Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/228

218 the designer of the book presents the oriental love story to his readers with Dutch accessories. The bride of the Song of Solomon wanders about the streets of a city supposed to be Jerusalem, but the dwellings have high-peaked roofs, Dutch gables, and overhanging upper stories; she is assaulted by an armed and helmeted cavalier who carries on his shield the heraldic black eagle of some unknown German potentate; the pope, two cardinals and a bishop, with drawn swords in their hands and shields on their arms, look with great composure over Gothic battlements on the assault below. Writers who are skilled in heraldry say that there is a peculiar significance in the presentation of the devices and the arms on shields which are found in many places in the book. Some German authors see in these devices the arms of the German Empire, of Wittemburg and of minor German principalities. Those who believe that the book was printed in the Netherlands, see in the shields the arms of Burgundy, of Alsace, and of Flemish towns and cities. From these trivial evidences, the conclusion has been drawn by one class of partisans that the designer must have been a German, and, by another class, that he must have been a Hollander.