Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

In giving chronological consideration to certain of the distinctive publishing centres and printer-publishers of Germany, it is necessary at this time to refer to the important undertakings of the Brothers of Common Life, whose work in the manuscript period has already been described.

As in the earlier manuscript publishing, the Brothers had interested themselves particularly in reaching with their books the common people, and had for this purpose produced their versions in the folk dialects. When, therefore, they had replaced the scriptoria of their Houses with well organised printing-offices, they devoted their presses mainly to the production of devotional books, and of books of general instruction planned for the service and information of the middle and lower classes, and printed in the vernacular.

While I have not found record of the business results secured through these printing-offices established by the Brothers, it seems probable, in view of the excellent distributing machinery they possessed for their output, and from the fact that they were almost the first among printers to prepare publications expressly for the use of the lower and middle classes, that they secured from the sales of their books satisfactory business returns, so that the profits produced by their presses may easily have formed an important part of the resources and the income of the Order. Their first printing-presses were established in Marienthal in 1468, in Brussels and in Rostock in 1476, and in Nuremberg in 1479. In 1490, there were no less than sixty different printing establishments carried on under the supervision of the Brothers. I am not sufficiently familiar with the various phases of the complex history of the Reformation to be able to speak definitely concerning the influence exercised upon the controversies and the contest of the time by the publications of the Brothers. It is my impression that these publications remained on the whole orthodox, but that they represented the more liberal wing of Catholic Orthodoxy.

The city of Leipzig, which a century after the invention of printing became the centre of the book-trade of Germany, and the most important book-producing city in the world, began its printing somewhat later than the other German cities whose work has already been referred to.

The earliest printing-press set up in Leipzig was that of an anonymous printer who issued, in 1481, an edition of the essay of the Dominican Annius von Viterbo, entitled Glosa Super Apocalipsim. The second Leipzig publication, also issued without imprint, was an edition of the fifteen astrological propositions of Martin Polich. The first Leipzig publisher whose name is recorded is Markus Brandis, who issued, in 1484, a volume entitled Regimen Sanitatis, which was the work of Archbishop Albicius of Prague, who had died in 1427. It is not easy to decide on what basis these first three publications of the future publishing mart were selected, and it is difficult to understand how a remunerative sale could have been depended upon for any one of the three.

By the year 1513, the production of Breviaries had become an important interest with the Leipzig presses. A printer named Lotter secured a reputation in the earlier years of the sixteenth century for the excellence of his typography, and was employed by the Archbishop of Heller in printing the Breviaries and the Missals of the Dioceses of Brandenburg. In 1492, a certain Gregor Werman printed Sacrarum Historiarum Opus. The name of the author does not appear in connection with the work. In 1497, Bötticher issued an edition of Virgil’s Bucolics, the first classic which bears a Leipzig imprint.

By the year 1495, the book-trade of Leipzig had assumed very considerable proportions, not only in connection with printing and publishing, but in the organisation of machinery for collecting and distributing the publications of other cities. In this branch of the book business, Leipzig was already beginning to rival Frankfort. The booksellers’ association, organised in 1525, is, at the present time, 370 years later, the most effective and intelligently managed trade organisation that the world has known. Leipzig publishers gave from an early period special attention to the printing of the controversial literature of the Reformation, and, as was natural from their close relations with Wittenberg, the sympathies of the larger proportion of the printers were in accord with the Lutherans.

Under the trade restrictions established by Duke George of Saxony, who was a Catholic, and whose reign covered the period between 1524 and 1533, the work of the Protestant printers was very seriously hampered, and the whole book-trade of Leipzig was affected. The writings of the Reformers were repressed as far as practicable by rigorous censorship, while those of the Romanists found few buyers. Lotter, the son of the first printer of that name, removed his printing-office to Wittenberg, where he continued, though still under the difficulties of a rigorous supervision, to distribute the writings of the Reformers. The magistracy of Leipzig, appreciating the importance of the book-trade, attempted in the first place to secure for its operations the necessary protection. Later, however, it was compelled, under pressure from the Duke, to put into effect the ducal regulations for supervision and censorship, and two ecclesiastical censors, appointed under the ducal authority, secured the aid of the city officials in making examination of the books printed, and in confiscating or cancelling all heretical works found in the book-shops of either Leipzig or Dresden.

Under the edict issued in 1528, all books printed by Vogel, Goltz, and Schramm of Wittenberg, were forbidden to be offered for sale in Leipzig or Dresden, and were forbidden transportation to the Frankfort Fair. The immediate result of these anti-reform operations of the Church and of the Duke was the practical destruction for the time being of the book-trade of Leipzig.

In 1539, a printer of Leipzig, named Michel Wohlrabe, secured for himself notoriety through the extent of his piracy publications. He issued editions of the Lutheran Bible and of other writings of the Reformers, in the face, not only of the claims of these writers to control their own publications, but of the prohibition of Duke George against the production of any Lutheran literature whatever. After the death of George, however, there came a change in regard to the influence of the ducal government, and at the request of the Elector John Frederic, an edict was issued forbidding the further printing in Leipzig of any anti-Lutheran literature. This removed one difficulty in the way of Wohlrabe’s operations, and Luther and his friends found that they were helpless, in the conditions which then obtained in the law and in the book-trade, to prevent the circulation of these unauthorised editions.