THE INVENTION OF PRINTING--MAINZ
No contrast could be much greater than that between the so-called
"Costeriana" and the incunabula printed at Mainz. Annually as a small
boy I used to be taken to the Crystal Palace, and there a recognized
part of the programme in each visit was to spend half an hour in
solemnly pedalling backwards and forwards on a semicircular track on a
machine miscalled a velocipede. Perhaps these clumsy toys really
constituted a definite stage in the invention and perfection of the
modern bicycle. On the other hand, whatever may be the historical facts,
there is no reason in the nature of things why the modern bicycle should
not have been invented quite independently of them. The relative
positions of Holland and Germany as regards the invention of printing
are very analogous to those of the old velocipede and the bicycle. Even
if it could be proved decisively that some Dutch fragment of a _Donatus_
was earlier than any experiment made at Mainz or Strassburg, it was at
Mainz that the possibility was first demonstrated of producing by print
books as beautiful as any written by the scribes, and it was from
Germany, not from Holland, that printers carried the art which they had
proved to be practicable to all parts of Europe, including Holland
itself.
[Illustration: V. MAINZ, FUST AND SCHOEFFER, 1459
DURANTI, RATIONALE DIVINORUM OFFICIORUM (1^a)]
In the development of the art of printing at Mainz three men had a
share, though the precise part which each of them played is matter of
conjecture rather than knowledge. The first of the three was Johann
Gutenberg, the Johannes Bonemontanus whom Fichet, as early as 1470,
acclaimed as the first of all men to think out the printing art, whom
the popular verdict has recognized as the inventor, and whom patriotic
German bibliographers delight to invest with every virtue that
distinguishes themselves.
Gutenberg's real name was Gansfleisch, Gutenberg being an addition to
his mother's surname[18] which he assumed for reasons not known to us.
He was born about 1400, and just when he attained manhood his family,
which belonged to the patrician party at Mainz, was banished and sought
refuge at Strassburg. At Strassburg Gutenberg remained till about 1446,
and legal and municipal records, so far as we can trust to their
authenticity, offer us some tantalizing glimpses of his career there.
When the town clerk of Strassburg came to Mainz the exile caused him to
be arrested for a debt due to his family, and the matter had to be
arranged to avoid a quarrel between the two cities. On the other hand,
Gutenberg was himself called to account for unpaid duties on wine, and
was sued for a breach of promise of marriage. In 1437 he was the
defendant in a much more interesting trial. He had admitted two partners
to work an invention with him, and on one of these partners dying his
brother claimed, unsuccessfully, to take his place in the partnership.
The use of the words "presse," "forme," and "trucken" in connection with
this invention leaves it hardly open to doubt that it was concerned with
some kind of printing, and loans which Gutenberg negotiated in 1441 and
1442 were presumably raised for the development of this. About the
middle of the decade he returned to Mainz and there also borrowed money,
presumably again for the same object.
At this point we are confronted with five fragmentary pieces of
printing, all but one of them only recently discovered. The latest of
these, according to German bibliographers, is a fragment of an
astronomical Calendar in German verse for an unspecified year, which
might be 1429, 1448, or 1467, but does not exactly fit any of them; the
earliest is part of a leaf of a _Sibyllenbuch_ (originally known as _Das
Weltgericht_, because the text of this fragment deals with the Last
Judgment). Between these two are placed fragments of three editions of
_Donatus, De octo partibus orationis_, two found recently in copies of
an edition of Herolt's _Sermones de tempore et sanctis_ printed at
Strassburg[19] by Martin Flach in 1488 and now at Berlin, the third one
of the minor treasures of the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, where it
has lain for over a century. Granting that the Calendar was printed for
use in 1448 (it has been argued, on the other hand, that its mention of
movable festivals was intended to be only approximate), and that the
other four pieces can be proved by typographical evidence to have
preceded it, we may suppose the _Sibyllenbuch_ to have been printed by
Gutenberg shortly after his return to Mainz, i.e. about 1445, or shortly
before this at Strassburg.
Soon after the supposed date of the Calendar the second of the three
protagonists in the development of printing at Mainz comes on the scene.
