a book which has been claimed by Dutch historians as the first production of the newly invented art of typography.
The irregular manner in which all the early xylographers drew and engraved letters on the block is fairly shown in this fac-simile of the imprint of Conrad Dinckmut, of Ulm, who affixed it to a Donatus printed by him in 1480. It will be seen that parallel lines ruled between the printed lines would interfere with almost every ascending or descending letter.
Reduced Fac-simile of the Imprint of Conrad Dinckmut.
[From De la Borde.]
The Donatus clearly shows the retrogressive tendencies of the teachers of that age. It was originally written for scholars who spoke in Latin, and who, when the book was first placed in their hands, knew the meaning of almost every word. In the fifteenth century Latin was a dead language, but the book that had been written a thousand years before received no modification adapting it to the capacities of the German or Dutch boys, to whom Latin was as strange as Chinese.[1] The
- ↑ Van der Linde says that the Donatus and Abecedarium, a religious primer hereafter to be noticed, are used in all the religious schools of Italy to this day.
I look with melancholy respect at an Abecedarium, a little octavo of four leaves, Il Sillabario, printed in our time in 1862, at Asti. Beneath the heading, Jesus Maria, the Alphabet follows, and after that the Pater noster, Ave, and Credo. Beside the Sillabario, I have a little grammar entitled Donato ad uso delle scuolle secondarie. Nuova editione accresciuta e riformata. Pinerola, &c, 1865. … The esteem in which these Catholic school-books, those foul springs from which, for instance, Erasmus drew the first elements of Latin, were held, was so great that the first efforts of the humanists to improve them were regarded as heresy, and heaven and earth were moved against such dangerous destroyers. … Donatuses were printed in every place where schools were established, and where the art of printing was introduced. The Haarlem Legend, p. 3.
