seventh year, and, commencing on the 10th of July, lasted fourteen
days, during which time the ordinary service in the church did not
take place, but a free market was held. The concourse of people was
uncommonly great on that occasion, so that, for instance in the year
1496, 142,000 pilgrims were counted in the town, and 80,000 guilders
in the offering boxes on one day. Aix-la-Chapelle possessed relics of
the first rank, as the swaddling-clothes of Christ, his body-cloth at
the Crucifixion, the dress worn by Mary at his birth, and the cloth
on which St. John the Baptist was beheaded. Van der Linde, _Haarlem
Legend_, p. 18.
[240] There is no evidence that Gutenberg had been taught xylography,
or any of the many branches of book-making. He was not, for that
reason, incompetent to invent an entirely new branch. The history of
great inventions shows that many inventors never received a thorough
technical instruction in the arts or trades which they undertook
to reconstruct. Jacquard, inventor of the automatic loom, was, in
his boyhood, a bookbinder and a type-founder. Arkwright, inventor
of the spinning jenny, was a barber until he was thirty years of
age. Stephenson, inventor of the locomotive, tended a steam boiler,
but had not served time as a machinist nor as a carriage-builder.
Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, was not a sailor, machinist nor
ship-builder. Morse, inventor of the electric telegraph, was an artist,
not a mechanician, nor even a man of science. Koning, inventor of the
cylinder printing machine, was not a printer. The greatest inventions
have been made by men not within, but without, the arts they improved.
It would seem that a thorough technical education in any art or trade
cramps the inventive faculties, disqualifying the expert from making
any attempt at radical changes, permitting him to attempt improvement
in the details only.
[241] Some authors will not admit that Gutenberg derived any benefit
from xylography. Bernard treats block-printing as an art so paltry,
that he refused to describe the block-books, or to admit that
xylography had any noticeable influence, direct or indirect, on the
invention of types. Van der Linde says that history knows nothing of
Gutenberg as a xylographer—that there is no documentary evidence that
he ever cut or printed a block. These disclaimers—obviously provoked
by the absurd statements of other authors that Gutenberg invented
xylography, that he printed with types of wood, that typography
is the natural outgrowth of xylography—cannot be accepted without
qualification. The fact remains that Gutenberg, his associates and
pupils, were benefited by the highest technical skill of that time
in all the processes of engraving in relief, in the compounding of
inks, in the construction and use of presses, and in the manipulation
of paper. Compared with the invention of the type-mould, these may
seem trivial matters, but the success of Gutenberg’s new ideas
about printing depended upon his attention to every process that
promised aid. It is not probable that the man who hired joiners and
goldsmiths could have neglected to avail himself of whatever skill the
block-printers possessed. The experience in printing acquired by the
block-printers was far from contemptible, but the educating influences
they had exerted over the book-buying public were of great importance.
It was Gutenberg’s discernment of the fact that the block-printers
had created a demand for printed work which could never be satisfied
by the method of xylography, which gave him the impulse to seek for a
more scientific method. Block-printing, although in no sense the mother
of typography, was its forerunner, and for that reason alone demands
respectful consideration.
[242] This passage has been translated by Ottley: Gutenberg sent “to
fetch all the forms that they might be loosened, and that he might
see it [done], and that the joinings of some of the four pieces
might be renewed.” This translation makes the action of Gutenberg
unintelligible. Bernard’s translation is: “Gutenberg sent to get the
forms, so that he could be sure that they had been separated; these
forms had given him a great deal of solicitude.” This is obviously a
very free and evasive translation. Wetter, who interprets the passage
as descriptive of block-printing, says that “the words are too obscure
for us to infer anything definite from them. We are in no case to
understand by the word _formen_ separate letters, but whole blocks.”
This is an unwarrantable assumption, and in contradiction to the
statement that the forms were melted. Van der Linde says that “the
words are plain. Translators have stopped at the words _zurlossen_ and
_ruwete_. _Zurlossen_, or _zerlassen_, means melting, and ruwete is
dialect for _reuete_, repented.”