This was Johann Fust, a goldsmith, who in or about August, 1450, lent
Gutenberg eight hundred guilders to enable him to print books, himself,
nominally or truly, borrowing the money from another capitalist, and
thereby gaining the right to charge interest on it without breaking the
canon law. By about December, 1452, the loan was exhausted, and Fust
made a fresh advance of the same amount. The inner history of the next
four years is hid from us, and the undisputed facts which belong to them
have consequently been interpreted in every variety of way that human
ingenuity can devise. These facts are that--
(i) Printing was continued with the fount of type used for the Calendar
attributed to 1448, fragments of more than a dozen different editions of
_Donatus_ printed with it being still extant, also a prognostication,
_Manung widder die Durken_, printed in December, 1454, a Bull of Pope
Calixtus "widder die Turcken" of 1456, a medical Calendar for 1456, and
an undated _Cisianus_, another work of an astronomical character.
(ii) When the pardoners employed by the proctor-general of the King of
Cyprus came to Mainz in the autumn of 1454 to raise money by means of a
papal Indulgence, valid till 30 April of the following year, they were
able to substitute two typographically distinct editions for the
manuscript copies which they had previously used, the text of each of
these Indulgences being printed in a separate fount of beautifully clear
small type, while a larger type was used for a few words. In one of
these Indulgences the larger type belongs, with some differences, to the
same fount as the books named in our last paragraph. This Indulgence has
thirty-one lines, and four issues of it have been distinguished, three
of them dated 1454 (the earliest of these being the earliest dated piece
of printing) and the fourth 1455. In the other Indulgence there are only
thirty lines, the large type is neater, and three issues have been
distinguished, one dated 1454, the other two 1455.
(iii) In November, 1455, an action brought by Fust to recover the 1600
guilders which he had lent Gutenberg, with the arrears of interest,
reached its final stage. In this suit the third of the Mainz
protagonists, Peter Schoeffer, was a witness on the side of Fust, and we
hear also, as servants of Gutenberg, of Heinrich Keffer and Bertolf von
Hanau, who may apparently be identified with printers who worked
subsequently at Nuremberg and Basel. The document which has come down to
us and is now preserved at the University Library at Gottingen is that
recording the oath taken by Fust, as the successful plaintiff, in order
to obtain judgment for the amount of his claim.
(iv) In August, 1456, Heinrich Cremer, vicar of the collegiate church at
Mainz, recorded his completion of the rubrication and binding of a
magnificent printed Bible in two volumes, now preserved in the
Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, the type of which used to be thought
identical with the larger type of the thirty-line Indulgence mentioned
above, but is now considered to be only closely similar.
For this last undoubted date of rubrication, August, 1456, German
bibliographers have lately substituted a reference to a manuscript date,
1453, in another copy of this printed Bible, now preserved in the
Buchgewerbe-Museum at Leipzig, formerly owned by a well-known German
collector of the last century, Herr Klemm. While, however, this date
appears to have been written at a period approximating to that of the
production of the book, its relevance as evidence of the date of
printing is highly disputable, more especially as there appear to be
signs of erasure near it. Its owner, Herr Klemm, preserved a discreet
silence as to its existence, and it is certainly not obligatory at
present to accept it as valid evidence.
In a work which does not pretend to the dignity of a history of printing
it is impossible to discuss, or even to enumerate, the different
theories as to the events of the years 1453-6, which have been
formulated to account for these facts. The edition of the Bible of which
Heinrich Cremer rubricated the copy now at Paris is so fine a book and
so great a landmark in typographical history, that the desire to regard
it as the production of the man who is credited with the invention of
printing, Johann Gutenberg, easily becomes irresistible. To refuse to
call it the Gutenberg Bible may, indeed, appear almost pedantic, though
its old name, the "Mazarine Bible," which it gained from the accident of
the copy in the Mazarine Library at Paris being the first to attract
attention, still survives, and it is also known among bibliographers as
the "Forty-two Line Bible," a safe uncontroversial title based on the
number of lines in most of its columns. Whoever printed it appears to
have been possessed of ample means and to have been a master of detail
and an excellent organizer. Under the minute examination to which it has
been subjected the book has yielded up some of its secrets, and we know
