Scribal Culture Dictates Technology: Scribal Process in Metal
    A paper given at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 1997.
    Mary Kay Duggan

    1. A leaf of a parchment gradual, fragment. Services for Quinquagesima Sunday, the Sunday before Lent, which occurs about a quarter of the way through the liturgical year. The nineteenth-century owner of the leaf, noted Goethe scholar and publisher Freiherr von Biedermann of Dresden and Leipzig (1817-1903), published an article in the leading German musicological journal Monatshefte fur Musikgeschichte in 1871 entitled "Ob Druck, ob Schrift" on the leaf. The article included the following hand-drawn facsimile which clearly indicates the overlapping stamps used for both letters and for plainchant. The fragmentary leaf measured 169 x 124 mm., written space 155 x 100 mm., only a portion of a complete leaf of what would have been a very large book for the entire choir. The letters, notes and staves were black, the initials red. The leaf had been used as a wrapper of a seventeenth- century book that was apparently purchased in the early nineteenth century at Freiberg. The illustration was reprinted in 1901 by the foremost incunabulist of the time, Gottfried Zedler, as the first illustration of his article "Die Entstehung" (in Gutenbergforschungen). The leaf was noted by Franz Falk in his "Der Stempeldruck vor Gutenberg und die Stempeldrucke in Deutschland," Festschrift zum funfhundertjahrigen Geburtstage von Johann Gutenberg (XXIII. Beiheft zum Centralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen; Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1900), 78, note 2.

    A leaf of a parchment gradual, fragment, jpg.
    A leaf of a parchment gradual, fragment, tif.

    2. Letters stamped on bindings of Conrad Forster. See Wolfgang Stromer v. R., "Vom Stempeldruck zum Hochdruck, Forster und Gutenberg," in Johannes Gutenberg--Regionale Aspekte des fruhen Buchdrucks. Vortrage der Internationalen Konferenz zum 550. Jubilaum der Buchdruckerkunst am 26. und 27. Juni 1990 in Berlin (Berlin Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, 1993), Illustrations 1-3.

    3. A bookbinding (Conpendium theoloice ueritatis [Compendium theologice veritatis) by Johann Richenbach (active 1464-1485) that clearly shows the overlap of punches that imitate scribal strokes. Note the use of red ink for the first letter of the title. From Die Buchkultur im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, erster Halbband (Hamburg: Maximilian-Gesellschaft, 1995), p. 269 in an article by von Arnim on "Einbandkunst," no. 10; blindstamped pigskin over wooden boards.

    Binding by Richenbach, jpg of photocopy.

    4. Graduale. [South Germany, 1470? 1472?].
    British Library, IB 15154
    The first music printing. Both the music and alphabetic types seem to derive from much earlier than the 1470s. An examination of the types supports creation from stamped punches rather than matrices.

    Graduale, f. [a1], jpg of postcard. Graduale, f. [a1], tiff of postcard.