Illiterate priests, to whom the descriptions or the legends of the pictures had been read, must have understood their historical and spiritual meaning, and must have found the pictures an aid to the memory, and suggestive of topics for preaching. Although made for priests, they were not beyond the reach of the people. As far back as the twelfth century, an English abbot sternly forbade, under penalty of excommunication, the lending of any books, "neither the large books with pictures, nor the small books without pictures." But the mandate was disregarded. Sooner or later, the books found their way to the hands of laymen, whose ignorance of Latin did not prevent them from admiring the pictures; and this admiration must have inspired many a reader with the desire to learn the strange language and to own the coveted book.
The Life of St. Meinrat is the only book which seems to have been written especially for the people. There are two, the Antichrist and the Exercise on the Lord's Prayer, which were, apparently, written to furnish suggestions to preachers against heresy. There was need for books of this character. The church was fermenting with dissent; a very large portion of the people had abandoned the old faith, and there was a general complaint among all priests that the churches were neglected. To recover this lost allegiance, and as an antidote to infidelity and heresy,[1] the church gave its assent to the circulation of image prints and block-books among the laity.
The poverty of the spiritual diet prepared for men who hungered for instruction and who leaned to heresy cannot be passed by without notice. It is strange that, in an age of
- ↑ Chatto says that the practice of distributing pictures or prints of a religious character at monasteries and shrines to those who visit them is not yet extinct in Europe.
In Belgium it is still continued, and, I believe, also in France, Germany and Italy. The figures, however, are not generally impressions from wood blocks, but are, for the most part, wholly executed by means of stencils. One of the latter class, representing the shrine of Notre Dame de Hal, colored in the most wretched taste with brick-dust red and shining green is now lying before me. It was given to a gentleman who visited Halle, near Brussels, in 1829. It is nearly the same size as many of the old devotional wood-cuts of Germany being about four inches high by two and three-quarters wide. Treatise on Wood Engraving, pp. 57, 58.