[243] The commonest meaning of the word form, in most European
languages, is a shape or figure prepared by carving; but it has also
been applied, colloquially, to the mould made from this carved shape,
and also to the article made from the mould. A type-founder’s punch is
the form of a letter; the mould in which the type is cast is the form
or former of the letter; the types prepared for printing are also known
as the form. On a future page it will be shown that the word _formen_
as used in the trial, was also used at a later date to describe the
most important tools in Gutenberg’s printing office at Eltvill.
[244] Here we may recall the surprise of Madame Zabern at the cost of
the work. She would not have hazarded the low estimate of ten guilders,
if Dritzehen had been surrounded by many types or printed sheets.
The only tools appertaining to typography, which have a value out of
all proportion to their apparent cost, are the punches, matrices and
moulds. The modern inexpert would underrate the value of a similar
collection as grossly as did Madame Zabern.
[245] It could not have been four pages of metal types, for types
disconnected and put in disorder, in or under the press, would have
betrayed the secret almost as plainly as if they had been in order.
Nor could it have been any attachment to a press like the frisket or
tympan. It is impossible to name any jointed or buttoned tool of four
pieces, connected with composition or presswork, which would suggest to
an inexpert the secret of typography.
[246] Bernard gives this form of type-mould a passing notice. He says:
M. de Berny showed me one of these primitive mechanisms in his own
foundry. This mould, which is still [1853] in use, is constructed with
two kinds of knees [or squares] enabling the type-maker to adjust it
in various ways so as to cast any body desired. _De l’origine_, etc.
vol. I, p. 44, note.
[247] The inability to produce any book printed by Gutenberg at
Strasburg was the occasion of the following pithy answer: Koch had
asserted before the Institute, that Strasburg was the cradle of
printing. Schaab interrupted him, “Yes, but it is a cradle without a
baby.”
[248] Schaab says that there is on record in Mentz a document which
proves that John Gensfleisch leased this house in October, 1443.
Reasoning from the two disconnected facts, that this house was used
by Gutenberg for a printing office, and that it had been leased
by Gensfleisch in 1443, careless readers have assumed that John
Gensfleisch was the first printer in Mentz, and that he was either
the true inventor of printing, or the unfaithful workman who stole
the invention of Coster or of Mentel. It is not necessary to repeat
what has been written concerning the impossibility of a theft from the
fictitious Coster, nor about the absurdity of representing the uncle as
a printer.
[249] Fischer, _Essai sur les monuments typographiques_, p. 70.
[250] Bernard refuses this statement. He says that the fragments of
other editions of the _Donatus_ in this type, supposed to be of the
same period, which he inspected in the British Museum, show ink that is
permanent.
[251] The text letters are of the form known to librarians as _lettres
de somme_, or letters of account, which may be understood as the
carelessly made letters then used in books of account. The letters of
the large lines are of the form known as _lettres de forme_, or letters
of precision, the angular and carefully made letters of fine books. The
_lettres de somme_ will be defined in this book under the name of Round
Gothic; the _lettres de forme_, under the name of Pointed Gothic.
[252] Deceived by the close fitting-up of the matrices, earlier writers
said that the letters were xylographic. The comments of Dr. Van der
Linde on this error are pertinent:
. . . . It was thought necessary to find the wooden letters of the
imagination, and hence bibliography presents the dismal spectacle
that almost all monuments of the excellent invention, that fruit of
a vigorous mind, of a simple, but ample and grand idea, have been
declared by would-be connoisseurs one by one to be xylographic. This
caused the double trouble of first making out, with much verbosity and
an air of perspicuity, incontrovertibly typographical masterpieces to
be wood, and then afterward putting aside this pedantry and returning
to the simple truth. The origin of typography presents nowhere
anything narrow-minded, worthless, or trifling, for it belongs to the
_grand_ facts of history, but trifling minds have soiled it with their
own littleness. _Haarlem Legend_, p. 77.
