# The Invention of Printing/Chapter 14

XIV
The Speculum Salutis, or the Mirror of Salvation.
Its Popularity as a Manuscript Book … Made for Mendicant Friars … Description of the Text … Fac-similes of Wood-cuts on First and Last Pages … Its Curious Theology … Four Editions of the Book … Their Peculiarities … Twenty Engraved Pages in one Edition … Strange Blemishes. Opinions of Bibliographers concerning the Date and Printer … Text of the Book Printed from Types … Fac-simile of the Types … Different Bodies of Types in Different Editions … Engraved Pages were Transferred from Types … Book Printed in Four Kinds of Ink … By Two Methods of Impression … Types and Cuts could not be Printed together … Opinions about the Quality of the Presswork … Strange Faults of Presswork … All Editions were Printed in Holland … Wood-cuts used for the last time by Veldener in 1483 … Not Probable that Veldener Printed the Earlier Editions … Veldener did not use the Types … The Speculum is the Work of an Unknown Printer.
André Chevillier.
The Speculum Salutis was popular as a manuscript for at least two centuries before the invention of typography. Heineken describes a copy in the imperial library of Vienna, which he attributes to the twelfth century. He says, such was the popularity of the work with the Benedictines that almost every monastery possessed a copy of it. Of the four manuscript copies owned by the British Museum, one is supposed to have been written in the thirteenth century, another copy is in the Flemish writing of the fifteenth century. The printed ​book contains forty-five chapters of barbarous Latin rhymes, the literary merit of which is clearly enough set before us in Chatto's faithful translation of four lines of the preface:
Predictum prohemium huius libri de cotentis compilaui Et propter pauperes predicatores hoc apponere curaui Qui si forte nequierunt totum libri sibi comparare Possunt ex ipso prohemio si sciunt historias predicare.
This preface of contents, stating what this book's about, For the sake of all poor preachers I have fairly written out. If the purchase of the book entire should be above their reach, This preface yet may serve them, if they know but how to preach.
In many features, the Speculum resembles the Bible of the Poor. As the designs are in the same style, and as the engravings show the same mannerisms, it has been supposed that both books were made by the same printer; but this conjecture is opposed by many facts and probabilities.
The illustration at the beginning of this chapter is a fac-simile of the upper part of the first pictorial page. In the compartment to the right may be seen the Fall of Lucifer. The rebellious angels having been transformed into devils, and by swords and spears thrust over the battlements of Heaven, are falling into the jaws of Hell, which is here represented, in the conventional style of medieval designers, as the mouth of a hideous monster filled with forks of flame. In the next compartment is the Creation of Eve in the garden of Eden. Here we see that the designer has modified the biblical narrative to suit his own notions: Eve is not formed from the rib of Adam, but is emerging from his side. At the bottom of this picture is this legend in abbreviated Latin, God created man after his own image and likeness.
Fac-simile of the Upper Part of the First Pictorial Page of the Speculum Salutis. [From Heineken.]
​An illustration on the last page of the book represents the Parable of the Ten Virgins, to which is added the legend, The Kingdom of Heaven is likened unto Ten Virgins. The five foolish virgins are sadly descending into the mouth of the monster that represents Hell. Another illustration represents the prophet Daniel interpreting the writing on the wall.
Hessel's free translation of a large portion of the preface is really needed to show the theological teachings of the book.
Fac-simile of the Upper Part of the Last Page of the Speculum Salutis. [From Heineken.]
The Speculum was printed at different times and places during the fifteenth century, but the copies of greatest value are those which belong to four correlated editions—two in Latin, and two in Dutch—all without date, name, or place of printer. In these four editions the illustrations are obviously impressions from the same blocks; but each edition exhibits some new peculiarity in the shape or disposition of the letters. Those who favor the theory of an invention of typography in Holland maintain that these letters are the impressions of the first movable types, and that the curious workmanship of the book marks the development of printing at the great turning-point in its progress when it was passing from xylography to typography. As important conclusions have been drawn from the peculiarities of each edition, it is necessary that they should be described with precision. The order in which the four editions were actually printed is not certainly known. Six eminent bibliographers have arranged them in as many different orders. The order assigned to them here ​is purely conjectural, but it is based on the supposition that that should be the first edition in which the wood-cuts show the sharpest lines, and that the last in which the types and wood-cuts show the strongest marks of wear.
