concerning the types of Gutenberg], the idea presented itself to me
that it would be well to examine with care a certain volume printed by
Frederic Hauman, which was in a neglected corner of my library. I took
it up, not thinking that I should make any discovery. I knew that the
last productions of the presses of Nicholas Bechtermüntz were printed
with other types than those of Gutenberg, and that, among the known
impressions of the Brothers of the Life-in-Common at Marienthal, none
were executed with these characters. But judge of my astonishment, of
my joy, perhaps, when I recognized in this neglected book not only
the types of the _Catholicon_ of 1460, the only ones appertaining to
Gutenberg that could have been employed in the books that proceeded
from the presses of Eltvill, but also the types that had been used in
the _Letters of Indulgence_ of 1454 and 1455, in the _Appeal against
the Turks_ of 1455, the _Calendar of 1457_ described by Fischer, the
_Bible of 36 lines_, and all the characters of Albert Pfister—or, to
be brief,—when I recognized the most ancient types of John Gutenberg.
Helbig, _Une découverte pour l’histoire de l’imprimerie_, p. 4.
Helbig gives a list of seven books, of little value, printed by Hauman,
in these types of Gutenberg. He expresses his astonishment that they
had not before been identified, but he offers no explanation of the
singular fact that these types were not used by any printer between
1469 and 1506.
[285] Helbig, _Une découverte pour l’histoire de l’imprimerie_, p. 4,
note.
[286] See pages 315 and 316 of this book.
[287] Many authors who do not mention Gutenberg speak of Mentz as the
city in which printing was first practised. Van Laar, at Cologne, in
1478; Caxton, at Westminster, in 1482; the archbishop Berthold of
Mentz in 1486; Meydenbach of Mentz in 1494—these are a few of the many
writers who have certified to this fact. A cloud of witnesses, says Van
der Linde, join in the song of Celtes: “You wind yourself, already, O
broad-waved Rhine! to the town of Mentz, which first of all printed
with metal letters.” Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 32.
[288] In the year 1742, the Jesuits, who then had control of the church
of Saint Francis, tore it down in order to rebuild another edifice upon
the same ground. The tablet and the tomb of Gutenberg were destroyed.
The inscription on this tablet was published for the first time in a
book printed by Peter Friedburg at Mentz in the year 1499. Helbig,
_Notes et dissertations_, p. 10.
[289] Ivo Wittig was an ecclesiastic of eminence, chancellor and grand
rector of the University of Mentz, to which he gave his large library
of books and manuscripts. When the Swedes approached Mentz, this
precious library was removed. Unfortunately, it was put on a boat of
the Rhine which was wrecked, and his rare collection of books was lost.
Helbig says it is an irreparable loss, for Wittig was deeply interested
in printing, and his collection, no doubt, contained materials of the
highest importance concerning its history.
[290] This is an error. This house is not connected with the history of
printing in any other way than in being the residence of Gutenberg when
a child. When the Gensfleisch family were sent or went in exile, their
houses were confiscated. It is not probable that Gutenberg died in the
house bearing his name.
[291] The Jesuit Serarius says that he saw this tablet one hundred
years after it was erected. Between 1632 and 1636, when the Swedes
were in Mentz, this house was sacked, but the tablet was spared. In
1741, it was taken down and placed in the wall in the court of a house
belonging to the University. But this monument, which escaped the
barbarity of the Swedish soldiers, was destroyed by the conscripts of
the French republic, who were lodged in this house between the years
1793 and 1797. Helbig says it is probable that these ruffians suspected
John Gutenberg of aristocratic tendencies. They did not know that the
old citizen of Mentz was, unwittingly, the leader of all democrats,
revolutionists and reformers, the man above all others, who, by his
invention, had paved the way for the French revolution.
[292] Bernard’s conjectures as to the reason for this change are
plausible. He says: The sales of the _Bible_ had not been so great as
Fust had expected. Envious copyists had probably fostered a prejudice
against the printed Bible as purely mechanical copying, and for that
reason, or on account of its known errors, inferior to the ordinary
manuscript. Fust hoped to remove these objections, and to attract
purchasers by giving the unsold copies the appearance of a new edition.
