gymnasium (as the high school of the time was then designated) of some reputation; it was a favorable location for an early printer; it was in Utrecht that the mutilated blocks of the Speculum were printed by John Veldener in 1483.
The book containing the Eulogy on Pope Pius ii, which must have been printed after the year 1459, and the Abecedarium, with its evenly spaced lines and its arrangement in octavo, are specimens of the typography, not of the second, but of the third, quarter of the fifteenth century. The Latin editions of the Speculum were, no doubt, printed before the Dutch editions; but when we consider the activity of nearly all the early printers, and their frequent publication of popular books, it is hazardous to concede to the Latin editions a priority of more than five years. But Dutch bibliographers claim that the earlier editions of the book were printed at least thirty-three, perhaps fifty, years before the arrival of German printers in the Netherlands. To support this claim, they refer to passages or annotations in old manuscript books, which seem to show that printed books were common in the Netherlands during the middle of the century. These passages and annotations demand critical examination.
There is an entry in an old diary which, on its first reading, produces the impression that printed books were sold in Bruges as ordinary merchandise in the first half of the fifteenth century. This entry was made by one Jean le Robert, abbot of St. Aubert in Cambray, then a city of Burgundy.
Item, For a doctrinal getté en molle, which I sent to Bruges for in the month of January, 1445, from Marquart, the first copyist at Valenciennes, for Jacquart, twenty sous, currency of Tours. Little Alexander had a similar copy for which the church paid.
Item. Procured at Arras a doctrinal for the instruction of the Lord Gerard, which had been bought at Valenciennes, and which was jettez en molle, and which cost twenty-four groots. He [Lord Gerard] returned to me this doctrinal on All Saints' Day, in the year '51, saying that he set no value on it, and that it was altogether faulty. He had bought another copy in paper for ten patards.[1]
- ↑ Bernard, De l'origine et des débuts de l'imprimerie, vol. i, pp. 97 and 98.
