The production of books and manuscripts in the fifteenth century saw the culmination of tendencies which had begun during the latter part of the thirteenth century. The most significant of these were the increasing dominance of lay workshops over the scriptoria of religious houses; the rise of a commercialised book trade; and the emergence of veritable publishing houses in the major centres of European book production. The period none the less witnessed something of a revival in the copying of liturgical and devotional books by religious communities. It was also to see an invasion of the market by books produced by the new process of printing with movable type, and the eclipse of those book producers and dealers who did not adapt to the new techniques.
To satisfy the increasing demands of literate lay people, as well as the clergy, a more sophisticated organisation of the book trade was required. The single scribe, working alone, was still to be found, but he formed only one element in the complex process of book production. A structure dominated by entrepreneurs and middlemen was emerging and ‘in the [later] Middle Ages true publishing houses existed, in the modern sense of the word’. The best known of these were to be found in the Low Countries and in northern Italy, but there were comparable establishments in England, France and Germany. A distinction has been drawn between the officine (publishing house or shop) and the atelier (workshop) in both northern and southern Europe. The relationship of publisher and bookseller to scribe and illuminator varied from one centre to another. It is also important to distinguish between ‘mere books’ and elaborately illuminated manuscripts, produced on the finest sheepskin or goatskin parchment. The latter have tended to be more durable, while the cheaper, everyday books, normally written on paper, are far less likely to have survived. Any quantitative estimate of books in circulation at any given time is thus fraught with difficulties.
An increasing use of paper in book production was evident from the late fourteenth century onwards. Although rag paper had already been employed for archival and documentary purposes since the later thirteenth century, literary, theological, devotional and scientific texts on paper began to appear in profusion only after c. 1400. Paper had been imported from China via Italy, where the first European paper mills were set up, the finest paper being made at Fabriano. By c. 1390 the Stromer of Nuremberg had established a paper mill, and manufacture of the material soon spread over northern Europe. Paper was a cheaper medium than parchment and this enabled book producers to market larger quantities of relatively inexpensive books. There were some limitations upon its use, however: at Florence, the material most commonly employed for commercially produced illuminated books was parchment until well into the 1460s. Parchment provided a better medium for manuscript painters, and was far better suited to the production of de luxe editions for affluent patrons and clients. Book prices therefore tended to fall. Florentine prices in the late 1450s ranged from about fifty florins for large, lavishly illuminated liturgical books on parchment to two to three florins for paper editions of classical and humanistic texts. Even so, books were not an exceptionally cheap commodity: it cost eighteen to twenty florins to keep a young Florentine apprentice for a year. But the paper book, often consisting of unbound quires, had little second-hand value and the allusions in English wills to boxes or chests of unspecified books probably referred to items of this kind.
The fifteenth century also saw an unprecedented demand for illustrated books at many social levels. These ranged from the lavishly decorated illuminated volumes commissioned for princes, nobles and wealthy patricians to the rapiaria or commonplace books, often containing miscellaneous assortments of devotional texts with woodcut illustrations, produced for humbler members of the literate laity. The most popular works were already reproduced by mechanical means before the introduction of movable type: a dialogue between a ploughman and Death (Der Ackermann aus Bohmen, c. 1400) was the first German illustrated book to be chosen for woodcut reproduction by Albrecht Pfister in 1460. A similar process was experienced by the illustrated aid to meditation known as the Biblia pauperum: a series of block-book versions replaced the hand-illustrated texts which had previously circulated. These were read by both clergy and laity in the middle levels of urban society and reflected the popularity of devotional books in which Old Testament prefigurations of New Testament events and doctrines were depicted in graphic form. Yet the hand-illustrated book retained its vogue among the upper classes. The mid-and later fifteenth-century German Hausbucher, mainly of Rhenish origin, and Geschlechtsbucher (commonplace books recording family history and depicting scenes from urban and courtly life) enjoyed great popularity. So too did the Tournament books assembled for both individuals and fraternities in the German towns. These celebrated their participation in jousts and tourneys, represented by the vividly illustrated volumes made for the electors of Saxony and for patricians such as Marx Walther of Augsburg (c. 1480—1520).
The manufacture and sale of books was only loosely controlled by guilds and corporations. Those involved in the processes of book production were necessarily concentrated in towns, and were therefore not exempt from the differentiation and division of labour common to all medieval urbanised industries. The stationers, scribes and illuminators were distinct from the panel painters. But the booksellers, illuminators and binders of Bruges first grouped themselves together and were recognised as a guild dedicated to St John the Evangelist only in 1457. At Florence, the cartolai — book producers and dealers in book materials — were already members of the guild of Medici e Speziali by that date. These men dealt in the raw materials of book production, while the more enterprising among them also acted as middlemen in the processes of copying and illumination. Supervision and regulation was always difficult, because the manufacture of books involved the services of craftsmen who were often very mobile. The early career of Johann Gutenberg of Mainz bore witness to that fact. Similarly, one of the most influential of Netherlandish illuminators — William Vrelant — moved from Utrecht to join the illuminators’ guild at Bruges (which totalled fifty-two members) by 1454, bringing Dutch methods and styles of book illustration with him.
