We have alluded in the preceding chapter to the paucity of woodcut initials in early works printed at Rome, and it is well known that the opinions of the clergy were divided with respect to the propriety of adding decorative embellishments to books. Some church dignitaries considered it a pious occupation, whilst others, who looked upon the copying of manuscripts as a sure way of attaining salvation,[28] were entirely against book ornamentation. It is probably on account of some such hostility on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities that ornamental initials are so seldom met with in books of the early Roman printers. In a list, for instance, of seventy-nine works published by Planck, only one, a _Pontificale_ of 1485, is mentioned as having woodcut initials; in the same list, of thirty-nine books by Eucharius Silber, there is one only with ornamental letters. Lastly, of one hundred and seventy-eight other works by seventeen known and six unknown printers, only two are reported as being so embellished. Of the earlier printers, Sweynheim and Pannartz used some very handsome initials in a few of their publications after 1470, the D reproduced being from their Suetonius, _Vitæ Cæsarum_. We give also a P from one of E. Silber’s publications, and a C with the portrait of Ariosto from a work published by Jacobus Mazochius, 1515. [28] A propos of manuscript copying, there was an anecdote current in _Scriptoria_ concerning a brother who had sinned very constantly whilst in the flesh, and who was challenged by St. Peter at the Gate of Paradise. The tally at first seemed to go against the applicant, but at last it was found that he had been for some time a scribe; written letters were checked against sins, and the frater was found to have a small but sufficient balance in his favour.