We can see what developments this theme could lend to the mysticism of the fifteenth century. Composed in eleven designs, the _Ars Moriendi_ ran up to eight different editions. From the middle to the end of the fifteenth century, the text was in Latin, then in French, under the title _L'Art au Morier_. In the French edition will be found the blocks that served for the second impression of the work. About 1480, more than fifty years after the first essays, the _Ars Moriendi_ enjoyed so much vogue that it employed all the resources of typography as much as in its earliest days. The original subjects, copied in a very mediocre manner, adorned the text, which was composed in Gothic letters, with a new and more explicit title: _Tractatus brevis ac valde utilis de Arte et Scientia bene moriendi_ (4to, s.l.n.d.), but the order is inverted, figure 5 of the xylograph becoming No. 3 of the edition of 1480. The _Ars Memorandi_, another xylographic work, of which the subject, taken from the New Testament, was equally well adapted to the imagination of the artists, had also a glorious destiny. The work originally comprised thirty blocks, the fifteen blocks of text facing the fifteen engravings. The designs represented the attributes of each of the Evangelists, with allegories and explanatory legends. Thus, in that which relates to the Apostle Matthew, No. 1 represents the birth and genealogy of Jesus Christ, No. 2 the offerings of the Magi, No. 3 the baptism of St. John, No. 4 the Temptation of Christ, No. 5 the Sermon on the Mount, No. 6 the parable of the birds. The angel that supports the whole is the emblem of St. Matthew the Evangelist. [Illustration: Fig. 3.--Figure of the school of Martin Schongauer, taken from the _Rationarium Evangelistarum_ of 1505, and copied from the corresponding plate of the _Ars Memorandi_.] This mnemonic treatment of the Gospels began with symbols of which we have no means of finding the origin, but which without doubt were employed many centuries earlier. However that may be, their success was as great as that of the already-quoted works. In 1505 a German publisher put forth an imitation, under the title of _Rationarium Evangelistarum_; and this time the copier of the illustrations, retaining the tradition of the first xylographers, no less reveals an artist of the first order, at least a pupil of Martin Schongauer. Some of the conceptions of the _Rationarium_ recall exactly the engravings of the great German master, among others that of the Infant Jesus (plate 12), which nearly approaches the style of the Infant Jesus of Schongauer; besides, the principal figures leave but little doubt on the subject. The same wings are on the angels and on the eagles, the same coiffures on the human characters, often the same attitudes.