Madden does not accept this hypothesis. He thinks that the two kinds
of copies were composed at the same time by different compositors,
who, setting their types from dictation, not seeing the manuscript
copy, made their abbreviations without uniformity, and, as a necessary
consequence, produced pages of unequal length. This explanation is
quite as reasonable.
[293] It could, with more propriety, be called a ritual. The psalms
are followed by prayers, collects, litanies, the service for the dead,
hymns, etc. But it is always described as a psalter.
[294] The rubricated capital letters on the larger body, which are very
large and square, might be regarded as another incomplete font, for
which small letters had not been provided.
[295] Savage said, before he had critically examined the ink of the
book:
It is a curious fact that, under Fust and Gutenberg, the process [of
printing in colors] should be carried nearly to perfection; for some
of the works they printed, both in the quality of the ink and in the
workmanship, are so excellent that it would require all the skill of
our best printers, even at the present day, to surpass them in all
respects: and I do not hesitate to say, that, in a few years after,
the printers were actually superior to us in the use of red ink,
both as to color and as to the inserting of a great number of single
capital letters in their proper places in a sheet, with a degree of
accuracy and sharpness of impression that I have never seen equaled in
modern workmanship. _Decorative Printing_, London, 1822, pp. 6 and 7.
After a closer inspection, Savage discovered that the red was painted.
Papillon declared that the red ink was of the most perfect beauty.
Chatto said that this earliest known production [of the press of Fust
and Schœffer] remains to the present day unimpaired as a specimen of
skill in ornamental printing. The art of printing was perfected by
Fust and Schœffer. Jackson and Chatto, _Wood Engraving_, p. 168.
[296] He says the ink was dull yellow:
On some of the leaves where music is given there is an appearance as
if the oil in the ink had penetrated through the vellum and tinged
the opposite side of the leaf with a dingy yellow. This had been
supposed to be the case, but I find that the original tune had been
printed with a dull yellow ink, and that subsequently a different one
had been written in over the first, with black ink to match the color
of the text; and so exactly is this effect produced that, if it were
not for the remains of the printing of the original tune, it might
pass unsuspected of being any other than the production of the press.
_Practical Hints on Decorative Printing_, pp. 49 and 51.
[297] _De l’origine_, etc., vol. I. p. 225.
[298] _History of Printing_, p. 85.
[299] Some writers say that the earliest printing inks were gum-water
colors, which could be washed off the vellum with a wet sponge. But the
ink of the _Psalter_ was a true printing ink, a smoke-black mixed with
oil. The modern pressman, who has ineffectually tried to make ordinary
printing ink stick to parchment imperfectly cleansed of oily matter,
will at once attribute this failure of the printer of the _Psalter_ to
the oiliness of the vellum and the weakness of his printing ink.
[300] _Practical Hints on Decorative Printing_, p. 50.
[301] This method of printing in colors was patented by Solomon Henry
of Great Britain in 1786, and in another form by Sir William Congreve
in 1819, and by him applied to the printing of maps. _Abridgment of
Specifications relating to Printing_, London, 1859. Improvements in
machine presses have put out of use these methods of printing in colors.
[302] _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, vol. II, p. liii, note.
[303] Blades shows fac-similes of the printed work of Colard Mansion,
in which we see that his red and black were printed by the same
impression. _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, vol. I, p. 43.
Also, plates III and VIII.
[304] The modern printer who may regard this method of color-printing
as puerile and wasteful of time, must be reminded that, slow as it
may now seem, it was a quicker method than that of hand-drawing and
painting. The difference between the old and the modern process of
printing in colors will be fully stated, by saying that Schœffer
printed, probably, but forty copies of this initial in one day, and
that the modern pressman on a machine press would be required to
produce, from two impressions, about twenty-five hundred copies in one
day. Far from being a specimen of the skill of the early printers, this
initial B is a flagrant example of their inexperience and the rudeness
of their methods.
[305] See fac-simile, plate 15, _Humphrey’s History of Printing_.
[306] See fac-simile on page 455 for the frequent transposition of the
letters _t_ and _c_. Also in first line of same fac-simile, _Presen
spalmorum_ for _Presens psalmorum_.
