Compendium Theologiae Veritatis
Dublin Core
Title
Compendium Theologiae Veritatis
Subject
Christian Theology
Description
In A Note by William Morris on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press, he wrote "[a]fter a while I felt that I must have a Gothic as well as a Roman fount; and herein the task I set myself was to redeem the Gothic character from the charge of unreadableness which is commonly brought against it. And I felt that this charge could not be reasonably brought against the types of the first two decades of printing: that Schoeffer at Mainz, Mentelin at Strasburg, and Gunther Zainer at Augsburg, avoided the spiky ends and undue compression which lay some of the later type open to the above charge. Only the earlier printers (naturally following therein the practice of their predecessors the scribes) were very liberal of contractions, and used an excess of 'tied' letters, which, by the way, are very useful to the compositor. So I entirely eschewed contractions, except for the '&,' and had very few tied letters, in fact none but the absolutely necessary ones. Keeping my end steadily in view, I designed a black-letter type which I think I may claim to be as readable as a Roman one, and to say the truth I prefer it to the Roman. This type is of the size called Great Primer (the Roman type is of 'English' size); but later on I was driven by the necessities of the Chaucer (a double-columned book) to get a smaller Gothic type of Pica size."
This leaf is from a book printed by Zainer, one of the printers Morris cites as a particular inspiration to the development of his Troy typeface.
This leaf is from a book printed by Zainer, one of the printers Morris cites as a particular inspiration to the development of his Troy typeface.
Creator
Hugh Ripelin of Strasburg
Publisher
Johann Zainer
Date
1478-81
Type
Book
Collection
Citation
Hugh Ripelin of Strasburg, “Compendium Theologiae Veritatis,” Book Club of California, accessed April 23, 2024, https://bccbooks.omeka.net/items/show/67.