It was proved that there was a uniformity in the shapes of the letters which could not have been made by drawing.
The statement that a rude method of printing had been practised three centuries before its supposed invention, was received by the bibliographers with incredulity. Authors who had advocated theories of a Chinese, a German or a Netherlandish discovery of printing would not admit that printing with ink could have been done at an earlier period. They said that the initials were made by stenciling, or by tracings taken from a model letter. But they had a peculiarity which could not have been produced by stenciling, for they showed the marks of hard indentation in the parchment. Papillon, a practical engraver on wood, accepted the indented letters as the impressions of wood-cuts; Lanzi, the historian of Italian fine arts, said that the initials were certainly printed.
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| The Mark of Jacobus Arnoldus, 1345. [From Jackson.] |
The Mark of Johannes Meynersen, 1435. [From Jackson.] |
Signatures which show all the mechanical peculiarities of impressions from engravings on wood have also been found on Italian documents of the twelfth century. Printed signa-
