During the centuries previous to the invention of printing the number of persons who could read was very small. The common people, farmers, soldiers, workmen, and the like, received but little instruction outside the immediate necessities of their lives. That little was largely by word of mouth reinforced by symbol and picture or statue. In those days the churches were the poor man’s schools and libraries. The Bible stories were told him by the priests and nuns and by the old men and women. The churches were elaborately ornamented with statues, stained glass windows, brasses, paintings, and carvings. Many of these painted or sculptured representations were conventionalized. If one saw a figure with a great key in his hand, no matter what the costume of the figure or the design of the face, he knew it was St. Peter. If he saw another figure with a book and a sword, he knew that it was St. Paul, and so on. He saw the sacrifice of Isaac, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crucifixion, the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, and all the other Bible stories visibly expressed. He saw the statues of kings and bishops and was told the meaning of the scenes in which these and other characters were represented in picture or sculpture. He thus read and reread the statues, stained glass windows, and sculptures of his church as we read and reread our Bibles and our histories. Many carvings and pictures were put into the churches which we should today consider entirely out of place. Caricature began here as well as religious and historical instruction. We find represented scenes which recall the current fables of the time and sometimes pictures of scenes ridiculous or even indecent, according to modern ideas, which satirized the vices and faults of men and women while they warned against them. By and by the desire came to bring this instruction into the homes of the people who were too poor to have paintings and carvings of their own. This desire was met by the production of what is known as image prints. The picture of some saint was carved on a piece of wood and from this block, or more properly plate, because the pictures were carved on the side and not the end of a flat piece of wood, an inked impression was made on parchment or paper. This process seems to have come in use some time in the fourteenth century. By the beginning of the fifteenth it was fairly common. The earliest dated woodcut of this sort, bearing the date 1423, is shown herewith. It is interesting not only as being the oldest dated work of this sort, but as being typical of the way in which these pictures were conceived and executed. It represents St. Christopher. The saint is shown fording the river with the Child Jesus on his shoulder and represents the entire legend of St. Christopher, the Christ Bearer. [Illustration: Reduced Facsimile of Early Wood-cut]