Among the treasures of early printing in the John Rylands Library is a collection of 15 blockbooks. This might not sound like an impressive number but it is the second largest collection of blockbooks in this country, after that in the British Library, and ranks as the seventh largest collection in the world.
Blockbooks are books printed entirely from carved wooden blocks and they are very different from books printed with movable metal type. In blockbooks, each page containing text and images was carved in reverse onto a single wooden block. Each page in the book required a separate block to be cut. This was a laborious process as each line and letter had to be carved out of the wood, the background being cut away to reveal the text and images. (Figure 1)
To make the print, the carved block was inked with a brownish or greyish water-based ink. Paper was placed onto the block and then rubbed on the back, transferring the ink from the wood to the paper. After all of the pages had been printed, the single-sided leaves of paper were then gathered and usually glued together, back-to-back, to form complete books. (Figure 2)
Blockbooks presented a small number of familiar texts, complete with recognisable illustrations, aimed at a popular audience of poor priests and semi-literate people. Most interpreted stories from the Old and the New Testament or offered moral guidance on living and dying well. The key texts were the Apocalypse, the Biblia pauperum (“Pauper’s Bible”), the Ars moriendi (“The Art of Dying”), the Canticum canticorum (“Song of Solomon” or “Song of Songs”), and the Speculum humanae salvationis (“Mirror of Human Salvation”). (Figure 3)
Once made, the blocks could be used repeatedly. Very popular works could be produced cheaply and quickly to order, as there was no need for expensive equipment such as a printing press or metal type. Blockbooks are very rare, though, with few copies having survived to the present day. Most were read to destruction or thrown away; some survive only in fragments; some editions probably have not survived at all and we know nothing about them. (Figure 4)
Blockbooks appeared during the 1450s in the Netherlands, enjoyed a brief period of popularity, and then vanished and were largely forgotten about. They only became the object of antiquarian interest in the late 18th century with a growing awareness of the importance of their place in the history of printing. Ever since blockbooks have excited much debate among scholars: who made them and, very importantly, when were they made? For a long time it was thought they preceded Johannes Gutenberg’s invention in the 1450s of printing with metal type, acting as a precursor technology to the printing press. However, they seem to have begun at approximately the same time that Gutenberg was experimenting with movable type in Mainz, Germany, about 250 miles away.
The Apocalypse
The earliest of the blockbooks is the Apocalypse. The earliest surviving edition of the Apocalypse is the unique copy in the John Rylands Library, known as edition I. No earlier blockbooks, if there were any, have survived. It is a very important book: by common consent it was regarded as the oldest entirely printed European book to exist. (Figure 5)
The Apocalypse consists of 92 woodcut illustrations from the life of St John the Evangelist and from the biblical Book of Revelation (the “Apocalypse”). It is printed in brown ink on 48 leaves of paper, on one side only. The Latin text is integrated into the illustrations in bordered sections and scrolls. The illustrations are coloured in thin watercolour washes. (Figure 6)
The Apocalypse was dated by woodcut specialists to the 1420s, and then later by art historians on stylistic grounds to around 1440. The paper and watermark scholar Allan H. Stevenson determined that it was Netherlandish and probably dated from between 1450 and 1452. He also said that it was possible that the carver of the woodblocks was Jan van den Berghe of Leuven (current-day Belgium), and that maybe this was where this earliest surviving blockbook had been designed, cut, and printed. (Figure 7)
Current research by Dr Stephen Mossman, using advanced images of the watermarks in the blockbook provided by the Rylands Imaging team specialist Tony Richards, has provided a date range for the Apocalypse of two years on either side of 1454, but certainly no earlier than 1450 or later than 1456. Dating from the early 1450s the Rylands Apocalypse, if not the oldest printed European book to still exist, is certainly one of the oldest, along with the famous Gutenberg Bible. The Apocalypse, as far as we can tell, is exactly contemporary with Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of printing with movable metal type.
Dr Mossman’s recent fascinating seminar on the Apocalypse, entitled ‘New Light on the Oldest European Printed Book: the Blockbook Apocalypse’, in which he presents his findings on the blockbook, can be viewed here.
The Apocalypse has been fully digitised and is available here. The full catalogue record is available here.
More blogs on the Rylands’ blockbooks will follow.