Within each publishing or manufacturing business, division of labour was strictly observed. The preparation and ruling of parchment, copying of text, initial decoration, illumination and binding were all separate tasks. Unbound quires or cahiers could be sent out for illumination to a painter working in another town, such as Jean Tavernier of Oudenaarde, who worked upon manuscripts sent to him from Lille, Brussels and elsewhere (c. 1450—60). In Florence, most manuscripts were produced on commission for clients by the cartolai, who also employed independent scribes and illuminators working outside their shops, normally on a piece-work basis. Attempts were sometimes made to introduce a ‘closed shop’: a series of ordinances appeared in Bruges between 1427 and 1457 designed to regulate the import of pictures, mainly from Utrecht, unless they were bound into manuscripts produced in the city. In 1447 friction between the painters and scriveners led the councillors (ecbevins) of the city to resolve that manuscript illuminators were to work only in watercolours, reserving the use of gold, silver and oil to the painters’ corporation of St Luke. Such restrictions were always very difficult to enforce and the evidence of surviving manuscripts suggests that they were frequently broken.
The tendency towards the establishment of publishing houses, which has already been noted, was especially marked in the Low Countries and at Florence. Master Jean Wauquelin and his successor Jacquemart Pilavaine set up publishing businesses at Mons between 1440 and 1460, as did David Aubert at Brussels, Bruges and Ghent between 1460 and 1480. They adopted very similar procedures and methods to those followed at a later date by Colard Mansion and William Caxton, including the selection, promotion and translation of popular texts. Similar patterns can be seen in northern Italy. At Florence the cartolaio Vespasiano da Bisticci (c. 1422—98) emerged as a true bookseller in the modern sense, learning his trade from his predecessors Niccoli (d. 1437) and Traversari (d. 1439). The special conditions of Florentine intellectual life created a demand for both de luxe and more humdrum manuscript books. Vespasiano enjoyed the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici, to whom he supplied books for the monastic library of San Marco and for the newly created library at the Badia of Fiesole. He also accepted specific commissions from foreign clients such as Jean Jouffroy, bishop of Arras, in 1460—1, and from Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, between c. 1465 and 1482. But Vespasiano also dealt in new books: ‘he very boldly set out to exploit the potential market for uncommissioned books’. He displayed new books in his shop, trying to anticipate and shape demand. He was unrivalled in Florence — and probably elsewhere — as an entrepreneur, and only one other Florentine cartolaio, Zanobi di Mariano, attempted to emulate him. Vespasiano was to enjoy a relatively brief, though very influential, hegemony over the Florentine book trade. The introduction of printing after 1465 led to intense competition, overproduction of humanistic texts and a dramatic fall in demand. In 1478 his shop was closed down for lack of business. He had refused to adapt to the new methods.
Such disdain for the new processes was not shared by German entrepreneurs. A well-established system of manuscript production absorbed new techniques and it has been said that ‘clearly, there was a wide German network of families or people working in Nuremberg, Mainz, Strasburg, [and] Bamberg ... as rivals but also as friends, interested in producing . . . the consumer goods of communication’, that is, parchment, paper, bookbindings and woodcuts. The major European centres of book production held their own against competition as demand rose. A major incentive had always been given to the book trade by the presence of universities, or by groups of scholars and visitors attracted by certain masters or intellectual trends, to Paris or Louvain, or to Florence during the Church Council of Florence—Ferrara (1438—9) and the congress of Mantua (1459). The foundation of many new universities during the fifteenth century also stimulated book production, although most scholars still engaged in the more economical method of copying texts for themselves.
The primary means of support for manuscript illumination still lay in the princely court. The influence of rulers and courtiers determined much of the content and style of manuscripts produced for a wider readership throughout this period. The de luxe market continued to be dominated by them, and they were emulated by wealthy patricians and burghers. Princely libraries were fundamental to the formation of taste and to the choice of manuscripts for reproduction made by entrepreneurs such as Vespasiano da Bisticci or William Caxton. Habits of book collecting formed in the fourteenth century were perpetuated, and the French royal library of Charles VI held about 1,000 volumes by 1420. The French royal collection was exceptional in northern Europe: alone among northern princes, Philip the Good of Burgundy managed to increase his library from about 250 volumes to over 900 between 1420 and 1467. His splendid collection was rivalled by that of Federigo da Montefeltro at Urbino, which also comprised over 900 books when it was completed in 1482. About one half of the Urbino library had been purchased from, and through, Vespasiano da Bisticci, who (not without an air of self-congratulation) described it as ‘the most complete library anywhere’. Although the famous statement that it contained no printed books was untrue, for Federigo certainly possessed a printed Origen, dated 1481, and a few other incunables, these formed a tiny minority of his essentially manuscript collection.
