Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/274

XIV

The Speculum Salutis, or the Mirror of Salvation.

Its Popularity as a Manuscript Book … Made for Mendicant Friars … Description of the Text … Fac-similes of Wood-cuts on First and Last Pages … Its Curious Theology … Four Editions of the Book … Their Peculiarities … Twenty Engraved Pages in one Edition … Strange Blemishes. Opinions of Bibliographers concerning the Date and Printer … Text of the Book Printed from Types … Fac-simile of the Types … Different Bodies of Types in Different Editions … Engraved Pages were Transferred from Types … Book Printed in Four Kinds of Ink … By Two Methods of Impression … Types and Cuts could not be Printed together … Opinions about the Quality of the Presswork … Strange Faults of Presswork … All Editions were Printed in Holland … Wood-cuts used for the last time by Veldener in 1483 … Not Probable that Veldener Printed the Earlier Editions … Veldener did not use the Types … The Speculum is the Work of an Unknown Printer.

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Everything about the book is uncertain. It may be that the book was printed from engraved blocks. There are persons who say that it was engraved; there is a librarian who says that it was written by hand. ... I submitted the book to a type-founder, to an engraver, and to a printer who decided that the book was printed with movable metal types that had been cast in a mould.

André Chevillier.

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The Speculum Salutis^[1] was popular as a manuscript for at least two centuries before the invention of typography. Heineken describes a copy in the imperial library of Vienna, which he attributes to the twelfth century. He says, such was the popularity of the work with the Benedictines that almost every monastery possessed a copy of it. Of the four manuscript copies owned by the British Museum, one is supposed to have been written in the thirteenth century, another copy is in the Flemish writing of the fifteenth century. The printed

1. Sometimes described under the title of Speculum Humanæ Salvationis.