A Brief History of Wood-engraving

Front matter

HENRY VIII. IN COUNCIL (From Holinshed's 'Chronicles of England, 1577) Page 100

A BRIEF HISTORY

OF

Chapter 1

CHAPTER I

ON THE EARLY PICTURES OF SAINTS

Many volumes have been written on the subject of Wood-Engraving, especially in Germany, Holland, and Belgium, where the art first flourished; as well as in Italy, France, and England; and some of the best of these books have been published during the present century.

The most important of them are, Dr. Dibdin's celebrated bibliographical works; 'A Treatise on Wood-Engraving,' by W. A. Chatto, of which a new edition has lately been issued; 'Wood-Engraving in Italy in the 15th Century,' by Dr. Lippmann; and, above all, 'The Masters of Wood-Engraving,' a magnificent folio volume written by Mr. W. J. Linton—himself a Master—who, besides giving us the benefit of his technical knowledge obtained by the practice of the art for fifty years, presents us with copies, from blocks engraved by himself, of the most celebrated woodcuts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Many writers have asserted that the first wood-engravings are to be found on playing-cards; others maintain that the very rough prints on the playing-cards of the early fifteenth century were taken from stencil-plates. It is impossible to decide the point, nor is it of much importance; there is no evidence whatever as to the method of their production. They appeared in Europe about the year 1350: they came from the East, but their positive history, according to Dr. Willshire, begins in the year 1392. It has been asserted that many prints of Images of Saints produced by means of wood-engraving preceded even playing-cards.

The first undoubted fact that we can arrive at in the history of wood-engraving is that early in the fifteenth century there were to be found, in many of the monasteries and convents in various parts of Europe, prints of the Virgin with the Holy Infant, the most popular Saints, and Subjects from the Bible, which were certainly taken from engravings on wood; and we have now to describe some typical examples of primitive devotional pictures, printed by the xylographic process. The earliest of these woodcuts may date from 1380, and there are many which are assigned to the first half of the fifteenth century; they were all intended to be coloured by hand, and are therefore simply in outline, without shading. The designs are usually good, but the execution is not always so meritorious.

In the Royal Library at Brussels there is a coloured print of The Virgin with the Holy Child in her lap, surrounded by four Saints in an inclosed garden. On the Virgin's right hand sits St. Catherine, with a royal crown on her head, the sword in her left hand, and, leaning against her feet, a broken wheel. Beneath is St. Dorothea crowned with roses, with a branch of a rose-tree in her right hand and the handle of a basket of apples in her left; on the other side are St. Barbara holding her tower, and, under her, St. Margaret with a book in her left hand; her right hand clasps a laidly dragon, and a cross leans upon her arm.

THE VIRGIN WITH FOUR SAINTS In the Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique

Outside the palings a rabbit is feeding; a bird sits on the rail behind St. Catherine, two others are flying, and, above all, three angels are offering chaplets of roses to the Virgin; a palm-tree is growing on each side of her. But the most important part of the print is the very solid three-barred gate at the entrance to the garden, for on the uppermost of the bars we distinctly read m: cccco xviiio. The print itself measures 14½ inches in height by 9 inches in width, without reckoning the border lines. It was found pasted at the bottom of an old coffer in the possession of an innkeeper at Malines in 1844 by a well-known architect, M. de Noter, who, recognising its great importance, offered it to the Royal Library at Brussels. It has been reproduced in scrupulously exact facsimile and fully described in the work entitled 'Documents iconographiques et typographiques de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique,' published by MM. Muquardt of Brussels. The small letters o are supposed to represent nails in the gate.

M. Georges Duplessis tells us that he has examined the print minutely several times, and that he does not believe this date has been tampered with in any way. Some collectors and would-be critics maintain that the drawing of the figures and the folds of the garments are of a later date than 1418; if they were to examine the works of Hubert and Jan van Eyck, and the paintings of Meister Stephan Lochner of Cologne, Rogier van der Weyden, and other artists who lived about this time, they would be sufficiently answered. Mr. Linton is of opinion (and there can be no better judge) that the style of the engraving does not compel him to attribute it to a later date than 1418, yet both he and Mr. Chatto express their doubts as to its authenticity—it appears to us, without sufficient reason.

About the middle of the eighteenth century Herr Heinecken, a German collector of engravings, discovered, pasted inside the binding of a manuscript in the library of the convent of Buxheim in Suabia, a folio print brightly coloured of St. Christopher bearing the Infant Christ.

