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 glass 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 classes 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.
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 Humanæ 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 illustration at the head of each page. One of them, however, has twenty pages of the text out of the sixty-two which constituted 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 documents concerning him to business about mirrors may refer to attempts on his part to print an edition of this book, “The Mirror of Salvation.”