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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 invented the movable-type printing press. Though movable type was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg's invention of the printing ...
'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 Sort (typesetting), components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric charac ...
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 woodcuts 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 (forgiven) sins". The ''Catechism of the Catholic Church'' describes an indulgence as "a remission bef ...
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 ( Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting method"Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the ...
on the images, added either near the time of printing or later.


Description

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: 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 of all kno ...
''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 An incunable or incunabulum (: incunables or incunabula, respectively) is a book, pamphlet, or broadside (printing), broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. The specific date is essentiall ...
, 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."


Origin

Woodblock printing Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of textile printing, printing on textiles and later on paper. Each page ...
was invented in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
sometime during the second half of the first millennium AD, but it is disputed as to whether or not woodblock printing in Europe was a native invention or came from China. Some believe it spread from the east while others believe it was independently invented in Europe. There is no hard evidence that Chinese printing technology spread to Europe. However a number of authors have advanced theories in favor of a Chinese origin for European printing based on early references and circumstantial evidence. Tsien suggests that woodblock printing may have spread from China to Europe due to communications during the Mongol Empire era and based on similarities between blockprints in both areas. He suggests that European missionaries to China during the 14th century could have borrowed the practice of creating prints to be colored manually later on, which had been prevalent in China for a long time with Buddhist prints. The block books of Europe were produced using methods and materials similar to those in China and sometimes in ways contrary to prevailing European norms: European wood blocks were cut parallel with the grain in the same way as the Chinese method rather than the prevailing European practice of cutting across the grain, water-based ink was used rather than oil-based ink, only one side of the paper was printed rather than both, and rubbing rather than pressure was employed to leave the print. Robert Curzon, 14th Baron Zouche (1810 – 1873) held the opinion that European and Chinese block books were so similar in every way that they must have originated in China. The question of whether printing originated in Europe or China was raised in the early 16th century by a Portuguese poet, Garcia de Resende (1470 – 1536). Paolo Giovio (1483 – 1552), an Italian historian who had come into possession of several Chinese books and maps through
João de Barros João de Barros (; 1496 – 20 October 1570), nicknamed the "Portuguese Livy", is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his (''Decades of Asia''), a history of the Portuguese in India, Asia, and southeast Africa. Early y ...
(1496 – 1570), claimed that printing was invented in China and spread to Europe through Russia. Juan González de Mendoza (1545 – 1618) made similar claims about printing coming from China through Russia but also added another route through Arabia by sea and that it influenced
Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg ( – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and Artisan, craftsman who invented the movable type, movable-type printing press. Though movable type was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg's inven ...
. Several other authors throughout the 16th century repeated such statements. Others such as Arthur M. Hind and Joseph P. McDermott dispute the theory of Chinese printing being transmitted to Europe. Hind believes that European block printing grew out of a single woodcut which developed from block-printing on textiles while McDermott emphasizes the lack of evidence. Although the Mongols planned to use printed paper currency in Persia, the scheme failed shortly thereafter. No books were printed in Persia before the 19th century and Chinese prints apparently made little impact on the region. There are no surviving printed playing cards from the Middle East while pre-1450 printed cards from medieval Europe contained no text. Although some elite Europeans were aware of printed paper money by the late 13th century, the earliest evidence that Europeans were aware of Chinese book printing only appeared in the early 16th century. McDermott argues that modern comparisons of techniques used in European and Chinese block books are ahistorical and that rather than direct transmission of technique, similarities between them were just as likely the result of convergent evolution.


Printing method

Block books were typically printed as folios, 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, Vol. I, p. 214. The earlier block books were printed on only one side of the paper (anopisthographic), 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 (opisthographic) 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.


Dates and locations of printing

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 The ''British Museum Quarterly'' was a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the British Museum. It described recent acquisitions and research concerning the museum's collections and was published from 1926 to 1973. It is available electron ...
'', 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 s ...
dates, however, lead scholars to believe that the books were 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, 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
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,
Ulm Ulm () is the sixth-largest city of the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with around 129,000 inhabitants, it is Germany's 60th-largest city. Ulm is located on the eastern edges of the Swabian Jura mountain range, on the up ...
,
Augsburg Augsburg ( , ; ; ) is a city in the Bavaria, Bavarian part of Swabia, Germany, around west of the Bavarian capital Munich. It is a College town, university town and the regional seat of the Swabia (administrative region), Swabia with a well ...
, and
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, 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 online copies: *''Apocalypsis Sancti Johannis cum figuris'', the
Apocalypse Apocalypse () is a literary genre originating in Judaism in the centuries following the Babylonian exile (597–587 BCE) but persisting in Christianity and Islam. In apocalypse, a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a ...
, 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 "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 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. He once taught Jerome, an early Christian Church father who is most known for his translation of the Bible into Latin, known as the Latin Vulgate. N ...
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 known by its incipit Our Father (, ), is a central Christian prayer attributed to Jesus. It contains petitions to God focused on God’s holiness, will, and kingdom, as well as human needs, with variations across manusc ...
. * Speculum Humanae Salvationis 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'' (; ), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory from the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death. The ''Danse Macabre'' consists of the dead, or a personification of death, summoning represen ...
, 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 (; ), is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is Germany's oldest unive ...
.
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 online. 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 (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...
, Paris. 49 examples. *
Bavarian State Library The Bavarian State Library (, 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 biggest universal and research libra ...
, Munich
46 examples.
*
British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...
, London. 44 examples. *
Morgan Library The Morgan Library & Museum (originally known as the Pierpont Morgan Library and colloquially known the Morgan) is a museum and research library in New York City, New York, U.S. Completed in 1906 as the private library of the banker J. P. Morg ...
, New York. 24 examples. * State Museum Kupferstichkabinett (Print room), Berlin. 20 examples. *
John Rylands Library The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a Victorian era, late-Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, neo-Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. It is part of the University of Manchester. The library, which opened to t ...
, Manchester.
17 examples.
*
Austrian National Library The Austrian National Library (, ) is the largest library in Austria, with more than 12 million items in its various collections. The library is located in the Hofburg#Neue Burg, Neue Burg Wing of the Hofburg in Innere Stadt, center of Vienna. Sin ...
, Vienna. 16 examples. *
University Library Heidelberg The Heidelberg University Library (, International Standard Identifier for Libraries and Related Organizations, ISIL DE-16) is the central library of the Heidelberg University. Together with the 83 decentralized libraries of the faculties and ins ...
. 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 S ...
, Den Haag. 11 examples. * Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel. 11 examples. * Lessing Rosenwald collection in the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
. 10 examples. * Ludwig Maximilian University Library, Munich. 10 examples. *
Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, it is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in ...
, Oxford
8 examples.
*
Biblioteca de Catalunya The Library of Catalonia (, ) 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 production and that related to the ...
, Barcelona
Three woodblocks used to print 16th century block books
and one printed
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.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 a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

Digitized blockbooks
from the Bamberg State Library
Heidelberg University digitized volume
{{DEFAULTSORT:Block Book 1450s books 1460s books 1470s books 15th-century Christian texts Incunabula Relief printing Woodcuts History of books