Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

In Nordlingen, the tax list of 1407 gives the name of Joh. Minner, recorded as a scriptor. There is an entry of a sale made by Minner to the Burgermeister Protzen of a German translation of the Decretals. The tax list of 1415 gives the name of Conrad Horn, described as a stadtschreiber. Horn seems to have carried on an extensive business in the production and the exchange of manuscripts. Kirchhoff quotes a contract entered into by him in 1427 with a certain Prochsil of Eystet for the purchase of a buch, the title of which is not given, for the sum of forty-three Rhenish gulden.

The name of Diebold Lauber has already been mentioned. His inscription appears on a number of manuscripts that have been preserved principally through the Heidelberg University. On the first sheet of a Legend of the Three Holy Kings from this library, is written the following notice, which can be considered as a general advertisement:

Item welche hande bücher man gerne hat, gross oder clein, geistlich oder weltlich, hübsch gemolt, die findet man alle by Diepold Lauber, schreiber in der burge zu hagenow.

Freely translated, this notice would read: “Any books that are desired, whether great or small, religious or profane, beautifully painted (adorned), all of these will one find by Diepold Lauber, scribe in the town of Hagenau.” Among the manuscripts of Lauber, which have been preserved, is a beautiful copy of Gesta Romanorum, mit den viguren gemolt, a Bible in rhyme (eine gerymete bibel, ein salter Latin und Tüstch). Also a number of gemolte losbücher (illustrated fortune-telling books), etc.

In Heidelberg, the name of Wolff von Prunow, bibliopola, is recorded early in the fifteenth century, as associated with the university. In Bruges, in 1425, the list of manuscript-dealers is a more important one. It begins with Joorquin de Vüc, who is described as a cleric. He was bookseller to Duke Philip, and is spoken of by Labord as having had an extensive manuscript factory.[392] Colart Mansion has already been referred to. He is recorded in 1450 as an escripvain, but a few years later appears in the list of printers and is known as the friend and associate of Caxton. The books of Duke Philip of Burgundy include also the name of the bookseller Hocberque, in 1427, and that of Neste in 1423. In 1456, Morisses de Haat is recorded as an escripvain de livres, who rented out books. In order to do this, he must, as Kirchhoff points out, have carried some general stock. A certain Herr van Gruthuyse, a rich collector, of Bruges, bought a number of finely illuminated manuscripts from Jean Paradis, who was in 1470 made a member of the librariers gild.

Kirchhoff quotes a document dated 1346, the wording of which is in the form of a contract between Wouters Vos and Jan Standard, described as manuscript-dealers, “parties of the first part,” and a group of citizens, “parties of the second part.” The contract has to do with the transfer of certain books as security for a loan. The list of the books includes copies of the Codex of Justinian, some essays on taxes, polities, and rhetoric, a work by Albertus, a treatise by Ægidius, the Physics of Aristotle, a commentary of Averrhoes, etc. These two dealers of Bruges seem to have had an important collection of literature for so early a period.

The manuscript-trade in the Netherlands was more important both in character and in extent than that carried on in Germany, and it had also a larger influence upon the general education of the people than the book-trade of the time in either France or Italy. In France and in Italy, the earlier book-trade was, as we have noted, connected principally with the work of the universities. In the Low Countries, on the other hand, particularly in such centres as Ghent, Antwerp, and Bruges, there came into existence, during the first half of the fifteenth century, an active and intelligently conducted business in the production of books both of a scholarly and of a popular character, the sale of which was made very largely among the citizens, outside of the university circles. One reason why the trade in books found a larger development in Belgium than in Germany, was the greater wealth of the trading class in the Low Countries. With the wealth, came cultivation and a taste for luxuries, and among luxuries soon came to be included art and literature.

As early as 1424, there was instituted a guild of publishers, librariers gild, in Ghent, and a year or two later one in Brussels. These guilds came into relations in 1450 with the St. Lucas Guild in Antwerp.

According to Kapp, the first evidences of an organised German trade in manuscripts are to be found at the beginning of the fifteenth century. He is, however, convinced that a very considerable exchange of literary material in manuscripts must have found place at a much earlier date. There came to be in the German towns and among the citizen class an earlier interest in literature than there is evidence of at this time in the same class of any other country of Europe. This demand for reading matter on the part of the citizen class brought into existence in Germany (at a time when in Italy, France, and England there were practically no books in other than the Latin language) a considerable mass of popular literature written in the vernacular, and copied out on cheap material in such way as to make possible a general circulation. This popular circulation of books written for the common folk was very much facilitated by the introduction into Germany, as early as the fourteenth century, of paper, which for the cheaper manuscripts took the place of the old-time parchment.

The Order of Brothers of Common Life carried on their literary work, so to speak, between the monasteries and the writers of the general lay community. They had for their first purpose the dissemination of sound doctrine, but as they were trying to give instruction direct to the common folk, they put their teachings into the dialect of the place, and they wrote out in their own monasteries the chap-books and instruction books which, at times distributed freely from the monastery centres, came to be very largely sold.