood in the records of the fraternity of St. Luke in Paris98 for the year 1391. But p185 neither the doctors of the universities nor the book-makers of Paris ever attempted to print books or pictures. Nor can it be shown that any one of the many persons laboring for the revival of literature at the beginning of the fifteenth century had anything to do with printing. The significance of this fact should be fairly considered, for it is the proper explanation of the curious and childish literature of the block-books which followed the printed images.

Early printed work was the outgrowth, not of scholarship, but of comparative ignorance. The first block-printers were men outside the pale of literature, and not indebted to any school or scholar for the suggestion of printing. The first merchantable products of printing on paper were not books, but playing cards and images. The earliest purchasers of p186 printing were men who could neither read nor write. The card-makers, who labored for the amusement of boyish tastes, were the ignorant nurses of an art which has preserved the learning of the world. They have had grand success. The once despised fabric of paper has displaced vellum; types do the work of reed and pen, and the work of perpetuating the literature of the world is done by mechanics.99 Nor has this great revolution been restricted to mechanical processes in book-making. Medieval books are more than out of date: they are dead, beyond all revival. They are known to book-lovers chiefly by reputation. The writings of Anselm, Dun Scotus, Abelard, Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Ockham, are read only through curiosity; they are as obsolete as the works of the old Greek philosophers.100

Although much had been done to prepare Germany and Flanders for the reception of printing, one thing was lacking. Printing waited for a wise appreciation of the utility of paper. For centuries paper had been regarded as a plebeian writing surface, unfitted for books, but good enough for shopkeepers, mechanics, and children who had or sought a smattering of education. It was necessary that the prejudices in favor of vellum should be uprooted, and that the practical superiority of paper should be recognized by men of higher authority than card-printers or poor scholars. This change in fashion was effectually made by the rich merchants of Flanders and Germany. The paper rejected of professional book-makers was not so strong nor so attractive as parchment, but it was flexible, durable, and much cheaper. There was no legislative intermeddling with its sale101 as there had been with parchment. p187 Everybody was free to buy and use it at his pleasure. The consequences of this contemptuous abandonment of paper to the people, who were supposed to be almost unfit to use it, were unexpected. Those who knew how to read and write found in paper a ready means of communicating their knowledge. The number of readers grew. With this increase of readers came also an increase of self-taught copyists and of unprofessional book-makers. In the commercial cities, where copyists were not subjected to the censorship of the universities, the practice of making books became as common as it had been exclusive. Book-making became a distinct trade, and shops were established for the sale of alphabets, primers, prayer books, creeds, and elementary text books for schools, all adapted, both in price and in subject, to the very humblest readers.102 The names of some nooks and corners in London, Paternoster Row, Creed Lane, Amen Corner, Ave Maria Lane, show that these were the places in that city where manuscripts of a religious character were largely made and sold.

As the sale of these books and tracts increased, Northern copyists combined with each other for purposes of mutual protection, after the usage of all the tradesmen of the middle ages. We find a mention of the existence of the Company of Stationers of London in 1405. There were guilds of book-makers at Augsburg in 1418, at Nordlingen in 1428, at Ulm in 1441, at Antwerp in 1441, at Bruges in 1454. These are the years in which the guilds were first mentioned; but it is probable they were incorporated at earlier dates. The p188 book-making fraternities of St. Luke, in Venice and in Paris, were constituted of copyists, calligraphers, illuminators and bookbinders; but the more practical Northern guilds admitted to membership printers and engravers, and every worker, however humble his work, who contributed to the making of a book. But this combination of copyists with engravers and printers did not at once lead to the printing of books. It did no more than pave the way for its introduction, by making people familiar with paper and printing. For a long time the workmanship of the rival arts was kept distinct; the copyist transcribed books, while the printers made images. But the time came when the copyist had to ask help from the printer.

The printing of books began, not as an independent art, but as an aid to the art of writing. A publisher103 of London recently described and offered for sale a curious old book, partly printed and partly written, which illustrates the close alliance of labor once maintained between the copyist and the engraver. He describes the book as a folio of 17 leaves of vellum, on which are printed 69 engravings, twelve of them bearing legends, “representing scenes of Christian mythology, figures of patriarchs, saints, devils, and other dignitaries of the church, all colored and illuminated with oxidized gold, impressed in the midst of a manuscript text in German.” The engravings of this book are small, about 3 inches long and 21 / 4 inches broad. They are enclosed by a double border of black lines, and are printed on the left side of the page. The designer of the illustrations was obviously an inexpert, not accustomed to drawing the letters of the inscriptions in reverse order on the block, for some of the letters are turned the wrong way. The engravings were printed before the descriptive text was written. The language of the text, old High German, contains obsolete words which were out of use before typography was invented. Quaritch attributes this p189 book to unknown monks of Southern Germany, “about the year 1400.” This copy of the Weekly Meditations is a favorable specimen of the combined workmanship of the copyist and the printer; but it is not the only one. Copies or fragments of manuscript books104 with printed illustrations are in the British Museum, and in many European libraries.

