34 
The History of the Book in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
34 DEVANA PAVLIK
Czechs and Slovaks shared their early history in the Great Moravian Empire, a 9th-century Slavonic state along the middle Danube. The first MSS were brought by missionaries promulgating the Church’s Latin rite. Liturgical texts in Old Church Slavonic were introduced and copied by the Byzantine mission of Sts Cyril and Methodius who were invited, in 863, to replace the Latin rite with a language understood by the people. For this purpose, they invented Glagolitic script, translating liturgical texts and the Bible into Old Church Slavonic. When Great Moravia collapsed in 906/8 the Czech centre of power grew in central Bohemia, while Slovakia was, until 1918, under the rule of Hungary, whose religious, political, and cultural development it followed. The Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia came under the dominance of the Holy Roman Empire.
Both the Czech lands and Slovakia were part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until its dissolution in 1918, when they co-founded a democratic state: Czechoslovakia. Until 1945, Czech and Slovak printing, publishing, and bookselling did not markedly differ from the rest of Europe. Fundamental changes came with the Communist takeover in 1948, however, when private firms were either liquidated or transferred into state ownership and centralized. Soviet-style organization of publishing and distribution was enforced, together with strict censorship. Material deemed politically undesirable was withdrawn from libraries. Some free Czech and Slovak émigré publishing continued abroad and was re-energized by the post-1968 wave of exiles. At home, independent underground publishing took off in the 1970s and 1980s, signalling future developments.
The demise of Communism in November 1989 brought complete transformation: with a market economy came the reorganization of the publishing and distribution industries as well as of libraries and archives. Private publishing ventures started practically overnight, and large print runs of suppressed works by dissident Czech and Slovak writers were produced. Translations of the latest fiction and popular non-fiction quickly appeared, satisfying demand for previously inaccessible literature. In 1993, Czechoslovakia was divided along its historical borders into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The 11th century saw the founding of monasteries and of cathedral and collegiate chapters that began assembling collections of imported and domestically produced MSS. The earliest evidence of biblical translations into Old Czech comes from the late 11th or early 12th century. Existing Czech texts were finally assembled into the complete Bible around 1380, the Czech translation being the third vernacular rendering of the Scriptures after French and Italian. Surviving MSS include 25 complete bibles, 27 Old Testaments, 35 New Testaments, 22 psalters, 17 gospel books, and numerous smaller fragments. Many are beautiful examples of Czech Romanesque and Gothic book illumination. The most outstanding among the early illuminated examples is the Codex Vysehradensis (1086); the most famous is the Codex Gigas, or Devil’s Bible (1204), over one metre high. The foundation of the university at Prague in 1348 and the existence of the archbishopric there encouraged MS production that reached its zenith during the reign of Wenceslas IV (1378–1419), when only Parisian scriptoria outshone Prague’s in the beauty of their illuminated codices.
Printing in Bohemia is traditionally thought to have begun in 1468 with Kronika trojánská (Trojan Chronicle), the first Czech printed book, and the New Testament (with the unclear inscription ‘M.4.75’). Because there is no conclusive evidence, however, the Latin Statuta Synodalia Arnesti, printed at Pilsen in 1476, is now regarded as the first book printed in the Czech Republic. The majority of incunables were printed in Prague, but printing also went on at Vimperk in southern Bohemia.
Of the 44 surviving incunabula printed in Bohemia, 39 are in Czech and 5 in Latin. Most Bohemian printers were local craftsmen, but the situation differed in Moravia, where foreign printers worked. Of the 23 extant incunabula produced in the Moravian printing centres of Brno and Olomouc, 2 are in German and the rest in Latin.
Most titles were secular in nature. There were educational works (e.g. Latin grammars, Donatus’ Ars Minor), legal works (Latin and vernacular), travelogues, legends, and chronicles (e.g. the Trojan Chronicle, in two editions; Twinger’s Martimiani (1488); and the Chronica Hungarorum (1488), the first illustrated Brno imprint, printed in Latin). The Severin-Kamp press brought out the first illustrated Prague imprint, the Czech edition of Aesop’s Fables (1488?). A Czech version of the popular Legenda Aurea, known as Pasionál, was printed twice, once lavishly illustrated, but it is the unillustrated edition that represents the height of Czech incunabula typography. There were almanacs, calendars, and other works, including Von den heissen Bädern (Brno, 1495), Folz’s tract on the medicinal value of bathing in natural hot springs.
