Books Before Typography Part 3

CHAPTER VI

_The Dawn of a New Era_

Methods of inscribing words or characters upon vellum or other writing material other than by the toilsome process of handwriting had long been in existence. Among the oldest of human remains are stamps and seals for the impression of symbols, words, or signatures upon plastic substances, as the impression of a signet or seal is now made on sealing wax softened by heat. Originally these seals were incised so that the impression was left in raised characters on the receiving substance, as is now usually the case with seals and signets. Later the designs were sometimes cut in relief so that the figure resulting from the impression was not raised in the substance but pressed into it. From this it was but a step to put some coloring substance on the raised part of the seal or die and so print it on an unyielding surface such as vellum or papyrus, as hand stamps are now used for a great variety of purposes.

Doc.u.ments were signed in this way by persons who were either too illiterate to write their names or too occupied with business to take the time to sign the great numbers of doc.u.ments which were brought before them. The peculiar characteristics of the Chinese alphabet early prompted this inventive people to the use of these types, for such these devices were. The Chinese are said to have used movable types made of porcelain at a very early period. The use of the seal or the stamp bearing a single letter naturally led to its enlargement and to the inclusion of more than one letter on the same stamp. As early as the 6th century the Chinese were printing books from wooden plates on which were cut in relief all the characters which were to appear upon a single leaf. This was nothing more or less than our modern stereotype plate, excepting that it was carved by hand on wood instead of being made of metal by a mechanical process. There is, however, no evidence whatever connecting these Chinese essays at printing, whether from blocks or types, with European printing. This last appears to have had an entirely independent origin and development.

In Europe, as has already been noted, stamps were used for signatures and other purposes. It has been observed that certain ma.n.u.scripts of the 12th century show initials so uniform as to appear to be stamp or die impressions. It can hardly be regarded as clearly established, however, that this is the case. As early as the first half of the 15th century bookbinders used dies both in relief and in intaglio, that is having the design cut into the surface of the die. None of these devices, however, appears to have been used for the purpose of multiplying impressions as is now done with the printing press.

At a comparatively early period, probably as early as the first part of the 12th century, there came a call for the dissemination of knowledge in somewhat rudimentary form among the common people. At an earlier period still this desire had expressed itself in the elaborate sculpture and stained gla.s.s with which the churches were decorated. The church itself was the poor man's Bible and his library the lives of saints and martyrs. The story was told to him by the priest. It was visualized by the artist. Conventional types or attributes of biblical and other personages were adopted so that the peasant or the artisan could recognize anywhere the figure of Christ, of one of the evangelists, of Moses, or of the patron saint of his church or city.

The clergy and the lettered cla.s.ses had long been accustomed to the pictures which not only decorated but interpreted the pages of their books. It was only natural that there should be a desire to have at least these pictures in the hands of the people so as to reinforce in the home the teachings of the church. The multiplication of these pictures, so costly and so tedious in their production, was clearly out of the question, but why not make a stamp big enough to carry a picture of a saint or a simple biblical scene, make an impression from it on vellum and so produce a rude but cheap picture which could be multiplied indefinitely and sold at a low rate?

No one knows who invented this idea or who first practised making these picture sheets. We know, however, that such sheets were printed as early as the 12th century. Originally printed upon cloth or vellum, by the middle of the 14th century they came to be printed on paper, and by the early part of the 15th they had become very common. Circulated at first only in single leaves, at a later period the leaves were folded and combined into quires as in other books and we have the fully developed block book as it is called, each leaf being printed from a single plate.

Some of these books were printed in many editions and had enormous circulation. At a later period a few lines of explanatory text were added to the picture. In some cases these lines were part of the plate.

In other cases they were written and in some they were even printed, as the use of the block book survived the invention of typographical printing. These block books were exactly like the picture books which we now place in the hands of little children. They were to be looked at rather than read. The meager explanatory text, as in the case of the child's book, served the double purpose of a simple reading lesson and of an aid to the explanation of the book for the benefit of the owner by some wiser person. One of the most popular of these books was the Biblia Pauperum, or Poor Man's Bible. This contained a large number of pictures covering the more striking incidents of the biblical story. These were not arranged in any particular order, as the idea of historical study of the scriptures had not yet made its appearance.

A sample page for instance, shows an architectural design. The larger part of the page is occupied by three panels. Above and below the middle panel are two smaller ones leaving four blank rectangles at the corners of the page. The middle one of the larger panels shows Jesus rising from the tomb while the other two show Samson carrying away the gates of Gaza and Jonah being disgorged by the whale. Each of the two smaller panels at top and bottom is occupied by two figures, the four being intended to represent David, Jacob, Hosea, and Zephaniah. Fortunately the "portraits" are labelled as these biblical worthies are represented in the ordinary costume of well-to-do citizens of the early part of the 15th century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Page from the second edition of the Poor Man's Bible, about 1450.]

This and other block books continued to be reprinted in type after the invention of typography. One block book and one only, so far as is known, was without pictures. This was a Latin grammar commonly known as Donatus, from its author the famous Roman grammarian Donatus of the 4th century. This was the one Latin grammar in use in the middle ages, when Latin was the foundation of all culture. It was, therefore, very extensively used and it is supposed that more copies were printed of it than of any other block book. It has the further distinction of being the only block book printed on vellum. Ordinarily the desire for cheapness and the much greater ease of handling the material caused the block books to be printed on paper. The importance of the Donatus as a book of reference and the hard usage it was likely to receive at the hands of schoolboys caused the use of the more expensive but more durable material.