The First Edition is in Latin. Each copy of the book is made up of sixty-three leaves of small folio printed upon one side of the paper, but with printed pages facing each other, after the style of the block-books. The space occupied by the printed page is about 7¾ inches wide, and 10¼ inches high. The preface, in rhyme, is composed in broad measure, and occupies five pages. The fifty-eight pages of text that follow are also in rhyme; but they are made up with two columns to the page. At the top of each page is an engraving on wood, containing, on one block, two distinct designs, separated from each other by the pillar of an architectural frame-work. At the bottom of each design, and engraved upon the same block, is a line in Latin, which explains the design, and which serves as the text for the verses underneath. The letters of the preface and the text are impressions from Pointed Gothic types of the Flemish style. Every line of verse begins with a capital letter. The only mark of punctuation is the period, but it is rarely used. The book is without title, paging-figures, signatures, or catch-words. The wood-cuts are in brown, and the types in black ink. The brown ink is a water color which can be partially effaced by rubbing with a moist sponge; the black ink is an oil color, for it has stained the paper with the pale greenish tinge of badly prepared oil. As the back of every printed wood-cut is smooth and shining, while the back of every type-printed page is rough and deeply indented, it is obvious that the types of the text were not only printed with a different ink, but by a separate impression, and, perhaps, by a process different from that employed in printing the pictures. The two pages that appear on the same sheet were printed together, as may be inferred from their irregularities; if one page is out of register, or out of square, its mated page is out of register to the same degree. The engravings were printed ​before the types, as is clearly proved by the discovery that on some pages the types slightly overlap the cuts.
The Second Edition is in Latin, and is like the first, with this odd exception: twenty pages of the text are printed from engraved blocks of wood. These xylographic pages are distributed in irregular order, as if by accident, as will be shown by the italic figures, which represent these pages, in the following table. It should be noticed that the xylographic pages,
| First Section of Six Leaves. | Second Section of Fourteen Leaves. | Third Section of Fourteen Leaves. | Fourth Section of Fourteen Leaves. | Fifth Section of Sixteen Leaves. |
| – 5 | . 6 – 19 . | 20 – 33 | 34 – 47 | 48 – 63 |
| 1 – 4 | . 7 – 18 . | . 21 – 32 . | 35 – 46 | 49 – 62 |
| 2 – 3 | 8 – 17 | . 22 – 31 . | 36 – 45 | 50 – 61 |
| | . 9 – 16 . | 23 – 30 | 37 – 44 | . 51 – 60 . |
| | . 10 – 15 . | 24 – 29 | 38 – 43 | 52 – 59 |
| | . 11 – 24 . | 25 – 28 | 39 – 42 | 53 – 58 |
| | . 12 – 13 . | . 26 – 27 . | 40 – 41 | 54 – 57 |
| | | | | 55 – 56 |
The Third Edition is in Dutch prose. The types are like those of the previous editions, with the exception of pages 49 and 60, which are printed in types of a smaller body. The face of the smaller types has all the peculiarities of the types of the earlier editions, and is apparently the work of the same letter-cutter. In the few known copies of this edition there are differences in typographic arrangement which show that types were altered between the first and the last impression.
