Speculum Humanae Salvationis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"My attention was [...] directed to those ancient books of Wood Engravings, which are well known to bibliographers under the appellation of Block-Books. The Speculum Humanae Salvationis so celebrated in the annals of typographical controversy, is commonly classed with these."--An Inquiry into the Invention of Printing by William Young Ottley |
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The Speculum Humanae Salvationis or Mirror of Human Salvation was a bestselling anonymous illustrated work of popular theology in the late Middle Ages, part of the genre of encyclopedic speculum literature, in this case concentrating on the medieval theory of typology, whereby the events of the Old Testament prefigured, or foretold, the events of the New Testament. The original version is in rhyming Latin verse, and contains a series of New Testament events each with three Old Testament ones that prefigure it. It is one of the most common books found as an illuminated manuscript, and also in early printing in both blockbook and incunabulum forms.
Printed editions
In the 15th century, with the advent of printing, the work then appeared in four blockbook editions, two Latin and two in Dutch, and then in sixteen incunabulum editions by 1500. The blockbooks present unique questions as only editions of this work combine hand-rubbed woodcut pages with text pages printed in movable type. Further eccentricities include a run of twenty pages in one edition which are text cut as a woodcut, based on tracings of pages from another edition printed with movable type. Though the circumstances of production of these editions are unknown, two of the editions are in Dutch and the Netherlands was probably the centre of production, as with most blockbooks. Hind places them in Holland, from about 1470-75. It appears the Prohemium may have been sold separately as a pamphlet, as one version speaks of the usefulness of it for "poor preachers who cannot afford the entire book".
The incunabulum editions, from eleven different presses, mostly, but not all, printed their woodcut illustrations in the printing press with the text. Some seem to have been printed in two sessions for texts and images. Günther Zainer of Augsburg, a specialist in popular illustrated works, produced the first one in 1473, in Latin and German, and with a metrical summary newly added for each chapter; this is considered an especially beautiful edition. Further incunabulum editions include Latin, German, French, Spanish and Dutch versions, and it was the first illustrated book printed in both Switzerland, at Basel, and France, at Lyon, which used the Basel picture blocks, later also used in Spain. A Speyer edition has woodcuts whose design has been attributed to the Master of the Housebook. In addition, the first of the somewhat legendary editions supposedly produced by Laurens Janszoon Coster, working earlier than Johannes Gutenberg, was a Speculum. Even if the Coster story is ignored, the work seems to have been the first printed in the Netherlands, probably in the early 1470s. Editions continued to be printed until the Reformation, which changed the nature of religious devotion on both sides of the Catholic/Protestant divide, and made the Speculum seem outdated.
