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Show moreCaption: "The Books of Hours, the outcome of changes in the society in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are the best known as well as the most artistic of all the theological volumes of the Middle Ages. With the general acceptance of the Christianity throughout Europe by the year 1300, a general prayer book for the wealthy laity was needed, and these Books of Hours, Horae, Offices, or Hours of the Virgin, as they are called, filled that they want. In general, they contain sixteen sections, including the calendar, with the Saint Days; the Gospels of the Nativity ; the eight hours of the virgin, the most important part; and the Service of the Dead. The Books of the Hours were deemed so essential a means of salvation and of obtaining indulgences that it is probable that there were few families of wealth or nobility who did not posses a copy. Emperors, dukes and merchant princes frequently ordered richly illuminated and illustrated copies as betrothal gifts. Pilgrims usually returned home from their journey to a shrine with as fine a copy as they could afford. Books of Hours were usually produced in the medieval scriptoriums with the patience engendered in a sheltered life and the skill fostered by religious devotion. All materials used, parchment, ink, colors, and quills, were prepared within monastic walls. The monastic book hands (or styles of writing), for long periods of time, were crystallized, so it is possible to allocate an example to a particular country and century, even when there is no mention in the text as to where the book was written." (Ege, Otto F.)
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Show moreCaption: "Thomas Aquinas, born 1227, entered a Dominican monastery but was soon released from his vows and sent to Cologne to attend the lectures of Albertus Magnus. Here this taciturnity, as well as his overweight, made him known among the students as the "great dumb ox of Sicily." His teachers, however, added, "This ox will one day fill the world with his bellowings". His first great book was this Book of Sentences, a commentary on the work of Peter Lombard, which closely followed the original but is ten times as extensive with ratiocinations and distinctions, thus producing a maze of new shades and thoughts. Aquinas great contribution was the reconciliation of reason with revelation, the natural with the supernatural, as the Greek philosophy, at it?s highest point, established the relation of continuity between the spiritual and the material. This Book of Sentences was universally used as a textbook until the end of the Middle Ages and was the inspiration for thousands of doctor?s dissertations. Vaughan, in a recent biography, states that Thomas Aquinas "was a man endowed with the characteristics notes of the three great Fathers of Greek Philosophy. He possessed the intellectual honesty and precision of Socrates, the analytical keenness of Aristotle and the yearning after wisdom which was the distinguishing mark of Plato". This fine book-hand was a revival of the characters used in the scriptoriums founded by Charlemagne around the year 800 and became the inspiration for the first roman type of the fifteenth century printers." (Ege, Otto F.)
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Show moreCaption: "Dante Alighieri, the supreme exponent of the Middle Ages, is, according to Ruskin, "the central of all the world as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral and intellectual faculties, all at their highest." Dante's great work, the Divine Comedy, is an original creation. It is explained in his own words: "The subject of the whole work, taken literally, is the state of souls after death, regarded as fact. Taken allegorically, its subject is man, insofar as by merit or demerit, in the exercise of free will, he is exposed to the reward or punishment of justice." In the narrative of his journey, which was inspired by a vision in 1300, Dante is accompanied by two guides, "Virgil, who stands for human reasons,... And Beatrice, who symbolizes divine grace." Virgil cannot lead the poet beyond Purgatory, while Beatrice lifts him through the spheres of Paradise by contemplation. The last line symbolizes the new "love which moves the sun and other stars." The magnitude of Dante's conception is no more wonderful than the composition and form in which he expressed it with metrical virtuosity through the hundred cantos. The lasting popularity of the work is evident from the vast critical literature that has been written concerning this work. This edition of Commedia, printed in Venice, 1491, by Petrus de Piasio of Cremona, is one of the best known of all the numerous fifteenth century editions. For several years, (1480-4183), de Piasio was in partnership with A. Torresanus, into whose hand the equipment of Jenson had fallen after the latter's death." (Ege, Otto F.)