The Fourth Edition is also in Dutch prose. All known copies of this edition are so badly printed that they have the appearance of spoiled or discarded sheets. Many authors have supposed that this must have been the first edition, and, perhaps, the first experiment with types; but a closer examination proves that the bad printing is owing, not so much to ignorance and to inexperience as to worn types and careless presswork—that this edition is really the last. The copy that is preserved by the city of Haarlem shows, in the handwriting of the sixteenth century, this inscription in Dutch: "The Speculum Salutis, the earliest production of Lourens Coster, the inventor of typography, who printed at Haarlem about the year 1440." Between the second and the third leaf has been inserted a portrait of Lourens Coster, "engraved by Vandervelde after Van Campen," with the words, in Latin, "Lourens Coster, of Haarlem, first inventor of the typographic art about the year 1440." Underneath this inscription is a Latin verse by Scriverius, in which he extols Coster as indisputably the inventor of typography. As the writing, the portrait, and the inscription were added a long time after the book had been printed, these additions cannot, consequently, be accepted as evidences of any real value.
Junius, the historian of Holland, writing in 1568, was the first to call attention to the Speculum. He noticed but one edition: it is not probable that he knew of the others. He said it was made by Coster from types of wood, in Haarlem, ​before the year 1440. Scriverius, a Dutch author, writing in 1628, said that it was printed by Coster from founded or cast types in or about 1428. Heineken, a German bibliographer, intimates that the blocks of the Speculum were engraved, and that the two Latin editions were printed in Germany after the invention of typography; but he concedes, rather grudgingly, that the Dutch editions were printed in Holland. Santander says that the book was printed in the Netherlands, but not before the year 1480.
The disagreements of bibliographers concerning this book have not been restricted to controversies about its date and printer. Some have said that there were no types in any of the editions, and that the letters, like the pictures, were cut on solid blocks of wood. This error is almost pardonable. The superficial observer of our own time will say that the characters of this book are not types, but badly engraved letters. They seem to lack the most distinguishing feature of types. The letters are not at all alike, as may be seen in the accompanying fac-simile. The variations in the shapes of the letters are so frequent that a modern printer would at once decide that the dissimilar letters could not have been cast in the same matrix. This is a curious defect, but it can be shown that the letters are types, and founded types. "The existence of a positive fact," says Chatto, "can never be affected by any arguments which are grounded on the difficulty of accounting for it." It is plain, however, that the types of the book were carelessly made by an inexpert type-maker, and perhaps by a clumsy method now out of use. Instead of making all the types of one character from one punch or original, the printer of this book made them from two, four, or six punches or originals. At this point it is not necessary to consider why so many punches were made. It is enough to say that there is real uniformity in the midst of all this diversity—that each letter is a duplicate, more or less faithful according to the wear it has received, of its own original. Careful tracings on transparent paper have been repeatedly made of a selected letter ​for the purpose of testing its agreement or disagreement with letters of the same kind on other pages, and the comparison establishes the fact that the letters are founded types.
The errors of the Speculum are those of types. They show the inversion of letters in positions which preclude the possibility that they could have been formed upon engraved blocks. The occasional occurrence of a c for an e, of an n for a u, of an s for an f, and the "turning upside down" of other letters, are examples of errors which can be made only by compositors.
The unequal perspicuity of the letters in the Speculum is that of unequally worn types. Of two adjoining letters, one will be distinct, black, and deeply indented in the paper; the other will be of dull color, and of indistinct outlines. The distinct letter is a new and high type, which has received the full force of impression; the indistinct letter is an old and worn type which has been touched but feebly by impression. If all the letters had been engraved on one plate, they would have been of equal height, and should have been equally legible, or nearly so, under impression.
The four editions of the Speculum are, of themselves, presumptive evidence that each edition was printed from types. It is improbable that the printer would re-engrave blocks for a second edition when those of the first were in existence. If the first edition had been printed from types, and the types had been distributed, as is customary, the printer was obliged to reset them in order to make the second edition.
