23. Propugnacula, seu Turris sapientiae (Sotheby ii. 164). One
sheet, plano, in the British Museum (IC. 30). It may have
originated in the Netherlands.
Blockbooks of Netherlandish origin are:—
1. Apocalypsis S. Johannis.—Copy in the Haarlem Town Library. A copy of the 3rd (?) edition, of 50 leaves, in the British Museum (IC. 40), the leaves 36 and 38 having been supplied from another copy. Leaf 21 of another copy in the same Of Netherlandish Origin. library.
2. Biblia Pauperum; 40 folio leaves (each bearing a signature: a to v; .a. to .v.). As many as seven editions have been distinguished by Sotheby (i. 43), Holtrop (Mon. typ. p. 3), and ten by Schreiber (iv. 1), who likewise mentions a Latin edition of 50 leaves, besides the two editions with German texts of 1470 and 1471. The British Museum Catalogue of 15th-century books enumerates copies or fragments of copies of seven editions.
3. Speculum humanae salvationis.—Of this work a blockbook must have existed, of which only 10 sheets (＝20 leaves) with woodcuts and texts, besides 12 isolated woodcuts (used in 1483), have come down to us. We speak of it at length below when dealing with the typographic editions known of this work.
4. Ars moriendi; 24 leaves, small folio, 13 containing text, 11 plates. See above (German) No. 2; Sotheby i. 69; Holtrop, p. 8; Schreiber iv. 253, who enumerates thirteen editions, some of which are German.[1] The theory, started a few years ago, that the engravings of this block book are imitations of the sketches by the master E. S. (see M. Lehrs, Der Kunstler der Ars moriendi, 1890; L. H. Cust, The Master E. S., 1898) is wholly inadmissible. Copy in the British Museum (IB. 18), and an imperfect one in the Haarlem Town Library.
5. A copy of another edition of 24 leaves in the British Museum (IA. 19).
6. Canticum Canticorum; Historia seu Providentia B. Virginis Mariae ex Cantico Canticorum; 16 leaves in folio, two editions (Sotheby i. 77; Holtrop, p. 6; Schreiber iv. 151). Copies in the Haarlem Town Library (wanting the leaves 3, 4, 7, 11, 13, 15, 16); the British Museum (IB. 46), which possesses also a copy of another edition (IC. 47).
7. Liber Regum, seu Historia Davidis; 20 leaves. folio (Sotheby i. 120b; Schreiber iv. 146). Some consider this to be a German work.
8. Exercitium super Pater Noster, by Henricus de Pomerio or Henry Vanden Bogaert; 10 leaves, small folio (Sotheby ii. 137; Holtrop p. 10; Conway, Notes on the Exercitium, 1887; Schreiber iv. 245). For other editions see the two preceding sections.
9. Pomerium Spirituale, by the same author as No. 8; 12 leaves, having 12 woodcuts. This block book is now only known from a xylo-chirographic issue with the MS. date 1440 (see above), preserved in the Brussels Royal Library. See Conway, Notes on the Exercitium.
10. Temptationes Demonis temptantis hominem de septem peccatis mortalibus; a single large folio leaf printed on one side (Sotheby i. 122a; Schreiber ii. 249). One copy in the British Museum (IC. 29), another in the Wolfenbüttel Library.
11. Vita Christi, or The Life and Passion of Christ; 36 cuts, originally printed in a press on six anopisthographic leaves, in 8vo. Copy in the Erlangen Library (Campbell, Annales, 746).
12. Historia Sanctae Crucis; a fragment of one leaf (with signature g), formerly in the Weigel Collection (ii. 92), but now in the museum at Nuremberg; it seems to be only a proof-sheet.
13. Alphabet (grotesque) in figures (Holtrop p. 11; Sotheby i. 122; Schreiber ii. 324–327).—There is one copy in the British Museum and another in the Basel Library, the latter having the date 1464 engraved on the letter A, which is mutilated in the Museum copy. A similar alphabet preserved at Dresden seems to be a copy made in Germany.
14. Donatus (Aelius) de octo partibus orationis. Leaf 6 of an edition c. 1500 of 16 leaves in the British Museum (IA. 48). For other xylographic editions of this work cf. Holtrop, Mon. typ.
Besides the works of Sotheby, Holtrop, Weigel, Schreiber, Lehrs, Cust, &c., quoted above, consult Sir W. M. Conway, The Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the 15th Century (Cambridge, 1884); Heinecken, Idée générale (Leipzig, 1771); J. Ph. Berjeau’s Facsimiles of the Biblia Pauperum, Canticum Canticorum, Speculum (London, 1859–1861), and idem, Catal. Illustré des livres xylogr. (London, 1865); Dodgson, Cat. of Early German and Flemish Woodcuts in the Brit. Mus.
