in Christo patre ac domino domino Sixto papa quarto pontifice
maximo illustrissimo, nobilissime domus austrie Friderico,
Romanorum rege gloriosissimo, rerum dominis, Nobili nec
non generoso Adolpho de Nassau archiepiscopatum gerente
maguntinensem, in nobili urbe Moguntia que nostros apud maiores
Aurea dicta, quam diuina etiam clementia dono gratuito pre
ceteris terrarum nationibus arte impressoria dignata est
illustrare, hoc presens Gratiani decretum suis cum rubricis,
non atramentali penna cannaue, sed arte quadam ingeniosa
imprimendi, cunctipotente adspiranti deo, Petrus Schoiffer de
Gernsheym suis consignando scutis feliciter consummauit.
A similar colophon was used in the “Nova compilatio Decretalium Gregorii
IX” of 1473, and the phrase “suis consignando scutis” occurs again in
Schoeffer’s edition of S. Bernard’s Sermons (1475) and in several books
of the three following years. In 1479, in an edition of the “Decretals
of Gregory IX,” the phrase is varied to “cuius armis signantur,” after
which Panzer records it no more. This first mention of the shields has
for us far more interest than the pompous recital of how Sixtus IV was
pope, and Frederick of Austria king of the Romans, and Adolph of Nassau
archbishop of Mainz when this “Decretal of Gratian” was printed “in the
noble city of Mainz, which our ancestors used to call the golden city,
and which has been so highly favored by its preëminence in printing.”
Needless discussions have been raised as to what was the use and import
of printers’ devices, and it has even been attempted to connect them
with literary copyright, with which they had nothing whatever to do,
literary copyright in this decade depending solely on the precarious
courtesy of rival firms, or possibly on the rules of their trade-guilds.
But here, on the authority of the printer who first used one, we have a
clear indication of the reason which made him put his mark in a book—the
simple reason that he was proud of his craftsmanship and wished it to
be recognized as his. “By signing it with his shields Peter Schoiffer
has brought the book to a happy completion.” When Wenssler of Basel
copied Schoeffer’s books, he copied him also in affixing their marks
and in drawing attention to them in the same way. Wenssler, too, was
a good printer, and though he was certainly not claiming copyright in
books which he was simply reprinting, he was equally anxious to have his
handiwork recognized.
If yet further evidence be wanted, we can find it in the colophon to
Schoeffer’s 1477 edition of the “Tituli Decisionum antiquarum et
nouarum,” which reads as follows:
Anno domini M.cccc.lxxvij. pridie nonis Ianuariis graui
labore maximisque impensis Romanam post impressionem opus
iterum emendatum: antiquarum nouarumque decisionum suis
cum additionibus dominorum de Rota: In ciuitate Maguntina
impressorie artis inuentrice elimatriceque prima Petrus
Schoyffer de Gernssheym suis consignando scutis arte magistra;
feliciter finit.
Some other features which occur in the wording of this will be noted
later on. For our present purpose it is of interest to find the mark of
the shields attached to a book which is distinctly stated to have been
printed “Romanam post impressionem,” “after the edition printed at Rome,”
and for which, therefore, no literary copyright is conceivable.
In the 1473 reprint of the “Sextus Decretalium” we note that Schoeffer
now considered himself venerable, or perhaps it would be fairer to
say “worshipful” (“per venerandum virum Petrum schoiffer de Gernshem
feliciter est consummatum”), but in his edition of S. Augustine’s “De
Ciuitate Dei,” of the same year, we find a more important variant. This
reads:
Igitur Aurelii Augustini ciuitatis orthodoxe sideris prefulgidi
de ciuitate Dei opus preclarissimum, binis sacre pagine
professoribus eximiis id commentantibus rubricis tabulaque
discretum precelsa in urbe moguntina partium Alemanie, non
calami per frasim, caracterum autem apicibus artificiose
elementatum, ad laudem Trinitatis indiuidue, ciuitatis dei
presidis, operose est consummatum per Petrum schoiffer de
gernsheim. Anno domini M.cccc.lxxiij. die v. mensis septembris.
Presidibus ecclesie catholice Sixto tercio pontifice summo Sedi
autem moguntine Adolfo secundo presule magnifico. Tenente autem
ac gubernante Christianismi monarchiam Imperatore serenissimo
Frederico tercio Cesare semper augusto.