These four editions were certainly the work of the same printing office, and, without doubt, of the same printer, for ​the engravings are the same, and the types, ink, paper, and workmanship have similar defects and peculiarities. The first edition shows pages of types only; the next edition has types and blocks, but the types are like those of the first; then comes a third edition in the same types, but with two pages of types differing somewhat as to body and face; lastly an edition entirely in the old types, in a worn condition. Each edition has more or less connection with the others.
English.
Two-line Brevier.
The body or dimension of the types used in the Speculum approximates the size known to all British and American printers as English; but it is rather larger than any of the modern standards. It is really intermediate between the body English and the little used body of Two-line brevier or Columbian.
Fac-simile of part of a Page of the Speculum Salutis.
​these twenty blocks to complete his imperfect edition. This hypothesis does not accord with other facts: the appearance of three successive editions of the book, each with a text of types, proves that the practice of typography was continued.
The provision of black ink for the types and brown ink for the cuts seems unnecessary, but Van der Linde's explanation of this peculiarity is plausible. He says that the oily black ink used on the types may have been rejected for the cuts because its greasy surface interfered with the brush of the colorist. It does not appear that the inquiry has ever been made, whether the brown ink of block-books was always brown. It is probable that this brown ink was once black. The variability of the color, so frequently remarked in all block-books, is the certain indication of a faded black writing ink. It was the fluidity of this writing ink that prevented its use on the types of the Speculum; the fluid collected in globules on the metal, spreading under impression, and blotting the paper. Oily ink was required for a surface of metal.
The unequal indentation of the letters indicates that the types were not of a uniform height. Nor is it probable that the engravings at the head of every page were always truly flat and of precisely the same height as the types. They were pieces of flat boards, which must have warped with every change from heat to cold, or from dampness to dryness. In these irregularities we find the probable reason for the employment of two distinct methods of impression. Two impressions were needed as much as two kinds of ink. ​The types required strong, and the wood-cuts weak impression. If the impression had been graduated to suit the wood-cuts, the print of the types would not have been visible; if enough impression had been given to face the types, the wood-cuts, if in the same form, would have been crushed.
The quality of the presswork of the Speculum has been strangely misrepresented. Sotheby, who tries to establish the priority of Dutch printing, says that the ink in one edition is brilliant; that its types have great beauty and sharpness; that its presswork is equal in clearness to that of Gutenberg's Bible. In this high praise no other author joins: most critics say it is but a shabby piece of presswork. The Dutch authors, who wish to show the imperfections of typography in its infancy, call especial attention to the illegibility of the fourth edition in Dutch, which they claim as the first, and for that reason they rate it as an unusually clumsy piece of printing. Van der Linde says that the presswork of the Speculum does not differ materially from that of many books printed in the Netherlands during the last quarter of the fifteenth century.
The wood-cuts were printed by the unknown process then made use of by all block-printers; the types were printed on a press which was fitted with at least one of the appliances of a well-made printing press; but the two editions in Latin, which are in verse, with lines of irregular length, show typographical blemishes of an extraordinary nature. In the blank spaces at the ends of the short lines are found impressions of letters never intended to be seen or read—of letters that do ​not belong to the text—of letters not printed with ink, but embossed or jammed in the paper. On some pages entire words are found. These words and letters, which are always found within the square of the printed page, and in line with the types printed in black, are, undeniably, embossings of types from the same font. The printer who critically examines these embossed letters will be convinced that the types making them were used as bearers at the ends of the short lines, to shield adjacent types from hard impression: he will also know that they were printed on a press provided with a frisket.