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Show moreCaption: "Aristotle, who lived in the fourth century B.C., had a profound effect on medieval thought. He became "the philosopher" and his word became to be regarded as comparable in weight to the Bible. Papal prohibitions against "reading" the treatises in the universities were disregarded and later withdrawn. Soon an intimate knowledge of Aristotelian writings frequently became the only requirement for the degree of Master of Arts. Of these works by one of the world?s greatest thinkers the Nicomachean Ethics has the greatest value to us today and is the most likely to survive. This masterpiece of Greek literature, named after the son of the philosopher to whom it was dedicated, offers logical explanation of all aspects of human behavior. In it Aristotle maintains that the chief human good and the end of life is happiness, (well being), and that this consists in virtuous activity, the highest form of which is contemplation. This manuscript page was written in Erfrut, Germany, in the year 1365 A.D., thirteen years before the great university was founded in that small city. This university of Erfrut was the first in Germany to introduce into its curriculum the study of classic literature and the humanities. The casual and natural cursive writing, done hastily, no doubt by a secular writer, is in sharp contrast to the handsome and leisurely executed book hands we usually find in the work of the monastic scribes." (Ege, Otto F.)
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Show moreCaption: "Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa (1292-1298), composed The Golden Legend with the object to write not a collection of lives and legends of the saints for the learned, but a book of devotion for the common people. The stories tell of the struggle of several hundred saints with the devil, who appears in every possible form, bird, beast, reptile, and particularly woman. The saints always triumph. It became one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century, more than seventy editions were printed in Latin, eight in Italian, fourteen in Dutch, three in English. Caxton wrote of this work, "Forlyke as gold passeth in value all other mettalles, so thys legend exceeded all other books". Luther denounced the work as immoral, and preachers in the Reformation period called the tales "Legends of Iron", for, they said, they were written by "a man with an iron mouth and leaden heart." This particular edition, an incunabulum, was printed in Venice in 1480 by Antonio de Strata of Cremona, who became noted for the textual accuracy of his publications. This renown was due the editing and the proofreading by the great scholar, Vittorio de Pisa. This Golden Legend was the first publication of the de Strata press." (Ege, Otto F.)
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Show moreCaption: "Livy's great work, Ab Urbe Condita Libri, covers the period from the foundation of Rome in 753 B.C. to the year 9 B.C. or up to twenty years before his death. In fine oratorical language, Livy expresses his burning desire to inculcate again, in his decadent era, the virtues and patriotism of the earlier great Romans. His "pictured page", with vividness of detail, graphic portrayal of events, "reporting" of fine speeches of his heroes, was the inspiration for the painters and writers of historical themes in the Renaissance. This work of Livy's is still the chief source of knowledge of the period with which it deals. However, it ignores the origin and development of the Roman constitution and shows little interest in military art. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the universities if Italy and the court schools introduced the study of the humanities. To meet the increased demand for more numerous and cheaper copies of the Greek and Roman writers, the secular scribes developed the semi-cursive character of the revived Carolingian handwriting, Shading of the strokes disappeared for the first time in centuries, and the writing developed a slope. Book hands of this type became the model for italic types." (Ege, Otto F.)
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Show moreCaption: "The Koran, the book of laws and religion of over 200 million Moslems, was dictacted by the prophet Mohammed after extensive travels to Syria and Palestine with a wealthy uncle. It was on these expeditions that Mohammed gained his concepts of monotheism and star worship. The 114 chapter of the Koran, arranged according to their length, have strange titles such as The Ant, The Spider, The Greeks and The Sun. The followers of Mohammed believed that the text contained revelations from the angel Gabriel, given to Mohammed in dreams after the year 600. The Koran gave all believers equality and eliminated the priestly class. It is held in great respect by Moslems, who, according to George Sale, the first translator of the Koran into English, do not dare to touch it without first being washed, nor to hold it below their girdles, nor knowingly suffer it to be in the possession of any person of a different persuasion. They swear by it and carry it into battle. This book was likely written in Cairo. With religious fervor rivaling that on the medieval monks, and with an alphabet surpassing the European one in artistic possibilities, the Moslem calligraphers of the Koran gained just honor and lasting renown. The art of writing is regarded by the Moslems as the finest of the arts, but few wrote before the time of Mohammed; in his own tribe, the Koreishites, only seventeen knew how to write. The prophet is not numbered among these. This leaf was written by the Egyptian calligrapher Mohammed ibn Kuzel Al Isawai with a reed, on egg-glazed paper that antedates any European-made paper by half a century." (Ege, Otto F.)