Thus the most renowned work of Aurelius Augustinus, a shining
star of the city of orthodoxy, the De Ciuitate Dei, with the
notes of two distinguished professors of Biblical Theology, set
out with rubrics and index, in the exalted city of Mainz of the
parts of Germany, not by the inditing of a reed, but skilfully
put together from the tips of characters, to the praise of the
undivided Trinity, ruler of the City of God, has been toilfully
brought to completion by Peter Schoiffer of Gernsheim, in
the year of the Lord 1473, on the fifth day of the month of
September, the catholic church being under the rule of Sixtus
III as supreme pontiff, and the see of Mainz under that of the
magnificent patron Adolf II, while the most serene Emperor
Frederick III, Caesar Augustus, held and guided the monarchy of
Christendom.
The struggles of the fifteenth-century Latinists to express the
technicalities of printing are always interesting, and the phrase
“caracterum apicibus elementatum” is really gallant. Following the
Greek στοιχεῖα, the Romans used the word “elementa” originally for the
component sounds of speech and then, by transference, for the letters
of the alphabet. “Elementatum,” therefore, is strictly appropriate, and
might be rendered “with the letters built up or put together,” while
“caracterum apicibus” of course refers to the engraving in relief which
forms the face of the type.
In 1475, perhaps as an echo of some verses in the “Noua compilatio
Decretalium Gregorii IX” of 1473, we find a new phrase tacked on to the
“arte impressoria” in an edition of Justinian, noting the fact that
though Providence did not consider antiquity worthy of the art, it had
been granted to our times (“qua quidem etsi antiquitas diuino non digna
est visa indicio, nostra nichilominus tempestate indulta”). In 1476
again Schoeffer advertises that his edition of Justinian’s Institutes
was printed “in the noble city of Mainz am Rhein, the inventress and
first perfectress of the printing art” (“In nobili urbe Maguncia
Rheni, impressorie artis inuentrice elimatriceque prima”), while in the
Clementine Constitutions of the same year he substitutes “alumnaque” for
“elimatriceque,” presumably in the sense of pupil or practiser, reverting
subsequently to “elimatrice.” In 1478 he once more varies the praises
of Mainz by calling her “domicilium Minerve firmissimum,” “the most
stable home of Minerva.” With this year 1478, which closes the period of
Schoeffer’s chief activity, we may bring our survey of his colophons to
an end. Thereafter he printed more intermittently, and, if the absence of
colophons may be trusted, as I think it may, with less interest in his
work. But during these twenty-two years from 1457 to 1478, inclusive, he
had made his books bear continual testimony to one great fact, that the
art of printing had been invented and brought to perfection in Germany,
in the city of Mainz; and in any weighing of the comparative claims
that have been advanced on behalf of Germany and Holland, I think that
the evidence of Schoeffer’s colophons alone would suffice to give the
priority to Germany and Mainz.
Of the clearness and energy of the claim made in these Mainz colophons,
we have already given abundant illustration, nor can there be any
doubt that it obtained wide publicity. Schoeffer printed at least one
advertisement of his books, and he had an agency for their sale in
Paris. Besides this, his editions were copied by other printers. So
far as publicity could be insured in the fifteenth century, it was
insured by Schoeffer, aided by the printer of the “Catholicon,” for
the statement that printing was invented at Mainz; and despite the
rivalry between city and city, and between country and country, during
all the years that this assertion was being repeated in one colophon
after another, no printer in any other book ventured to challenge it.
No doubt there are facts on the side of Holland which have to be
explained as best we may, but in the face of these Mainz colophons the
explanation must be of such a kind as to leave undisputed the fact
that it was at Mainz that printing with movable types—“mira patronarum
formarumque concordia proporcione et modulo”—first became a practicable
art. On the other hand, as to the individual inventor of this art the
fifteenth-century colophons are absolutely silent. There is nothing in
any Mainz colophon answering to the boast of John of Speier at Venice,
“primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis,” by which he asserted his
individual priority over any other firm. The only statement of the kind
is in the extraordinarily crabbed verses added by the corrector Magister
Franciscus, after the colophon, to the “Institutiones Justiniani” of
1468, and reprinted in that of 1472, and in the Decretals of 1473, but
omitted in 1476. This states that two Johns, both of whom the town of
Mainz produced (genuit), were the renowned first stampers of books
(librorum insignes protocaragmaticos), and that with them was associated
a Peter; and the natural interpretation of these allusions identifies the
“protocaragmatici” (though the “proto” may refer to preëminence quite
as well as to priority) with Johann Gutenberg, Johann Fust, and Peter
Schoeffer.