[253] It is possible that other books, now lost and forgotten, may
have been printed in the small types, but Helbig thinks that the types
were made expressly for the _Letters of Indulgence_, as bank-notes are
now made, with the intention that the copies of each edition should
be exactly alike in appearance, and that they should be difficult
of imitation. Bernard dissents from the belief that the _Letters of
Indulgence_ were printed by Gutenberg. He attributes them to some
printer of unknown name in Mentz, supposed by him to have been either
the false workman described by Junius, or some graduate or seceding
malcontent of Gutenberg’s printing office. But we have no evidence
of a typographical printer before Gutenberg. Jäck has endeavored to
prove that two _Letters_ were printed by Pfister of Bamberg. De la
Borde thinks one of the faces of type used in the _Letters_ was cut by
Schœffer in a friendly competition with Gutenberg. These conjectures
cannot be made plausible.
[254] It is sometimes described as the _Mazarin Bible_, and sometimes
as _Gutenberg’s First Bible_.
[255] This is known as the _Bamberg Bible_, because nearly all the
known copies of this edition were found in the neighborhood of the
town of Bamberg; as _Pfister’s Bible_, because it has been attributed,
incorrectly, to Albert Pfister, a printer of Bamberg; as the _Schelhorn
Bible_, because it was fully described by the bibliographer of that
name; as _Gutenberg’s Second Bible_, because it is the belief of many
authors that it should have been printed by Gutenberg about 1459, after
his rupture with John Fust.
[256] Bernard, _De l’origine et des debuts de l’imprimerie_, vol. II,
p. 30.
[257] In the year of our Lord 1450, they began to print, and the first
book they printed was the _Bible_ in Latin: it was printed in a large
letter, resembling the letter with which, at present, missals are
printed. _Cologne Chronicle_ of 1499.
[258] In the first essays of printing, great difficulties were
encountered. For when they [the first printers] were printing the
Bible, they were obliged to expend more than four thousand florins
before they had printed three sections. Trithemius, as reprinted by
Wolf, _Monumenta Typographica_, vol. II, p. 654.
[259] These evidences, which seem to favor the theory of the priority
of the _Bible of 36 lines_, combine many features of probability,
but they are not free from objections. Too little is known about the
book to warrant a positive statement as to its age. In nearly all the
popular treatises on printing, the _Bible of 42_ lines is specified as
the first book of Gutenberg, but it is the belief of many of the most
learned bibliographers, from Zapf to Didot and Madden, that the _Bible
of 36 lines_ is the older edition. The theory that it must have been
printed by Gutenberg between 1457 and 1459, and the proposition that
it may have been printed by Albert Pfister of Bamberg at or soon after
that time, will be examined on an advanced page.
[260] His name is often improperly written as Faust. In all the
books subsequently printed by Fust and his partner, Schœffer, the
name appears as Fust. It was so written and printed by all his
contemporaries, and is so seen, wherever it occurs, in the record of
the famous trial he instituted. It is so spelt in the church record of
his burial. During his lifetime, and for at least thirty years after
his death, the name is always given as Fust. The notorious reputation
subsequently made by Dr. John Faust, who was born in Wurtemberg in 1480
(several years after the death of Fust), who studied magic in Cracow,
and, by his learning and wickedness, horrified wise men like Luther
and Melancthon; whose life, deeds and death are involved in a mystery
that dramatists have turned to such good account, has been transferred
by carelessness to John Fust, the printer. The confusion has been
perpetuated by a legend. The fable, not yet weeded out of treatises on
printing, that Fust was arrested in Paris for selling bibles, supposed
to have been manufactured at the instigation of the devil, has served
to foster the error.
[261] Those who favor this view of Fust’s character, find a peculiar
significance in the radical meaning of his name, Fust—in German, fist,
the symbol of all that is hard, close, grasping, and aggressive.
[262] These were the terms of the contract, made in August, 1450:
The partnership between Gutenberg and Fust should be for five years,
in which time the work projected by Gutenberg should be completed.—For
the purposes of this partnership, not specified, Fust should advance
to Gutenberg 800 guilders, at 6 per cent. interest. The tools
and materials made by Gutenberg for the uses of the partnership
should remain mortgaged to Fust, as security for this loan of 800
guilders, until the whole sum should be paid.—When the aforesaid
tools and materials should be made, Fust should, every year, furnish
Gutenberg with 300 guilders to provide for the payment of the paper,
vellum, ink, wages and the other materials that would be required
for the execution of the work.—For these advances Fust should have
one-half of the profits made from the sale of the products of the
partnership.—Fust should be exempted from the performance of any work
or service connected with the partnership, and should not be held
responsible for any of its debts.