that it was printed simultaneously on six different presses, that the
body of the type was twice reduced, forty-two lines finally occupying
slightly less space than the forty which had at first formed a column,
that after the printing had begun it was resolved to increase the size
of the edition, and that there is some reason to think that eventually a
hundred and fifty copies were printed on paper and thirty on vellum,[20]
and that the paper was ordered in large quantities and not in small
parcels as it could be paid for. To the present writer it appears that
if Gutenberg had possessed the financial means, the patience and the
organizing power needed to push through this heavy piece of work in the
way described, it is difficult to perceive any reason why the capitalist
Fust should have quarrelled with him, or to imagine how Gutenberg
exposed himself to such an action as that which Fust successfully
carried against him. On the supposition that the Bible was completed in
or soon after 1453 the difficulty becomes almost insuperable, for it is
inconceivable that if Gutenberg had produced the book within a few
months of receiving his second loan from Fust he should not, by the
autumn of 1455, have paid his creditor a single guilder, either for
principal or interest. After his quarrel with Fust, Gutenberg apparently
had dealings with two other men, with Albrecht Pfister who is found in
possession of a later casting of the heavier fount of type in which the
Astrological Calendar attributed to 1448 had been printed, and with a
Dr. Homery. He ended his days as a pensioner at the court of the
Archbishop of Mainz, while Fust, with the aid of Peter Schoeffer, whom
he made his son-in-law, developed a great business. The inventor who
lacks organizing power and whose invention never thrives till it has
passed into other hands is no unfamiliar figure, and such a conception
of Gutenberg perhaps accords better with the known facts of his career
than that of a living incarnation of heroism and business ability such
as his German eulogists love to depict. According to a theory developed
by the present writer in an article in _The Library_ for January, 1907
(Second Series, Vol. VIII), though no originality is claimed for it, the
key to the situation lies in the assertion[21] made on behalf of Peter
Schoeffer that his skill in engraving had enabled him to attain results
denied to the two Johns, Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust.
According to this theory, it was Schoeffer who engraved the two founts
of small type used in the two sets of Indulgences of 1454-5, and thus
demonstrated that the new art could be applied to produce every kind of
book and document which had previously circulated in manuscript. Fust
gave him his daughter Christina in marriage, and Johann Schoeffer, the
offspring of the alliance, distinctly tells us that this was in reward
for his services. From the first, or almost the first, the firm adopted
a policy of advertisement which other printers were slow to imitate, the
partners giving their names in their earliest colophons and making no
secret of the fact that they were using an "adinuentio artificiosa
imprimendi ac caracterizandi" which enabled them to dispense with the
pen. In 1460, in the _Catholicon_ of that year, the work of an anonymous
printer to which we shall have to recur (see p. 51 _sqq._), the
invention is distinctly claimed for Mainz, and from 1467 this claim was
taken over by Peter Schoeffer, who in the colophons of his subsequent
books again and again celebrated Mainz as the city singled out by divine
favour to give the art to the world. The fact that for nearly forty
years (1460-99) these statements remained unchallenged, and passed into
the contemporary history of the time, is the strongest evidence in
favour of the substantial invention of the art at Mainz that can be
conceived. A single reference in 1499[22] to prefigurations of a humbler
kind in _Donatuses_ printed in Holland and the presentation of a rival
theory in 1568 cannot deprive of its due weight the evidence that during
all the years when the facts were easily ascertainable judgment in
favour of Mainz was allowed to go by default. But the Fust and Schoeffer
colophons tell us more than this, for while they make no mention of
Gutenberg they never claim the invention of printing as their own
achievement. It is clear that Fust could not claim this himself, and
while he was alive his son-in-law did not think fit to put forward, or
allow to be put forward, any claim on his own behalf. It was only in
1468, when both Gutenberg and Fust were dead, that Schoeffer's
"corrector," or reader, Magister Franciscus, was permitted to assert on
his behalf, in the _Justinian_ of that year, that though two Johns had
the better in the race he, like his namesake S. Peter, had entered first
into the sepulchre, i.e. the inner mysteries of printing. The claim,
thus irreverently put forward, is deprived of much of its weight by the
moment at which it was made; nevertheless it can hardly have been
baseless.
