![Apocalypse](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Apocalypse.jpg)
Block books or blockbooks, also called xylographica, are short books of up to 50 leaves,
block printed in Europe in the second half of the 15th century as
woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
s with blocks carved to include both text (usually) and illustrations. The content of the books was nearly always religious, aimed at a popular audience, and a few titles were often reprinted in several editions using new woodcuts. Although many had believed that block books preceded
Gutenberg
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its kind, earlier designs w ...
's invention of
movable type
Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...
in the first part of the 1450s, it now is accepted that most of the surviving block books were printed in the 1460s or later, and that the earliest surviving examples may date to about 1451.
They seem to have functioned as a cheap popular alternative to the typeset book, which was still very expensive at this stage.
Single-leaf woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
s from the preceding decades often included passages of text with prayers,
indulgence
In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence (, from , 'permit') is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins". The '' Catechism of the Catholic Church'' describes an indulgence as "a remission before God o ...
s and other material; the block book was an extension of this form. Block books are very rare, some editions surviving only in fragments, and many probably not surviving at all.
Some copies have added
watercolour
Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...
on the images, added either near the time of printing or later.
Description
![Biblia Pauperum Cpg438](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Biblia_Pauperum_Cpg438.jpg)
Block books are short books, 50 or fewer leaves, that were printed in the second half of the 15th century from wood blocks in which the text and illustrations were both cut. Some block books, called chiro-xylographic (from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
''cheir'' (χειρ) "hand") contain only the printed illustrations, with the text added by hand. Some books also were made with the illustrations printed from woodcuts, but the text printed from movable metal type, but are nevertheless considered block books because of their method of printing (only on one side of a sheet of paper) and their close relation to "pure" block books. Block books are categorized as
incunabula
In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were pro ...
, or books printed before 1501. The only example of the blockbook form that contains no images is the school textbook Latin grammar of
Donatus.
Block books were almost exclusively "devoted to the propagation of the faith through pictures and text" and "interpreted events drawn from the Bible or other sources in medieval religious thought. The woodcut pictures in all were meaningful even to the illiterate and semi-literate, and they aided clerics and preaching monks to dramatise their sermons."
Printing method
Block books were typically printed as
folios
The term "folio" (), has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book ma ...
, with two pages printed on one full sheet of paper which was then folded once for binding. Several such leaves would be inserted inside another to form a gathering of leaves, one or more of which would be sewn together to form the complete book.
Hind A hind is a female deer, especially a red deer.
Places
* Hind (Sasanian province, 262-484)
* Hind and al-Hind, a Persian and Arabic name for the Indian subcontinent
* Hind (crater), a lunar impact crater
* 1897 Hind, an asteroid
Military
...
, Vol. I, p. 214.
The earlier block books were printed on only one side of the paper (anopistographic), using a brown or grey, water based ink. It is believed they were printed by rubbing pressure, rather than a printing press. The nature of the ink and/or the printing process did not permit printing on both sides of the paper – damage would result from rubbing the surface of the first side to be printed in order to print the second. When bound together, the one sided sheets produced two pages of images and text, followed by two blank pages. The blank pages were ordinarily pasted together, so as to produce a book without blanks – the Chinese had reached the same solution to the problem. In the 1470s, an oil based ink was introduced permitting printing on both sides of the paper (opistographic) using a regular printing press.
Carter
Carter(s), or Carter's, Tha Carter, or The Carter(s), may refer to:
Geography United States
* Carter, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Carter, Mississippi, an unincorporated community
* Carter, Montana, a census-designated place
* Carter, ...
p. 46.
Block books often were printed using a single wood block that carried two pages of text and images, or by individual blocks with a single page of text and image.
The illustrations commonly were colored by hand.
The use of woodcut blocks to print block books had been
used by the Chinese and other East Asian cultures for centuries to print books, but it is generally believed that the European development of the technique was not directly inspired by Asian examples, but instead grew out of the single woodcut, which itself developed from block-printing on textiles.
Dates and locations of printing
![Ars](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Ars.moriendi.pride.a.jpg)
Block books are almost always undated and without statement of printer or place of printing. Determining their dates of printing and relative order among editions has been an extremely difficult task. In part because of their sometimes crude appearance, it was generally believed that block books dated to the first half of the 15th century and were precursors to printing by movable metal type, invented by Gutenberg in the early 1450s. The style of the woodcuts was used to support such early dates, although it is now understood that they may simply have copied an older style. Early written reports relating to "printing" also suggested, to some, early dates, but are ambiguous.
[Allan H. Stevenson, ''The Quincentennnial of Netherlandish Blockbooks'', British Museum Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 3/4 (Spring 1967), p. 83.]
Written notations of purchase and
rubrication
Rubrication is the addition of text in red ink to a manuscript for emphasis. Practitioners of rubrication, so-called ''rubricators'' or ''rubrishers'', were specialized scribes who received text from the original scribe. Rubrication was one of se ...
dates, however, lead scholars to believe that the books had been printed later.
Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber, a leading nineteenth-century scholar of block books, concluded that none of the surviving copies could be dated before 1455-60.
Allan H. Stevenson Allan Henry Stevenson (June 20, 1903 – March 31, 1970) was an American bibliographer specializing in the study of handmade paper and watermarks who "single-handedly created a new field: the bibliographical analysis of paper." Through his pion ...
, by comparing the watermarks in the paper used in blockbooks with watermarks in dated documents, concluded that the "heyday" of blockbooks was the 1460s, but that at least one dated from about 1451.
Block books printed in the 1470s were often of cheaper quality. Block books continued to be printed sporadically up through the end of the 15th century.
One block book is known from about 1530, a collection of Biblical images with text, printed in Italy.
Most of the earlier block books are believed to have been printed in the Netherlands, and later ones in Southern Germany, likely in
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
,
Ulm
Ulm () is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Danube on the border with Bavaria. The city, which has an estimated population of more than 126,000 (2018), forms an urban district of its own (german: link=no, ...
,
Augsburg
Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ' ...
, and
Schwaben
Swabia ; german: Schwaben , colloquially ''Schwabenland'' or ''Ländle''; archaic English also Suabia or Svebia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.
The name is ultimately derived from the medieval Duchy of ...
, among a few other locales.
Texts
A 1991 census of surviving copies of block books identifies 43 different "titles" (some of which may include different texts). However, a small number of texts were very popular and together account for the great majority of surviving copies of block books. These texts were reprinted many times, often using new woodcuts copying the earlier versions. It is generally accepted that the Apocalypse was the earliest block book, one edition of which Allan H. Stevenson dates to c. 1450–52. The following is a partial list of texts, with some links to digitized on line copies:
![Totentanz blockbook d](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Totentanz_blockbook_d.jpg)
*''Apocalypsis Sancti Johannis cum figuris'', the
Apocalypse
Apocalypse () is a literary genre in which a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a human intermediary. The means of mediation include dreams, visions and heavenly journeys, and they typically feature symbolic imager ...
, containing scenes and text from the Apocalypse and the apocryphal life of St. John.
Germany, 1450–1452, Cambridge Digital Library
*Ars Memorandi per figuras evangelistarum, an anonymous work with mnemonic images of events in the Four Gospels.
*
Ars Moriendi
The ''Ars moriendi'' ("The Art of Dying") are two related Latin texts dating from about 1415 and 1450 which offer advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to "die well" according to Christian precepts of the late Mi ...
, the "Art of Dying", offering advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death. The first edition of this work has been called "the great masterpiece of the Netherlandish blockbooks."
*
Biblia Pauperum
The (Latin for "Paupers' Bible") was a tradition of picture Bibles beginning probably with Ansgar, and a common printed block-book in the later Middle Ages to visualize the typological correspondences between the Old and New Testaments. Unlike ...
or "Bible of the Poor", a comparison of Old and New Testament stories with images, "probably intended for the poor (or lesser) clergy rather than for the poor layman (or the unlearned)."
Netherlands or Niederrhein, 1460-65, Schweinfurt, Bibliothek Otto Schäfer
*
Canticum Canticorum or Song of Songs.
Germany, c. 1469-70, Bavarian State Library
*
Aelius Donatus
Aelius Donatus (; fl. mid-fourth century AD) was a Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric.
Works
He was the author of a number of professional works, of which several are extant:
*Ars maior – A commentary on Latin grammar.
* Ars minor – ...
Ars minor, a popular text of the parts of speech and the only exclusively textual work to be printed as a block book.
Rheinland (?), before 1475?, Bavarian State Library*Exercitium Super Pater Noster, containing woodcuts and text interpreting the
Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...
.
*
Speculum Humanae Salvationis
The ''Speculum Humanae Salvationis'' or ''Mirror of Human Salvation'' was a bestselling anonymous illustrated work of popular theology in the late Middle Ages, part of the genre of encyclopedic speculum literature, in this case concentrating on ...
or "Mirror of Man's Salvation". Only one pure block book edition was printed; other editions have the text printed by metal type, but printed on only one side of the paper.
Netherlands, c. 1468-79, Bavarian State Library
*
Dance of Death
The ''Danse Macabre'' (; ) (from the French language), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory of the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death.
The ''Danse Macabre'' consists of the dead, or a personification of ...
, depicting dancing skeletons appearing before their victims from various classes, trades and professions, was the subject of a few block books, the most famous of which is at
Heidelberg University
}
Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...
.
South Germany(?), 1465-60(?), Bavarian State Library
*The Fable of the Sick Lion.
*Other works
**In addition to the above texts, block books include some calendars and almanacs.
Collections
Because of their popular nature, few copies of block books survive today, many existing only in unique copies or even fragments. Block books have received intensive scholarly study and many block books have been digitized and are available on line.