Sacred incunabula are dominated by biblical texts. The first complete bible in Czech, a folio of 610 leaves printed in double columns of 47 lines with titles in red, was printed in 1488 by Severin-Kamp. An illustrated edition, with 116 locally made woodcuts, was printed a year later in the silver-mining town of Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg) by Martin of Tišnov. The New Testament in Czech was also published in illustrated and plain versions. The Psalter appeared in Czech and Latin; there were also liturgical works, books on church administration, two missals, and a number of contemporary tracts, Catholic and Protestant.
Incunables in the vernacular were printed using Czech bastarda types, the earliest being the most ornate (emulating handwritten forms), the later influenced by rotunda and Fraktur. Textura and rotunda founts were used for Latin works; imported German Schwabacher is found in imprints connected with Prague University.
Several incunabula printers from the kingdom of Bohemia and Moravia distinguished themselves abroad, including Johann Sensenschmidt at Nuremberg and Bamberg, Mathias Grossmann Moravus at Naples, and Valentinus de Moravia, who printed the first book in the Portuguese language at Lisbon.
The 16th century was the golden age of Czech printing, with 4,400 titles printed. Religious controversies stimulated the growth of printing, driven in part by the rapid production of pamphlets and polemical literature. Humanism began to change the look of the printed book and its contents, and the increasing wealth of burghers brought books to a wider public. As the number of book collectors and readers grew, the libraries of professional men sometimes surpassed those of the nobility. Printing offices were established in many towns; bookselling was promoted through bookshops, markets, and book fairs, and via lists of books in print distributed throughout the country and abroad. In addition to printing in Latin (using Roman types), Czech, and German (using Fraktur and Schwabacher), there was also printing in Cyrillic script: the first bible in Cyrillic was printed in Prague in 1517–19 by Francysk Skaryna. The first book in Hebrew was printed in Prague in 1513, and, by the end of the century, there were several Hebrew presses operating in the city (see 8).
Music and books displayed on the title-page of the Moravian hymnal, Pjsnĕ Duchownj Ewangelistské (Ivančice, 1564), generously illustrated with woodcuts; the British Library has a copy partly printed in gold. © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. C 36 g 12, title page
A monument of 16th-century Czech language and printing: a woodcut Mauresque from the sixth and last volume of the Kralice Bible (1579–94) incorporates the date of printing in its centre. © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. C. 114. n. 18.
Printing presses were established by scholars and intellectuals promoting humanist literature. Most significant was the press of Daniel Adam of Veleslavín, a Prague University professor who took over from the highly successful Jiří Melantrich z Aventina in 1584. Publishing 100 titles, Veleslavín was an enthusiastic promoter of the use of the Czech language in scholarly literature and founded modern Czech lexicography, his best work in this sphere being a monumental Latin–Greek–German–Czech dictionary (1598). He used some 50 different founts, employed high-quality ornaments, and lavished great care on title-pages, typically executed in black and red. The peak of 16th-century printing was achieved at the printing offices of the Unity of Brethren, especially at their Moravian locations in Ivančice and Kralice. Founded soon after 1500, the Unity was among the first printers to spread Reformation ideas. Its imprints are characterized by fine typography and design, and by the high standard of their Czech language. The Unity’s six-volume Kralice Bible (1579–94) crowns the impressive sequence of Czech bible printing in this era.
The victory of the Catholic Habsburgs over the Protestants in 1620 had far-reaching consequences for the development of printing. The Czech language, regarded as a tongue of heretics and rebels, was replaced by German as the official language; printing in Czech was largely confined to prayer books, hymn books, sermons, hagiographies, novels, and folk tales. As exponents of the Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits exercised tight control over printing, which they concentrated in a small number of establishments. The largest of these was their own press at the Klementinum complex in Prague. Lists of prohibited books were compiled, and many books printed in the previous century were taken from their owners and banned and burned. Destroyed books were fast replaced by new material—textbooks, postils (biblical commentaries), hymn books, and homiletic literature—issued in large numbers by the Jesuits.
Many Czech scholars and artists, such as the educationalist Johann Amos Comenius or the engraver Wenceslaus Hollar, went abroad to work and publish, while foreign artists began leaving their mark on the baroque book in the Czech lands. Copperplate engravings replaced woodcuts in book illustration, and large presentation volumes incorporated engraved plates, frontispieces, and title-pages. Marked differences in quality emerged between editions of historical, legal, theological, and scientific works, and cheaply produced editions for the mass market. At the lowest end of the ‘paper goods’ market were broadsides, numbering some 6,000 items by the end of the 18th century.
