Gouda: Gerard Leeu, 3 June 1480
The establishment of printing in England coincided with the beginnings of an import trade in printed books. The Low Countries, Italy and Germany had strong trade links with Britain and many books from these countries found their way into British hands early in the incunabular period. This charming collection of animal fables is annotated throughout in the hand of Nicholas Alexander, a Dominican friar of Warwick, who records his acquisition from a colleague at the end of the volume. A later inscription on the first leaf testifies to the religious upheavals of the 1530s, and reads in translation “I Nicholas Alexander renounce the pope and affirm our king Henry VIII as supreme head of the Anglican church and also his heirs and successors”.
SSS.40.15, fol. k5 verso
This is the first edition of one of the most charming books printed in the fifteenth century. Its printer, Gerard Leeu, had started his business three years earlier in the small Dutch town of Gouda, and we see him here setting out on a new venture: illustrating his books. The text itself was quite a find, a compilation of 121 amusing discussions between God’s creations, each leading to a moral supported by solemn theological works. It was written in or near Milan, probably in the
fourteenth century, but was hardly known in northern Europe. A few surviving manuscripts are illustrated in the tradition of bestiaries. Leeu’s artist, producing a woodcut for each dialogue, interpreted this model using very simple lines to almost cartoonish effect. In the present copy the rubricator added delicate touches in red to many of the cuts.
The immediate success of the book is evident from the rate with which it was reprinted. Between 1480 and 1482 Leeu published it six times, in Latin, Dutch and French, using the same set of woodcuts. Further reprints, and imitations by others, continued well into the sixteenth century. Leeu’s ambition was to sell his books far beyond Gouda, and indeed, their early owners are recorded in the Low Countries, in France, in the German lands, and in England.
The copy shown here was owned early in the sixteenth century by the Sub-Prior of the Dominican friary in Warwick, Nicolas Alexander, who noted that a previous English owner, Robert Compson, had given it to him. Both owners read the book attentively, pen in hand, for in the margins they wrote comments on the text in Latin, often marked with little flags. There is also the faint trace of a different kind of note, written at a later date at the foot of the second leaf. We can still read that it
says (in Latin) ‘I, Nicolas Alexander, deny the authority of the pope and affirm our king Henry VIII as supreme head of the Anglican Church, and his successors, in perpetuity.’ The friary in Warwick was surrendered to the king in October 1538, whereupon the fabric of the building was stripped out by the citizenry and country folk, leaving a mere shell. This was the background against which Nicolas must have written his declaration in the book he had managed to salvage, leaving us to
imagine the precise circumstances.
Essay by Lotte Hellinga