These specimens of book-making during the period of its transition from writing to printing, give us some notions of the estimation in which the process of printing was held by the men who manufactured chap-books. It does not appear that they made use of printing because they thought it was a labor-saving process. They used it mainly, if not entirely, to supplement the deficient skill of the copyist. It was then as it is now—many could write, but few could draw. If the copyist who wrote the text had been competent to draw, the pictures would not have been engraved. Nor would these engravings have been made for one nor even for one dozen copies. We may properly suppose that enough copies were printed to justify the expense of engraving.

While it was expedient to engrave the pictures, it was inexpedient to engrave the text of a book. In many books, the letters constituted the largest part of the work, and to the engraver it was the more difficult part—the expense of engraving would more than offset all the advantages that might have been gained from printing. A full suite of blocks for the text would cost more than the writing of a hundred copies. To the stationer who could sell but few books, xylographic printing was not an economical process: the preliminary cost of engraving was too great. It would be an extravagant estimate to assume that the writer of the Weekly Meditations made one hundred copies of this book; but one p190 hundred copies would have been an edition much too small to justify the engraving of its text of seventeen pages. We must accept this as the reason why printing was so sparingly used by the early book-makers. They did not engrave blocks and print books, because there were not enough book-buyers to warrant the expense. This feature of printing—its entire dependence upon a very large number of book-buyers—may require a more extended explanation.

The small prices for which all popular modern books and newspapers are sold lead many into the error that printing is, necessarily and under all circumstances, a much cheaper method of making books than that of writing. As compared with writing, presswork, or the operation of impressing the types on the sheet, is much the quicker and cheaper process; but presswork is not the main branch of the art of printing. Before one impression can be taken, or one copy be made, types must be composed or blocks engraved at very great expense. The composition and stereotyping of the pages of an ordinary duodecimo book may be worth six hundred dollars. On an edition of ten copies the cost of such a book would be, for making plates only, sixty dollars per copy. If there were but one hundred copies, the expense of the plates would be six dollars per copy. Under these conditions few books would be published. But if an edition of one thousand copies should be printed, the cost of the plates would be only sixty cents a copy. In this instance, printing would be much cheaper than writing, but this reduced rate would not necessarily justify the expenses of printing. The risk of sale must be hazarded. No publisher would undertake at his own risk to print even one thousand copies,—much less a smaller number,—if he did not fully believe that the edition could be promptly sold. But the early book-maker did not have this confident belief in large and speedy sale. There were, comparatively, few book-buyers, and the publication of a book by the method of engraving and printing must have seemed very hazardous speculation. p191

It can be clearly seen that the cost of printing a book is in inverse ratio with the number printed. When the number is small, the cost per copy is great; when the number is great, the cost per copy is small. Printing is an economical process only for books of many copies. If there were not a very great number of book-readers and book-buyers, printing could not be practised to advantage.

In the fourteenth century this multitude of book-readers had not been created. One hundred copies would have been considered a great edition, and the engravers or printers who took such a hazard would have waited many years for purchasers. Their unwillingness to take an unwise risk has been often regarded as an evidence, not of their sagacity, but of their stupidity. There are writers who have taught that the project of a printed book was a grand conception, not to be imagined by any but a great inventor—an idea far above the capacity of any printer of playing cards or images; but the legends in the image prints teach us that the early engravers knew how to engrave the letters, and that they could have engraved entire books of letters if they had thought it expedient. The advantages or disadvantages of engraving books were considered by them as they would be by publishers of our own time, purely as an economical question. The early engravers decided that books of letters could be appreciated, and would be purchased, only by the educated, a class too small to reward the labor of the engraver. For the making of books, printing was not regarded as an economical process, and books were consequently made by the cheaper process of writing.

While it was unprofitable to engrave letters for books, it was profitable to engrave designs for printed fabrics, images and playing cards. On work of this character, the relations of cost and sale were completely reversed. The expenses for engraving one design, one image, or one suite of cards, was small; but the sale of the work printed from the blocks was generally very large. Fabrics that could be worn, cards that p192 could amuse, and images that would serve as decorations or as aids to devotion, had attractions for all people, and especially for the poor and illiterate. Whoever printed merchandise of this nature could rightfully expect that it would be sold in such large quantities that the cost of engraving would be inappreciable.

The world was not ready at the beginning of the fifteenth century to apply its knowledge of printing with ink to the making of books. It was regarded as too expensive a process. It bided its time, waiting for more readers and book-buyers, for paper in greater supply and of better quality, for higher skill on the part of the engravers, printers and ink-makers. If there were no other evidences than those afforded by the partly printed and written books, it could be safely assumed that when the early engravers did begin to print books, they would be, not books of letters, but books of pictures.