Chapter VI · STRASBURG AND REUTLINGEN

With Knoblochtzer, Schott, and Prusz, the first commencing in 1477, Grüninger and Hupfuff at the end of the fifteenth century, we have printers who made a liberal use of initials. Knoblochtzer has been thoroughly explored by MM. Schorbach and Spirgatis, and a monograph upon Strasburg book-illustration has been published by Dr. Kristeller. Although many of our specimens were known to these bibliographers, a few of them, and these by no means the least interesting, have escaped their observation.

One of them, the splendid A representing Jesus washing the feet of a disciple, is what one might expect to find at the beginning of a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century manuscript, and the artist in cutting it has managed to make it retain this appearance.

It is to be found in an undated volume without name of printer, but identified as having been printed by Knoblochtzer in 1478, and entitled Thomas (Ebendorfer) de Haselpach: Sermones dominicales super Epistolas Pauli. This A at the beginning of the first volume is the only typographical ornament in the book, and seems to have been entirely unknown to either of the Strasburg bibliographers.

The D, with two armed figures and the two coats of arms, is given by MM. Schorbach and Spirgatis as the earliest specimen of Strasburg ornamentation. It occurs for the first time at the beginning of Knoblochtzer’s Burgundische Historie, in which there is no other woodcut. It represents the Duke René of Lothringen and Charles the Fearless of Burgundy with their shields at their feet, and was cut specially for the History of Burgundy, although it occurs several times also in the Schachzabelbuch of Jacobus de Cessolis. The latter volume contains also the large S, with two personages, one in a fool’s cap, which also ornaments the first page of the Dyalogus Salomonis et Marcolfi.

Another handsome initial from the Knoblochtzer press, and especially well engraved, is the I, with an angel with outspread wings above, Samson forcing open the lion’s mouth below, and branching ornaments on either side. It is to be found on the first page of the Belial of 1483, and several times in the Leben der Heiligen Drei Könige; also in the chess-book of De Cessolis already mentioned.

In the last two volumes there are eleven of the twelve initials representing the months of the year, which are to be found complete in a Deutscher Kalender, having the form of a little volume. There is a calendar printed probably at Nuremberg, on a single sheet, with the whole of the alphabet, but the letter for January is replaced by one having the Nativity as its subject, the general disposition being much the same as in the initials of Geneva or of Bamberg similarly historiated. These calendar letters are to be met with in a great many Strasburg publications, as, for example, in the Tractatus clarissimi philosophi et medici Matheoli perusini de memoria augēda per regulas et medicinas. They also occur in the De valore et utilitate Missarū pro defuntis celebratarū per sacre theologie professorē Jacobū ordinis cartusiensis edita. This little tract, which contains amongst other initials the calendar D representing a man trimming the vines, is dated 1493, and as Knoblochtzer ceased to print in 1485, making over his material to Mathias Hupfuff, it is to the latter that it must be attributed.

The two P’s, one with a doctor, the smaller with a king, are at the beginning, the first of a De secretis mulierum, the second of a tract entitled De ritu et moribus Indorum. The letter itself, in the smaller initial, is entirely white, but in the copy from which it was reproduced it is painted in blue and red.

The anthropomorphic letters are to be found in many of the publications both of Knoblochtzer, Schott, and others. These letters are reduced copies of a very celebrated alphabet known as the alphabet of the master E. S. of 1464, specimens of which are given in several works on early engraving. The British Museum has a somewhat similar alphabet, but with the personages in different attitudes, printed originally au frotton. Some letters of this were given by Jackson, and the whole was reproduced a few years since by the trustees of the Museum.[21] One of our reproductions, the one with a man holding up a dog by the tail, is from the Vier und Zwanzig Gulden Harpfen. The D with a saint is the only initial in an Albertus Magnus of Knoblochtzer; the three others were reproduced from two impressions of Hupfuff, a Melusine and a Boethius of 1500. In the latter is an I of this alphabet which we have not seen elsewhere, but of which the impression is slightly defective.[22]

The M and the P, the Crucifixion and the Nativity, are also taken from a work without date or name of printer, and have hitherto remained undescribed, as far as we know. The work is entitled Commentarius Sancti Johannis Episcopi Constantinopolitani cognomento Crisostomi in epistolam Sancti Pauli Apostoli ad Hebreos. The letters would appear to belong to the same alphabet as the C, representing saints and others being put to the torture, which is used by Schott sometimes as a D. This latter is to be found twice in a rare book, the Scriptum in primum librum Sentenciarum Venerabilis inceptoris fratris Guilhelmi de Ockam, dated 1483, but without printer’s name, and it occurs as a D in an undated Secreta of Aristotle.

The three letters, comprising amongst them the N with the rabbit, and the O with a fool, are from a Plenarium of which we have only seen a fragment, without printer’s name or date, but said to be of Strasburg.

The rabbit occurs again in the Plenarium of Urach of 1481, with floral letters somewhat larger than those given here, and also in the Stella Meschia printed at Esslingen, the first book published with Hebrew characters. It has also two full-page illustrations.

The six large historiated initials which follow are taken from a Psalter without date or printer’s name. Van Praet in his catalogue of books printed upon vellum belonging to the King’s Library, says that it ‘comes from a German Press.’

Mr. Weale attributes it to Basle, and it is interesting to compare these initials with those which illustrate Furter’s Psalter of 1501-3. It would seem, however, that it is to be attributed to J. Prusz, and that it was printed in 1499 or 1500.