To possess a library of 100 manuscripts or more was a notable feat for a non-princely owner by the end of the fifteenth century. In 1518, Francis I of France’s book collection numbered only 254 volumes, for the earlier royal collection had been dispersed in the 1420s to John, duke of Bedford and others. Over 150 of these books derived from the library of the fifteenth-century Burgundian nobleman and courtier Louis de Bruges, lord of Gruuthuse (d. 1492). Gruuthuse’s collection was a formative influence upon the commissioning of lavishly illuminated manuscripts from Bruges and Ghent by Edward IV of England. The possession of even a small number of books became a sine qua non of the educated noble or gentleman. At the courts of Burgundy, Anjou—Provence, Milan, Urbino, Castile, Aragon, Hungary, Bohemia and elsewhere, patronage of secular literature inflated the levels of book production. Vernacular books began to rival Latin texts, despite humanist efforts to promote classical languages, and were far more widely diffused by the later fifteenth century. The acceptance of vernaculars as languages of courtly literature in England, the northern Low Countries, Germany, Italy and Spain enabled greater inroads to be made into the primacy of French and Latin as media of culture and civilisation. Diffusion of manuscripts took place through dedication or presentation to potential royal and aristocratic patrons, followed by multiple copying of the texts. Volumes produced for royal or princely libraries were often reproduced on a large scale: for example, Jean Wauquelin supplied a paper copy of the Chroniques de Hainaut, of which he had produced a sumptuous manuscript for Philip the Good, to a bourgeois named Brassot in August 1448. A similar practice was adopted by Colard Mansion and William Caxton whereby copies were made of books in the Burgundian ducal collection and in the Gruuthuse library. Book-ownership was expressed heraldically and the passage of books from one collection to another at this time can be traced by the overpainting of coats of arms and devices upon change of proprietorship. There was much exchange, transference and borrowing of books among court circles and this led to a certain uniformity of style, such as that of the ‘Master of Mary of Burgundy’, which was widespread in the Low Countries during the latter part of the century.
The most important development in the style and format of illuminated books during this period stemmed from the emergence of a closer relationship between manuscript painting and the art of the panel painter. This tendency had already begun in the fourteenth century, and the work of the Limburg brothers for Jean, duke of Berry (d. 1416), exemplified this trend. It became increasingly common for the full-page miniatures in a de luxe manuscript to draw upon the techniques of panel painting, especially in the use of light, shade and perspective. The innovations of Hubert and Jan van Eyck (d. 1441) were soon applied to the illuminated book. It has been claimed that the so-called Turin—Milan Hours, stemming from the circle of the counts of Hainault—Holland, was a work of the van Eycks, although the attribution and dating of this partially destroyed manuscript is disputed. The illuminations in the book depict scenes of remarkable realism, in which landscapes, sea shores and domestic interiors are represented with the attention to detail and close observation of nature which was a hallmark of ‘Eyckian’ art. These innovations enabled manuscript painters to produce more faithful likenesses of the owners of books — especially of Books of Hours, where they often appear in adoration of the Virgin and Child with attendant saints — and to render doctrinal truths and devotional images more vivid and immediate. The lessons taught by the van Eycks, and by Rogier van der Weyden (d. 1464), permeated European manuscript painting. In Italy, their influence was most strongly felt at Venice and Naples, while the Italian ambitions of Rene of Anjou, titular king of Naples and Sicily, brought Italian manuscripts into France. These began to adopt Netherlandish features — such as greater concentration on landscape painting and portraiture — and the work of Rene’s own painter, ‘Master Barthelemy’, a relative of Jan van Eyck, was an amalgam of Italian and Netherlandish styles.