The following institutions have important collections of block-books (the number of examples includes fragments or even single leaves and is taken from
Sabine Mertens et al., Blockbücher des Mittelalters, 1991, pp. 355–395, except where a footnote provides another source):
*
Bibliothèque Nationale de France
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...
, Paris. 49 examples.
*
Bavarian State Library
The Bavarian State Library (german: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, abbreviated BSB, called ''Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis'' before 1919) in Munich is the central " Landesbibliothek", i. e. the state library of the Free State of Bavaria, the bigg ...
, Munich
46 examples.*
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
, London. 44 examples.
*
Morgan Library
The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th S ...
, New York. 24 examples.
*
State Museum Kupferstichkabinett (Print room), Berlin. 20 examples.
*
John Rylands Library
The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a late-Victorian neo-Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. It is part of the University of Manchester. The library, which opened to the public in 1900, was founded by Enriquet ...
, Manchester.
17 examples.*
Austrian National Library
The Austrian National Library (german: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) is the largest library in Austria, with more than 12 million items in its various collections. The library is located in the Neue Burg Wing of the Hofburg in center of V ...
, Vienna. 16 examples.
*
University Library Heidelberg
The University Library Heidelberg (german: Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg) is the central library of the University of Heidelberg. It constitutes together with the 83 decentralized libraries of the faculties and institutes the University Lib ...
. 12 examples.
*
Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the St ...
, Den Haag. 11 examples.
*
Herzog August Bibliothek
The Herzog August Library (german: link=no, Herzog August Bibliothek — "HAB"), in Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, known also as ''Bibliotheca Augusta'', is a library of international importance for its collection from the Middle Ages and ear ...
, Wolfenbüttel. 11 examples.
*
Lessing Rosenwald
Lessing Julius Rosenwald (February 10, 1891 – June 24, 1979) was an American businessman, a collector of rare books and art, a chess patron, and a philanthropist.
Biography
Born in Chicago, Lessing J. Rosenwald was the eldest son of Julius R ...
collection in the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
. 10 examples.
*
Ludwig Maximilian University Library, Munich. 10 examples.
*
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second- ...
, Oxford
8 examples.*
Biblioteca de Catalunya
The Library of Catalonia ( ca, Biblioteca de Catalunya, ) is the Catalan national library, located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The primary mission of the Library of Catalonia is to collect, preserve, and spread Catalan bibliographic producti ...
, Barcelona
Three woodblocks used to print 16th century block booksand one printed
bull
A bull is an intact (i.e., not castrated) adult male of the species ''Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e., cows), bulls have long been an important symbol in many religions,
includin ...
.
Biblioteca de Catalunya
References
Notes
Sources
*John Carter, ''An ABC for Book Collectors'', Oak Knoll Books, Delaware, and British Library, London (8th ed. 2006)
/cite>
* Arthur M. Hind, ''An Introduction to a History of Woodcut'', Dover Publications, New York, 1963 (reprint of 1935 ed.).
*Adrian Wilson & Joyce Lancaster Wilson, ''A Medieval Mirror: Speculum Humanae Salvationis 1324–1500'', University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985
* Sabine Mertens et al., ''Blockbücher des Mittelalters: Bilderfolgen als Lektüre:Gutenberg-Museum, Mainz, 22. Juni 1991 bis 1. September 1991 '', Verlag Philipp Von Zabern, 1991. Catalog of exhibition of block books, with a census of all known copies.
* Allan Stevenson, ''The Problem of the Blockbooks'', in Sabine Mertens et al., Blockbücher des Mittelalters, 1991, pp. 229-262, based on a typewritten text from 1965-1966.
Further reading
*Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin,''The Coming of the Book The Impact of Printing 1450-1800,'' Chapter 2, Editions Albin Michel, Paris, 1958 (French) Verso, London, 1976 (English)
*Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber, ''Un catalogue des livres xylographiques et xylo-chirographiques,'' published as volume IV of Manuel de l'amateur de la gravure sur boie et sur métal au XVe siècle, Berlin, 1902 (reprinted Kraus 1969). The standard catalog.
External links
Wikisource Blockbücher -- Links to many on line digitised block books (in German)
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20170504115405/http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/ausgaben/uni_ausgabe.html?sortjahr=14&recherche=ja&ordnungsname=alpha&projekt=1236933450 Same, chronological listbr>Digitized blockbooks from the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection
From th
Rare Book and Special Collections Division
at the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
Digitized blockbooks
from the Bamberg State Library
The Bamberg State Library (german: Staatsbibliothek Bamberg) is a combined universal, regional and research library with priority given to the humanities. Today it is housed in the New Residence, the former prince-bishop's new palace. The Free ...
Heidelberg University digitized volume
{{DEFAULTSORT:Block Book
1450s books
1460s books
1470s books
15th-century Christian texts
Incunabula
Relief printing
Woodcuts