Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/30

18 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE trading towns and in the free imperial cities the work of copyists had developed into a regular industry, more with the object of supplying the universal wants of the people than those of scholars. Eegular catalogues were made out, and the works were disposed of by travelling pedlars, who found ready sale for them at the annual fairs. In the middle of the fifteenth century we find one of these pedlars, named Diepold Lauber, opening at Hagenau a shop well supplied not only with Latin books but with the best of the High-German literature, with epic poems, legends, prose works, versified Bibles, lives of the saints, prayer and meditation books. This varied stock shows that during the Middle Ages books were not confined to the rich and learned in Germany. After the invention of printing the trade in books continued on the same lines as that of manuscripts, and developed so rapidly that towards the close of the century it had covered nearly all civilized Europe. Many of the customs and technicalities still in use in the trade date from that period. Frankfort-on-the-Main was the centre of the world's book trade. The dealers met together at the annual fairs and festivals, there concluded business arrange- ments, made their purchases, and did everything to perfect the method of their trade. In the early days of the trade the printers trafficked with one another on the system of exchange, the first traces of which are found in the year 1474 in the printing establishment of the monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, and in that of ' The Brethren of the Social Life ' in Eostock — one of the oldest print- ing houses in Northern Germany. Their trade was not