The outlines are printed in black ink, not by any kind of press, but in much the same way as that used by wood-engravers of the present day in taking their proofs, who first ink the engraved surface with a printer's ball, then lay the paper carefully over the cut, waxed at the edges to hold the paper firmly, and rub the back of the paper with a burnisher. In the fifteenth century a roller called a frotton was used, as being more expeditious.

Our illustration gives an idea of the original, which is still in the cover of the book in which it was discovered, and now in the Spencer Library at Manchester. The cut measures 11½ inches in height by 8½ inches in width, and is coloured after the manner of the time; that is, the Saint's robe is tinted with red and the lining with yellow ochre, the nimbuses are of the same kind of yellow; the robes of Christ and the monk are light blue, of the same tint as the water; the grass and foliage are bright green; the faces, hands, and legs are in a pale flesh-tint; there are but five or six colours used, and they may have been either washed in by hand or brushed in through a stencil-plate. As hand colouring would be quicker and less troublesome, one does not see the advantage of the stencil. The inscription beneath the cut reads thus:—

Cristofori faciem die quacumque tueris Millesimo cccco

Illa nempe die morte mala non morieris xxo tercio

which may be rendered:

On whatever day the face of Christopher thou shalt see,

On that day no evil form of death shall visit thee.

ST. CHRISTOPHER The original (11½ in. by 8½ in.) is pasted inside the cover of an old manuscript book in the Spencer Library now at Manchester.

Mr. Linton is enthusiastic in praise of this cut. 'I am well content,' he says, 'to give some words of unstinted praise to our St. Christopher for the design. I mind not the disproportionate space he occupies in the picture. Is not he famous as a giant? The perspective also is good enough for me, as doubtless it was to those in whose interest the print was issued. It is certain he is crossing a stream; we see a fish beneath the waves. He supports his colossal frame and helps his steady course with a full-grown fruit-bearing palm-tree—fit staff for saintly son of Anak; no heathen he; the nimbus is round his head. As on his shoulders he bears the Lord of the World, can we fail to remark his upturned glance, inquiring why he is thus bowed down by a little child? The blessing hand of the Blessed plainly gives reply. Look again, and see on one side of the stream the merely secular life; is it not all expressed by the mill and the miller and his ass, and far up the steep road (what need for diminishing distance?) the peasant with the sack of flour toiling towards his humble home. And on the other side is the spiritual life—the hermit, by his windowless hut, the warning bell above; he kneels in front, with his lantern of faith lifted high in his hand, a beacon for whatever wayfarer the ferryman may bring. Rank grasses and the fearless rabbit mark the quiet solitude in which the hermit dwells. I can forgive all shortcomings. These old-century men were in earnest.'

In the Spencer collection are two other prints which may be attributed to the same period as the St. Christopher. One is a picture of The Annunciation, which was found pasted on the end cover of the book (Laus Virginis) in which the St. Christopher was discovered. It is of similar size, and is printed with a dark-coloured pigment, probably by means of a frotton. The Angel Gabriel is kneeling before the Virgin, who also is kneeling; she holds a book in her hand, and is represented in a kind of Gothic chapel; a vase with flowers in it stands under one of the diamond-paned windows. The Holy Dove is descending in a flood of rays; unfortunately the figure of the Almighty has been torn from the top left-hand corner of the print. On one of the pillars of the chapel is a small scroll with the legend

Ave gracia plena dominus tecum.

THE ANNUNCIATION The original (11½ in. by 8½ in.) is pasted inside the cover of an old manuscript book in the Spencer Library.

The wood-engraver may produce his design in two ways, either by means of black lines on a white ground, or by white designs on a black ground. The two methods are here united, while in the St. Christopher one only (the first) is used. Notice the discreet use of masses of black to give force to the design, and to contrast with the lightness of the other part of the picture. The Annunciation belongs to quite a different school to the St. Christopher.

The other print is of St. Bridget of Sweden (who died in 1373). She is seated at a sloping desk, writing with a stylus in a book. The motto above her head is o brigita bit got für uns ('O Bridget, pray to God for us'). In the left upper corner is a small representation of the Virgin with the Holy Infant in her arms, opposite is a shield with the letters S.P.Q.R. on it, referring to her journey to Rome. In the lower corners are, on the left, the palm and crown of martyrdom; and on the right is a shield with the Lion rampant of Sweden. A pilgrim's hat and scrip hang on a staff behind the Virgin's seat. The print is roughly coloured, evidently by hand.

