in Poland A Dutch printing-office fifteenth-century

The Netherlands and Poland, at first sight two countries far apart and with little in common, have in fact been linked for centuries in many different ways in various fields, ranging from commercial and economic contact to artistic and cultural interchange, through which both have gained a valuable tradition of mutual understanding and innumerable lasting ties. Examples one can point to arc bilateral trade, which dates from the thirteenth century, and colonisation of parts of Poland by Dutch farmers and artisans, who settled mainly around the Vistula estuary in the lowlying area on the Baltic coast. Remnants of this colonisation survive to the present day in the names of such villages as 'Holendry' (Dutchmen). In the field of art, a number of original Dutch works are in collections in Poland. The earliest of them, Memling's 'Last Judgement', has been preserved in Gdansk (Danzig) since 1473. Some Dutch artists, like Tylman van Gameren, worked in Poland and have left their masterpieces there. The Dutch influence on Polish art is also well-known and clearly evident both in painting and in architecture, most conspicuously perhaps in the gothico-renaissance buildings of Old Gdaiisk, which have been accurately reconstructed after the destruction of World War II. In the intellectual sphere it is sufficient to mention the extraordinarily en- thusiastic reception of Erasmian theories and their spread in Poland even during the great Dutchman's lifetime. Jan Dantyszek (Dantiscus), Andrzej Krzycki (Critius) and Jan Laski (a Lasco), the last of whom was active in both countries, were the most prominent Polish admirers of Erasmus. But it was not only among the intellectual clite that the ideas of Erasmus fell on fertile ground - tolerance and love of liberty have always been a traditional characteristic of the whole Polish nation, and just how widely these ideals were embraccd is testified to by the treatment of Dutch Mennonite refugees who sought sanctuary in Poland. The seventeenth century saw a further consolidation and extension of these links. Just as in the previous century Dutch scholars had worked in Poland, so now Polish academics taught in Holland (Jan Makowski, Mikolaj Arnold) and Polish painters, namely the Lubieniecki brothers, were also active there. In addition, mention must be made of the outstanding Dutch thinker Hugo Grotius, who in his writings made frequent reference to the works of Frycz Modrzewski (Fricius Modrevius) and who kept in close touch with other contemporary Polish intellectuals. Further evidence of Dutch-Polish co-operation in past centuries is afforded 163 by connections in the typographical field. These were previously thought to date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the earliest. As far back as 1 S 3 8the writer and printer Francis Rhode, who had found his way to Poland from Flanders, had begun publishing in Gdalisk, and for more than eighty years his widow and afterwards his heirs held a monopoly of printing in the town. In Krak6w (Cracow), at about the same time (1600), a book in Dutch was printed. On the other side, a voluminous edition of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum was printed and issued in Amsterdam from T656 onwards. In Amsterdam too, a Polish immigrant, the theologian and physician Jail Crcll, and after him his son, ran a printing business, while in Gdalisk a Dutchman, the outstanding bookseller Gillcs Janszoon van Waesberge, operated from 1679 till the beginning of the eighteenth century. During this period, for two hundred years at least, it was common practice to import into Poland from Holland the paper, types and frontispieces needed for printing production. Yet another, hitherto unknown contribution can now be added to this series of Dutch-Polish contacts. It is that of a fifteenth-century printing house - one which has always given much trouble to bibliographers attenlptlllg to deter- lllllle its place of activity. The anonymous printer, called, after his largest work, the 'Typographus Leonis I papae Scrmones', has, from the eighteenth century (Panzer, Annales) down to our own time (Scholdcrcr), been a source of misunderstandings. On the basis of the type he used, which is characteristic of the Low Countries, the majority of researchers have up to now assigned editions in this heavy tcxt-type to Holland. This location, however, finds no supporting evidence in the library holdings of North-Wcst Europe - in fact the only known product of this printing office in the Netherlands, the solitary copy of Leo I Sermones in Utrecht University Library, came originally from Wroclaw (Breslau), where it was purchased for Holland earlier this century. Some investigators have as- signed the office to Gcrman lands, generally, however, without giving a precise location. Only Dr. Victor Sclioldererl is more specific and suggests Cologne as the probable place of the Typographus's activity, though he does not exclude the possible candidacy of territories closer to Eastern Europe. In their recent admirable monograph Thefijieenth-century printing types of the Low Countries, 2 vols (Amsterdam 1966), W. and L. Hellinga conclude (I, p. 8) that : `... the printer of Leo papa Sermones, ... with his so-called Netherlandish tcxt-type, must have worked mainly in the East of Europe, beyond the Elbe', and accordingly pay no further attention to this particular printing house. At the same time, quite independently of the above suggestions, an attempt to explain the enigma of the place of origin of the printer of Leo I Sermones was

1 V. Scholderer, 'The Printer of Leo I "Sermones" (Proctor 3248)', The Papers of the Biblio- graphical Societyof America,54 (1960), pp. 111-13.