Mediaeval and modern history . mediaevalperiod. First, devices onplaying cards were formedby impressions fromblocks; then manuscriptswere stamped with portraitsand pictures. The nextstep was to cut into thesame block a few lines ofexplanatory text. In timethe lines increased topages, and during the firsthalf of the fifteenth cen-tury many entire bookswere produced by theblock-printing method. But printing from blockswas slow and costly. Theart was revolutionized byJohn Gutenberg (1400-1468), a native of Mainz in Germany,through the invention of the movable letters which we call type.^The oldes
Mediaeval and modern history . mediaevalperiod. First, devices onplaying cards were formedby impressions fromblocks; then manuscriptswere stamped with portraitsand pictures. The nextstep was to cut into thesame block a few lines ofexplanatory text. In timethe lines increased topages, and during the firsthalf of the fifteenth cen-tury many entire bookswere produced by theblock-printing method. But printing from blockswas slow and costly. Theart was revolutionized byJohn Gutenberg (1400-1468), a native of Mainz in Germany,through the invention of the movable letters which we call type.^The oldest book known to have been printed from movable gifts of mind. The special task which Pico set for himself was the harmonizing ofChristianity and the New Learning, a task like that of those scholars of the presenttime who seek to reconcile the Bible and modern science. 8 Some Dutch writers claim for Coster of Haarlem the honor of the invention, butthere is nothing aside from unreliable tradition on which such a claim can Fig. 49. — A Block-Printed Page FROM THE BiBLIA PaUPERUM (From Lacroix) 264 THE RENAISSANCE letters was a Latin copy of the Bible issued from the press ofGutenberg and Faust at Mainz between the years 1454 and art spread rapidly and before the close of the fifteenth cen-tury presses were busy in every country of Europe — in the cityof Venice alone there were two hundred — multiplying books witha rapidity undreamed of by the patient copyists of the cloister. 290. The Aldine Press at Venice. — But it is merely the intro-duction of the new art into Italy that especially concerns us now.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubje, booksubjectmiddleages