The period in which the early editions of the Speculum were printed will be the subject of the next chapter, but it may here be told when the wood-cuts were destroyed. In the year 1483, one John Veldener, then a printer at Culembourg, printed two editions of the Speculum, in the Dutch language, and in small quarto form. One edition contained 116 and another 128 illustrations, printed from the wood-cuts that had been previously used in the four notable editions. To make these broad wood-cuts, which had been designed for pages in folio, serve for pages in quarto, Veldener cut away the architectural frame-work surrounding each illustration, and then sawed each block in two pieces. Mutilated in this fashion, it was impossible afterward for any printer to use these blocks in the production of an edition in folio like any of those that have been previously described. Veldener's editions were not made by the method used by the printer of the earlier editions: the types and the wood-cuts were printed together, ​in black ink and upon both sides of the leaf. The blocks were badly worn before they were mutilated: the finer lines of the engraving are flattened out, and retain too much ink, producing an effect of blackness and muddiness not shown in the impressions of the earlier editions. The fault is certainly in the cuts, and not in the presswork, for Veldener was an able printer. The wood-cuts printed by him in other books, at Louvain and at Utrecht, show neater presswork, although they are of feeble design and meanly engraved.
Although Veldener made use of the wood-cuts, he did not use any of the types of the Speculum. His book types are well known: as they are of different bodies and faces, they may be regarded as conclusive evidence that Veldener was not the printer of the early editions. It is probable that he bought from the printer of the first editions, or from his successors, the wood-cuts only. We may suppose that the types were worn out, and that the punches and matrices were also worn out or obsolete, for we find no traces of them in the books of any later printer. We have, therefore, to attribute all the books in which these types are found to a printer who preceded Veldener. We do not know the name of this printer, nor can we fix the date when he began to print, but it is evident that he was one of the earliest if not the first typographic printer in the Netherlands.
* ↑ Sometimes described under the title of Speculum Humanæ Salvationis.
* ↑ Jackson and Chatto, Treatise on Wood Engravings p. 83.The book was written for the instruction of the traveling mendicant friars who had, since the thirteenth century, gradually monopolized preaching and the pastoral work of the settled clergy. Provided with nothing but a little Church Latin, and therefore too ignorant to derive their discourses from original sources, they felt the want of homiletic and catechetical assistance as an aid to their understanding and memory. Picture books, with a brief explanatory text, were the best means of supplying this want. Hence originated representations of the mystic relation between the Old and the New Testament, of which the Biblia Pauperum is the first fruit. Van der Linde, Haarlem Legend, p. 3.
* ↑ There is an edition, with a text in Latin and in German, which was printed at Augsburg in 1471; there are many editions in German only, some without dates, and others with dates of 1476, 1492, and 1500; a Flemish edition by Veldener in 1483; and various editions in French.
* ↑ There are two copies of the book which exhibit the blemish of a leaf made up of two distinct pieces of paper, each piece printed by a different impression, but so pasted together as to constitute one perfect page. We do not certainly know the cause that made this patchwork necessary, but it would seem that a gross blunder had been made in the printing-office; perhaps a transposition of lines by the compositor, or illegible presswork by the pressman. It was necessary that the sheet containing the error should be canceled and replaced. But the frugal printer refused to destroy the entire page for an error confined to but half a page. He tore off the lower half of the leaf, and replaced it by attaching a piece of white paper to the bottom of the upper half, which contained the engraving in brown ink. On this pasted piece of white paper, he took a corrected or perfect impression from the types. In this copy, the impression, which deeply indented the paper in the double thickness where it was pasted, proves that the types were printed after the engravings. There is another copy in which the illustration on the upper half of the sheet was canceled, and replaced by the same method.
* ↑ Ottley, selecting one letter for examination from a great number of letters of the same kind, found that it was always the same where-ever it occurred, not only in the first, but in the second edition. Koning and Enchedé, pursuing a badly cast or defective letter, found that the peculiar blemishes of this letter reappeared in other letters on many pages. This precision of form is the peculiarity of typography: it proves that the letters of unvarying uniformity could not have been made by any engraver on wood, but must have been produced by a mould.
* ↑ The Latin and Dutch editions of the Speculum maintain such a remarkable conformity with each other in the engravings, in the types, in the quality of the paper, in the presswork, and in every typographic feature, that it is evident that the four editions were published in the same country and by the same printer. As all bibliographers, whatever theory they may have concerning the origin of printing, attribute, without hesitation, the Dutch edition of the Speculum to Holland, the Latin editions should also be attributed to Holland. Guichard, Notice sur le Speculum, pp. 118 and 119. This is the opinion of all bibliographers except Heineken.