[307] Fournier thinks that _all_ the letters of the _Psalter_ were cut
on wood. _De l’origine, etc., de l’imprimerie_, p. 231. But Bernard
says: “After a careful study of many copies, I declare that this book
is certainly printed with types of founded metal, and founded, too,
with admirable precision.” _De l’origine et des débuts_, etc., vol. I,
p. 224.
[308] The last edition of the book, printed by his son, John Schœffer,
in 1516, shows the great initial B entirely in red ink. It proves that
the letter previously printed in two colors was engraved on one block.
It proves also that the original method of painting the letter in two
colors had been found expensive and impracticable.
[309] The one first printed is dated April 6th, 1462: it is a
manifesto, from Diether, notifying all people that he is the lawful
ruler, and that Adolph is the usurper. This document, which is in
German, contains 106 lines of Great-primer type, and is printed on a
sheet of the size 12-1/2 by 17-1/4 inches. But when Adolph captured
Mentz, he issued counter proclamations. First of all was a proclamation
dated August 8, 1461, from the Emperor Frederic III, announcing the
deposal of Diether. It was printed on a half sheet, in German, and in
the types of the _Bible of 1462_. The other proclamations were bulls or
briefs in Latin, against Diether, from Pope Pius II, dated at Tivoli.
All of them are in Round Gothic types on English body. The first bull
warns the people to shun Diether as they would a pestilent beast; the
second is the warrant for the installation of Adolph; the third orders
the clergy to obey Adolph; the fourth orders the people to obey Adolph,
and releases them from allegiance to Diether. The fifth bull relates to
a different matter: it sets forth the unsuccessful mission of Cardinal
Bessarion to the Turks. Bernard, _De l’origine_, etc., vol. I, p. 242.
[310] Bernard, _De l’origine_, vol. II, p. 273.
[311] We do not know whether Jenson acquired his knowledge of printing
secretly or openly—in the office of Gutenberg or Schœffer, or
elsewhere, but he succeeded in his undertaking. Nor is the date of his
return to Paris known. Madden thinks that Jenson was taught the art not
in Mentz, but in Cologne. During his absence, Charles VII died. On the
15th August, 1461, Louis XI, his son, was crowned at Rheims. A lover of
books, and the founder of the great National Library, the king should
have been deeply interested in the mission of Jenson, but he had formed
a strong dislike to all the officers that had been appointed by his
father, and began his reign by dismissing the court favorites. Jenson
was treated as one of their number. All his efforts to get a suitable
recompense for what he had done, and money to establish an office in
Paris, were unavailing, and he was obliged to abandon Paris. He went to
Venice, and made himself famous by his new design of Roman letter, and
by the admirable presswork of his books.
[312] These _Bibles_ have been the occasion of an incredible legend
which was first told by one John Walchius. It would not deserve
repetition here if it had not so often appeared in modern literature.
He says that Fust offered one copy of this _Bible_ to the king for
sixty crowns, and another copy to the archbishop for fifty crowns. To
tempt indifferent purchasers, he abated his price until it was but
forty crowns, a price so small and so insufficient as to excite the
greatest wonder. The purchasers of different copies, fearing trickery,
compared their copies. Instead of discovering imperfection, they found
an unvarying uniformity which was unaccountable. Meanwhile Fust was
still offering for sale other copies, and all were exactly alike. As it
was clearly impossible that any copyist could write so many books with
this precision, it was obvious that Fust was in league with the Devil,
and that the _Bibles_ were their joint production. The logical process
by which this conclusion was reached is not stated; but we are told
that complaint was made, that Fust was arrested, and thrown in prison,
from which he was not released until he had revealed the secret. The
absurdity of the story is transparent. Bernard has shown that it rests
on no valid authority.
[313] See page 435 of this book.
[314] In this year Conrad Sweinheym and Arnold Pannartz, who had
established a printing office in the monastery of Subiaco, near Rome,
printed an edition of _Lactantius_, in which Greek types were used.
[315] The phrase, _neque ærea_, must be understood as, not by engraving
_in_ brass or copper plates, or not by the process then employed by the
copper-plate printers.