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Show moreCaption: "Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers is a collection of eighty-two sketches, divided into ten books. It is the only extant work of this third century biographer. Although full of anecdotes and highly colored narratives, it is still the chief source of information concerning the history of Greek philosophy and the private lives and habits of the most eminent philosophers of antiquity. There are also many valuable quotations from lost works included in the compilation. This translation of The Lives of the Philosophers was made by the brilliant Ambrogio Traversari, the only great monastic scholar of the Renaissance. Jenson, the most noted of all fifteenth century printers, produced about one hundred and fifty books in about ten years. Updike, in his monumental volumes Printing Types, states, "Jenson's roman type have been accepted models for roman letters ever since he made them, and, repeatedly copied in our day, have never been equaled". Our contemporary types which have been inspired by the Jenson letter include the "Golden" type of William Morris, the "Doves" type of Sir Emery Walker and T.J Cobden Sanderson, and the "Montaigne" and "Centaur" types by Bruce Rogers. Jenson's successor, Herbort, in a broadside, extols the virtues of these types in the following glowing phrases. "(They) ought to ascribe (this design) rather to divine than to human wit... His books do not produce weariness but rather give delight by their exactness and precision; they do not harm one?s eye but rather help them and do them good?, hence our debt to that excellent man, Master Nicolas Jenson, is great indeed"." (Ege, Otto F.)
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Show moreCaption: "Dr. Hartmann Schedel, the compiler of this Nuremberg Chronicle or Weltchronik, spent more time reading history than practicing medicine. Italian, English, and French chroniclers had treated German history rather slightingly; to correct this condition, Dr. Schedel persuaded two wealthy merchants of Nuremberg, Sebald Schreyder and Sebastian Kamermaister, to underwrite a new chronicle. The book holds great fascination for us, not for its text but for the lavish abundance of woodcuts. Two noted artists, Michael Wolgemut, the master of Albrecht Durer, and his stepson, William Pleydenwurff, were engaged to make the wood-cut illustrations. A total of 1809 pictures, made from 645 blocks, appear in the book with complete disregard for validity. Ninety-six blocks were used to portray 596 portraits, so that the portrait assigned to Nebuchadnezzar earlier appears later as several of the German emperors; the block for the town of Mainz does service also for Naples. The characters with elongated fingers and unkempt hair have been attributed to Wolgemut. The famous printer Anton Koberger, formerly a baker, established his first press about the year 1470, and continued to print and publish for more than fifty years. He employed, at various times, over one hundred workmen on his twenty-four presses as binders, illuminators, and artists. Koberger became the first wholesale printer and publisher. He exchanged his books with other printers over a wide area. The Nuremberg Chronicle was Koberger?s most successful venture. In the year 1493, two editions, one in Latin and one in German, appeared. These editions must have been large ; over a hundred copies are now owned in America, four hundred and fifty years after they were issued." (Ege, Otto F.)
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Show moreCaption: "This work, On Duty, (De Officiis) was addressed to Cicero?s son Marcus in the year 43 B.C. In it Cicero gives his viewpoints on many philosophical and ethical questions which center mainly around the theme borrowed from the Stoics. "Man must be virtuous in order to be happy". Like many wealthy Romans, Cicero had sent his son to study philosophy in Athens under the philosopher Cratippus. From Cicero?s famous letter, we learn that he exchanged books with Cleopatra, who was in Rome when this text was written. We wonder whether she received a copy of the De Officiis and, if she did, whether she read it. Cicero?s diction and style established Latin as a vehicle for great prose. This work has a distinction of being the first classical book that appeared in print. In the year 1469, John of Spire and his brother Wendelin, Germans from Rhenish, Bavaria, were well established and encouraged by the city senate of Venice to establish themselves as the first printers in that city and were given an exclusive five year privilege. When John died the following year from the plague, the senate decided that the grant or "patent" given to the brothers had lapsed. Wendelin, however, continued to print four or five years longer, until competition forced him into bankruptcy. Venice soon became the printing center of Europe; before 1480, more than fifty printing establishment were in operation. Daniel Berkeley Updike states that the two brothers, John and Wendelin, made and used the first truly Roman type. It is also thought by some scholars of printing history that Nicolas Jenson worked for the de Spires in the year 1469. It is possible that he really was the creator of the first type used by this press." (Ege, Otto F.)
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