De Gulden Passer. Jaargang 36

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A message from Plantin to Guillaume le Bé
by Harry Carter
(Oxford)

A note written by Plantin in the margin of a page printed in Hebrew and put by Guillaume Le Bé in one of his albums was noticed by Henri Omont in 1887 (‘Spécimens de caractères hébreux gravés à Venise et à Paris par Guillaume Le Bé, 1546-1574’, Mémoires de la Soc. de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile de France, t. xiv, p. 6). This note addressed to the famous punchcutter gains in interest if it is related to a set of matrices in Plantin's collection.

The note is on fol. 16 verso of Rés. X, 1665, at the Bibliothèque Nationale, one of two albums preserved there in which Le Bé put specimens of types that he had cut and of some cut by others and his remarks on them. Both are believed to have belonged in the 18th century to P.-S. Fournier (le jeune) and were acquired by the B.N. by 1888 (H. Omont in Mémoires as above, t. xv, pp. 273-4).

Plantin asks Le Bé in the note to cut him a Hebrew type with all the letters made in various widths. He illustrates his request with drawings of aleph and beth in two degrees of extension, one normal and the other about one-and-a-half times the normal. By drawing beth in this way he showed that he was not asking merely for the five extended forms of aleph, he, lamed, tav and final mem that are generally used in printing Hebrew; and his drawings show that the width of these customary extended forms - about three times the normal - was not the only one that he had in mind.

Underneath the message Le Bé wrote that he was too busy at the

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time to cut the punches and make the matrices that Plantin wanted. It is not possible to tell the date of the request: the page is put in the album among miscellaneous material. Nor does the type that Plantin sent as a sample help to fix the date: it is one that had been used at Venice by Daniel Bomberg and, no doubt, brought into the stock of the company headed by Plantin when Cornelis van Bomberghe joined it in 1563. Le Bé put several specimen-pages of this type into his albums; but he did not name it. However, on fol. 20 verso of MS. Rés. X, 1665, it is shown in a page from Bomberg's edition of David Kimhi's Sefer ha-sharashim (1529), together with a ‘moyenne glose des Bombergues’: it must, therefore, have been one of Daniel Bomberg's types. The design appears to be characteristic of Jean Arnoul, ‘dit le Picard, le jeune’, of whose work Le Bé put three examples in his collection. Plantin showed this type in his ‘Folio Specimen’ of about 1579 (Plantin-Moretus Museum, Arch., Varia V, reproduced in part in Gedenkboek der Plantin-Dagen 1555-1955 as a folding plate), where he calls it ‘[Hebrieu] Sur la Garamonde et Bible’, meaning that it was cast on both those bodies, approximately 9 and 7 points, respectively, in the Didot scale. Twenty-seven matrices for it are now in Box 83 at the Museum, and with them are 16 unjustified strikes for the letters with dagesh.

Although Plantin's inquiry of Le Bé can have led to no immediate result, there is in the existing collection of matrices in his house a set made on the plan that he favoured. It is kept in an old box (No. 72) which has inside the lid an inscription in an Italic hand probably of the early 17th century: ‘Hebrieu sur la facon de Venise de la taille de G. le Bé 76/77’. The number is of pieces in the set when the label was written: there are now 76 matrices and resh is missing. Some of the characters are present in several degrees of extension: aleph and final mem in four different widths, he, lamed and tav in three, and 'ayin in two. There are 25 characters with a dagesh and/or holam, the stop (:) and six loose vowelpoints.