[316] The use of the words, Peter, my son, may be understood as the
first acknowledgment by Fust of the marriage of his daughter to
Schœffer.
[317] The Library of Geneva has a copy of this edition of _Cicero_,
which contains, in his own handwriting, the acknowledgment of Louis
de Lavernade, first president of Languedoc, that the book had been
presented to him in Paris, by John Fust, in July, 1466.
[318] The record of this church says that the mass was instituted to
John Fust, printer of books, “by Peter Scofer and Conrad Henlif,”
who gave to the church the _Epistles of Saint Jerome_, printed
on parchment, and valued at 12 crowns of gold. In 1473, Schœffer
established another mass for Fust and his wife Margaret, with the
Dominicans at Mentz, for which he gave a copy of the _Epistles of
Jerome_ and of the _Constitutions of Pope Clement V_. As two books
were here required, it shows that the price of books was rapidly
depreciating.
[319] Bernard says that this Conrad was the son of John Fust, and that
Christina Fust, who married Schœffer, was Conrad’s daughter. The only
evidence that this Christina was Conrad’s daughter is the statement
in the application, which is printed above. But this statement is not
enough to overturn the contradictory statements of other writers of
that day, who had better knowledge of the true relationship of all the
parties. Wetter thinks that Conrad was another son-in-law to Fust. We
know very little about him. It does not appear that he had any thing
to do with printing before the death of Fust, nor did he exercise any
known influence as a printer. His name is not to be found in any of
Schœffer’s books. It is not known when he died.
[320] This manuscript was returned, as had been agreed. It was probably
used to collate the text of their edition of this book, a big folio of
548 double-columned pages in types on English body, which was completed
by Schœffer and Conrad Fust, June 13th, 1469.
[321] This passage is an allusion to the running of the disciples to
the sepulchre where Christ had been laid. “So they ran both together;
and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the
sepulchre . . . . yet went he not in . . . . Then cometh Simon Peter
following him, and went into the sepulchre.” St. John, XX, 4, 6.
[322] _Institutes of Justinian_, 1468.
[323] It seems that this was done to avoid the expense of making a
new mould, and to save the labor of cutting new capital letters—an
evasion of duty not at all creditable to the alleged inventor of the
type-mould. Gutenberg made four sizes of Pointed Gothic—the Paragon of
the _Bible of 42 lines_, the Double-pica of the _Bible of 36 lines_,
the Double-great-primer and Meridian of the _Psalter of 1457_—and three
sizes of Round Gothic, the large English of the _Letter of Indulgence
of 31 lines_, the small English of the _Letter of Indulgence of 30
lines_, and the Pica of the _Catholicon of 1460_. They were cast on
seven distinct bodies. Schœffer’s three faces of types, one of them
imperfect, were cast on two bodies.
[324] He consigned his books to one Hans Bitz of Lubec, who died,
leaving the debt unpaid.
[325] To become a freeman of the city of Frankfort, Schœffer paid a tax
of 10 pounds 4 shillings.
[326] There is in Paris a treatise by Dun Scotus, printed by Anthony
Koburger of Nuremberg in 1474, which contains a bill of sale written by
Peter Schœffer, which states that the book was sold to one John Henry
for three crowns of gold.
[327] His agent in Paris was Hermann Stathoen, who died there in 1474,
before he had been made a citizen. According to the French law, all his
effects reverted to the crown. The books of Schœffer were seized by the
king’s commissioners, and were scattered and sold before his partner
Conrad Fust, or Henlif, could make a reclamation. He appealed to the
king, Louis XI, who ordered that Schœffer should be recompensed by the
payment of 2,425 crowns. This was a large sum for that day: it was
nearly four times as large as the sum fixed on in a valuation of all
the books in the Louvre in 1459.
[328] His son, John Schœffer, who had some control over the printing
office before his father’s death, timidly and tardily introduced
paging-figures, but they were not regularly used in his later works. We
may suppose that the father disliked the innovation. The invention of
leads is the only improvement that can be attributed to Schœffer.