The desire to credit Gutenberg with some really handsome and important
piece of printing has caused his name to be connected with two other
large folios, a Latin Bible, of thirty-six lines to a column, printed in
a variety of the type used for the _Sibyllenbuch_ and the _Kalendar_ of
"1448," and a Latin Dictionary known by the name _Catholicon_, the work
of a thirteenth century writer, Joannes Balbus, of Genoa. The type of
the Thirty-six Line Bible passed into the hands of Albrecht Pfister, of
Bamberg, who printed a number of popular German books with it in 1461
and 1462. There is considerable evidence, moreover, that a large number
of copies of the Bible itself were sold at Bamberg about 1460. The
greater part of the text appears to have been set up from a copy of the
Forty-two Line Bible. Where, when, and by whom it was printed we can
only guess, but the place was more probably Bamberg than Mainz, and as
the type is believed to have been originally Gutenberg's, and there is
evidence that Pfister, when he began printing the popular books of
1461-2, was quite inexperienced, Gutenberg has certainly a better claim
to have printed this volume than any one else who can be suggested. The
Thirty-six Line Bible is a much rarer book than the Forty-two Line, but
copies are known to exist at the British Museum, John Rylands Library,
Bibliotheque Nationale, and Musee Plantin, and at Greifswald, Jena,
Leipzig, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Wolfenbuttel. A copy is also said to be
in private hands in Great Britain, but has not been registered. None has
been sold in recent times. Besides the more complete copies mentioned
above, various fragments have been preserved and some of these are on
vellum. The vellum fragment of leaf 204 now in the British Museum was at
one time used as a book-cover.
The _Catholicon_ is printed in a small type, not very cleanly cut. It
was issued without printer's name, but with a long colophon, which has
been translated:
By the help of the Most High, at Whose will the tongues of infants
become eloquent, and who oft-times reveals to the lowly that which He
hides from the wise, this noble book Catholicon, in the year of the
Lord's Incarnation 1460, in the bounteous city of Mainz of the
renowned German nation, which the clemency of God has deigned with so
lofty a light of genius and free gift to prefer and render illustrious
above all other nations of the earth, without help of reed, stilus, or
pen, but by the wondrous agreement, proportion and harmony of punches
and types has been printed and brought to an end.
Upon this follow four Latin verses in honour of the Holy Trinity and the
Virgin Mary and the words "Deo Gracias." We can imagine an inventor who,
despite his invention, remained profoundly unsuccessful, writing the
opening words of this colophon, and it is not easy to see their
appropriateness to any one else. It is thus highly probable that
Gutenberg set up this book and refused to follow Fust and Schoeffer in
their advertising ways. He may even have had a special reason for this,
for among the forty-one copies registered (almost all in great
libraries) two groups may be distinguished, one embracing the copies on
vellum and the majority of the paper copies, the other the rest of the
paper copies. The groups are distinguished by various differences, of
which the most important is that in the one case the workmen used four
and in the other two pins to keep the paper in its place while being
printed. An attractive explanation of all this would be that while
Gutenberg set up the book and was allowed to print for himself a certain
number of copies, there was a richer partner in the enterprise whose
pressmen pulled the greater part of the edition. But Dr. Zedler, who has
brought together all the available information about the book in his
monograph _Das Mainzer Catholicon_, has a different explanation.
In the same type as the _Catholicon_ are two small tracts of little
interest, the _Summa de articulis fidei_ of Thomas Aquinas, and the
_Dialogus_ of Matthaeus de Cracovia; also an Indulgence of Pope Pius II.
In 1467 the type is found in the hands of Heinrich Bechtermunze at
Eltvil, who died while printing a vocabulary. This was completed by his
brother Nicholas, who also printed three later editions of it.
During the years which precede 1457, Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer,
the one a goldsmith, the other a clerk in minor orders of the diocese of
Mainz, are involved in the obscurity and uncertainty which surround
Gutenberg's career. Reasons have been offered for believing that it was
Schoeffer who designed the small neat types used in the Mainz
Indulgences of 1454-5, and that he with his skill and Fust with his
money pushed the Forty-two Line Bible to a successful completion. If
they printed this, they no doubt printed also a liturgical psalter in
the same type, of which a fragment is preserved at the Bibliotheque
Nationale at Paris. But we do not touch firm ground until we come to the
famous Psalter of 1457, the colophon of which leaves us in no doubt as
to its typographical authorship. This runs:
Presens psalmorum[23] codex venustate capitalium decoratus
Rubricationibusque sufficienter distinctus Adinuentione artificiosa
imprimendi ac caracterizandi absque calami ulla exaracione sic
effigiatus, Et ad eusebiam dei industrie est consummatus, Per Iohannem
fust ciuem maguntinum, Et Petrum Schoffer de Gernszheim Anno domini
Millesimo .cccc.lvij. In vigilia Assumpcionis.
The present book of the Psalms, decorated with beautiful capitals and
sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus fashioned by an
ingenious invention of printing and stamping without any ploughing of
a pen, And to the worship of God has been diligently brought to
completion by Johann Fust, a citizen of Mainz, and Peter Schoeffer of
Gernsheim, in the year of the Lord, 1457, on the vigil of the
Assumption.