Many other woodcuts of the same character have been discovered, which are believed to have been engraved in the first half of the fifteenth century. In the Imperial Library at Vienna there is a print of St. Sebastian, bearing the date 1437, which was found in the monastery of St. Blaise in the Black Forest. 'Having visited,' says Herr Heinecken, 'in my last tour a great many convents in Franconia, Suabia, Bavaria, and in the Austrian States, I everywhere discovered in their libraries many of these kinds of figures engraved on wood. They were usually pasted either at the beginning or the end of old volumes of the fifteenth century. These facts have confirmed me in my opinion that the next step of the engraver on wood, after playing-cards, was to engrave figures of Saints, which, being distributed and lost among the laity, were in part preserved by the monks, who pasted them into the earliest printed books with which their libraries were furnished.' Herr Heinecken possessed more than a hundred of these pictures of Saints. There can be little doubt they were produced in the monasteries and convents, and distributed to the people, especially in the processions of the Church, as aids to devotion. Among the thousands of monks who lived in the fifteenth century there must have been many men who, like Fra Angelico, were gifted with sufficient artistic taste to enable them to draw and engrave such a picture as the St. Christopher.

Chapter 11

CHAPTER XI

IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES IN GERMANY, ITALY AND ENGLAND

In the portfolios of collectors of works of art of the sixteenth century we frequently meet with very interesting examples of printing in chiaro-oscuro, as it was called, by means of successive impressions of engraved wood-blocks. Sometimes two or three blocks were used, sometimes six or eight, in all cases with the intention of reproducing the appearance of a tinted water-colour drawing or an oil-painting. Those prints which were the least ambitious were the most successful, They were generally printed in various shades of grey and brown—from light sepia to deep umber—and sometimes the effects are admirable. A well-known designer and engraver on wood, Ugo da Carpi (c. 1520), introduced this new style of printing into Venice, and other artists, Antonio da Trento, Andrea Andreani, Bartolomeo Coriolano, and others made many successful efforts in a similar direction; their best works are much prized.

At the same time a group of Venetian artists, who were also engravers on wood, distinguished themselves by copying the works of Titian and other Italian painters. The most celebrated of these engravers were Nicolo Boldrini, Francesco da Nanto, Giovanni Battista del Porto, and Giuseppe Scolari, who all flourished between the years 1530 and 1580. Their productions, which are on a large scale, are greatly valued by artists.

Near the end of the century a book of costume entitled Habiti Antichi e Moderni di tutto il Mondo was designed and published at Venice by Cesare Vecellio, who is said to have been a nephew of the great Titian. This work contains nearly six hundred figures in the costume of every age and country, admirably drawn and engraved; indeed, they are the best examples of the art of wood-engraving in Italy at the time. This excellent work was reproduced in their well-known style by Messrs. Firmin, Didot & Cie in two volumes (Paris, 1860).

An edition of 'Dante' published by the brothers Sessa at Venice in 1578 is well illustrated with good woodcuts.

German artists were also bitten at this time with a mania for reproducing pictures by means of colour blocks. The results, however, were much more curious than beautiful. We have before us a copy of a painting designed by Altdorfer, one of the 'Little Masters,' of 'The Virgin with the Holy Infant on her Lap,' set in an elaborate architectural frame. In this print at least eight different colour-blocks were used, among them a deep red and a vivid green. The printer's register has been fairly well kept, and the mechanical part of the work is worthy of all praise; but we fear the effect on most of our readers would be to produce anything but admiration. A Saint Christopher, designed and probably engraved by Lucas Cranach, printed in black and deep umber, only with the high lights carefully cut out of the latter block, is much more satisfactory.

In the middle and towards the end of the sixteenth century there were several excellent wood-engravings published in London in illustration of Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' (1562), Holinshed's 'Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland' (1577), 'A Booke of Christian Prayers' (1569), and other works, chiefly from the press of the celebrated John Daye.