Particular interest attaches to one block book called the Speculum Humanae Salvationis or "Mirror of Salvation." In a way this book is the connecting link between block books and type printed books. There is no copy of this book in existence printed entirely from wooden blocks. Most of the early editions are printed from movable types with a block printed ill.u.s.tration at the head of each page. One of them, however, has twenty pages of the text out of the sixty-two which const.i.tuted the entire book printed from wood blocks. These twenty pages are inserted at intervals among the others, and how and why they came there is a riddle beyond guessing.

It has been conjectured by some that the long-held belief that Gutenberg was a polisher of mirrors is erroneous and that the reference in certain of the scanty doc.u.ments concerning him to business about mirrors may refer to attempts on his part to print an edition of this book, "The Mirror of Salvation."

In making a block book the design was cut on the side of a flat piece of wood, not on the end of the block as was the later practice in wood engraving. Sometimes, as has been said, a design thus cut was only a picture. Sometimes it was both picture and text. The design was cut in relief, that is to say the wood was cut away leaving the design to be impressed upon the paper raised. The block was then thoroughly wetted with a thin, watery, pale brown material much resembling distemper. A sheet of damp paper was laid on it and the back of the paper was carefully rubbed with a dabber or burnisher. It is probable that other inks were employed, especially for vellum, and it is also extremely probable that a rude press, ancestor of the modern printing press, was used to produce the impressions in many cases. The resulting book consisted of sheets printed on one side only, although there are a few very late examples in which printing appears on both sides. The pictures were commonly roughly colored by hand.

Playing cards were at one time supposed to have been the first products of this method of printing. It was naturally supposed that the small and comparatively simple design on the face of the playing card might be regarded as the original from which the more elaborate picture and book might be developed. This opinion has now, however, been abandoned, as it is known that the earliest playing cards were hand drawn and painted and that the block printed playing cards which we have date from the 15th century when block printing was very common.

It has already been said that these blocks contained not only pictures but text, one very important block book consisting of text alone. What determined the form of the letters composing this text?

There were four types of handwriting recognized in the ma.n.u.scripts of the period which we are considering. The first was the book hand. This was the recognized type of script used in the production of books and it existed in two forms, the set or upright in which the letters were carefully formed, held upright, and without ligatures or connecting strokes between letters, and the cursive in which the letters were sloped and ligatured. The second type was the church hand, used for ecclesiastical ma.n.u.scripts and familiar to us as the Gothic or black letter. This also appears in two forms. Manifestly the Gothic does not lend itself to a cursive form so that the two types which appear are the set or upright, similar in its characteristics to the corresponding book hand, and the ornamental or calligraphic which, as its name implies, was an ornamental type of the set hand. The third type was the letter hand, used by persons who were not professional penmen in correspondence and the ordinary uses to which handwriting is applied. The fourth was the court or charter hand. This hand was used for court records, deeds, charters, and all sorts of legal doc.u.ments. The first two types were highly conventionalized and left very little to the "hand" as we now say of the individual writer. The third, as might be supposed, while following certain general models offers all the peculiarities of individual handwriting at any age. The fourth is intermediate in regard to its conventionality between the first and second types and the third.

These recognized conventional types of handwriting were imitated in the cutting of the blocks. They were also imitated when the letters, instead of being cut in groups on a block to form an inscription, were cut on the ends of single types to be used in printing. The first printing, whether on blocks or from types, was an imitation of ma.n.u.script and this determined the letter faces.

The early 15th century, then, sees everything prepared for the invention and use of movable types for printing purposes. There is a greater demand for books than the hard working copyists can supply. The idea of making impressions from stamps has become very familiar through long use. Ink and paper suitable for these impressions have been discovered and are obtainable at a reasonable price. The rude presses used for so many other purposes have been adapted to the taking of these impressions. Everything is ready for the invention which is to revolutionize the intellectual life of mankind.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

The Story of the Alphabet. Edward Clodd.

The Story of Books. G. B. Rawlings.

Books in Ma.n.u.script. Falconer Madan.

Books and Their Makers in the Middle Ages. Vol. I. G. H. Putnam.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. Eleventh Edition.

Articles: Alphabet (very scholarly and in large part suitable only for very advanced students.) Paleography.

Ma.n.u.script.

Book.

Libraries.

Bookbinding.

Bookselling.

Papyrus.

Paper.

Ink, and many others which will suggest themselves during the study of the articles named.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. Name some of the earliest devices for communicating ideas to the absent.

2. What was the most important of these devices, and why?

3. What is an ideogram?

4. What is a phonogram?

5. Tell how phonograms became alphabets.

6. Who were the Egyptians and what kind of characters did they use?

7. Who were the a.s.syrio-Babylonians and what kind of characters did they use?

8. Who were the Cretans and what kind of characters did they use?

9. Who invented the alphabet?

10. Where did they get the material for the alphabet?

11. What is papyrus, and how was it made?