Thus in the Psalter of 1457 we have the first example of a book
informing us when and by whom it was manufactured; it also illustrates
in a very remarkable way the determination of the new partners to
produce a volume which should fully rival the best shop-made
manuscripts. The effort to print rubrics had already been made in the
Forty-two Line Bible, but the red printing was abandoned in that
instance as too troublesome. Now it was revived with complete success,
and with the printed rubrics came also printed capitals or initial
letters in two colours, red and blue, and several different sizes. A
good discussion of the manner in which these were printed will be found
in the _Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Printed Books exhibited at the
Historical Music Loan Exhibition_ (1886) by Mr. W. H. J. Weale. In an
article in the first volume of _Bibliographica_ Mr. Russell Martineau
showed that part of the edition was printed twice. When Mr. Martineau
wrote nine copies were known, all on vellum, viz. (i) five of an issue
of 143 leaves containing the Psalms and Canticles only, these being at
the British Museum, Royal Library Windsor, John Rylands Library,
Bibliotheque Nationale Paris, and Royal Library Darmstadt; (ii) four of
an issue of 175 leaves, containing also the Vigils of the Dead, these
being at the Bibliotheque Nationale Paris, University Library Berlin,
Royal Library Dresden, and Imperial Library Vienna. To these must now be
added a copy of the larger issue, wanting five leaves, presented in 1465
by Rene d'Anjou to the Franciscans of La Baumette-les-Angiers and now in
the municipal library at Angers. The distribution of the Psalms in this
1457 edition is that of the general "Roman use," but blank spaces were
left for the insertion of the characteristic differences of the use of
any particular diocese.
Two years later (29 August, 1459) Fust and Schoeffer produced another
Psalter, in the same types and with the same capitals, with twenty-three
instead of twenty lines to a page. This was stated in the colophon to
have been printed "ad laudem dei ac honorem sancti Jacobi," and was thus
apparently commissioned by the Benedictine monastery of S. James at
Mainz. Its arrangement is that generally in use at the time in German
monasteries. Thirteen copies of this edition are preserved, all on
vellum, viz. four in England (British Museum, Bodleian, John Rylands
Library, and the Earl of Leicester's library at Holkham), two at Paris,
one at the Hague, five in Germany, and one in Mr. Morgan's collection at
New York. This last was bought by Mr. Quaritch at the sale of the
library of Sir John Thorold for L4950.
Between the production of these two Psalters Fust and Schoeffer printed
in the same types on twelve leaves of vellum the Canon of the Mass only,
obviously that it might be bought by churches which owned Missals
otherwise in good condition, but with these much-fingered leaves badly
worn. The unique copy of this edition of the Canon was discovered at the
Bodleian Library in a Mainz Missal of 1493 and identified by Mr. Gordon
Duff. It is described by Mr. Duff in his _Early Printed Books_, and by
Dr. Falk and Herr Wallau in Part III of the Publications of the
Gutenberg Gesellschaft, with facsimiles of ten pages.
In October, 1459, Fust and Schoeffer took an important step forward by
printing in small type the _Rationale Diuinorum Officiorum_ of Gulielmus
Duranti, a large work explaining the meaning of the various services of
the Church and the ceremonies used in them. The text is printed in
double columns with sixty-three lines in each column, and the type
measures 91 mm. to twenty lines. A copy at Munich is printed partly on
paper, partly on vellum. All the other forty-two copies described by Mr.
De Ricci are entirely on vellum. The book has also one large and two
smaller capitals printed in two colours, and the first of these has been
reproduced as a frontispiece to this chapter, together with a piece of
the neat small type which, by demonstrating the possibility of cheap
printing, set up a real landmark.
In 1460 Fust and Schoeffer gave another proof of their skill in their
edition of the _Constitutions_ of Pope Clement V with the commentary of
Joannes Andreae. The text of the Constitutions is printed in two columns
in the centre of each page in a type measuring 118 mm. to twenty lines,
with the commentary completely surrounding it in the 91 type used in the
_Duranti_. Headings and colophon are printed in red, and the general
effect is extremely rich and handsome. All the fourteen copies known to
Mr. De Ricci are printed on vellum.
