Chapter 2 BLOCK-BOOKS

The collector of the time of George III, whose heart was set on Typographical Antiquities, and who was ambitious enough to wish to begin at the beginning, must have hungered after a block-book.

Even in the days of Bagford, at the very outset of the eighteenth century, interest had been aroused in the block-printed editions of the Speculum Humanae Saluationis, so that Bagford himself travelled from Amsterdam to Haarlem on purpose to see a copy of one of the Dutch editions, and set an English wood-cutter to work, with very poor success, to manufacture a bogus specimen of it, wherewith "to oblige the curious." This, with a similar imitation of a page in the Biblia Pauperum, was intended to illustrate the History of Printing which Bagford had the temerity to plan, although such of his smaller dissertations as have been preserved show conclusively that he was quite incapable of carrying it out.

The interest thus early shown in block-books sprang from an entirely reasonable, but probably incorrect, view of the part which they had played in the development of printing with movable type. It was known that woodcuts without letterpress were printed in Germany quite early in the fifteenth century, the cut of S. Christopher, formerly in the Spencer Collection, now in the John Rylands Library, bearing the date 1423.3 On the other hand, printing with movable type was practised at Mainz in the fifties, and about 1461 Albrecht Pfister published at Bamberg several books with woodcut illustrations and printed letterpress. In the logical order of development nothing could be more reasonable than the sequence:

i. Woodcut pictures.

ii. Woodcut pictures and woodcut text.

iii. Woodcut pictures and text printed from movable type.

Facts, however, do not always arrange themselves with the neatness which commends itself to an a priori historian, and the most recent students of block-books are unable to discover sufficient justification for the early dates which their predecessors assigned to them. On the old theory, in order to put it in front of the invention of printing with movable types, the Biblia Pauperum, which appears to be the oldest of the block-books, was placed about 1430 or 1440, and the Ars Moriendi and the other chief specimens of block-printing were all supposed to have been produced before 1460, the main period of block-printing thus coinciding with the interval between the S. Christopher of 1423 and Pfister's activity at Bamberg about 1461. Positive evidence in favour of this chronology there was none. It rested solely on the idea, at which bibliographers had jumped, that the block-books were necessary "steps towards the invention of printing," as they have often been called, and on what seemed the improbability that any one, when the art of printing with movable type had once been invented, would have troubled himself laboriously to cut letterpress on wood.

So far from block-printing being unable to co-exist with printing from movable type, it was not till nearly a century after printing had been invented that block-books finally ceased to be produced. The example generally quoted as the latest4 is the Opera nova contemplativa per ogni fedel christiano laquale tratta de le figure del testamento vecchio: le quale figure sonno verificate nel testamento nuovo. As its title implies, this, curiously enough, is an adaptation of the Biblia Pauperum, which was thus the last, as it may have been the first, of the block-books. It is undated, but has the name of its publisher, Giovanni Andrea Vavassore, who worked at Venice about 1530.

The Opera nova contemplativa was from one point of view a mere survival, but Vavassore is not likely to have produced it solely to cause twentieth century antiquaries surprise. He must have had a business reason for having recourse to block-printing, nor is that reason very hard to find. From the frequency with which the early printers changed and recast their types, and the short intervals at which popular books printed with types were set up afresh, it is clear (1) that the type-metal5 employed was much softer and less durable than that now in use, and that only small impressions6 could be taken from the same setting up; (2) that only a small amount of type was cast at a time, and that type was quickly distributed and used again, never kept standing on the chance that another edition would be wanted. Now when we come to the illustrations in printed books, we find the same woodblocks used for five or six successive editions, and then, in many cases, enjoying a second lease of life as job-blocks, used at haphazard by inferior printers. It is clear, therefore, that while it was a much more difficult and laborious business to cut the letterpress of a book on blocks of wood than to set it up with movable types, when the blocks were once made much more work could be got out of them. In a word, in the case of a small book for which there was a steady demand, a printer might be tempted to have it cut as a block-book for the same reasons as might cause a modern publisher to have it stereotyped. The labour of cutting the letterpress on wood was much greater than that now involved in stereotyping, and the result clumsier. Hence it was only to short books intended for unexacting purchasers that the process was applied and with two or three exceptions it was used only for illustrated books with a small amount of text. But within this restricted field it had its own commercial possibilities, and there is thus nothing surprising in its coexistence with printing from movable type.