So far as they are intelligible, therefore, these verses in the
Institutes of Justinian confirm and extend the evidence of the colophons,
and may be cheerfully accepted. Our last colophon in this chapter is not
quite in the same case. This famous and ingeniously arranged addendum to
the edition of the “Compendium de Origine regum et gentis Francorum” of
Johann Tritheim, printed by Johann Schoeffer at Mainz in 1515, is shown
as one of our illustrations, but may nevertheless be transcribed here for
the sake of expanding its contractions:
[Illustration: Tritheim. Chronicarum opus. Mainz: Joh.
Schoeffer, 1515. (Reduced.)]
Impressum et completum est presens chronicarum opus, anno
domini MDXV. in uigilia Margaretae uirginis. In nobili
famosaque urbe Moguntina, huius artis impressorie inuentrice
prima. Per Ioannem Schöffer, nepotem quondam honesti uiri
Ioannis Fusth, ciuis Moguntini, memorate artis primarii
auctoris. Qui tandem imprimendi artem proprio ingenio
excogitare specularique coepit anno dominice natiuitatis
M.CCCC.L. indictione XIII. Regnante illustrissimo Romanorum
imperatore Frederico III, praesidente sanctae Moguntinae sedi
Reuerendissimo in Christo patre domino Theoderico pincerna de
Erpach, principe electore. Anno autem M.CCCC.LII. perfecit
deduxitque eam (diuina fauente gratia) in opus imprimendi,
opera tamen ac multis necessariis adinuentionibus Petri
Schöffer de Gernsheim ministri suique filii adoptiui, cui etiam
filiam suam Christinam Fusthinn, pro digna laborum multarumque
adinuentionum remuneratione nuptui dedit. Retinuerunt autem
hii duo iam praenominati, Ioannes Fusth et Petrus Schöffer,
hanc artem in secreto (omnibus ministris ac familiaribus eorum,
ne illam quoquo modo manifestarent, iureiurando astrictis)
Quo tandem de anno domini M.CCCCLXII per eosdem familiares
in diuersas terrarum prouincias diuulgata haud parum sumpsit
incrementum.
Cum gratia et priuilegio Caesaree Maiestatis iussu et impensis
honesti Ioannis Haselperg ex Aia maiore Constantiensis
dioecesis.
This may be rendered:
The present historical work has been printed and completed in
the year of the Lord 1515, on the vigil of Margaret, virgin,
in the noble and famous city of Mainz, first inventress of
this printing art, by John Schöffer, grandson of a late worthy
man, John Fust, citizen of Mainz, foremost author of the said
art, who in due course by his own genius began to think out
and investigate the art of printing in the year of the Lord’s
nativity 1450, in the thirteenth indiction, in the reign of
the most illustrious Emperor of the Romans Frederick III,
and when the most reverend father in Christ, Theoderic the
cup-bearer, of Erbach, prince-elector, was presiding over the
sacred see of Mainz, And in the year 1452 perfected and by the
favor of divine grace brought it to the work of printing, by
the help, however, and with many necessary inventions[2] of
Peter Schöffer of Gernsheim, his workman and adoptive son, to
whom also he gave his daughter Christina Fust in marriage as a
worthy reward of his labors and many inventions.[2] And these
two already named, Ioannes Fust and Peter Schöffer, kept this
art secret, all their workmen and servants being bound by an
oath not in any way to reveal it; but at last, from the year of
the Lord 1462, through these same servants being spread abroad
into divers parts of the world, it received no small increase.
With the favor and privilege of the Imperial Majesty and at the
command and expense of the worthy John Haselperg of Reichenau
of the diocese of Constance.
It would be too much to call this colophon untruthful, inasmuch as the
term “primarius auctor,” like “protocaragmaticus,” does not necessarily
claim primacy in point of time; nevertheless, it certainly suggests
this primacy and generally assigns to Fust a more decisive part than we
can easily believe that he played. We need not censure too hardly John
Schoeffer’s family feeling, even though it led him to ignore Gutenberg
in a way which earlier testimony forbids us to believe to be just; but
it seems evident that family feeling was so much to the fore as to place
this long historical colophon on quite a different footing from that of
the earlier ones written by Schoeffer himself.
