In the British Museum is a Hebrew Pentateuch, printed at ‘Taro’ in 1487. It is not known where this place was; but it has been conjectured that the name is a misprint for Faro, a town of Portugal (though it might stand for Toro in Leon); and if this is so, the date of the introduction of printing into Portugal must be placed two years farther back.
DENMARK AND SWEDEN.
The first book printed in Denmark, or indeed in the whole of the Northern countries, was an edition of Gulielmi Caorsini de obsidione et bello Rhodiano, of which a single copy is now preserved in the library at Upsala. It was printed in 1482 at Odensee, by John Snell, with the colophon: ‘Per venerabilem virum Johannem Snel artis impressorie magistrum in Ottonia impressa sub anno domini 1482.’ After the printing of this one book, Snell went to Stockholm. In 1486 one book was printed at Schleswig, by Stephen Arndes, who had already printed at Perusia, and who in 1487 appears at Lubeck. The book was the Missale secundum Ordinarium et ritum Ecclesiæ Sleswicensis, and no other was issued at this town in the fifteenth century. Next in order comes Copenhagen, to which, about 1490, Govaert van Ghemen moved from the Netherlands. The first dated book issued was the Regulæ de figuratis constructionibus grammaticis of 1493. According to M. Deschamps, this was preceded by a Donatus, without date, but having the name of the printer; and it is supposed that Govaert van Ghemen began to print in March 1490. He seems to have printed up to the year 1510.
John Snell, who has already been noticed as a printer at Odensee, came to Stockholm in 1483, and in that year printed the Dialogus Creaturarum Moralizatus, a small quarto of 156 leaves, with twenty-three lines to the page. [Hain, 6128.] Of this book four examples were known; one unfortunately perished in the fire at Abö in 1827. Of the others, two are at Upsala, and the third at Copenhagen. No other book appears at Stockholm until 1495, when the Breviarium Strengenense was printed. The printer’s name is given as Johannes Fabri. And some writers would have this to be another form of the name Snell; Snell, they say, being the same ‘practically’ as Smed, Smed being our Smith, and Faber or Fabri the Latin. This alteration, however, is not quite satisfactory.
In the same year as the Breviarium Strengenense was issued, the first book in Swedish was printed by the same printer. It is the Bok af Djäfvulsens frästilse, by John Gerson. The printer, John Fabri, died in the course of this year; for in the year following we find issued the Breviarium secundum ritum ecclesiæ Upsalensis, printed by the widow of John Fabri. One other book must be noticed as printed in the fifteenth century; it is the De dignitate psalterii, by Alanus de Rupe, printed probably at Stockholm, but with no printer’s name. One book only is known to have been printed at Wadsten in the fifteenth century; it is an edition of the Breviarium ad usum cœnobii Wadstenensis de ordine S. Brigittæ, printed in 1495, an octavo with twelve lines to the page. Only one copy is known, which passed after the Reformation, with the rest of the books belonging to the monastery, into the library of Upsala. The printing press of this monastery came to an untimely end, for in the middle of October 1495 the whole of the part of the building where it stood was destroyed by fire. Of this occurrence an account is preserved; and we learn from it that not only did the monastery lose all its printing materials, but that a tub full of the Revelaciones Sanctæ Brigittæ, which had been printed in 1492 at Lubeck, by Bartholomæus Ghotan, and which the printer had sent up for sale, were also destroyed. Stockholm and Wadsten are the only places in Sweden where any books were produced in the fifteenth century; and the total number of books issued, according to Schröder’s Incunabula artis typographicæ in Suecia, was six.
CHAPTER VIII.
CAXTON—WYNKYN DE WORDE—JULIAN NOTARY.
The history of the Introduction of Printing into England is comparatively clear and straightforward; for we have neither the difficulties of conflicting accounts, as in the case of Germany and the Low Countries, nor troublesome manuscript references which cannot be adequately explained, as in the case of France. Previous to 1477, when Caxton introduced the art in a perfect state, nothing had been produced in England but a few single sheet prints, such as the Images of Pity, of which there are copies in the British Museum and the Bodleian, and the cut of the Lion, the device of Bishop Gray (1454-1479), in Ely Cathedral.