The books were arranged in classes: (a) William Caxton and the Development of the Art of Printing in England and Scotland. (b) The Development of the Art of Printing in other Countries. (c) The Comparative Development of the Art in England and Foreign Countries, illustrated by specimens of the Holy Scripture and Liturgies. (d) Specimens noticeable for Rarity or for Beauty and Excellence of Typography. (e) Specimens of Printing. (f) Printed Music. (g) Book Illustrations. (h) Portraits and Autographs of Distinguished Authors, etc. (i) Books relating to Printing. (k) Curiosities and Miscellanies. (l) Type and Printing Materials. (m) Stereotyping and Electrotyping. (n) Copper-plate Printing, Lithography, etc. (o) Paper and Paper-making.
The great effort of the exhibition seems to have been directed to Class C. Noble collectors and commoners, universities and libraries, the British and Foreign Bible Society, archbishops and bishops, all contributed, and it was this department above the others that was to invest Protestantism with a peculiar halo. Yet the case presented difficulties of no ordinary character. Men like Stevens rant about “priestly dross and gloss” and similar claptrap expressions to keep alive old myths, but it required enormous assurance to advance these myths in the face of the collection gathered at London in 1877. They may talk of monkish legends and fables, but Protestantism rests on legends and fables which men who know better still continue to circulate in defiance of bibliography and common sense.
In the present case they desired to present to the public a glowing picture. There is a foreground in every picture, and there is a background also; there are clear lights which bring out the chief figures into bold relief, and there are shadows where figures lie almost unnoticed. The artists here knew well what to throw into the background and the shade.
Fable the first was that the Catholic Church had ever been the enemy of the Bible, opposed to its circulation. How is it, then, that when printing was invented the first book printed was the Bible? The church must have made the Bible known, or the early printers, who were not priests or monks, would have known nothing of such a book, would not have known where to get copies to print from, would not have known that anybody would know enough about the work to buy it if they printed it. But the fact is that people knew about the Bible, manuscripts were easily obtained, and many wanted them who could not afford to buy them. The fact that the Bible was selected to print shows that there was no impediment to its circulation, that there existed a well-known demand for it, and a call for cheaper copies.
Stevens reluctantly gives us aid to demolish this fable of Catholic darkness as to the Bible: “The Bible was the first book printed.” “Biblical bibliography proves that during the first forty years, at least, the Bible exceeded in amount of printing all other books put together; nor were its quality, style, and variety a whit behind its quantity.” And be it remembered that these forty years do not cover the whole period from the invention of printing to the commencement of the Reformation.
Bibles preceded all the Latin and Greek classic authors and all vernacular works, not in one place but in almost every place where a printing-press was set up.
“In a word,” says Stevens, “up to the discovery of America in 1492 Columbus might have counted upon his fingers all the old classic authors (including Ptolemy and Strabo in their unbecoming Latin dress) who could throw any geographical light on the questions which the great discoverer was discussing with the theologians of Spain; while, covering the same period, the editions of the Bible alone, and the parts thereof, in many languages and countries, will sum up not far less than one thousand, and the most of these of the largest and costliest kind.”
This, it must be remembered, is no rash assertion, but the truth wrung from this writer by the fact that the collection exhibited before his eyes at least three hundred out of the thousand to which he refers; and this thousand—not thousand copies of the Bible, but thousand editions of the Bible, or parts such as New Testament, Psalms, etc.—includes only to 1492, thirty years before Luther issued his Bible. Yet the monstrous figment is kept up to this day that in those dark and benighted ages the people were kept in ignorance of the Bible, that the Catholic Church suppressed it and kept it hid away, and that it was only the “glorious Reformation” which brought it from its obscurity. Stevens, with all his assurance, must have blushed as he wrote the words: “The church managed to have small call for the Scriptures in the vulgar tongues which the people could read and comprehend.” He does not cite, and knew that he could not cite, any authority to show that the church did anything that could be construed into any such management. The Bible had come down in her keeping; she preserved it, diffused it, and handed it down from generation to generation, jealous of its purity and its traditional interpretation.
Next to the fable of the hostility of the church to the Bible, and connected with it, is the myth of Luther’s discovering an old copy of the Bible when he was a priest and a monk, that he thereupon set to work to translate it, and that he first gave the Scriptures to the people in the vernacular. It was a very pretty story, told down to our day by authors like D’Aubigné. The Caxton celebration, though it did not contain specimens of all the editions of the Scriptures printed before the Reformation, had enough to show how shamefully the Protestant public had been deceived and imposed upon by this fable.
Mr. Stevens’ list begins with the Gutenberg Bible, printed at Mentz between 1450 and 1455—for a copy of that magnificent work was there, lent by Earl Spencer, perfect, entire, with its six hundred and forty-one leaves, double column, “the earliest book known printed with movable metal type.” Then follows the Psalms, printed by Fust and Schöffer at Mentz in 1457, Queen Victoria lending a copy. Next comes the 1459 Psalter, the second, third, and fourth Latin Bibles, another Psalter, and then a complete Bible in German, printed, Mr. Stevens assumes, at Strassburg, by Mendelin, in 1466. Queen Victoria’s magnificent copy, richly illuminated in gold and colors, was there for all to admire, and beside it Earl Spencer’s, nearly as beautiful. Either by accident or design Caxton’s Psalter was not obtained, and this first known separate book of Holy Scripture issued in England between 1480 and 1483 was represented only by a fac-simile of a page of the copy in the British Museum. The various Books of Hours printed by Caxton were similarly unrepresented.[[82]] Then with other Latin editions came the second German Bible, also in 1466; the third, Augsburg, 1470; and so on through the list, fourth, fifth, sixth, to the twelfth German,[[83]] printed at Augspurg in 1490 by Henry Schonsperger; and two editions in Low German, Cologne, 1480, Lubec, 1491. There was also a German Psalter printed in 1492, described by Stevens as “a fine specimen of an early pocket edition of the Psalms in the language of the people.”