The first periodicals appeared after 1658, achieving genuine popularity in 1719 with the Prager Post, published twice weekly by Carl Franz Rosenmüller, the best Prague printer of the rococo era, whose press issued historical works by Bohuslav Balbín, Václav Hájek, Gelasius Dobner, and others.
Enlightenment ideas and religious and social reforms introduced in the last part of the 18th century heralded the awakening of Czech national consciousness. Scholarly research into Czech history, the revival of Czech as a literary language, and new discoveries in science benefited from the relaxation of printing restrictions. The Royal Czech Society of Sciences was founded in 1770, and works by such eminent scholars as M. A. Voigt, G. Dobner, R. Ungar, J. Dobrovský, J. Jungmann, P. J. Šafařík, and F. Palacký were published. The publisher who best represented the Czech national awakening was Václav Matĕj Kramerius (1753–1808), journalist and translator, who started his renowned Imperial and Royal Prague Post Newspaper in 1789. His ‘Czech Expedition’—a centre for the publication and distribution of books in Czech, mostly renderings of popular foreign works—issued some 84 titles printed by various presses.
The first half of the 19th century saw the foundation of many learned societies and libraries, as well as the beginnings of modern Czech literature, especially poetry. The cost of publication, and sometimes distribution, was often borne by authors themselves. In science and the humanities, publishing was subsidized by the Matice česká, founded in 1831, which organized public collections and appeals for donations. With Matice’s financial support, scientific illustration and the publication of maps and atlases developed and flourished. It ensured the survival of the Journal of the Czech Museum, that started in 1827 and continues to this day, and financed such significant undertakings as Jungmann’s five-volume Czech–German dictionary (1835–39) and Šafařík’s Slovanské starožitnosti (1837).
The second half of the century witnessed considerable developments in the field of Czech belles-lettres as well as science, and a corresponding growth of publishing houses. The largest firm was that of Ignác Leopold Kober (1825–66), which published c.300 titles including the first Czech encyclopaedia, the ten-volume Slovník naučný (1860–72), edited by František Ladislav Rieger.
Modern book illustration began in the 1860s with the artists Josef Mánes and Mikoláš Aleš. In the 1890s, Zdenka Braunerová pioneered the movement for the book as an aesthetic artefact (see artist’s book); her compatriot artists Alphonse Mucha and František Kupka made their name in book art in France. The journal Moderní revue became a platform for the Decadent and Symbolist movements. The efforts of late-century graphic artists were summarized by Vojtĕch Preissig, who provided the theoretical and practical foundation for the development of 20th-century book design.
The largest publishing house before the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 was that of Jan Otto (1841–1916). It encompassed many fields of knowledge for all levels of readership and price ranges, including prestigious illustrated journals (Lumír, Zlatá Praha, and Svĕtozor) and several ambitious literary series. The firm’s efforts culminated in 1888–1909 with the still-unsurpassed 28-volume encyclopaedia Ottův slovník naučný.
In typography, great advances were made in the first twenty years of the new century. Important developments in this sphere are connected with the 1908 foundation of the Association of Czech Bibliophiles and with Karel Dyrynk, Method Kaláb, and Oldřich Menhart. Typography was also of great interest to the Czech avant-garde, represented by Josef Šíma, Jindřich Štýrský, and Toyen, together with its theorist, Karel Teige.
During World War II, the seven-year Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia severely restricted freedom of the press. These strictures were partly compensated for by publishing abroad, mainly in England, through the efforts of Czechoslovak forces and the exiled government.
The legacy of 40 years of Communism, 1948–89, with its centralized system of publishing, bookselling, libraries, and archives, meant huge changes when its rule ended. By the close of the millennium, economic changes—the rising cost of living and increasing book prices (the average book price rose by 260 per cent between 1990 and 1995)—resulted in a sharp drop in book sales. However, both the fact that quality publications maintained their value and the continuing vitality of the annual Prague Book Fair testify to a buoyant Czech book culture.
In Slovakia, the Nitra Gospels, dating to the end of the 11th century, were among the Latin MSS that were copied and kept in monasteries and chapter houses. Lay scriptoria arose at the end of the 14th century.
