(From the novel Printers Devils, based on speeches typical of the 19th century, and on Beatrice Warde’s essays).
Welcome everyone, welcome once again to the chapel Wayzgoose, which, for you apprentices just starting out in the craft, is a printers holiday held every year on St. Bartholomew’s day, August 24th.
Many centuries ago, when the making of books and the saving of souls were closely aligned, monks and nuns copied books by hand. They needed an abundance of light, so they usually worked in chapels with high ceilings and big windows.
When moveable type came to us, thanks to Mr. Gutenberg, the iron grip of the church was loosened. Yet still we kept the traditions, partly to remind ourselves that we are engaged in an enterprise that is far more than just ink on paper. While the monks had goose quills and we have moveable lead type, those things we hold in common are worth recalling.
For example, the printing company is still called a chapel, and it still has high ceilings and big windows. The chief printer is still called a sexton. A punishment is still called a solace.
And the apprentices are still called printers devils.
But — to be clear — “devil” is a nick-name for an errand boy. A printers devil means something more, albiet, nothing to do with service to Old Nick, nor the Old Church either. So in a way, the term is a sly joke.
You are printers devils, and the printing shop is called a chapel and the shop foreman is called a sexton because, even in this modern time, the printing craft owes a great debt to the monks and nuns who kept knowledge alive through Europe’s centuries of slumber, despite everything — even their own church. And by the way, printers devils know that spite the way a kindling fire feels a rising storm.
You are printers devils, and the job you do is still the very saddle stitching and binding of our society. Just as a life in a Medieval town was regulated by the ringing of bells, so modern life is regulated by the printed word.
Take the daily Bible reading – The system shifts every year, from evens to odds – like a game of quadrats.
Those daily readings in your prayer books come from a pattern within the different books of the Bible according to the year. Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are varied every year, so that within six years, you will have spent a day pondering every significant verse in the major gospels.
But that’s just an example. The point is, what we do — printing — puts the great ideas of our time into everyone’s hands. It is the lifeblood of democracy and religious freedom. We provide calendars and almanacs; we print the laws and even the house rules in taverns; we print the bills of fare and the bills of lading; why, everything we do in a free nation is somehow ordered and regulated by the products of this house, and no other business can boast of that significance. Therefore, the men of learning who inhabit and provide custom to our printing companies have an influence unlike any others.
Knowledge and reason have the power to awaken men. And surely in this printing company, the Lord is in His chapel, and its books and papers are the gates to heaven.
We Printers are the Creatures of Prometheus. Like Prometheus, we have stolen fire from the old gods.
And as heirs to the high tradition, we have faced perilous times. Bishops and kings feared our freedom, since they had always managed to crush small outbreaks of heresy in the centuries before the Gutenberg’s printing press. In 1418 they roasted Jan Hus, the reformer from Prague. Ten years later they even disinterred John Wycliffe’s bones, to punish his family and ensure he had no hope of the Resurrection.
This was the world that Gutenberg changed. In Gutenberg’s new world, a German priest named Martin Luther could set Europe on fire with his 95 Theses because a printer in one town would reprint a copy and then send a copy on to the next town. Imagine the crowds of shouting burghers surrounding the printing chapels in Mainz, Venice, Paris, Vienna, and London that winter of 1518, passing Luther’s broadsheets overhead — the ink still wet from the press — and loudly arguing about the authority of the church and the rebellion they all saw looming between the printers and the priests.
In mythology, Zeus sent shrieking eagles to torment Prometheus. In history, printers had to face the Inquisition, and the Licensing Act, and the Index of Prohibited Books, followed by and the rack, and the noose, and the fiery stake.
And yet, if you were ever to look for hope in this wretched world, you might remember that all those fearsome torments paled like candles in the dawn, and that, in the humble printing chapels that took root all across Europe, they saw the rise of the novus ordo seclorum — the new order of the ages.
So now when you go back to work, realize you are not merely returning to a job. Yes, we labor over these presses, these powerful frames protected by our First Amendment. Realize that we follow a higher purpose, that we advance a nobler enterprise.
Gentlemen — and ladies — with every line of type that is set, with every page that is printed, you are following the architecture of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and you are building this free republic. Every day, you are testing Thomas Jefferson’s proposition that a democracy can be ruled by reason.
So when you return to work, remember, this is a printing chapel, the crossroads of civilization, and you are standing on sacred ground.
And one final word — It seems to me that we printers devils are all bound like a book, in a brotherhood of purpose, of virtue and of service, and we are bound no less than the great monks of the scriptoria of Europe, and far more than lucky enough to be engaged in our immortal trade.
And so, new apprentices, we welcome you, and new journeymen, we wish you God speed.
And on this wayzgoose, we raise a glass to the printers devils, and to this printing chapel, and to all the children of Prometheus.
——-
Notes:
A “wayzgoose” or “way goose” is a goose that has been browsing the wayz, or stubble, after a harvest, and may be fatter than a Christmas goose. The Wayzgoose festival for printers is noted in Joseph Moxon’s 1683 manual: “These Way-gooses, are always kept about Bartholomew-tide. And till the Master-Printer have given this Way-goose, the Journey-men do not use to Work by Candle Light.” In other words, in the summer before St. Bartholomew’s Day, printers stop work at sunset; but afterwards it’s usually necessary to have candles to continue working.
Some Wayzgoose addresses are found in “Songs of the. Press” by C.H. Timperlee, 1833,