The Pica: the first book printed in York 500 years ago

With only a tiny window and tallow candles for light, Hugo Goes peered into his box of printer’s type. The one-inch letters he took out spelled Thomas Hannibal – the first words in the first book to be printed in York. It also spelled doom for the city’s scribes who were about to see an end to their livelihoods.

The book was the Directorium Sacerdotum, a guide for priests and nicknamed the ‘Pica’ – Latin for magpie – because like the bird, the printed text was black and white.

Goes probably had an assistant or two and he would have been glad of them. Each of the 234 pages took at least a day to set by hand before being scrutinised by a proof-reader.

The letters – or sorts – were composited into text on a metre long ‘galley’ before being placed in a ‘forme’ which held enough words to print four pages. Once ready it was tightly bound into a square to hold the letters in place.

Until now, Goes’s work had been long and arduous. By the time the frames were in the printer’s hands, the scribe’s method of writing by hand with a goose-quill became redundant.

Monday, February 18, 1510, was a momentous day in York’s history as the printer dabbed the type with ink and covered it with a sheet of paper. With a tug of the press’s handle, he produced the city’s first printed sheet which he hung out to dry, like washing on a line. Time and again the printer continued, enough times to produce around 300 editions of the Pica.

Copies were collected from the printer in loose form and each parish was responsible for binding their own edition. Most of the books would have been plain and probably covered with paper. Only two formally bound copies still exist; one is in Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, the other in York Minster Library.

Marmaduke Fothergill commissioned the binding for the York copy during the 18th century. Today, its rich mahogany-coloured leather remains in remarkably good condition.

The Pica is not a weighty tome; no larger than a paperback, it fits snugly into Keith Walls’s hands.

Mr Walls is a Latin scholar who has spent many years researching the book. He takes care opening it for fear of breaking the binding and reveals pages which are still magpie-esque. Rough-cut edges encase bold, unfaded print; only a few marks and stains offer clues to the book’s great age.

Mr Walls said: “The Directorium Sacerdotum provided an essential series of charts through the daily and weekly round of religious offices conducted in York Minster and the many hundreds of parish churches in the Province of York.

“The book was not used in church, instead it helped the priest or chaplain prepare for the different services that each day required.”

The Pica is an ecclesiastical calendar which gives the dates of saints’ days and feasts in each year from 1497 to 2011. It also answers the problems caused by a moveable Easter. There are five weeks when Easter might fall and with an elaborate system of letters and numbers, 35 different calendars help priests to move festivals that clash.

The Pica was compiled by Robert Avissede, a chaplain at St Gregory’s Church near Micklegate.

Mr Walls said: “Avissede, dismayed by the confusion in the conduct of services in some York parishes drew up a detailed schedule for such services. One of its readers was Thomas Hothyrsall, a vicar choral of St William’s College, who found many mistakes and produced a revised version which he took to Hugo Goes for printing.”

An exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of The Pica will be held at Grays Court in Chapter House Street, York between February 14 and 18. The star attraction will be the Cambridge copy which will be on loan.

The John Jackson Trust is organising the event. Honorary secretary Michael Sessions, of Quacks The Printer, in Grape Lane, said: “We’re marking York’s first printed book by looking back to 1510, but also ahead to 2510. It will be a celebration of a millennium of book printing in York, Yorkshire and the north of England.

“Why? Because while Hugo Goes radically changed the way books were made in York, digital publication will revolutionise printing for the next 500 years.”

Firms are looking into printing circuit-boards on to paper and who knows what the next half millennium has in store? Printing is still big business in the region and Michael says it is the fifth largest employer, turning over £2bn a year.

“The Pica had enormous significance in York,” says Michael. “It was the first time in the city that a book had been printed using the Gutenberg-inspired moveable type. In 1510, York became only the third provincial city to produce a book this way. Undoubtedly it had a lot to do with its importance as England’s second ecclesiastical centre.

“Printing revolutionised the way books were produced. It was a big social change, from scribes penning everything by hand to a system that eventually led to assembly lines.”

It also helped make books more readily available. The growth in numbers saw prices fall and by the 18th century, printed books meant that education in England was no longer the preserve of the wealthy.

Early presses were made of wood. None survive today because they wore out very quickly. By the 19th century, robust cast-iron presses had taken over. They still use traditional machines at Quacks and Michael shows me one of them – an 1822 Albion printing press; it’s a beauty.

The upstairs print-room is shamelessly Dickensian. Vintage leather books lie on the desks, a Victorian clock quietly marks time in the corner and manager Horst Meyer sifts through antique wooden letters. Behind him is a traditional hinged box – with its upper and lower case letters.

Michael opens an ink-blackened drawer set in a cabinet which takes up one of the walls. Inside irregular compartments contain hundreds of metal letters and spaces.

He selects a handful, places a sheet of paper on the typeface and pulls the handle to print just as Hugo Goes did in the next street all those years ago.

Downstairs at Quacks, the work is computerised. No more blackened hands for the typesetter as he keys in words and checks their accuracy on the screen. The digitised information is sent directly to the printing cylinder of the press.

They may be efficient, but modern printers don’t hold the same place in Michael’s heart as his beloved traditional presses. He revels in the time-honoured dexterity of manual typesetting; the backbreaking art of the manual printer.

Two pints of bitter stand next to the Albion press and Michael slakes his thirst with one of them; it’s just reward for his efforts, but a glint in his eye suggests that he is also toasting the 500th anniversary of the day when a man in a dimly-lit room in Stonegate revolutionised life in York.

• THE Pica exhibition at Grays Court in Chapter House Street, York will be held between 11am and 4pm on February 14 to 18. Apart from displaying the Cambridge copy of the Pica, the exhibition will look at future page design and tell the history of the book. There will be a working hand printing press similar to the one used by Hugo Goes, and visitors will be able to pull the handle on an original Albion Press. For more information visit radiusonline.info or phone 01904 635967.

It began in China

THE first prints were made in China during the fifth-century using wooden blocks carved with characters from the Chinese language.

The first book in York would have been owned by Paulinus and James who preached Christianity in 627AD and who founded the Minster School. They would have owned a bible for their missionary work.

The first recorded book in York was a two-volume copy of the gospels which were presented to the Minster in 700AD. It was hand-written in letters of gold, with illuminations on purple parchment.

York Gospels is the oldest surviving book in York and dates from 1020. It is still used at the enthronement of each archbishop. The book is kept in the Minster library where a facsimile edition can be seen by visitors.

York’s first newspaper was the York Mercury, published in 1718-19 by Grace White in Coffee Yard. It was a single sheet measuring seven inches by five and a half and cost 1 ½ pence.

The first printed first book in English was made by William Caxton and was his own translation of the History of Troy. It appeared in late 1473 or early 1474. Caxton went on to print more than 100 books during his lifetime.

How printing made us mind our Ps and Qs

The printing industry has not only supplied us with books, it has also given us a number of every day phrases. Here are a few:

Dab hand: Printers used a hand held “dabber” to put ink onto the typeface.

Upper and lower case:Letters were stored in a hinged box. When open, the upper case held the capitals and the lower case held... well, lower-case letters.

Mind your Ps and Qs:Apprentices were taught to take extra care when replacing the letters p and q in the cases because they look so similar.

Out of sorts:Printer’s letters were known as sorts. If letters were missing from their compartment it meant disaster. The whole printing process had to stop and everyone was left feeling “out of sorts.”