‘Novem printe lignee ad imprimendas ymagines cum quatuordecim aliis lapideis printis.’
Thus, these editions do not necessarily follow one another; some may have been produced side by side by different cutters, others within the interval of a few months, but by the same man. Their date is another difficult point. The copies of the Biblia Pauperum, Apocalypse, and Ars Moriendi, which belonged to Mr. Horn, were in their original binding, and it was stamped with a date. The books were separated and the binding destroyed. Mr. Horn asserted from memory that the first three figures of the date were certainly 142, and the last probably an 8. Mr. Conway very justly points out that the resemblance of a 5 of that date to our 2 was very strong, and that Mr. Horn’s memory may have deceived him.
It will be noticed in examining block-books generally, that the letterpress in the majority of the later examples is cut in imitation of handwriting, and not of the square church hand from which printing types and the letterpress of the earlier block-books were copied. The reason of this probably is, that it was found useless to try to compete with the books printed from movable type in regularity and neatness. To do so would have involved a much greater expenditure of trouble by the woodcutter and designer. The illustrations were the important part of the book, and the letterpress was put in with as little trouble as possible.
The sheets on which the early block-books were printed were not quired, i.e. placed one inside the other to form a quire or gathering, as was done in ordinary printed books, but followed each other singly. In many of the books we find signatures, each sheet being signed with a letter of the alphabet as a guide to the binder in arranging them.
Among the dated block-books may be mentioned an edition of the Endkrist, dated 1472, produced at Nuremberg; an edition of the Ars Moriendi cut by Hans Sporer in 1473; and another of about the same period cut by Ludwig zu Ulm. Of the Biblia Pauperum there are three dated editions known, one of 1470 and two of 1471. A copy of the De generatione Christi has the following full colophon:—
‘Johannes Eysenhut impressor, anno ab incarnationis dominice Mº quadringentesimo septuagesimo Iº.’ Hans Sporer of Nuremberg produced an edition of the Biblia Pauperum in 1475, and Chatto speaks of another of the same year without a name, but containing as a mark a shield with a spur upon it, which he supposes to stand for the name Sporer. Many of these later books were not printed in distemper on one side of the paper only, but on both sides and in printer’s ink, showing that the use of the printing press was known to those who produced them.
PAGE 3 OF THE ‘MIRABILIA ROMÆ’
Among the late block-books should be noticed the Mirabilia Romæ [Hain 11,208]; for why it should have been printed as a block-book is a mystery. It consists of 184 pages of text, with only two illustrations, printed on both sides of the page, and evidently of late date. The letterpress is not cut in imitation of type, but of ordinary handwriting, and the book may have been made to sell to those who were not accustomed to the type of printed books. The arms of the Pope which occur in the book are those of Sixtus IV., who occupied the papal chair from 1471 to 1484, so that the book may be considered to have been produced within those two dates, probably nearer the latter. The accompanying facsimile is taken from the first page of text.