CHAPTER I
Conditions in the Middle of the Fifteenth Century
As was briefly indicated in the preceding volume in this series, the conditions existing in the world of letters at the middle of the fifteenth century were such as to demand imperatively some new method of making books. The slow march of civilization had gone on with many setbacks and interruptions through the centuries, but was now proceeding with a swiftness hitherto unknown. The demands of the human mind were pressing hard against the physical boundaries to progress created by the methods of book-making then in use. It must be remembered that men were still making books just as they had done for nearly two thousand years. A vast store of knowledge had been accumulated and additions were being made with tremendous rapidity, but there was no adequate means of getting this knowledge before the people. At the same time there were more people intensely eager for knowledge than ever before.
It is worth while to stop for a moment to consider the conditions of the period. The Hundred Years’ War between France and England, which had paralyzed the energies of a divided France and had exhausted the powers of England in useless attempts at an impossible conquest, had at last come to an end. The English had withdrawn to their own island. They had given up the dreams of a continental empire which had danced before their eyes ever since William of Normandy, in 1066, had added England to his possessions. In reading English history we are liable to forget that during a great part, if not the whole, of the four hundred years succeeding the Conquest, the English kings had considered their continental possessions the more important, regarding the little island which they shared with the Scotch, then an independent nation, as a sort of colonial possession. It is true that they maintained their capitals there and took their titles thence, because in England they were kings, whereas they governed their broad possessions on the continent as dukes or counts only. From the time of Henry V they had claimed to be kings of France. Now these continental ambitions were definitely given up and England was free to develop her own nationality, and a much more vigorous national life immediately began.
The same events mark an era in the development of France. Free from the horrors of war and the dread of another conquest, a new opportunity was given for the development of the arts of peace.
Italy was still divided into a great number of independent states whose quarrels and changing alliances make the Italian history of the period extremely difficult to study on its political side. There had, however, developed in Italy a group of strong rulers who governed states of respectable size and kept them for considerable periods in comparative stability. The Italian states had rallied more quickly from the barbarian invasions which overthrew the Roman Empire than the rest of Europe and their progress in civilization had been very remarkable when one considers the civil wars and wars between small states which had been almost continuous.
For the most part Germany had lagged far behind the rest of Europe in the development of civilization. The greater part of it, however, was now in a fairly stable political condition and many of the German states had become important centers of learning. This was especially true of western and southern Germany, where the influence of Rome had been strongest and where the influence of France and Italy had been most felt.
Much of Spain was still in the hands of the Moors, who were in many respects more civilized than their Christian neighbors. Portugal was enlightened and advanced.
The great schism known as the Babylonish Captivity which had rent the Catholic Church in twain, with rival popes ruling at Rome and Avignon, had come to an end, and for the time being the unity of Christendom was undisturbed.
The political conditions of Europe were thus more favorable than they had been for a long time for the development of the intellectual life. They were still far from ideal and there were many dark days in store, but the bad old times were never fully to come back.
This political condition, however, was only a background for the revival of intellectual activity known as the Renaissance which distinguishes this remarkable period.
This movement may perhaps be said to have begun with Petrarch, the Italian poet, philosopher, and student, who died in 1374. By the middle of the fifteenth century, however, many men had appeared in the world of letters whose names are famous for all time. These great thinkers and writers revived the study of the ancient languages, recast the study of philosophy, and even ventured to discuss the fundamentals of religion. In so doing they not only revived the ancient learning, but started a new one.
New universities sprang up, among them Erfurt in 1392, Leipsic in 1409, St. Andrews, in Edinburgh, in 1411, Louvain in 1426. The revival of the study of great literature in Italy may be said to have begun about 1400. About 1450, there were many eminent Greek scholars and their enthusiasm for Greek literature had led to the revival of the philosophy of Plato.
The revival of interest in the art of the ancients, classic literature, and the philosophy of Plato brought about the great advance of modern art which marked the second half of the century, Perugino, the teacher of Raphael, being born in 1446.