When the theory that block-books were "Steps towards the Invention of Printing" is thus opposed by the rival theory that they were forerunners of stereotyped plates, we are left free to consider, uncoerced by supposed necessities, such evidence as exists as to the dates of the specimens of block-printing still extant. Putting aside the late Italian block-book as a mere survival, we find two7 broadly distinguished groups, one earlier, the dates of members of which can only be conjectured, the other later, several of which can only be definitely connected with the years 1470 to 1473. The characteristics of the earlier group are that they are printed (1) with a watery brown ink; (2) always on one side of the paper only; (3) without mechanical pressure;8 (4) two consecutive pages at a time, so that they cannot be arranged in quires, but must be folded and stitched separately, and the book thus formed9 begins and ends with a blank page and has a pair of blank pages between each pair of printed ones. This arrangement in some extant copies has been altered by modern binders, who have divided the sheets, mounted each leaf on a guard, and then gathered them, at their own will, into quires. The inconvenient intervention of the blank pages has also sometimes been wrestled with (at an early date) by gluing the leaves together, so that all the leaves, except the first and last, are double, and the printed pages follow each other without interruption. These expedients, however, are easily detected, and the original principle of arrangement is free from doubt.

In the later block-books, on the other hand, we note one or more of the following characteristics: (1) the use of the thick black ink (really a kind of paint) employed in ordinary printing; (2) printing on both sides of the paper; (3) marks of pressure, showing that the paper has been passed through a printing-press; (4) the arrangement of the blocks in such a way as to permit the sheets to be gathered into quires.

In the case of the more popular block-books which went through many issues and editions10 we can trace the gradual substitution of later characteristics for earlier ones. At what intervals of time these changes were made we have bibliographically no adequate grounds even for guessing. Analogies from books printed with movable types may be quoted on both sides. On the one hand, we find the blocks for book-illustrations enjoying an amazingly long life. Thus blocks cut at Venice and Florence between 1490 and 1500 continued in use for fifteen or twenty years, were then laid aside, and reappear between 1550 and 1560, certainly the worse for wear, but yet capable by a lucky chance of yielding quite a fair impression. The fact that one issue of a block-book can be positively assigned to 1470 or 1473, thus does not of itself forbid an earlier issue being placed as far back in the fifteenth century as any one may please to propose. On the other hand, when a printed book was a popular success editions succeeded each other with great rapidity, and one centre of printing vied with another in producing copies of it. The chief reason for the current disinclination to assume a date earlier than 1450 or 1460 for any extant block-book is the total absence of any evidence demanding it. If such evidence were forthcoming, there would be no inherent impossibility to set against it. But in the absence of such evidence twenty years seems an ample time to allow for the vogue of the block-books, and (despite the neatness of the a priori theory of development mentioned at the beginning of this chapter) this fits in better with the history both of printing and of book-illustration than any longer period.

The first attempt to describe the extant block-books was made by Carl Heinrich von Heinecken in 1771, in his Idée générale d'une collection d'estampes. This held the field until the publication in 1858 of Samuel Legh Sotheby's Principia Typographica: the block-books issued in Holland, Flanders and Germany, during the fifteenth century, a painstaking and well-illustrated work in three folio volumes. The most recent and probably the final treatment of the subject is that by Dr. W. L. Schreiber, in Vol. IV of his Manuel de l'Amateur de la Gravure sur bois et sur métal au xve siècle, published in 1902 (facsimiles in Vols. VII and VIII, 1895-1900). Dr. Schreiber enumerates no fewer than thirty-three works as existing in the form of block-books, the number of extant issues and editions of them amounting to over one hundred. Here it must suffice to offer brief notes on some of the more important.