The illuminated book was not, however, filled entirely with large, full-page pictures. Its border decoration, initial letters and script were also works of considerable artistry and invention. Study of the borders of both Netherlandish and Italian manuscripts has enabled attributions to specific scribes and workshops to be made. The elaborate use of foliage, acanthus and other compositional devices allowed the artist to indulge in fantasy, grotes-querie and heraldic allusion. Scribal hands naturally differed from one individual and region to another, but the Gothic bastarda and rotunda scripts perfected in the Low Countries were widely admired and copied. Even in Florence, choirbooks were written in large, well-formed Gothic rotunda hands, which were easier to read during services than the more cursive script of the humanists and their scribes. By the later fifteenth century, the illuminated book had become a form of art-work in which a number of hands were often involved. There was also a vigorous export trade in books: the great library formed by Matyas Corvinus, king of Hungary (1459—90), was largely stocked with manuscripts purchased from Florentine dealers, while Carlos of Aragon, prince of Viana, bought both Netherlandish and Italian manuscripts which exerted their influence upon Catalan and Aragonese artists. The pages of illuminated books now served as ‘windows’ on to the natural world, reflecting the advances made in portraiture and landscape painting in the Burgundian Low Countries.
Religious sentiment, however, still remained a vital spur to book production. The demand for liturgical, theological and devotional texts was keen. Beginning with their Books of Hours, the laity had then helped to create a market for devotional treatises, homilies, manuals of the Christian life and of the pious manner of dying (ars moriendi), mystical writings and vernacular Bibles. These formed the core of many — if not most — book collections and reflected a spreading lay literacy and desire to be better informed in matters of doctrine and belief. The popularity of devotional books such as Thomas Kempis’s Imitation of Christ (De imitacione Christi et contemptu omnium vanitatum mundi), completed in 1441, was well illustrated by its translation into other, more accessible, languages. Dutch versions soon appeared, and four different French translations are known, including one which was probably the work of Nicholas Finet, canon of Cambrai, almoner to Margaret of York, duchess of Burgundy. Court and aristocratic circles were thus kept acquainted with contemporary currents of religious sentiment and devotional practice through such books, some of which had their origins in the movement known as the devotio moderna.
The devotio also played a significant part in book production itself. One of the primary tasks of the houses founded by Gerhard Groote and his followers, such as Florent Radewijns (c. 1350—1400) at Deventer, Zwolle, Windesheim and elsewhere in the Low Countries, Westphalia and the Rhineland, was the copying, illuminating and binding of books. By 1450, there were nineteen houses of Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life, and manuscripts survive from some of them. The house at Zwolle was a prolific centre of book production and the Lives of its members by Jakob van Trier, together with Kempis’s own Chronicle of the canons regular of Mount St Agnes, supply a fascinating picture of the community’s work. The first prior of Mount St Agnes, Jan van Kempen (1399—1408), was a distinguished scribe and illuminator, while Henrik Mande (c. 1360—1431), an early member of the Windesheim convent, had been a scribe and secretary in the service of William IV, count of Hainault and Holland, before his conversion to the devotio. He wrote and decorated at least fourteen manuscripts during his early years at Windesheim. William Vorniken, second prior of Mount St Agnes (1408—25), caused ‘a good store of books to be written for the choir and the library ... and with his own hand he illuminated many books’. Yet the communities did not only produce books for their own use: Egbert van Lingen, sub-prior of Zwolle, illuminated books ‘that were written for sale’. There can be no doubt that the houses of the Brethren were among the most important producers of liturgical and devotional books at this time. Their work was to some extent paralleled in Italy by the production of liturgical manuscripts and choirbooks by the members of Florentine and Venetian convents, for use in other churches, and by the activity of Carthusian monks in northern Europe. The Carthusians, as an eremitic order, devoted some of their ample time to the composition and copying of books, and houses such as the English foundations at Mountgrace and Syon inherited the role of the monastic scriptoria of earlier periods.
In their task of rendering the invisible world of the Spirit visible to human eyes, the manuscript illuminators of the fifteenth century followed the advances made by both panel and fresco painters. In the Low Countries, tangible objects and humdrum scenes of everyday life were infused with significance, emotion and Christian symbolism: ‘the artist prefers his experience of men as he knows them to the inventive figuration of a world he has not observed’. In Italy, the classicising and idealising tendencies of humanism imparted a special character to manuscript illumination, but northern influences were also clearly apparent. France derived much from the neighbouring Low Countries, but the introduction of Italianate forms and styles in the work of Jean Fouquet of Tours (c. 1420—80), and through the court of Rene of Anjou in Provence, gave French illumination a greater eclecticism. Spanish book production, in Castile, Aragon and Catalonia, absorbed and imitated both Netherlandish and Italian models, while the German lands looked mainly to Flanders and to the Rhineland for their inspiration. England supported indigenous book producers and illuminators, largely influenced by Netherlandish styles. But throughout western Europe, the number of manuscripts and books in circulation had grown substantially by 1500. There was a ready demand for books from a wider readership, and entrepreneurs existed to satisfy their needs. Later fifteenth-century Europe was therefore well prepared for the introduction of new techniques for the mass-production and dissemination of the written word.