All this intellectual activity stirred a new spirit of adventure. Just as the men whose intellectual energies had been absorbed in the petty quarrels of church and state now devoted themselves to constructive thinking, so those whose physical energies had been devoted to the constant succession of small wars of which we have spoken now gave themselves to exploration. By the middle of the century important discoveries had been made by the exploring expeditions sent out by the Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator. The known world was to be doubled in size by the voyage of Columbus before the end of the century.
It is easy to see that all this meant the creation of many books. Learning without books is a manifest impossibility. There was a renewed interest in the old books and a great call for copies of them. All this new learning and discovery required books for record and for dissemination. It is true there were many more books than there had been formerly and many more were being made, but the possibility of supply was hopelessly behind the demand. Great libraries were being formed and many individuals had remarkable collections of books. Some of these libraries still exist, the best known probably being the library of the Vatican, at Rome, which was started in 1447. The trade of book-making had long since outgrown the monastery. As we saw in the preceding volume, practically all of the book-making of the so-called Dark Ages was in the monasteries and much was still done there, but there was now in existence a regularly organized trade of copyists. No really good book of this period was complete without its ornamental capitals, pictures, and other embellishments. These adornments, or illuminations, as they were called, extended in some cases to every page of a book. They were not generally made by the men who did the copying or writing of the text, but by a class of specially trained men who were called illuminators.
Clearly the shortcomings of the manuscript books are very evident. First and foremost must be placed the absolute impossibility of making by the laborious process of writing out by hand anything like the number of books required to meet the demand. Either some new method of making books must be devised or the new learning and the new civilization were to be strangled at birth. Moreover, the manuscript books were necessarily very costly and they were also very inaccurate. Any one who has had any experience in the hand-copying of large amounts of manuscript will see how impossible it is to avoid errors, even with the most careful checking over. It is not probable that any two copies of any manuscript book were ever exactly alike. It is true that the invention of printing did not automatically remove errors. Indeed errors and inaccuracies, very common in the early books, are far from unknown at present, but at any rate all the copies of one edition are alike and errors may be corrected either in subsequent editions or by the insertion of errata in the printed book.
Not only was the time ripe for the invention of a new method of book-making, but the materials were ready with the vital exception of type, and that was within a step of discovery. The materials are paper, ink, presses, and type. Paper is supposed to have been invented by the Chinese about the end of the first century A. D., and to have been more or less known in the East for a long time before the knowledge of it was brought to Europe. The Arabs conquered Samarkand in 751, and from this conquest it is supposed that the knowledge of paper and paper-making came to Europe by way of Spain, the greater part of which was then in the hands of the Moors, who were themselves Arabs. As early as the eleventh century there were paper mills at Valencia, Xativa, and other Moorish towns in Spain. From Spain the art of paper-making spread to Italy where we know that there was a paper mill at Fabriano before 1340, and to France where there was a mill at Troyes about the same time. Not long after we find paper-making at Nuremberg. By the middle of the century paper was familiar throughout Europe, but the use of it was not extensive. The paper of that time did not lend itself readily to writing and the makers of the manuscripts preferred the use of parchment.
Obviously, printing can not be done with writing ink. Very different qualities are necessary for the two arts, but as early as the beginning of the century special inks were being made for printing from blocks. Those inks were not exactly like those soon to be used for printing from type, but they were near enough in their general character to indicate the improvements which were needed to produce a true printer’s ink. Who invented these inks is not known, but it is generally supposed that they were invented by artists who were accustomed to the handling of color and pigments. The invention has been attributed by some to an unknown Italian painter, by others to Hubert Van Eyck, a great Dutch painter of the period. It is not probable, however, that the invention, if it can be said to be the invention of an individual, can ever be traced to its author.
The press needed was only an adaptation of a very simple machine in common use for many different purposes. The use of the press in squeezing grapes for wine, in molding cheese and squeezing out the whey, and for a great number of other purposes was so common that the problem of the exertion of pressure was already solved. Everything was ready but the type, and when one sees how far men had gone toward the use of type one wonders that the invention was not made long before it really occurred. Probably it was only waiting for the imperious demand of necessity to spur some one to the making of the necessary experiments.