BIBLIA PAUPERUM

A series of forty composite pictures, the central compartment in each representing a scene from the life of Christ, while on each side of it is an Old Testament type, and above and below are in each case two half-figures of prophets. The explanatory letterpress is given in the two upper corners and also on scrolls. Schreiber distinguishes ten issues and editions, in addition to an earlier German one of a less elaborate design and with manuscript text, which belongs to a different tradition. The earlier of these ten editions appear to have been made in the Netherlands. An edition with German text was published with the colophon, "Friederich walther Mauler zu N?rdlingen vnd Hans Hurning habent dis buch mitt einender gemacht," and a second issue of this (without the colophon) is dated 1470. In the following year another edition, with copied cuts, was printed with the device of Hans Spoerer.

ARS MORIENDI

Twenty-four leaves, two containing a preface, and the remaining twenty-two eleven pictures and eleven pages of explanatory letterpress facing them, showing the temptations to which the dying are exposed, and the good inspirations by which they may be resisted, and, lastly, the final agony. The early editions are ascribed to the Netherlands or district of the Rhine; the later to Germany. There are also editions with German text, one of them signed "hanns Sporer," and dated 1473. A set of engravings on copper by the Master E. S. (copied by the Master of S. Erasmus) may be either imitations or the originals of the earliest of these Ars Moriendi designs. (See Lionel Cust's The Master E. S. and the Ars Moriendi.) The designs were imitated in numerous printed editions in various countries. In addition to a copy of the edition usually regarded as the earliest extant, the British Museum possesses one with the same characteristics, but of a much smaller size (the blocks measuring 137 by 100 mm. instead of 226 by 162), and from this, as much less known, a page is here given as an illustration.

CANTICA CANTICORUM

Sixteen leaves, each containing two woodcuts, illustrating the Song of Songs as a parable of the Blessed Virgin. Produced in the Netherlands.

APOCALYPSIS SANCTI JOHANNIS

Fifty leaves, or in some editions forty-eight, showing scenes from the life of S. John and illustrations of the Apocalypse, mostly with two pictures on each leaf. The early editions are assigned to the Netherlands, the later to Germany. A copy of the edition regarded as the fourth, lately sold by Herr Ludwig Rosenthal, bears a manuscript note, most probably as to the writer, just possibly as to the book, entering the household of the Landgrave Heinrich of Hesse in 1463.

III. ARS MORIENDI, BLOCKBOOK, C. 1465

INSPIRATIO CONTRA VANAM GLORIAM

SPECULUM HUMANAE SALUATIONIS

Scenes from Bible history, arranged in pairs, within architectural borders, with explanatory text beneath. No complete xylographic, or block-printed, edition is known, but twenty leaves printed from blocks are found in conjunction with forty-four leaves printed from type, and have not unreasonably been held to prove the previous production of a complete block-printed edition now lost. In like manner, the fact that two different types are used in different parts of a Dutch printed edition has encouraged Dr. Hessels to believe that this "mixed edition" should be regarded as proving the production of two complete editions, one in each type. On this theory we have (1) a hypothetical Latin block-printed edition; (2-4) three Dutch editions, each printed in a different type; (5) a Latin edition, entirely printed from type; (6) a Latin edition, printed partly from type, partly from some of the blocks of No. 1. The copy of this "mixed Latin edition," as it is called, in the University Library at Munich, is dated in manuscript 1471, and the hypothetical complete block-printed edition may be as much earlier than this as any one pleases to imagine. But other bibliographers recognize only four editions and arrange them differently.

ANTICHRISTUS

Thirty-eight leaves, with two pictures on each leaf, illustrating the Legends relating to the Coming of Antichrist, and the Fifteen Signs which were to precede the Last Judgment. The text is in German, and the block-book was executed in Germany, probably about 1470.

FRANCISCUS DE RETZA. DEFENSORIUM INVIOLATAE CASTITATIS VIRGINIS MARIAE

Sixteen leaves, mostly with four pictures and four pieces of explanatory letterpress on each leaf, concerning marvels in the natural world which were supposed to be equally wonderful with that of the Virgin Birth, and therefore to render faith in this easier. Unfortunately the marvels are so very marvellous that they do not inspire belief, e.g. one story relates how the sun one day drew up the moisture from the earth with such rapidity that an ox was drawn up with it and subsequently deposited out of a cloud in another field. One edition was issued by a certain F. W. in 1470, another at Ratisbon by Johann Eysenhut the following year.