The first Slovak printed books, the work of an unidentified Bratislava printer, date to 1477–80. Lutheranism influenced the development of the first printing presses: 16th-century printers travelled frequently, forced to change their place of work when harassed for their religious beliefs. They set up in Košice, Šintava, Komjatice, Plavecké Podhradie, and Hlohovec, sometimes printing parts of one book in different towns. The Slovak printer Mikuláš Štetina Bakalár worked in Pilsen in Bohemia. The language of the landlord class and most of the urban population was Hungarian; until the end of the 18th century, a large proportion of Slovakian printing was carried out in Hungarian. Books in Czech for the Slovak-speaking population (standard written Slovak did not develop until the 1780s) were mostly imported from Bohemian and Moravian presses, which were better equipped to produce large volumes such as bibles, postils, and hymn books. Such printing in Slovakized Czech as existed in Slovakia concentrated on popular works, e.g. textbooks and calendars. By the last quarter of the 16th century, printing presses were established in Trnava, Bardejov, and Banská Bystrica. Bratislava grew in importance by the century’s end when, during the occupation of a large part of Hungary by the Turks, many government bodies and schools moved there from Buda. The foremost Bratislava printing press, that of the archbishopric, flourished 1608–63. Printing grew in Trnava after the foundation of the university in 1635.
Until 1700, the centre of book production was concentrated in Levoča, mainly in the hands of the Breuer family, who produced some 700 titles by the late 17th century. Most of these were in Latin, but some were in the vernacular, including three editions of Juraj Tranovský’s popular hymn book Cithara Sanctorum (1636, 1639, 1653) and Comenius’ Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1685). The first newspaper in Hungary was printed in Levoča and Bardejov in 1705–10; others followed in Bratislava. Košice, the eastern Slovakian metropolis, rose to prominence as a printing centre in the 18th century. The works of Sámuel Timon, printed in Košice in 1733 and 1736, greatly contributed to the national identity of Slovakia, as did Bel’s Compendium Regnorum Sclavoniae in 1777. The written Slovak language, based on western Slovak dialect, was codified by Anton Bernolák in 1787.
At the end of the 18th century, the Slovak National Revival, together with Enlightenment ideas, spurred the growth of printing, publishing, bookselling, and the founding of libraries. In 1843, L’udovít Štúr, leader of the revival movement, introduced written Slovak based on the dialect of central Slovakia: this became the language of the revivalists and was accepted as the standard national language. Slovak revivalist printing was provided by the Jelínek Press (Trnava) and Škarnicel Press (Skalica), which issued the acclaimed journal Slovenské pohl’ady. Technical progress in the 19th century brought fundamental changes in printing, publishing, and distribution, facilitating further growth.
In 1870, the Book Printing Holding Association in Turčianský sv. Martin became the leading printer of Slovak language books and periodicals. Vernacular publishing grew, leading to the foundation of the Booksellers and Publishers Holding Association (1885). The two organizations merged in 1908, representing the bulk of Slovak publishing prior to 1918.
Between the two world wars, Slovakia enjoyed unprecedented economic and artistic development. Many cultural and educational institutions were established or renewed, libraries of all types built, and publishing houses established to issue books in Slovak. The end of Communist rule advanced the Slovak quest for complete independence from the Czechs, which was attained in 1993.
In 2000, the Slovak National Library separated from the cultural body Matica Slovenská. Large publishing firms that survived the transition into the market economy, such as the SPN-Mladé letá, have been augmented by small independent publishers. The skilfully managed Petrus in Bratislava exemplifies current trends. The Bratislava Biennial of Illustrations (started in 1967) is arguably the most important international exhibition of book illustration for children and young adults worldwide. Under the patronage of UNESCO and IBBY, it presents several prizes and has exhibited work from some 90 countries.
M. Bohatcová, Česká kniha v promĕnách staletí (1990)
V. Breza, Tlačiarne na Slovensku 1477–1996 (1997)
HDHB
F. Horák, Pĕt století [Five Hundred Years of Czech Printing] (1968)
I. Kotvan, Inkunábuly na Slovensku (1979)
Lexikon české literatury (1985–2008)
V. Petrík, Slovakia and its Literature (2001)
M. Strhan and D. P. Daniel, eds., Slovakia and the Slovaks (1994)
P. Voit, Encyklopedie knihy (2006)
