1440 and 1475. As we approach the latter date, we find block-books containing the names and places of the printers. We see that they were made at Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, — the towns which have the earliest records of manufacturers of playing cards, — in the district in which old image prints like the St. Christopher have been oftenest discovered. It is probable that block-books were printed in Southern Germany at or near the time when the St. Christopher was printed, but we have no positive proof that any block-book was printed in 1423. The German book with earliest printed date is the Chiromancy, but its date of 1448 is not certainly the date of printing.
The evidences in favor of an early practice of block-book printing in the Netherlands are, in some features, even more incomplete. No early Dutch or Flemish block-book reveals the name of its printer. There are not many notices in old Flemish town-books concerning card-makers, or printers or painters of images. Yet there was, without doubt, an early practice of block-printing in the Netherlands. The Dutch traditions about early printing are more circumstantial than those of Germany; the Brussels Print dated 1418 is older by five years than the print of St. Christopher; the date of 1440 as printed in the wood-cuts of the Exercise on the Lord's Prayer is eight years earlier than the date of the Chiromancy.
The books themselves do not tell us, neither directly nor indirectly, whether they were first printed in Flanders or in Germany. They have been critically examined by many able men, but the unbiased reader will not fail to note that most inquirers have found only what they wanted to find. To the German critic, all the early block-books are German; to the Dutch critic, they are surely Dutch. To recite the arguments advanced by partisans, or even to state the facts wrested to the support of the arguments, would provide a tedious task for the reader. Nor would the fullest presentation of the facts lead to certain knowledge. The language oftenest found in the block-books is Latin, the language of the Church and of