JOHANN MüLLER (JOHANNES REGIOMONTANUS). KALENDER

Thirty-two leaves, containing lunar tables, tables of the eclipses for fifty-six years (1475-1530), other astronomical information, and a figure of the human body with notes of the signs of the zodiac by which it was influenced. Composed by the famous astronomer, Johann Müller, and sold by Hans Briefftruck, probably Hans Spoerer, about 1474-5, at Nuremberg and elsewhere.

JOHANN HARTLIEB. DIE KUNST CHIROMANTIA

Forty-four figures of hands, with a titlepage and page of text and a printed wrapper. Early issues are printed on one side of the paper only, later on both. The printer appears to have been Jorg Schaff, of Augsburg, and the date of issue about 1475. The date 1448 found in the book is that of composition, and it probably circulated in manuscript for many years before being printed.

MIRABILIA ROMAE

A German guide-book for visitors to Rome. Ninety-two leaves, printed with black ink on both sides of the leaf, with only a few illustrations. It was perhaps first published to meet the rush of German pilgrims to Rome at the Jubilee of Pope Sixtus IV, 1475. The blocks were probably cut in Germany, and the printing done at Rome. Some of the ornaments are said to have been used in type-printed editions by Stephan Plannck. This suggests that the book may have been published by his predecessor, Ulrich Han.

In addition to these block-books of Low Country and German origin, mention must also be made of a very curious Italian one, a Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi, fully described by the Prince d'Essling. The copy of this at Berlin contains eighteen leaves, and was probably executed at Venice about the middle of the fifteenth century. Some of the blocks were subsequently used (after a scroll at the foot had been cut off) for an edition of the Devote Meditatione sopra la Passione del Nostro Signore (attributed to S. Bonaventura), published at Venice in 1487 by Jeronimo di Sancti e Cornelio suo Compagno, and a page from this is reproduced as a frontispiece to our chapter on Italian Illustrated Books.

Mention has already been made of the Opera nova contemplativa, an adaptation of the Biblia Pauperum, printed as a block-book at Venice about 1530.

The only extant French block-book, if it can be called one, is that of the "Nine Worthies" (Les Neuf Preux). This consists of three sheets, the first showing three heathen worthies-Hector, Alexander, and Julius C?sar; the second, three from the Old Testament-Joshua, David, and Judas Maccab?us; the third, three from medieval romance-Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Boulogne. Under each picture are six lines of verse. These three triple woodcuts, with the woodcut text, are assigned to about 1455.

No English block-book has yet been discovered, nor is it in the least likely that one ever existed, though there are a few single woodcuts.

Block-books possess two permanent attractions in addition to their supposed historical importance in the development of the invention of printing on which doubt is now cast-the attraction of popular literature and the attraction of the illustrated book. As we have seen, it would not have been worth any one's while to cause a block-book to be laboriously engraved, or cut, unless a large and speedy sale could be expected for it. The most famous block-books are nearly all of a religious character, and they prove a widespread desire for simple instruction as to the incidents of the life of Christ and the events in the Old Testament history which were regarded as prefigurements of them, as to the dignity of the Blessed Virgin and the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, as to the end of the world and the coming of Antichrist, and as to the spiritual dangers and temptations of the dying and the means by which they might be resisted. As early specimens of book-illustration the value of the block-books varies very greatly. The majority of them are more curious than beautiful, but the pictures of the Cantica Canticorum, the Speculum Humanae Saluationis, and the Ars Moriendi have all very great merit. The tall, slender figures in the Song of Songs have a charm as great as any Dutch book-illustrations of the fifteenth century; the cuts of the Speculum are full of vigour, while the serene dignity of the scenes in the Ars Moriendi illustrating the Inspirations of the Good Angel is as impressive as the grotesque force used in depicting the diabolic suggestions. If we must grant, as the weight of authority now bids us, that these woodcuts are copies from the copper engravings of the Master E. S., it can hardly be disputed that the wood-cutter was the better artist of the two.

