after another. The book is so called because the letters are in silver, and present a brilliant appearance, like the glittering letters of bookbinders, on their leaves of purple vellum. The Codex Argenteus presents many indications of hand-printing: the letters are depressed on one side of the leaf, and raised on the other, as if made by indentation. Under the letters that have been too rudely pressed with the stamp, the vellum is thin; in some parts the leaf has been broken by pressure and patched with bits of vellum. Occasionally, letters are found turned upside down — an error possible to a hand-printer, but not to a penman. John Ihre, who described the book, in a pamphlet published at Upsal in 1755, says the silver leaf of the letters was affixed to the vellum by means of sizing, and that the letters were produced by stamping on the leaf with engraved punches of hard metal, which had been heated and used as bookbinders now use gilding tools. The use of heat has not been proved, but the blemishes of the work are most satisfactorily explained by the hypothesis that the book was printed letter by letter.[1]
This explanation of the method by which the book was made has not been generally accepted. It was said that silver letters are found in medieval books made entirely by writing. But this is negative evidence, for these books do not present the mechanical imperfections of the Codex Argenteus. There has, evidently, been a vague apprehension that the admission of an early use of single types for printing would invalidate all subsequent claims to the invention of typography. One can hardly imagine a grosser error, for the hand-printing of single types is not typography. It is even farther removed from it than the printing of letters on engraved blocks.
- ↑ The text of the Codex is a translation of the four Gospels, written in the Gothic character, by Ulphilas, bishop of the Goths, about the year 370. This book, which is supposed to have been made not later than the sixth century, was discovered in the year 1587, in an abbey in Westphalia, and was taken to Prague. When that city was captured by the Swedes in 1648, the book was sent as one of the trophies of war to Queen Christina. It has ever since been regarded as a great curiosity.