Early Printing with movable Metal Types.—When the art of writing, and that of printing from wooden blocks (xylography), and all the subsidiary arts of illuminating, decorating and binding manuscripts, books, pictures, &c., were at their greatest height, and had long passed out of the exclusive hands of the monasteries into the hands of students and artisans, the art of printing with movable cast-metal types (typography) was invented. As to when, where and by whom this invention came about, a dispute has been waged for more than four hundred years. It will be seen below that we must attribute it, as in our former edition, to Lourens Janszoon Coster, of Haarlem, and not to Johan Gutenberg, of Mainz.
In saying this, we are aware that in the year 1900 (exactly four hundred years after the Cologne Chronicle had publicly started the dispute by saying that Gutenberg had improved but not invented the art) Germany enthusiastically celebrated the supposed 500th anniversary of his birthday. The speeches delivered on that occasion, after The Claims of Germany. making faint allusions to the doubts and opposition of former times, all declared that, after the rediscovery of the Helmasperger document of 1455, which could not be found in 1880 (Hessels, Gutenberg, pp. 99-101), it was impossible for any unbiased person to dispute Gutenberg’s claims to the honour of the invention any longer.
In the same year a Gutenberg Museum was erected at Mainz to be a repository for anything connected with Gutenberg and printing; also a Society (Gutenberg-Gesellschaft) founded with the view of publishing any book that related, however remotely, to Gutenberg and his invention, to which the whole civilized world was invited to subscribe, as its object was to honour the genius who had conferred such an inestimable boon on mankind by his invention. As a first result, a “Festschrift” was published containing an historical introduction by Professor Hartwig; and articles on the first steps to typography (Schreiber); stamp-printing before Gutenberg and the Psalters of 1457, 1459, &c. (Falk); 15th-century printing in France (Labande); German printers in Spain and Portugal (Häbler); German printers in Italy (Marzi); the coloured initials in Fust and Schoeffer’s Psalter (Wallau); the Turkkalendar for 1455 (Wyss); the earliest spread of typography (Velke); also an elaborate pedigree of the family Gänsfleisch (Schenk zu Schweinsberg), and an equally full account (by Schorbach) of all the documents related to Gutenberg. This “Festschrift” was followed by publications of the “Gutenberg Society”: I. (1902) Die älteste Gutenberg type (Zedler); II. (1903) Die Donat- und Kalendar type (Schwenke); II. 1904) Das Mainzer Fragment vom Weltgericht (Schröder, Zedler, Wallau); IV. (1905) Das Mainzer Catholicon (Zedler); V., VI., VII. (1908) Das Mainzer Fragment vom Weltgericht (Schröder); Die B42 type im Schöfferschen Missale Mogunt. von 1493 (Zedler); Die Missaldrucke P. Schöffers und seines Sohnes Johann (Tronier); Zu den Bücheranzeigen Peter Schöffers (Velke).
We admit the great value of these learned and painstaking publications, and those who have the time and patience to study the mass of material here brought together in a somewhat bewildering fashion, will find their knowledge enriched on various subjects connected with early printing, but no proofs that Gutenberg invented it. It is clear from these books that their authors firmly believed from the outset that Gutenberg invented printing, and printed nearly every book that appeared or can be placed before his death in 1468. Under this impression they always speak of him as the “great master,” the “great genius,” &c., and represent him, not as inventing printing by accident, but as conceiving, somewhere about 1436 or earlier, the idea of inventing it, and meditating from that moment over the problems which he had to solve. Consequently, our authors read a good deal between the lines of their documents, which we fail to find there, and in this way the texts of the documents always show somehow that “the great master” is making or has already made his invention. For instance, the Strassburg lawsuit of 1436–1439 is to them an unimpeachable proof that Gutenberg was secretly working there at printing and trying to solve his problems; when he is paying there, during the same time, a considerable sum in duties for large quantities of wine, we are told that he was then in good circumstances; but when he borrows money in 1442, 1448, 1450 and 1452, and is summonsed in 1455 for not repaying the two last loans, and prosecuted in 1457 for not paying the interest due on his first debt, it is all owing to his difficulties in working out the problems of his invention, though the documents themselves never allude to any “invention” and may be interpreted in quite a different way.
We proceed to examine the documents. The earliest mention
and description of the new art is perhaps that in the Donatus issued- ↑ Heinecken enumerates six editions, of which one has German inscriptions. See also an article by Guichard, in Bull. du Bibliophile (Paris, 1841).
