PAULA P. WITKAM†

Double use of type matter in the print shop of Joannes and Cornelius Blaeu (1640-1)

In October 1641 Blaeu in Amsterdam published one of Hugo Grotius'so most important works, the Annotationes in libros Evangeliorum.' At the back of this of over a thousand pages the author had included reprints of three of his tracts which had appeared anonymously in the previous year: the Commentatio de Antichristo (BG Nos. 1100 and 1101 ), the Explicatio de fide et operibus (BG Nos. 1109 and 1110) and the Explicatio Decalogi (BG No. 1117); to these was added a fourth tract published for the first time in 1641, the Appendix de Antichristo (BG No. 1128).2 During a comparison of the separate editions of these tracts with the version in the Annotationes I realized that in two of these additions to the folio and in editions of 1640 or 1641 the same type matter had been used. The first tract, the Commentatio de Antichristo, is printed, like the Annota- tiones itself, across the full width of the folio page. The second, the Explicatio de fide et operibus, is printed in two columns per page in a smaller size (about 10 pt.) than that used for the main work (about 14 pt.). The ornamental capitals, too, are much smaller (about 42 pt.) than those in the Annotationes (about 82 pt.), and they are of a different design. The third tract, the Ex- plicatio Decalogi, is printed in the same manner as the first. The fourth, finally, the Appendix de Antichristo, is again printed in the `10 pt.' face in two columns per page, but the ornamental capital used at the beginning of the tract is the same large '82 pt.' size as the ornamental capitals of the Annota- tiones proper. When Grotius saw the proof sheets for the tracts he expressed his displeasure at the lack of uniformity in execution and at the layout in two columns per page, the purpose of which was unclear to him.3 However, his brother Willem, who was in charge of dealings with the publisher, informed 64 him a little later that Blaeu had had the fourth tract, the Appendix de An- tichristo, printed in columns so that the same type matter could be used for an octavo edition.4 This information is verifiably accurate, as may be seen, for example, in identical damage to types at the same place in the text. Moreover one column of the folio edition proves to correspond exactly to two pages in the octavo: with the last line of the column consistently the same as the last line of a recto page in the octavo edition,5 though in the folio edition the running title is slightly longer and is more widely spaced than that in the octavo. As to the text of the tract, in the octavo edition some changes have been made, e.g. p. 26, 1. 9, where 'docet', erroneously itali- cized in the folio (p. 57A, 1. 38), has been replaced by `docet'.6 It is thus safe to assume that the folio edition is the first and that the octavo ver- sion was printed from the same type matter when it had been corrected. The use of the large ornamental capital at the beginning of the tract-out of place in an octavo edition but more at home in a folio-is another indication that the starting point for this 'double edition' was the folio. The second tract, the Explicatio de fide et operibus is also printed in two col- umns in the folio. Two octavo editions of this tract also exist, both of them with the date 1640 on the title-page (BG Nos. 1109 and 1110); the one is a page for page reprint of the other. Corrections in the text are not a great deal of help in establishing which of the two came first, however, since both contain a fair sprinkling of errors. But comparison with the folio edition reveals that one of the two (BG No. 1110) was printed from the same type matter as the 1641 folio edition; and it may for this reason, among others, be regarded as the second of the two to have been printed. The relationship between the octavo and folio editions in the case of the Explicatio de fide et operibus is different, however, from that in the case of the Appendix de Antichristo. For whereas in the latter case we may assume that the folio edition was printed first, and later the octavo version, in the former case the order of printing appears to have been the reverse. A first sign of this, perhaps, is the title-page of the octavo edition, which gives the date