[263] There are two kinds of copies, with differences which seem to
justify the opinion that they belong to two distinct editions. In one
kind, all the copies have 42 lines to the column, and all the summaries
of chapters are written and not printed. In the other kind, the first
eight pages of the first section have 40 lines to the column; the ninth
page has 41 lines; the tenth and all other pages (except two 40-line
pages in the book of _Maccabees_) have 42 lines; and the pages of 40
and 41 lines have their five summaries printed in red ink. The same
face of type is used in both kinds of copies, but the pages of 40 and
41 lines occupy the same space as the pages of 42 lines, begining and
ending, for the most part, with the same words. Bernard says that the
40-line pages were reset by Peter Schœffer after Fust had acquired
the unsold copies of the _Bible_, with intent to lead the purchaser
of the book to form the belief that it was an entirely new edition.
Other writers suggest that a portion of the first section may have been
spoiled, and replaced by a subsequent reprinting. But the differences
are not confined to the first section. In many other sections there are
differences in the spelling and abbreviation of words which clearly
prove that the two kinds of copies were printed from separately
composed and distinct forms. The double composition of every page for
the same edition seems a ridiculous waste of labor, but the proofs of
this double labor are unmistakable.
[264] Bernard says that over-colored and under-colored pages are by no
means rare. He attributes this unequal blackness to imperfections in
the inking implements. _De l’origine de l’imprimerie_, vol. I, p. 182.
[265] See the fac-similes of Sotheby and Humphreys. The written
summaries of this Bible, as they present them, are unlike the printed
text.
[266] At the sale of the Perkins library near London, June 6, 1873, a
copy of the _Bible of 42 lines_, on vellum, was sold for £3,400, and a
copy on paper for £2,690—more than the first printers got for all the
copies.
[267] Hessels’ translation, as printed in the _Haarlem Legend_, pp. 24
and 25.
[268] Philip de Lignamine, in a book entitled _A Continuation of the
Chronicles of the Popes_, which he printed in Rome in 1474, writes
concerning the year 1458: “Jacob Gutenberg of Strasburg, and another
called Fust, very skillful in the art of printing with characters of
metal on parchment, each printed three hundred leaves daily at Mentz.”
Jacob is an error of memory or of typography, and the mention of
Strasburg as Gutenberg’s birthplace is incorrect, but the statement
that he printed in 1458 is, no doubt, true. It seems the testimony of
a printer, whose knowledge of the facts had been derived either from
personal observation, or from the reports of workmen once employed at
Mentz.
[269] This _Catholicon_ was written, or edited, as the title informs
us, by John of Genoa, of the fraternity of preachers, or mendicant
friars. It contains an elaborate Latin grammar and an etymological
dictionary in five divisions. It was a text book of authority in the
higher schools.
[270] Van Praet says that Gutenberg, as a noble, dared not advertise
his connection with a mechanical art. This is absurd, for Gutenberg’s
connection with printing in Mentz had been known for at least ten
years, and printing was not then regarded as a business derogatory to
the standing of a noble. Wetter says that Gutenberg was humiliated
by the superior workmanship of Fust and Schœffer. But the work of
these printers was not of such unquestionable superiority. Helbig’s
conjecture seems most plausible, but Gutenberg may have been so intent
on the personal satisfaction he derived from the realization of his
ideas, that he was comparatively indifferent to the gratification
derived from notoriety.
[271] In Germany, the punch or the model letter is known as the
_patrice_, a word obviously derived from the root of the Latin
_patronarum_ of the text. The reversed duplicates of punches, here
translated as matrices, are noticed in the text as _formarum_, a
variation of the word form, which we find so often in the record of the
Strasburg trial. “The admirable proportion, harmony and connection of
the punches and matrices,” should be understood, not as a commendation
of the beauty of the printed letters, but as a specification by the
inventor of what he conceived was the great feature of typography, the
making of types of different faces and thickness on bodies of absolute
uniformity, so that they could be combined with ease. It should be
noticed that the invention or the use of isolated letters or types
is not boasted of; it was the method of making the types which the
inventor regarded as the most admirable feature of his invention.
