The importance of this document depends entirely upon the construction of these words, getté en molle. Bernard says that they have always been regarded in France as the equivalent of printing, or of printed letters.[1] The literal meaning of the words is, cast in mould. So construed, no words could more clearly define founded types. This construction of the phrase would prove the existence of a typographic printer in Bruges at least as early as 1445. The dry, matter-of-fact way in which the words were used would show that books of this description were not novelties; that they were sold in Arras and in Bruges; that book-buyers were critical about their workmanship, and knew how they were made.
This construction of the phrase has been keenly disputed. Van der Linde says that the books were printed, but not from types—from blocks that had been getté en molle, or put into form, or put into readable shape, by the art of engraving. He cites authorities showing that the word molle or mould had been applied to forms of manuscript.[2]
Dr. Van Meurs proposes a new construction—that getté en molle has nothing to do either with types or blocks. "Who does not perceive, while reading the Cambray document, that in 1451, the term getté en molle is used in contradistinction to in paper? Do not these terms make us rather think of books in loose sheets as opposed to sheets, that are bound? What can molle mean but form? What is a book getté en molle but a book brought together in a form, or in a binding, in oppo-
- ↑ Bernard, De l'origine et des débuts de l'imprimerie, vol. i. p. 98.
- ↑ The phrase could be applied to the forms of the letters in the books, without regard to the quality or any peculiarity of the printing or the binding. Two forms of writing were then in use: one, a black angular, and somewhat condensed form of Gothic character, which is defined in Fournier's Manuel typographique as lettres de forme, or letters of precision; the other, a round, light-faced, more careless and more popular form of letters, named by him as lettres de somme. To this day, carefully written but disconnected letters, whether upright or inclined, are colloquially known as print letters. The doctrinal which was put in form may have been written in lettres de forme. The phrase gette en molle could have been fairly applied to these precise letters, in contradistinction to the more careless shapes of the lettres de somme.
