Nor did Tritheim, abbot of Spanheim, in the fifteenth century, omit bookbinding in an enumeration of the various employments of the monks of his abbey.
There is a show of justice in the modern book collector’s expression of due praise to the binder of the magnificent folio or shining duodecimo, made to sleep upon an eider-down pillow, but it will not atone for centuries of ingratitude. There was an old law which compelled bookbinders to take oath that they did not know how to read; and the magnificent books of Grolier and Maioli and De Thou come to us without an indication of the name of the artist, who is ever to remain in obscurity. The Marquis de Lavalette’s mistake of the name of Grolier for the name of a bookbinder was not an unnatural one, and should not have been considered by such an ardent bibliophile as Clément de Ris solely in the light of evidence of the distinguished minister’s ignorance of the history of bibliomania.
The publishers of the first printed volumes were bookbinders also, and the names of Johannas Guile-