[329] Ten years before, John Schœffer had conceded full justice to
Gutenberg, and had told the story with more truth. In the dedication
of an edition of Livy, printed by him in 1505, John Schœffer uses this
language: “Will your Majesty [addressing the Emperor Maximilian] deign
to accept this book, printed in Mentz, the city in which the admirable
art of typography was invented, in the year 1450, by the ingenious John
Gutenberg, and was afterward perfected at the cost and by the work of
John Fust and of Peter Schœffer . . . ” This acknowledgment did not
prevent the Emperor from making a subsequent official declaration, in
the privilege or copyright for a grand edition of Livy, published by
the same printer, and dated December 9, 1518, that the grandfather of
John Schœffer had invented printing [_chalcographia_]. So much for the
strength of audacious falsehood! Bernard, _De l’origine et des débuts_,
vol. I, p. 309.
[330] _Annales Hirsaugienses_, vol. II, p. 421.
[331] The description of the more ingenious method of “founding the
forms of all the letters of the Latin alphabet, which they called
matrices, from which [matrices] they again founded types, either in
tin or in brass,” has been denounced by many writers on typography as
the confused statement of a man who did not thoroughly understand what
he related, and who has reversed the proper order of the process of
type-making. A more careful reading will show that Trithemius attempted
to describe the process of matrix-making, which is set forth in page
302 of this book. He says the types were made either of brass or of
tin, for his memory failed him, and he could not recollect that it was
the matrix which should have been of brass, and the type of tin. The
characters “which before this had been cut by hand” may be regarded
not as types, but as punches of soft metal. They would necessarily be
damaged by pressure in the semi-fluid metal selected for making the
matrices. The tools which Trithemius vainly tried to describe were the
punch of steel and the mould and matrices of brass. That punches and
matrices of wood or of soft metal unequal to hard pressure were used by
the earlier printers is proved by the variable shapes of their types.
[332] The impressions of Gutenberg, which clearly show that his types
were cast and not cut, should outweigh the statements of all the
chroniclers; but it may be proper to call attention to the fact that
the types of the _Bible of 42 lines_ were used by Schœffer in 1476,
and that the types of the _Letters of Indulgence_ and of the _Bible of
36 lines_ were in use by Hauman at the end of the fifteenth century.
If these types had been cut, they would have been soon worn out. The
reappearance of these faces fifty years after they were first used
shows that the types of Hauman must have been cast from the matrices of
Gutenberg.
[333] This version is found in _Wolf’s Monumenta Typographica_,
vol. I, pp. 466 and 469, under the heading of _The Statement of an
Unknown Author_, and is attributed by Wolf to one Jo. Frid. Faustus of
Aschaffenburg (who died in 1620), or to his son. Wolf admits (p. 452,
note) that the identity of the author is not clearly established. It is
probable that the statement was written by a descendant of John Fust,
who was predisposed to magnify his services and those of his partner.
Van der Linde calls the writer an arch liar. Bernard rejects the entire
statement as unworthy of credit, or even of notice.
[334] Five of the disputed works are the _Donatus of 1451_, the _Bible
of 36 lines_, the _Letters of Indulgence of 1455_, the _Calendar of
1457_ and the _Almanac of 1455_. The chief reason for attributing these
works to Pfister is that they exhibit the types of the _Bible of 36
lines_.
[335] There is no English equivalent for _libripagus_, which means
a workman who is an engraver, a printer, and a stenciler. Like
other writers of his day, Paul of Prague had to coin a word to
define printers, who for many years after were called _typographi_,
_typothetæ_, _chalcographi_, _excusores_ and _protocharagmatici_.
Most writers called printers _impressores_, or impressors, from the
process of impressing types. This word, which was finally accepted in
all European languages, has served to foster the error that the vital
principle of printing is impression.
[336] Ticozzi, Stefano, _Storia del letterati e degli artisti del
dipartimento della Piave_, Belluno, 1813. See, also, _L’imprimerie_,
No. 58, October, 1868.
[337] Bernard, _De l’origine_, vol. II, p. 94. This vain and scandalous
inscription was probably made by one of Mentel’s descendants. It is
not stated when this tablet was erected. Bernard supposes that it is
a second tablet, which was put up in place of one made soon after his
burial.