WHO INVENTED MOVEABLE TYPES?
The wood-block, however, was merely a stepping-stone to the greatest of
all events in the history of printing, the invention of moveable types;
that is, of letters formed separately, which, after being grouped into
words, and sentences, and paragraphs, could be redistributed and used
again for all sorts of books. Here once more our Chinese friends were
ahead of the rest of the world, for, more than four centuries before
German printers existed, Picheng, a Chinese smith, had shown his
countrymen how to print from moveable types made of burnt clay. But the
process which was to prove of such untold value to those who employed
the simple Roman alphabet was almost useless to the Chinese, since the
immense number of their characters rendered the older method the less
tedious and cumbersome of the two. In China and Japan, therefore, the
use of moveable types was of short duration. In Europe, however, when
the art of printing from moveable types once became known, the case was
very different.
Once upon a time, as a magnate of the city of Haarlem was walking in a
wood near the city, he idly cut some letters on the bark of a beech
tree. It then suddenly occurred to him that these letters might be
impressed upon paper; whereupon he made some impressions of them for the
amusement of his grandchildren. This, we have learned from our youth up,
is how the art of printing came to be discovered. But unfortunately,
this legend is not to be relied upon. As a matter of fact, the first
inventor of printing is unknown, and even as regards moveable types it
is impossible to say with absolute certainty when or by whom the idea
was first conceived. Daunon, in his _Analyse des Opinions diverses sur
l'origine de l'Imprimerie_, tells us that no less than fifteen towns
claim to be the birthplace of printing, and that a still larger number
of persons have been put forward as its inventors, from Saturn, Job, and
Charlemagne downwards. The arguments for or against the pretensions of
Saturn, Job, and Charlemagne, and, indeed, of the majority of the
personages whose names have been mentioned in this connection, do not
call for notice. For although the first printer is not known, many
believe that they can point him out with tolerable certainty, and in the
fierce battle which has raged round the question of the identity of the
inventor of moveable types, two names alone have been used as the
respective war-cries of the opposing armies. One is Johann Gutenberg of
Mentz, and the other, Laurenz Coster of Haarlem.
Although the balance of opinion is now, and always has been, in favour
of Gutenberg, the battle has been long and furious. The diligence of the
disputants in collecting data in support of their theories has been
equalled only by the vigour and ferocity with which some of their number
have maintained their opinions. Each side has charged the other with
forging evidence, and ink and abuse have been freely poured out in the
cause of typographical truth. Yet though sought for during several
centuries, no conclusive proof has been discovered by either side;
typographical truth remains in her well, and the identity of the
inventor of moveable types seems almost as hard to determine as that of
the man in the iron mask or the writer of the letters of Junius. The
partisans of Coster have been as eminent and as able as those of
Gutenberg, and thus the unlearned enquirer finds it difficult to declare
for one rather than the other, without investigating for himself all the
ins and outs of this involved subject. Even then, without some previous
bias in one or the other direction, he would probably find himself
halting between two opinions. Such an investigation is obviously out of
the question here, and even were it practicable it could hardly be
lipped that where so many doctors disagree our modest effort would
produce any valuable result. We shall therefore do no more than briefly
set forth some of the chief arguments on either side as fairly as may
be, but without attempting an exhaustive examination of the evidence,
first, however, declaring ourselves as followers of the majority and
partisans of Gutenberg, by way of sheet anchor.
Those who advocate the claims of Holland against Germany largely base
their belief on the existence of various printed books and fragments of
Dutch origin, undated, and affording no clue to the time and place at
which they were printed, or to their printer, whether Coster or another.
It is much more likely, they say, that these were the first rude
attempts at typography, and that they gave the idea to the Mentz
printers, who forthwith improved upon it, than that the Mentz printers
should have given the idea to the Dutch, who, so far from improving upon
it, produced these clumsy imitations of fine German work. And Mr
Hessels, who made a complete examination of the evidence in favour of
Gutenberg, was unable to say either that Gutenberg invented
type-printing, or that he did not invent it. On the other hand, "it is
certainly possible," say the writers of the _Guide to the British
Museum_, "that actual printing may have been previously executed in
Holland; although, to our minds, the improbability of the printers who
are asserted to have produced _Donatus_ and the _Speculum_ from moveable
types ten years before Gutenberg having produced nothing but the like
kind of work for nearly twenty years after him outweighs all the
arguments which have been advanced in support of their claim. It is at
all events certain that, without some very direct and positive evidence
on the other side, mankind will continue to regard Gutenberg as the
parent of the art, and Mainz as its birthplace."
Within recent years a claim for the honour of the invention has been put
forward on behalf of quite another part of the world. Some early
fifteenth century documents discovered at Avignon make unmistakable
references to printing, and not to xylography, and from them we learn
that Procopius Waldfoghel, a silver-smith of Prague, was engaged in
printing at Avignon in 1444, and had undertaken to cut a set of Hebrew
types for a Jew whom he had previously instructed in the art of
printing. No specimens of his work are known, and it is therefore
impossible to say exactly to what process these records refer, but it
has been conjectured that it may have been some method of stamping
letters from cut type, and not from cast type by means of a press.