PORTRAIT OF JOHN DAYE, THE CELEBRATED PRINTER OF FOXE'S 'BOOK OF MARTYRS,' A.D. 1562

As an example we give one of the illustrations of Holinshed's Chronicles as a frontispiece. There can be no doubt that Holbein designed it; the ornamentation alone would almost prove it to be from his hand. The title-page of the 'Bishops' Bible,' printed about the same time, has a finely engraved border, representing the King handing the volume to the Bishops, who in turn present it to the people. There are many woodcuts in the text, but they are of very low merit.

We give an illustration of 'A Booke of Christian Prayers,' known as Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-book, from a fine portrait of Her Majesty kneeling on a handsome cushion, with clasped hands before a kind of altar. The Queen's dress is magnificent, and the ornamentation of the whole design is of a similar character. It is an excellent piece of engraving, and we are able to give a facsimile of it, cut about sixty years ago by George Bonner. Mr. Linton thinks the original was on metal; who engraved it is at present unknown. We fear there was no one in England who could produce such work, nor can anyone tell who made the design. It is printed on the back of the title-page, which is decorated with a border of a 'Jesse-tree,' with a figure of Jesse at the foot and the Virgin with the Holy Infant on her lap at the head. There are woodcut borders to each of the 274 pages, all betraying German origin, and evidently by different hands. A few floral designs and single figures of 'Temperance,' 'Charity,' and the like are the best. Among the rest is a series of 'Dance of Death' pictures, but not by Holbein. Another edition of this work was printed in 1590 at London, 'By Richard Yardley and Peter Short for the assignes of Richard Day dwelling in Bred-street hill at the signe of the Starre.' [Doubtless this was on the site of the present printing office of Richard Clay & Sons.] Richard Day was a son of John Day or Daye, as we often find the name printed.

ELIZABETHA REGINA (From 'A Booke of Christian Prayers.' Printed by John Daye, London, 1569.)

Another illustrated book, 'The Cosmographical Glasse, conteinyng the pleasant Principles of Cosmographie, Geographie, Hydrographie or Navigation. Compiled by William Cuningham, Doctor in Physicke' (of Norwich), was printed by John Day in 1559, with many cuts. In the ornamental title-page there is a large bird's-eye view of the city of Norwich, with a mark of the engraver, I. B. There is also a large and well-engraved portrait of the author, 'ætatis 28,' a rather sad-looking young man; and many initial letters, some of which have a small I. D. at the foot, which probably tell us that John Day himself engraved them. Others have a small I inside a larger C, and this monogram appears frequently on the small cuts in the border of Queen Elizabeth's Book of Prayers. John Day tells us in a work published in 1567 that the Saxon type in which it is printed was cut by himself.

John Day was a great friend of John Foxe, and assisted him in producing his celebrated 'Acts and Monuments of the Church,' generally known as his 'Booke of Martyrs.' In the 'Acts and Monuments,' printed in 1576, there is a large initial C, evidently drawn and engraved by the artists who produced the Queen's portrait. In this initial, Elizabetha Regina is seen seated in state, with her feet resting on the same cushion that appears in the larger print, attended by three of her Privy Councillors standing at her right hand. A figure of the Pope with two broken keys in his hands forms part of the decoration of the base; an immense cornucopia reaches over the top.

Early in the seventeenth century we meet with the name of an excellent wood-engraver at Antwerp, Christoph Jegher, who worked for many years with Peter Paul Rubens, and produced many large woodcuts. We are enabled to give a much-reduced copy of a 'Flight into Egypt,' which in the original is nearly twenty-four inches in length. Underneath appears the inscription, P. P. Rub. delin. & excud., from which we learn that Rubens himself superintended the printing, for C. Jegher sculp. appears on the other side. Some of this series of cuts were printed with a tint of sepia over them in imitation of the Italian chiaro-oscuro prints of the previous century. Christoph Jegher was born in Germany in 1590 (?) and died at Antwerp in 1670. He lived through many tempestuous years and did much good work. A contemporary wood-engraver named Cornelius van Sichem, living at Amsterdam, produced a few excellent cuts from drawings by Heinrich Goltzius (d. 1617), who copied the Italian school.

THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. BY RUBENS Reduced copy of the engraving by C. Jegher

At the end of the seventeenth century the art of wood-engraving reached its lowest ebb. There were a few tolerably good mechanical engravers on the Continent, who were chiefly employed in the manufacture of ornaments for cards, and head and tail pieces for books and ballads, but nearly all the woodcuts we meet with in English books are of the most childish character. The rage for copper-plate engravings had set in with so much vigour among all the printers and publishers that the poor wood-engraver was well-nigh forgotten.