[Illustration]
III
COLOPHONS AT VENICE
While to Mainz belongs the supreme credit of having brought printing
to the position of a practical art, the city in which it attained
its highest perfection and popularity in the fifteenth century was
undoubtedly Venice. The output from the Venetian presses represented some
forty per cent. of the entire book production of Italy, and its quality
was at least as remarkable as its quantity. It is natural, therefore,
to turn from Mainz to Venice in our quest for interesting colophons,
as wherever printers did good work and took pride in it we may expect
to find correspondingly good colophons. Certainly at Venice we have no
ground for disappointment in this respect. The Venetian colophons are
plentiful and full of information, though chiefly about the publisher’s
side of printing. What makes them a little alarming to the pedestrian
editor is that so many of the earliest and most interesting specimens
are in verse. The books most favored by the first Venetian printers were
editions of the Latin classics and Latin translations of the Greek ones.
To see these through the press each printer had to retain the services
of a corrector, who filled a position half-way between the modern
proof-reader’s and editor’s. The printers, not being able to write Latin
themselves with any fluency, naturally left their colophons in the hands
of their correctors, and these gentlemen preferred to express themselves
in verse. The verse, even allowing for the fact that it is generally
intended to be scanned by accent rather than quantity, is often of a kind
which would get an English school-boy into considerable trouble; and it
would be a nice question as to whether Omnibonus Leonicenus and Raphael
Zovenzonius, who wrote it for John and Wendelin of Speier; Antonius
Cornazanus, who was in the pay of Jenson; or Valdarfer’s corrector,
Lodovicus Carbo, should be held the most successful. Just, however,
because its poetic ornaments are commonplace, to render this verse into
prose seems more than usually unsportsmanlike. Good poetry can stand
the test of prose, and the poetaster meddles with it at his peril, as
witness the uniform inferiority of metrical renderings of the Psalms to
the prose of the Great Bible or Prayer-Book version. But mediocre poetry
when turned into prose becomes simply ridiculous, and so the present
translator, without reckoning himself as even a “minimus poeta,” has
wrestled manfully with these various verse colophons and “reduced” them,
as best he could, into English rhymes, since these, poor as they are,
misrepresent the originals less than any attempt he could make in prose.
Here, then, without more apology, are the colophons from the earliest
Venetian books, which fall into an interesting sequence.
The first printer at Venice, it will be remembered, was John of Speier,
who obtained a special privilege for his work which would have cramped
the whole craft at Venice had not his death removed the difficulty. In
his first book, an edition of Cicero’s “Epistolae ad Familiares,” printed
in 1469, the colophon is cast into these verses:
[Illustration: Cicero. Epistolae ad Familiares. Venice: John of
Speier, 1469.]
Primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis
Vrbe Libros Spira genitus de stirpe Iohannes.
In reliquis sit quanta uides spes, lector, habenda,
Quom labor hic primus calami superauerit artem.
M.CCCC.LXVIIII.
In Adria’s town, one John, a son of Speier,
First printed books by means of forms of brass.
And for the future shall not hope rise higher
When the first fruits the penman’s art surpass?
1469.
Of this first Venetian edition of Cicero’s letters we know from a
subsequent colophon that only one hundred copies were printed, one
twenty-fifth part of the whole edition now being preserved in the four
copies at the British Museum. It was obviously sold out very rapidly,
and in some three or four months’ time the printer had got out a second
edition, to which he added a new colophon.
[Illustration: Cicero. Epistolae ad Familiares. Second Edition.
Venice: John of Speier, 1469.]
Hesperiae quondam Germanus quisque[3] libellos
Abstulit: en plures ipse daturus adest.
Namque uir ingenio mirandus et arte Ioannes
Exscribi docuit clarius aere libros.
Spira fauet Venetis: quarto nam mense peregit
Hoc tercentenum bis Ciceronis opus.
M.CCCC.LXVIIII.
From Italy once each German brought a book.
A German now will give more than they took.
For John, a man whom few in skill surpass,
Has shown that books may best be writ with brass.
Speier befriends Venice: twice in four months has he
Printed this Cicero, in hundreds three.
1469.
The puzzle here is to determine how many copies there were of the
second edition. Mr. Horatio Brown, in “The Venetian Printing Press” (p.
10), courageously asserts that “the second edition of the _Epistulae_
consisted of six hundred copies, published in two issues of three hundred
each; and that the whole six hundred took four months to print.” This
is clearly inadmissible, as everything we know of fifteenth-century
printing forbids us to suppose that John of Speier kept the whole book
standing in type and printed off a second “issue” when he found there
was a demand for it. The fourth month must be reckoned from the date of
the first edition, and we have to choose, as to the number of copies in
the second, between supposing that the three hundred, the “tercentenum
opus,” refers to this alone, and that the poet did not intend to make any
statement about the number of the first edition at all, or else that the
second edition consisted of two hundred copies, and that these, with the
hundred of the first, made up a total of three hundred. In either case
his language is ambiguous, as the language of poets is apt to be when
they try to put arithmetic into verse.