Since Coster is the hero of the well-known story quoted above, and since
as regards our present purpose there is less to be said of him than of
Gutenberg, we will briefly recapitulate what is known about him, and the
foundations on which his fame as a typographer rests, before dealing
more at length with Gutenberg and the Mentz press.
It does not seem easy to account for the existence of what the partisans
of Gutenberg contemptuously term the Coster legend. It has been
conjectured, somewhat plausibly, that Haarlem's jealousy of the
superiority and fame of Mentz and its printers began very early, and
arose from the narrow vanity of those Haarlemers who imagined that the
first printing press in Haarlem must necessarily be the first printing
press in the world. However this may be, the legend arose, and waxed
strong, and many believed in it.
Laurenz Janssoen, or Coster, was born in Haarlem about 1370. He is said
to have held various high offices, such as sheriff, treasurer, officer
of the city guard, and especially that of Coster to the great church of
Haarlem. Coster means sacristan or sexton, but the position was one of
far greater honour than is now associated with it. But another account,
which is supported by all the available records, represents him as a
tallow-chandler, and subsequently as an innkeeper, and if he had
anything at all to do with the great church, it was only that he
supplied it with candles. But whether chandler or coster, nothing is
heard of him as a printer until 1568, more than a hundred years after
his alleged success in printing from types--in itself a strange fact,
since if Coster were the inventor, why were the Mentz printers allowed
to appropriate all the credit to themselves, unchallenged by Coster's
kinsfolk or countrymen, and supported by the opinions of sixty-two
writers, including Caxton, the chronicler Fabian, Trithemius, and the
compilers of the Cologne and Nuremberg chronicles? It is true that "few
sometimes may know when thousands err," but silence is no proof of
truth, and if Coster's representatives possessed the truth, how came
they to withhold it from a deluded world?
Although Coster is not named till 1568, the claims of Haarlem to be the
birthplace of printing had been put forward (for the first time) some
years earlier by Jan Van Zuyren in a work on the Invention of
Typography, of which only a fragment remains. The claims of Haarlem, he
says, "are at this day fresh in the remembrance of our fathers, to
whom, so to express myself, they have been transmitted from hand to hand
from their ancestors." Thus, though probably writing in all good faith,
Van Zuyren bases his statements on nothing better than tradition. "The
city of Mentz," he goes on to say, "without doubt merits great praise
for having been the first to publish to the world, in a becoming garb,
an invention which she received from us, for having perfected and
embellished an art as yet rude and imperfect.... It is certain that the
foundations of this splendid art were laid in our city of Haarlem,
rudely, indeed, but still the first."
Coornhert, an engraver, and a partner of Van Zuyren, repeats the same
statements, and on the same basis, in the preface to a translation of
Cicero which he published in 1561, but is acute enough to see that the
case for Haarlem is nearly hopeless. "I am aware," he says, "that in
consequence of the blameable neglect of our ancestors, the common
opinion that this art was invented at Mentz is now firmly established,
that it is in vain to hope to change it, even by the best evidence and
the most irrefragable proof." He proceeds to declare his conviction of
the justice of Haarlem's claim, because of "the faithful testimonies of
men alike respectable from their age and authority, who not only have
often told me of the family of the inventor, and of his name and
surname, but have even described to me the rude manner of printing first
used, and pointed out to me with their fingers the abode of the first
printer. And therefore, not because I am jealous of the glory of
others, but because I love truth, and desire to pay all tribute to the
honour of our city which is justly her due, I have thought it incumbent
upon me to mention these things." Yet it is strange that he did not
think it incumbent upon him to mention the name and surname of the
inventor, since he had been told them so often.
Hadrian Junius, said to have been the most learned man in Holland after
Erasmus, is the first to give to the world the fully-developed legend of
Coster. This he does in his _Batavia_, which was finished in 1568 and
published posthumously twenty years later. It is he who first mentions
Coster by name, and gives the story of the walk in the woods. He relates
how Coster devised block-printing, and calling in the help of his
son-in-law, Thomas Peter, produced the block-book _Speculum Humanæ
Salvationis_, and then advanced to types of wood, then to types of lead,
and finally to types of lead and tin combined. Prospering in his new
art, he engaged numerous workmen, one of whom, probably named Johann
Faust, as soon as he had mastered the process of printing and of casting
type, stole his master's types and other apparatus one Christmas Eve,
and fled to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and finally to Mentz. For all
this Junius also adduces no better authority than hearsay, but
nevertheless it is his statements which have brought Coster to the front
and given him such reputation as he now enjoys.
No books bearing Coster's name are known, though this in itself is no
argument against him, for the name of Gutenberg himself is not found in
any of his own productions. It is not only highly improbable that Coster
was the first printer, but also doubtful whether he printed anything at
all. But those who think otherwise consider that the idea of printing
occurred to him about 1428 or 1430, and that he executed, among other
books, the _Biblia Pauperum_, the _Speculum_, the _Ars Moriendi_, and
_Donatus_.
The people of Holland still retain their faith in Coster. Statues have
been erected, medals struck, tablets put up, and holidays observed in
his honour.