In London a new edition of 'Æsop's Fables,' edited by Dr. Samuel Croxall, and illustrated with many woodcuts much better engraved than was customary at the time, was published by Jacob Tonson at the Shakespear's Head, in the Strand, in 1722. We do not learn the names of the artists. In 1724 Elisha Kirkall engraved and published seventeen Views of Shipping, from designs by W. Vandevelde, which he printed in a greenish kind of ink; and in a portfolio full of woodcuts in the Print Room of the British Museum Mr. W. J. Linton recently discovered a large Card of Invitation (query—to a wedding?) from Mr. Elisha and Mrs. Elizabeth Kirkall, dated August the 31st, 1709. Printed at His Majesty's Printing Office in Blackfryers,' which is very firmly and boldly engraved, probably in soft metal. On the left of the Royal Arms, Fame, blowing a trumpet, holds up a circular medallion portrait of Guttenburgh (we follow the spelling); a similar figure on the right holds the portrait of W. Caxton and a scroll; at the foot, in the middle, is a view of London Bridge over the Thames, with the Monument and St. Paul's Cathedral, and on either side is a Cupid—one with a torch and a dove, with masonic emblems at his feet, the other with attributes of painting, sculpture, and music. The Cupids are very like the fat-faced little cherubim we so constantly meet with on seventeenth-century monuments, though Mr. Linton has nothing but praise to give to the engraving, which he says is the first example of the use of the 'white line' in English work.

In Paris there was a family of three generations of engravers named Papillon, who illustrated hundreds of books with small and very fine cuts, in evident imitation of the copper-plates then so much in vogue. Jean Michel Papillon, the youngest of them, published a Traité Historique et Pratique de la Gravure en Bois, in two volumes with a supplement, which, though full of credulous errors, has been of inestimable service to all writers on the history of wood-engraving. This Papillon was probably in England at one time, for he received a prize from the Society of Arts. He was born in the year 1698, began to engrave blocks when only eight years old, and lived till the year 1776.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

ON THE BLOCK BOOKS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

In the first half of the fifteenth century, before the invention of printing by means of movable type, many books were produced in which the woodcuts and the text were engraved on the same page, or sometimes the text was on one page and the woodcut opposite. They were impressed on one side only of the paper, and the two blank pages were often pasted together. They are usually called Block Books. Many of the cuts are more than ten inches in height by eight inches in width, and were probably cut with a knife upon smoothly planed planks of the pear-tree, or other fine-grained wood, or possibly some were engraved upon soft metal.

The most celebrated of them are:

I. Biblia Pauperum.—Bible of the Poor.

II. Apocalypsis Sancti Johnannis.—Visions of St. John.

III. Ars Moriendi.—The Art of Dying.

IV. Canticum Canticorum.—Solomon's Song.

V. Ars Memorandi.—The Art of Remembering.

VI. Liber Regum.—Book of Kings.

VII. Temptationes Daemonis.—Temptations of a Demon.

VIII. Endkrist (only known copy in the Spencer Library).

IX. Quindecim Signa.—The Fifteen Signs.

X. De Generatione Christi.—Of the Genealogy of Christ.

XI. Mirabilia Romae.—The Wonders of Rome.

XII. Speculum Humanae Salvationis.—Mirror of Salvation.

XIII. Die Kunst Ciromantia.—The Art of Chiromancy.

XIV. Confessionale.—Of the Confessional.

XV. Symbolum Apostolicum.—Symbols of the Apostles.

and are supposed to have been issued between the years 1420 and 1440. There is no title-page to any of them, and the dates are generally only a matter of conjecture. Probably they were copies of illuminated manuscripts, and were drawn, engraved, and coloured by the monks in their scriptoria. Doubtless other books of a similar character may be existing in some of the old monasteries on the Continent at the present day.

The Block Books appear to have been made in Germany and Holland, and the most popular volumes passed through many editions. The earliest specimens are printed in a brown ink similar to that used for distemper drawings. It sometimes happened that the blocks used for a book were afterwards cut up and used over again in a different combination (as noticed by Bradshaw in his 'Memoranda,' No. 3, pp. 5 and 6, and by William Blades, in his 'Pentateuch of Printing,' pp. 12 and 13.) A Block-book edition of the 'Biblia Pauperum,' printed at Zwolle, was cut up, and the pieces used afterwards in a different combination. The same was done with the blocks of the 'Speculum nostrae Salvationis,' which were cut up, and the pieces used again for an edition printed at Utrecht in 1481. This was a step in the development of the art of printing.