I have followed Mr. Proctor in making the second edition of Cicero’s
letters precede the Pliny, but—as, in common with many other students
of old books, I am made to feel daily—to be no longer able to go to him
for information is a sore hindrance. I should have thought myself that
the Pliny, a much larger book, was begun simultaneously with the first
edition of Cicero, and that Wendelin’s colophon to the “De Civitate
Dei” obliged us to link the Pliny with the first rather than the second
edition. Perhaps, however, this arithmetic in verse is once more a little
loose. Certainly the Pliny colophon, which is free from figures, is all
the better poetry for that reason. It is the book here that speaks:
[Illustration: Plinius. Historia Naturalis. Venice: John of
Speier, 1469.]
Quem modo tam rarum cupiens vix lector haberet,
Quique etiam fractus pene legendus eram:
Restituit Venetis me nuper Spira Ioannes:
Exscripsitque libros aere notante meos.
Fessa manus quondam moneo: calamusque quiescat,
Namque labor studio cessit: et ingenio.
M.CCCC.LXVIIII.
I, erst so rare few bookmen could afford me,
And erst so blurred that buyers’ eyes would fail—
To Venice now ’twas John of Speier restored me,
And made recording brass unfold my tale.
Let rest the tired hand, let rest the reed:
Mere toil to zealous wits the prize must cede.
1469.
The aspersion on the scribes was undeserved. If truth be told, either
because they used too thin an ink, or else from too slight pressure, the
early Venetian printers seldom did full justice to their beautiful types;
and though their vellum copies are really fine, those on paper are no
easier to read than the average fifteenth-century manuscripts which they
imitated. We must, however, forgive John of Speier his little boastings,
as this was the last colophon he was to print; and our next, which comes
at the end of S. Augustine’s “De Civitate Dei,” contains his epitaph:
Qui docuit Venetos exscribi posse Ioannes
Mense fere trino centena uolumina Plini
Et totidem magni Ciceronis Spira libellos,
Ceperat Aureli: subito sed morte peremptus
Non potuit ceptum Venetis finire uolumen.
Vindelinus adest, eiusdem frater et arte
Non minor, Adriacaque morabitur urbe.
M.CCCC.LXX.
John, who taught Venice there might written be
A hundred Plinys in months barely three,
And of great Cicero as many a book,
Began Augustine, but then death him took,
Nor suffered that he should Venetians bless
Finishing his task. Now Wendelin, no less
With skill equipped, his brother, in his room
Means to take Adria’s city for his home.
1470.
The business which thus passed into his hands was certainly carried on by
Wendelin vigorously, for during the next three years he turned out over
a dozen folios or large quartos a year. He seems, indeed, to have outrun
his resources, for as early as 1471 his colophons tell us that some of
his books were financed for him by John of Cologne, and after the summer
of 1473 his type passed into the possession of this John and his “very
faithful partner, Johann Manthen.” As Wendelin’s name disappears from
colophons for three years, it is probable that his services were taken
over with his types; in 1470, however, he was his own master and the
object of much praise from his colophon-writer. In his Sallust of this
year we read:
Quadringenta dedit formata volumina Crispi
Nunc, lector, Venetis Spirea Vindelinus.
Et calamo libros audes spectare notatos
Aere magis quando littera ducta nitet?
To Venice Wendelin, who from Speier comes,
Has given of Sallust twice two hundred tomes.
And who dare glorify the pen-made book,
When so much fairer brass-stamped letters look?
The Livy of the same year ends with a poem of forty-six lines, which
praises Wendelin for bravely rescuing such of Livy’s Decads as remained,
“saevis velut hostibus acri Bello oppugnatas,” and by multiplying copies
saving them from the fate which had befallen the rest. A poem like this,
however, must be reckoned rather with congratulatory verses than as a
colophon, though the line in these Venetian books is not always easy to
draw. Two more of Wendelin’s publications in 1470 may be pressed into our
service—a Virgil and a Petrarch. Of these the Virgil ends:
Progenitus Spira formis monumenta Maronis
Hoc Vindelinus scripsit apud Venetos.
Laudent ergo alii Polycletos Parrhasiosue
Et quosuis alios id genus artifices:
Ingenuas quisquis Musarum diligit artes
In primis ipsum laudibus afficiet:
Nec vero tantum quia multa uolumina, quantum
Quod perpulchra simul optimaque exhibeat.
M.CCCC.LXX.