[272] This work is attributed to Gutenberg, chiefly on the authority of
this inscription, which was found in a copy in the possession of the
Carthusian Friars at Mentz:
The Carthusian Friars near Mentz, through the liberality of John
Gutenberg, own this book, which was made by his wonderful art, and by
the skill of John Nummeister, clerk. In the year of our Lord 1463, on
the 13th calend of July [June 19].
Helbig doubts the genuineness of this annotation, and intimates that
it may be the work of Bodmann, a librarian at Mentz, who has been
suspected of attempts to foist spurious documents on those who were
eager to know more of the life and labors of Gutenberg. In his treatise
on the _Typographic Monuments of Gutenberg_, Fischer, on the authority
of Bodmann, printed the copy of a verbose document which set forth that
John Gutenberg and Frielo Gensfleisch assented to the action of their
sister Hebele in conveying to the Convent of Saint Clare, of which she
was then a nun, her share in the paternal inheritance. It also recites
that John Gutenberg will give to the convent a copy of every book to be
printed by him. This document, which is dated 1459, is not accepted as
genuine by discreet bibliographers.
[273] Bernard says that some of these works were probably printed by
an unknown printer at Mentz (not the printer of the _Indulgence of
31 lines_); but this conjecture of two printing offices, about which
history and tradition are silent, which never produced any work of
value, cannot be accepted.
[274] A copy of this book in the National Library at Paris has an
annotation which sets forth that “Henry Kepfer of Mentz put this book
in pledge for twelve days, and has not reclaimed it. . . .” Henry
Kepfer was one of Gutenberg’s workmen who appeared for him on the trial.
[275] Fischer says that a library at Mentz once contained several
pamphlets printed by Gutenberg in the large types of the _Bible of 36
lines_. He gives fac-similes of the illuminated initials in one of
these pamphlets, which closely resemble those of the _Psalter of 1457_.
This similarity is more than an indication that the letters of this
_Psalter_ were made by Gutenberg.
[276] In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Mentz, then the capital of
Germany, contained a population of about 100,000 inhabitants. It was
the most powerful city of the empire, the great city where the emperors
were crowned. In the fourteenth century, it was so strong that it could
send out of its walls 10,000 armed citizens to destroy the strongholds
of the noble robbers who had ravaged its commerce.
[277] Helbig says that all the larger houses that had not been
destroyed by fire were confiscated. The booty was divided in three
parts: Adolph took the first and the best part, the nobles of his army
claimed the second; the soldiers, “a band of mercenary savages,” took
the remainder. _Notes et dissertations_, p. 52.
[278] Hessels’ translation.
[279] Schaab says that an aristocratic appointment at the court
procured this nobleman a comfortable life. Voluntarily he followed the
princely court, where he had a free table and fodder for his horses.
Even for his dress he received cloth in the court colors, and generally
wore a kind of mantle, called Tabard. It was in accordance with the
morals of that time to carouse at court. They went there with empty
cups and returned with full ones. The princes tried not before the
sixteenth century to put a check to this excess by special orders. The
elector Johan Schweikard von Kronenberg ordered, even in the year 1605,
to leave the _grossen Saumagen_—this was the name of the cups then
used—for the future at home . . . . However comfortable and German-like
all this may look, miserable were these court-wages, this dress, these
alms presented to the inventor of typography. But no, it is perfectly
in harmony with the general course of earthly things. Van der Linde,
_Haarlem Legend_, p. 29.
[280] Henry Bechtermüntz had died before the book was finished.
[281] The _Vocabularium ex quo_ was reprinted by Nicholas Bechtermüntz,
in the same types and in the same form, in the years 1469, 1472, and
1477. Only one copy is known of the first edition of the book.
[282] From the preface to a curious and little-known poem entitled
_Encomion Chalcographiæ_, by Arnold Bergellanus, as reprinted by Wolf
in his _Monumenta Typographica_, vol. I, p. 5.
[283] It appears from this, that Humery, who owned the printing office,
had neglected to properly record or establish his title. It was through
the grace of the archbishop, who understood the matter, that he was
spared the trouble of re-establishing his right by legal process.