A curious devotional cut is inserted in the Faques Psalter of 1504 in the British Museum, containing the emblems of the Passion and a large I. H. S. At the base of the cut are the initials d. h. b., perhaps referring to the place where the cut was issued. Most of these cuts were doubtless produced in monasteries or religious houses to give or sell to visitors, who very often inserted them in their own private books of devotion, and in this manner many have been preserved. The Lambeth copy of the Wynkyn de Worde Sarum Horæ of 1494 shows signs of having contained eighteen of such pictures, though only three are now left.
After the single leaf prints we come to the block-books, which we may look upon in some ways as the precursors of printed books.
‘A block-book is a book printed wholly from carved blocks of wood. Such volumes usually consist of pictorial matter only; if any text is added in illustration, it likewise is carved upon the wood-block, and not put together with movable types. The whole of any one page, sometimes the whole of two pages, is printed from a single block of wood. The manner in which the printing was done is peculiar. The block was first thoroughly wetted with a thin watery ink, then a sheet of damp paper was laid upon it, and the back of the paper was carefully rubbed with some kind of dabber or burnisher, till an impression from the ridges of the carved block had been transferred to the paper. Of course in this fashion a sheet could only be printed on one side; the only block-book which does not possess this characteristic is the Legend of St. Servatius in the Royal Library of Brussels, and that is an exceptional volume in many respects besides.’[2] These block-books must be considered as forming a distinct group of themselves, radically different from other books, though undoubtedly they gave the idea to the inventor of movable type. They continued to be made during the whole of the fifteenth century, almost always on the same plan, and each one as archaic looking as another. The invention of movable type did not do away with the demand, and the supply was kept up.
[2]Conway’s Woodcutters of the Netherlands. Cambridge, 1884. 8vo.
Unfortunately we have no data for determining the exact period at which these books were made; and it is curious to note that all the editions which are dated have a late date, the majority being between 1470 and 1480, and none being earlier than the first date, with the exception of the Brussels block-book, which is dated 1440.
The number of different block-books in existence is hard to estimate, but it must approach somewhere near one hundred. Many of these are of little importance, many others of too late a date to be of much interest.
The best known of the earlier block-books are the Ars Moriendi, the Biblia Pauperum, the Apocalypse, and the Canticum Canticorum. Of these, the first and third are probably German, the second and fourth Dutch. Of all these books there are a number of editions, not easily distinguishable apart, and which it is difficult to place in chronological order. These editions are hardly editions in the modern sense of the term. They were not produced by a printer who used one set of blocks till they were worn out, and then cut another. The woodcutter was the only tradesman, and he sold, not the books, but the blocks. He cut set after set of blocks to print the few books then in demand, and these were sold to private purchasers. We find wealthy people or heads of religious establishments in possession of such sets. In the inventory of Jean de Hinsberg, Bishop of Liège, 1419-1455, are noticed—
‘Unum instrumentum ad imprimendas scripturas et ymagines