The block-books are a striking example of the difficulty of gleaning where the earlier collectors have reaped, a difficulty to which we shall often have to call attention. They vary greatly in positive rarity. Of the Biblia Pauperum and Ars Moriendi, which in their different issues and editions enjoyed the longest life and early attracted attention, Dr. Schreiber (if I have counted rightly) was able to enumerate in the one case as many as eighty-three copies-many of them, it is true, mere fragments-in the other sixty-one. Of the Apocalypse fifty-seven copies were known to him, of the Speculum twenty-nine, of the Antichrist thirteen, of the Defensorium twelve, and of the Mirabilia Romae six. But of these 261 copies and fragments no fewer than 223 are recorded as being locked up in public libraries and museums, the ownership of thirteen was doubtful, and only twenty-five are definitely registered as being in the hands of private collectors, viz. of the Apocalypse, eight copies or fragments; of the Biblia Pauperum, six; of the Speculum and Ars Moriendi, four each; of the Defensorium, two; and of the Cantica Canticorum, one. The chief owners known to Dr. Schreiber were the Earl of Pembroke, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, and Major Holford, to whom must now be added Mr. Pierpont Morgan and Mr. Perrins. No doubt the copies in public institutions are much more easily enumerated than those in private hands, and probably most of the untraced copies are owned by collectors. But when allowance has been made for this, it remains obvious that this is no field where an easy harvest can be reaped, and that the average collector may think himself lucky if he obtains one or two single leaves. The last great opportunity of acquiring such treasures was at the sale in 1872 of the wonderful collection formed by T. O. Weigel,11 at which the British Museum bought a very fine copy of the first edition of the Ars Moriendi, the first edition, dated 1470, of the Biblia Pauperum, in German, a block-book illustrating the virtues of the hymn Salve Regina, and the compassion of the Blessed Virgin, printed at Regensburg about 1470, besides fragments and woodcut single sheets. The foundation of the Museum collection of block-books had been laid by George III, added to by Mr. Grenville, and completed by a series of purchases from 1838 to this final haul of 1872, since when there have been few opportunities for new acquisitions. It is now quite adequate for purposes of study, though not so rich as that of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.

* * *

3 The authenticity of a still earlier date, 1418, on a cut of the Blessed Virgin at Brussels is disputed.

4 The Libro di M. Giovanbattista Palatino, printed at Rome in 1548, is spoken of by Mr. Campbell Dodgson as a "belated specimen" of a block-book. But this was a writing-book, and hardly counts.

5 Numerous references in colophons show that the metal mostly used was brass, e.g. "Primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis Vrbe libros Spira genitus de stirpe Johannes," and the use of Chalcographi as a name for printers. But there are one or two references to printing "stanneis typis," with types of tin.

6 Of the first book printed at Venice only 100 copies were struck off, but the number was trebled in the case of its immediate successors. At Rome Sweynheym and Pannartz mostly printed 275 copies, only in a few instances as many as 300. But at the end of the century Pynson was printing at least 600 copies of large books and as many as 1000 of small ones.

7 A very small third group, earlier than either of these, consists of woodcuts with manuscript text. The most important of these is a German Biblia Pauperum quite distinct from those started in the Netherlands.

8 Some early woodcuts were printed by pressing the block down on the paper by hand; for the early block-books, however, the usual method seems to have been to press the paper on to the face of the block by rubbing it on the back with a burnisher. The paper was thus quite as strongly indented as if passed through a press, but the impression is usually less even. The friction on the back of the paper often gives it a polished appearance. As long as this method continued in use it was, of course, impossible to print on both sides of the paper.

9 It is possible that the earliest specimens of block-printing were intended not to be bound in books but to be pasted on walls. In the case of the Biblia Pauperum, for instance, the space between the two woodcuts placed on each sheet is so small in some issues that the sheets cannot be bound without concealing part of the pictures.

10 Different issues are distinguished by the signs of wear in the blocks, or occasionally by their being differently arranged, or with changes made in the blocks. In a different edition we have to deal with a new set of blocks.

11 Since this was written the interesting collection formed by Dr. Schreiber himself has been dispersed.

* * *