Two of our reproductions are from the copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale. For the others, which are defective in this copy, we are indebted to M. Jacques Rosenthal, who considers that the volume was printed in 1480. In our own opinion the later date is more probable.

The four initials, of uniform size and style, A, C, E, and S, the E with the Nativity being certainly one of the prettiest we have seen, have every appearance of being taken from a missal. We cannot affirm for certain that they have no such origin, but the book from which they were reproduced is an edition of Pogge, printed by Knoblouch in 1513. Two of them, the E with the Nativity and another, occur in an Interpretatio Sequentiarum of the same year. Other printers used them, however, before this. We are unable to give exact references for the whole series, but the E had served already in a volume of sermons of Geyler von Kaisersperg, published by Matthias Schurer in 1505. In this, with the exception of a floral V on the second page, it is the only woodcut initial.

There is a Psalter of Knoblouch of 1513 of the same size as those of Augsburg, Basle—and Metz—Psalterium cum apparatu vulgari firmiter appresso. Like the Metz Psalter, it has an initial on the title, this being ornamented with a moth and dragon-fly and bunches of leaves and flowers. Below is a cut of David with his harp, the Almighty looking down, and a German castle in the background. There are two strips of border, one on each side of the cut, but descending lower, one of a conventional foliated pattern, the other with strawberry leaves, flowers, and fruit. The initial B is of the same design; the other letters have dragon-flies or butterflies, a D has a geometrical pattern something like the Maiblümchen.

Grüninger began to decorate his publications with ornamental letters at the end of the last decade of the fifteenth century. They are of a very special kind, and the only other printer who occasionally used them was Quentell of Cologne.[23] Some of them occur in a small folio by Braunschweig—Liber Pestilentialis de venenis epidemie, 1500, with pictures on nearly every page, manufactured according to the system he adopts in many of his illustrated books of bringing three factors of the picture together, and so obtaining variety with an economy of engraving. The centre of a picture on one page, for instance, will be found a few pages later with the two outer thirds replaced by different blocks, the variety introduced into the general appearance being sufficient for it to pass as a different composition. A few pages later, it is the centre that is replaced with the same effect. Such pictures are to be seen in the different editions of Braunschweig’s De Cyrurgia, in which there are only insignificant nonhistoriated initials.

Grüninger’s finest picture-book is probably his splendid edition of Virgil, with engravings by Brandt, the author of the Ship of Fools. In this work he makes use of nearly all the letters of this smaller historiated alphabet, which are also found afterwards constantly in his impressions, and particularly in the publications of the reformer, Geyler von Kaisersperg. In these, many of the initials, as is only appropriate, represent religious subjects—David and his harp, St. Sebastian full of arrows, and in a slightly different style, St. Laurence carrying his own gridiron. Two of them are framed. One of these represents Adam and Eve; the other, a D with a charming little love-scene, would seem frequently to have excited the reprobation of devout readers, for in three different works we have found this initial defaced almost beyond recognition. A larger initial of the unframed series, representing a swordsman, we have only met with in the 1501 edition of Boethius, De Philosophico consolatu sive de consolatione Philosophiae, etc., with commentaries of St. Thomas.

Grüninger’s largest letters would appear to have been reserved exclusively for Geyler’s publications. We have seen them in a great many of his books of sermons and nowhere else. They are most numerous in his Evangelia, where there are between thirty and forty different varieties, but even then they do not constitute a complete alphabet, as Geyler’s sermons most often commence with the word der or die, the letter D occurring as frequently as all the others together, and several other letters much more often than the remainder.

Geyler and Grüninger were evidently made to write and publish for one another, for whilst the preacher often loses the thread of his subject in amusing but not always relevant anecdotes, the printer would seem to have set up his copy much on the same principle, embellishing the sermons with illustrations, many of which, inserted apparently at haphazard, are entirely foreign to the subject. In one of these collections, for instance, there are a number of cuts from the Virgil.[24]

The large series, two specimens of which are given, invariably deals with Biblical subjects. The letters are generally attributed to Hans Schäufelein.

Besides the initials already enumerated, Grüninger has a few historiated letters on a black ground, of intermediate size and different complete foliated or floral alphabets, all of them uniformly uninteresting.

Reutlingen.

—The large S, with a personage in a doctoral bonnet, is taken from an Albertus Magnus, Secreta mulierum et virorum, in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale (Res. 826), described in Mlle. Pellechet’s Catalogue des Incunables under No. 372 as being without typographical indications. It also occurs at the commencement of a Physiognomia of Michael Scotus, which is stated by Mr. Proctor to have been printed by M. Greyff at Reutlingen, the date being probably 1482. We have not seen this volume, but thanks to the courtesy of Professor Ferguson of Glasgow, who sent a photograph of the initial, we have found that it is identically the same.

The reproduction does not render exactly the peculiar impression of the ink, which gives the initial the appearance of having been drawn in fusain. Another initial, the P with the Pope, is taken from a volume printed at Reutlingen by Greyff—the De ritu et Moribus Indorum—which has exactly the same typographical disposition as the edition printed by Knoblochtzer at Strasburg, a P at the beginning with the Pope, and a border on the margin of the front page.

It may be noted here that in previous chapters no attempt has been made to distinguish between metal-cut initials and those cut on wood. Many printers, such as Grüninger, Gering, and Rembolt, etc., undoubtedly used soft metal, but this was cut in the same way as wood, the blocks were inked in the same manner, and printed in the same way with the type, so that for all practical purposes they belong to the same class.