Most writers on early bibliography, amongst others Bodemann and Muther, who both give reproductions of the initial border at the beginning of the Latin Boccaccio, quote J. Zainer as the first printer in Ulm to use woodcut initials. The date of the Boccaccio is 1473. In addition to the initial border it contains a complete alphabet,[13] of which we give several specimens. From a decorative point of view this alphabet is not very remarkable, the letters being of small size, but the book is interesting on account of the very large historiated initial at the beginning, which is prolonged along the side and upper margins into a floro-foliated border in imitation of the more elaborate decoration of the old manuscripts. The subject represents that very unfortunate incident in the history of the first woman which was the cause of all the subsequent unhappiness of mankind. Eve, who is the heroine of the first chapter of this book on celebrated women, is represented in the act of receiving the apple from the arch deceiver, who is ensconced in the branches of the fatal tree with his tail twisted into the letter S. Above, in the branches of the tree, are small personages emblematic of the seven deadly sins. In a German edition of the same book of the same year, the initial becomes a D, and contains the arms of the noble to whom the work is dedicated, with winged angels at the corners, being prolonged into borders along the two adjacent margins. In these two instances the initial letter forms part of the general composition. [13] Copied from a manuscript of the fifteenth century, the ‘Evangeliare of St. Udalrich.’ In another style of border the initial is merely placed in juxtaposition, and the same design is thus able to serve for any book with any letter. There is a remarkably vigorous folio-floral border with the head and shoulders of a fool with his cap, bells, and other insignia, at the angle of the two margins in the _Liber Biblie Moralis_, 1474. The same composition is used in the _Alvarus Pelagius_ the year before.[14] [14] In church architecture, and in early book ornamentation, which reflects so well the ideas and customs of the time, the fool did not make his appearance before the middle of the fifteenth century. Wright, in his _History of Caricature_, mentions as early instances some sculptures of this date in churches of Cornwall, and it was about the same time that this personage is first seen in manuscript decoration. The idea, however, was much older, springing from that taste for the grotesque which characterised the Middle Ages, and the relics of which are seen in so many artistic remains of the period. From the tenth century and even earlier, companies of fools existed in all large towns, and on certain occasions Mother Folly and the Lord of Misrule reigned supreme. The cult of the ass, whose ears were to become later part of the fool’s insignia, was another outcome of this love of the burlesque.