Biblia Pauperum.—In the Print Room of the British Museum there is a very fine copy of this work, probably the first edition. It is a small folio consisting of forty leaves impressed on one side only of the paper, in pale-brown ink or distemper, by means of friction, probably by a frotton or roller, as we can tell by the glazed surface on the back. The right order of the pages is indicated by the letters a, b, c, &c., on the face of the prints, each of which is about ten inches in height by seven and a-half in breadth. On the upper part of each page are frequently two half-length figures and two on the lower, intended for portraits of the prophets and other holy men whose writings are cited in the Latin text.

BIBLIA PAUPERUM—TENTH PAGE (Reduced from 10 in. by 7½ in.)

The middle part of the page consists of three compartments, each of which is occupied by a subject from the Old or New Testament. The greater part of the text is at the sides of the upper portraits. On each side of those below is frequently a rhyming Latin verse. Texts of Scripture also appear on scrolls. The illustration, which is a much reduced copy of the tenth page (k), will afford a better idea of the arrangement of the subject and of the texts than any more lengthened description.

The picture in the middle represents the Temptation of Christ by the Devil; that on the right, the Temptation of Adam by Eve; and that on the left, Esau selling his birthright for a Mess of Pottage, which his Brother Jacob has evidently just cooked in the iron pot suspended over the fire on a ratchet in the chimney-breast. The ham and goat's flesh or venison hanging on the kitchen wall remind us of the Dutch paintings of two centuries later. Esau's bow and quiver will be seen to be of a very primitive character.

On the thirty-second page (to give another example) we find in the middle compartment Christ appearing to His Disciples; on the left, Joseph discovering himself to his Brethren; and on the right, the Return of the Prodigal Son.

At the bottom of the page are these rhyming Latin verses:—

| Under Joseph and his Brethren. Quos vex(av)it pridem Blanditur fratribus idem. | | Under the Return of the Prodigal Son. Flens amplexatur Natum pater ac recreatur.

Hic ihesus apparet: surgentis gloria claret.

Which have been roughly translated:

| Whom he so lately vexed He charms as brother next. | | The wept-one is embraced And as a son replaced,

Here doth Christ appear, in rising glory clear.

JACOB AND ESAU—BIBLIA PAUPERUM Facsimile of the original cut

The 'Biblia Pauperum,' although it could not be read by the laity, was evidently issued for their especial benefit, and, with the help of the priests, it afforded excellent lessons in Bible history. It is believed that the first copies were printed at Haarlem about A.D. 1430 to 1440.

Five editions of the 'Biblia Pauperum' are known as block books with the text in Latin; two with the text in German; and several others were printed about 1475 with the text in movable type. At least three editions were printed in Holland, and seven or eight others appear to be of German origin; the earlier are of the Dutch School. There are four copies, differing editions, in the British Museum, one in the Bodleian Library, and one in the Spencer Library. Some of the copies are coloured in a very simple manner.

Apocalypsis Sancti Johannis.—This work consists of forty-eight pages of woodcuts about ten and a-half inches high by seven and a-half broad, printed in ink or distemper of a greyish-brown tint on thick paper on one side only. Each page is equally divided into two subjects, taken from the Apocalypse, one above the other. The cuts are engraved in the simplest manner, without any attempt at shading, as will be seen on examination of our print, which forms the first page of the book. In the upper half St. John is addressing three men and one woman. The words in the label Conversi ab idolis per predicationem beati Johannis Drusiana et ceteri are literally 'Drusiana and the others are converted from idols by the preaching of the blessed John.' The letter a indicates page 1. In the lower half we see St. John baptizing Drusiana in a very small font in a small chapel; outside are six ill-looking men trying to peep in through the chinks of the door. Over the chapel are the words Sanctus Johannes baptisans, and over the men Cultores ydolorum explorantes facta ejus, literally, 'Worshippers of Idols spying on his acts.' Two of the idolaters are armed with hatchets, as if they intended to break open the door. [The Latin words, in accordance with the usual practice of the monks, are contracted in a manner very puzzling to those unused to these mediæval writings.] There are several editions of the Apocalypsis, all apparently of German origin.