In 1461 printing was put to a new use by the publication of a series of
eight placards (one in two editions) relative to the struggle between
the rival archbishops of Mainz--a papal bull deposing Diether von
Isenburg, the Emperor's confirmation of this, papal briefs as to the
election of Adolf von Nassau, a petition of Diether's to the Pope, and
the manifestos of the two archbishops. All these, and also a bull of the
same year as to a crusade against the Turks, are printed in the neat 91
type, and though we may be struck by the difficulty of reading the long
lines unrelieved by any headings, these publications must have been a
great advertisement for the new art.
In 1462 the archiepiscopal struggle led to Mainz being sacked, but on 14
August there was completed there perhaps the finest of all the early
Bibles, printed throughout in the 118 type, with headings in red and
numerous two-line capitals and chapter-numbers in red and blue, though
spaces were left for others to be supplied by hand. Three different
colophons to this book have been described, and examples of all of these
are in the British Museum. Of the sixty-one extant copies registered by
Mr. De Ricci at least thirty-six are printed on vellum. The Lamoignon
copy bequeathed to the Museum by Mr. Cracherode has good painted
capitals added by hand and is a singularly fine book.
The Bible of 1462 marks the close of the great period of printing at
Mainz. Whether six, seven, or nine years separate it from the Forty-two
Line Bible the time had been splendidly employed. The capacity of the
new art had been demonstrated to the full, and taken as a group these
early Fust and Schoeffer incunabula have never on their own lines been
surpassed. The disaster of the sack of Mainz and perhaps the financial
strain involved in the production of the Bible almost reduced their
press to silence until 1465, and it was during these years that their
workmen are said to have left them and begun carrying the art into other
towns and countries.[24] When the partners resumed active work in 1465
they struck out a new line in their _De Officiis_ and _Paradoxa_ of
Cicero, but attained no special excellence in such small folios and
quartos. Fust died about this time, and Schoeffer, left to himself,
displayed no further originality. The Bible of 1472, save for the
absence of printed capitals, is a close copy of that of 1462. The
Clementine Constitutions of 1460 were reprinted, and similar editions
were issued of the Institutes and Codex of Justinian, Decretals of Pope
Gregory IX, etc. For his miscellaneous books Schoeffer seems rather to
have followed the lead of other printers at Strassburg and Rome than to
have set new fashions himself. In 1483 he printed a Breslau Missal, and
this was followed by two reprints and editions for the use of Cracow,
Meissen, Gnesen, and Mainz itself. He also printed the _Hortus
Sanitatis_ in 1485, and in 1490 the first of several Psalters in the
style of the editions of 1457 and 1459. In 1503 he was succeeded by his
son Johann.
About 1476-80 a few unimportant books were issued at Mainz by an
anonymous printer known as the "Printer of the Darmstadt
Prognostication," from the fact that the first copy of the
Prognostication in question to attract notice was that in the Darmstadt
library. The books of this press attained undeserved notoriety from the
forged dates inserted in many of them about 1800, in order to connect
them with Gutenberg.
The work of three other printers, Johann Neumeister, Erhard Reuwich, and
Jacob Meidenbach is chiefly important in the history of
book-illustration, and will be found mentioned in Chapter VII. The only
other Mainz printer in the fifteenth century was Peter von Friedberg,
who is chiefly notable as having printed a little series of works by
Johannes Trithemius (Tritheim or Trittenheim), the erudite Abbot of
Spanheim.
After about 1472 Mainz was easily surpassed as a centre of printing by
Strassburg, Cologne, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. But if no book had been
printed there after the sack of the city ten years earlier, its fame as
long as civilization lasts would still be imperishable.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Her maiden name was Elsa Wyrich, but she lived at the Hof zum
Gutenberg at Mainz, and the name Gutenberg thus came into the family.
[19] It will be noted that this connection with Strassburg offers
just a grain of evidence in favour of the _Donatuses_ having been
printed there rather than at Mainz.
[20] According to the excellent _Catalogue raisonne des premieres
impressions de Mayence_ of Mr. Seymour de Ricci, eleven copies on
vellum and thirty on paper can now be located, but some of these have
only one of the two volumes. The vellum copy belonging to Mr. Robert
Hoe sold in 1911 for $50,000.
[21] In the verses by Magister Franciscus in the _Justinian_ of 1468,
subsequently twice reprinted.
[22] In the Cologne Chronicle. See _supra_, p. 34.
[23] Misprinted _spalmorum_.
[24] It seems reasonable to believe that Ulrich Zell, the first
printer at Cologne, who was a clerk of the diocese of Mainz, and
Sweynheym and Pannartz, who introduced printing into Italy, owed
their training to Fust and Schoeffer.