* ↑ The fac-simile given by Holtrop in his Monuments typographiques presents the following measurements, in American inches: In the Latin edition, described in this book as the first, 25 lines measure 5½ inches. In the Dutch edition, here described as the third, 27 lines measure 5½ inches. In the Dutch edition, here described as the fourth, 26 lines measure 5½ inches. As we find no indication of the use of leads or thin blanks to increase the distance between lines, it would seem that the types of the three editions were cast in different moulds. Sotheby's fac-similes, which seem to have been made with equal care, do not exactly agree with those taken from Holtrop's book. There are, no doubt, differences of size, not only in the fac-similes, but in the original copies of the book. Allowance must be also made for the unequal shrinkage on different leaves of the very thick paper, which may have been unequally dampened, and unequally extended before printing.
* ↑ When a new engraving on wood, in imitation of an old one, is desired, the modern engraver does not redraw, but transfers the subject, substantially by the following process: The back of the print to be copied is moistened with a solution of alkali, or of benzine, which, soaking through the paper, forms a new combination with the oil in the ink. The black of the ink is thereby liberated, so that it can be completely removed by firm pressure. The print so treated is then laid, face downward, on the block, and the free black is transferred to the block by the pressure of a burnisher, or of a press. The black re-appears on the block, but in a properly reversed position, ready for the tool of the engraver.
* ↑ The neglect of engraving on wood by the early typographers has frequently been noticed as a strange fact. It was, no doubt, induced by the difficulties encountered in trying to print wood-cuts with types. The blocks would warp and crack in spite of all precautions. The evil was but partially checked by diminishing the size of the blocks. To evade the annoyance produced by warped blocks, some printers engraved large illustrations on separate pieces of wood, which were roughly fitted to each other, but not conjoined. Other printers printed the wood-cuts of their books by a separate impression. As these illustrations were printed in the same black ink which was used for the text, the double impression is rarely ever noticed, not even by the practical printer.
* ↑ The Dutch folio of Jan de Mandeville, placed by Holtrop about 1470, as a work of printing, is so bad that the earliest editions of the Speculum are masterpieces by the side of it. The work of an unknown Schiedam printer of the latter part of the fifteenth century is equally bad. The Brussels incunabula of the Brotherhood of the Life-in-Common are bad; those of Arnold ter Hoorne at Cologne (1471-83) are sometimes barbarous. Heineken mentions a book printed in Augsburg in 1557, and says: "If the name of the engraver on wood and the date had not been found, one might think that this was the oldest book in the world." In the series of the different Dutch incunabula of this kind, the Speculum presents itself very favorably; it is not badly, but well printed; it is not a first experiment, but the fruit of practice. Dr. Van der Linde, Haarlem Legend of the Invention of Printing, p. 37.
* ↑ The frisket of the modern hand-press is a light frame-work of iron, which is covered like a kite, with a sheet of paper pasted to the edges. Just before the act of impression, this frisket is placed between the form of inked types and the sheet of paper prepared to receive the impression. The office of the frisket is to prevent the sheet from being blackened by anything but the face of the types. For this purpose, every part of the page to be printed is neatly cut out of the paper mask pasted on the frisket. Every part of the sheet that should remain unprinted is masked or covered by the uncut paper of the frisket. When the impression is taken, the sheet receives only the impression from the type, and is unsoiled by the ink that accumulates about the types and their fixtures.
* ↑ Veldener, who was a German, and, probably, a pupil of Ulric Zell of Cologne, began to print at Louvain in 1473. Like many printers of the Netherlands, he moved his printing office from place to place. He printed at Louvain in 1473; at Utrecht in 1478; at Culemburg in 1483. The last book bearing his imprint is dated 1484.