A cette époque le nom d’Ex-libris n’était connu et employé que par les savants de profession et par les hommes du monde, amateurs de livres.”
A recent and more authoritative ruling is that of the Council of the Société Française des Collectionneurs d’Ex-Libris, which not only permits autographs and other manuscript entries in books to be styled Ex-libris, but opens the columns of its journal to the consideration and reproduction of the armorial bearings, monograms, and devices to be found stamped on the leather bindings of books, to which it also applies the term Ex-libris.
In the programme issued with the first part of the Archives de la Société Française occurs the following paragraph dealing with this question: “Bien des personnes considèrent, à bon droit, les marques imprimées en or, ou à froid sur les plats des livres, comme de veritables Ex-Libris. Ce sont, disait un érudit, les Ex-Libris Français par excellence, leur étude est liée à celle des Ex-Libris gravés. Les archives donneront une large hospitalité à tous les documents, notes, ou détermination d’armoiries que nos membres voudront bien nous communiquer.”
British collectors treat these super libros as things apart from ex-libris. A system which includes book-plates, autographs, and armorial bearings on bookbindings under the one term Ex-Libris leads to confusion in correspondence, and is therefore to be deprecated.
The earliest known examples of ex-libris are German, and the custom of using them originated no doubt in that country, where costly bindings, with arms emblazoned on the covers, as in France and Italy, were seldom indulged in.
Earliest in the field in the art of printing, and prolific in book-making, the Germans never attached very particular importance to elegant and sumptuous bindings.
Valuing their books for their intrinsic, rather than extrinsic merits, they covered them with good stout wooden boards and strong metal clasps, and soon discovered that a printed label, or a rough woodcut of a coat-of-arms, was as useful a mode of proclaiming the ownership of a volume as the showy, but costly, system of heraldic emblazoning in gold, silver, and colours, adopted by their more luxurious neighbours.
Hence it is not so very uncommon to find German ex-libris dated in the early years of the sixteenth century, whereas the earliest known French plate is of a much later date. In fact, no French ex-libris of undoubted authenticity has been discovered with an earlier date than 1574, a memorable year for collectors, as being that which is also found on the earliest known English plate, the fine armorial of Sir Nicholas Bacon, a facsimile of which will be found in Mr. Griggs’s valuable collection of “Examples of Armorial Book-Plates,” 1884.
Unfortunately, the first French dated ex-libris is nothing more than a plain label printed with movable type, and bearing the inscription: “Ex Bibliothecâ Caroli Albosii E. Eduensis. Ex labore quies. 1574.”
Now, with the exception of the dated autographs of owners of books, with which we are not here dealing, this ex-libris of the book collector of Autun is the earliest dated example of a French mark of possession which has yet been found affixed to the interior of a book in any French library.