The ‘Hebrieu sur la facon de Venise’ is not traceable in Plantin's inventories until 1588 (Arch., vol. 98, fol. 459), when matrices for it were in store at Frankfurt. It is there described

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A message from Plantin to Guillaume Le Bé
Plantin's instructions to Guillaume Le Bé for a new Hebrew type, written in the margin of a page set in the ‘Garamond ou Bible’ Hebrew of Bomberg. The plan of having the letters cut in several thicknesses was followed in Le Bé's ‘Hebrieu sur la facon de Venise’, for which the Plantin-Moretus Museum has the matrices.
(Ceci est la sorte de Lectre dont ie voudrois avoir les poinsons tant des lectres de differentes largeurs comme---- etc. que de toutes les sortes de points et accents accordants sur ladicte lectre etc.
Cest un memoyre que le Sr Plantin mescrivit pour avoir et luy tailler ceste lettre que neuz lors loisir de faire.)
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Rés. X, 1665, fo. 16v. Reproduced by permission.

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as ‘Hebrieu sur la facon de Venise fourny en tout de la taille de G. le Be’, nor is it shown in the Folio specimen. Le Be did not put a proof of it in his albums, which he posted up to 1592. It is included by name in the ‘Quarto Inventory’ of punches, matrices and moulds (Arch. vol. 215), which appears to have been made in the time of Jean Moretus, about 1610. Le Bé outlived Plantin by 9 years, dying in Paris in 1598. A search of the books printed in the Plantinian office might reveal the first use of the type. Plantin's desire to have the Hebrew letters variously extended may have been aroused by the germ of the idea in a type that Le Bé cut for Garamond in 1551. Two years after Garamond's death, that is to say in 1563, the Plantin company bought a set of matrices and three moulds for this face: the purchase is recorded by Le Bé and by Plantin (Arch., vol. 2, fol. 46). In Le Bé's proof and in the set of matrices now at the Museum (in Box 82) this type has the he in three forms of differing widths. In his note Le Bé implies that he had provided the letters in greater variety: he wrote that he had cut ‘lettres communes, lettres larges demy larges et estroittes pour faciliter la composition en la contraincte es fins des lignes dautant que les Hebr. nusent point de division et separation des motz en la fin de ligne. Les Imprimeurs ont indifferement mesle lesd. lettres en la besogne faisant servir a toutz rencontres celles qui ne se doibvent mettre que en fin de lignes et menbrousliant et meslant le tout’ (Bibl. Nat., MS, Nouv. acq. fr. 4528, p. 8).

Plantin's inventories attribute three other Hebrew types to Le Bé: the ‘Gros Hebrieu fort gros’ (Inv. 1563), the ‘Lectre Hebraique taille du Be pour Garamont’ (ibid.) and the ‘Coronelle Hebrieu de Guillaume le be’ (Inv. 1576(?) and 1581). In addition his ‘Hebrieu de la Grande Bible’ was cut by this artist. They are all shown in the albums made by Le Bé, in each case with a note that Plantin had acquired matrices or strikes. The ‘Hebrieu de la facon de Venise’ was therefore the fifth. And, besides these, the ‘Double Paragonne’ of the Folio Specimen appears to be the type numbered 12 by Le Bé in his albums. They are all magnificent types, probably the most beautiful ever made for the Hebrew script, and matrices for all six are at the Museum in good condition.

There seems to be nothing in Jewish tradition forbidding

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variation in the width of the letters. Ludwig Blau on ‘Das Schreiben der Sefer Thora’ writes: ‘Wortbrechung, Wortteilung kennt das Hebräische nicht... dürfen zwei Buchstaben, wenn sie kein selbständiges Wort bilden, in die Zwischenkolumne eingestreut werden. In der Praxis kommt dies schon seit alter Zeit nicht mehr vor, denn die Schreiber verlängern oder verkürzen nach Bedarf die obere Linie gewisser Buchstaben (litterae dilatabiles םתלהא, aber auch andere), so dass sie die Zeile immer mit einem ganzen Wort beendigen’ (Soncino-Blätter, 1. Jhrg., Berlin, 1925, at p. 23)⁽¹⁾.

(1) I am indebted to M. Jacques Guignard, of the Bibliothèque Nationale, for checking my transcript of the autographs of Plantin and Le Bé.