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THE INVENTION OF PRINTING.

The earliest specimen of printing from movable type known to exist was printed at Mainz in 1454. In making this statement, I do not wish to pass over the claims of France and the Low Countries to the invention of printing, but only to point out that, in considering the question, we must put the evidence of the printed books themselves first, and then work from these to such documentary evidence as we possess. France has the documents but no books; the Low Countries neither the one nor the other; and therefore, if we are to set about our inquiries on any rational plan, we must date the invention of printing from the date of its first product. This is the famous Indulgence of Nicholas V. to such as should contribute money to aid the King of Cyprus against the Turks.

In the copy of the Indulgence now preserved in the Meerman-Westreenen Museum at the Hague (discovered by Albert Frick at Ulm in 1762, and afterwards in the collections of Schelhorn and Meerman), the place of issue, Erfurth, and the date, November 15, have been filled in; thus giving us as the earliest authentic date on a printed document, November 15, 1454.

In the years 1454 and 1455 there was a large demand for these Indulgences, and seven editions were issued. These may be divided into two sets, the one containing thirty-one lines, the other thirty lines; the first dated example belonging to the former.

These two sets are unmistakably the work of two different printers, one of whom may well have been Peter Schœffer, since we find the initial letters which are used in the thirty-line editions used again in an Indulgence of 1489 certainly printed by him. Who, then, was the printer of the other set? He is generally stated to have been John Gutenberg; and though we have no proof of this, or indeed of Gutenberg’s having printed any book at all, there is a strong weight of circumstantial evidence in his favour.

What do we know about John Gutenberg, the presumed printer of the first dated specimen of printing? The earliest information comes from the record of a lawsuit brought against him at Strasburg in 1439 by George Dritzehn, for money advanced.

There is hardly room for doubt that the business on which Gutenberg was engaged, and for which money was advanced him, was printing. There is a certain ambiguity about some of the expressions, but the greater part of the account is too clear and straightforward to allow of any doubt.[5] It may safely be said that before 1439 Gutenberg was at work at Strasburg, experimenting on and perfecting the art of printing.

[5] A very careful literal and unabridged translation will be found in Hessels’ Gutenberg, pp. 34-57. The text used is Laborde’s with some corrections, and Schœpflin’s readings when they vary are given in notes. It should be noted that Mr. Hessels implies that the account of this trial is a forgery, or at any rate unreliable; but his negative and partial reasoning cannot stand against the evidence brought forward by many trustworthy authorities.

The next document which relates to him as a printer is the lawsuit of 1455, the original transcript of which was recently found at Göttingen. This was brought against him by Fust to recover a loan of 800 guilders. In this lawsuit mention is made of two of Gutenberg’s servants, Heinrich Keffer, afterwards a printer at Nuremberg, and Bertolf von Hanau, supposed to be the same as Bertold Ruppel, the first printer at Basle. Peter Schœffer also appears as a witness. We learn from this suit that somewhere about August 1450, Fust advanced the amount of 800 guilders, and about December 1452 a like amount; but these loans were advanced in the first instance by Fust towards assisting a work of which the method was understood, and we are therefore justified in considering that by that time Gutenberg had mastered the principles of the art of printing.

The first two books printed at Mainz were the editions of the Vulgate, known from the number of lines which go to the page as the forty-two line and thirty-six line Bibles. The forty-two line edition is generally called the Mazarine Bible, because the copy which first attracted notice was found in Cardinal Mazarin’s library; and the thirty-six line edition, Pfister’s or the Bamberg Bible, because the type used in it was at one time in the possession of Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg. On the question as to which of the two editions is the earlier, there has been endless controversy; and before going farther, it will be as well to state shortly the actual data which we possess from which conclusions can be drawn.

The Paris copy of the forty-two line Bible has the rubricator’s inscription, which shows that the book was finished before the 15th August 1456.

The only exact date we know of, connected with the other Bible, is 1461, this date being written on a copy of the last leaf, also preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.

The types of both Bibles were in existence in 1454, for they were used in the thirty and thirty-one line letters of Indulgence printed in that year.

The type of the forty-two line Bible is clearly a product of the Gutenberg-Fust-Schœffer partnership, for it is used afterwards by Schœffer as Fust’s partner, and must therefore have been the property of Fust. Mr. Hessels, who has worked out the history of the types with extreme care and accuracy, says: ‘I have shown above that one of the initials of the thirty line Indulgence is found in 1489 in Schœffer’s office. The church type of the same Indulgence links on (in spite of the different capital P) to the anonymous forty-two line Bible of 1456. This Bible links on to the thirty-five line Donatus, which is in the same type, and has Schœffer’s name and his coloured capitals.[6] This again brings us to the Psalter, which Joh. Fust and Peter Schœffer published together on the 14th August 1457, at Mentz, their first (dated) book with their name and the capitals of the Donatus.’

[6] The colophon of this book says: ... ‘per Petrum de Gernssheym in urbe Moguntina cum suis capitalibus absque calami exaratione effigiatus;’ and Mr. Hessels translates ‘cum suis capitalibus,’ ‘with his capital letters,’ a rendering which is surely impossible.

We may safely say of the forty-two line Bible, that it could not have been begun before about August 1450 (when Gutenberg entered into partnership with Fust), and that it could not have been finished later than August 1456 (the rubricated date of the Paris copy).

As regards the thirty-six line Bible, M. Dziatzko has brought forward, after much patient study, some remarkable evidence. He proves, from an examination of the text, that the thirty-six line Bible was set up, at any rate in part, from the forty-two line Bible. One copy survives which betrays this; for the compositor has passed from the last word of leaf 7 to the first word of leaf 9. In another place he has misread the beginning of a chapter, and included the last two words of the one before, which is explained by the arrangement of the text in the forty-two line edition.

Dziatzko concludes that this latter edition was the product of the Gutenberg-Fust confederation, and that Gutenberg may have produced the thirty-six line Bible more or less pari passu, either alone or in partnership with (perhaps) Pfister. An examination of the paper used in printing the two books points to the conclusion that there were substantial means available for the production of the forty-two line Bible, while the thirty-six line seems to show many separate purchases of small amounts of different papers.

It is impossible to assign any date for the commencement of the thirty-six line Bible. Fust had clearly nothing to do with it, and the type may have been made and some sheets printed before the partnership for printing the forty-two line Bible was entered into in 1450. The largeness of the type and consequent lesser number of lines to the page points to an early date, for the tendency was always to increase the number of lines to the page and economise paper. Thus we find that when the first gathering of the forty-two line Bible had been printed, which has only forty lines to the page, the type was recast, so as to have the same face of letter on a smaller body; and with this type the page was made to contain forty-two lines to the page.

The workmanship and the appearance of the type would also lead us to suppose that the thirty-six line Bible was printed earlier than the Manung widder die Durcke, which, being an ephemeral publication applicable only to the year 1455, must presumably have been printed in 1454.

We can therefore probably put both Bibles earlier than 1454.

The first book with a printed date is the well-known Psalmorum Codex of 1457, printed by Schœffer. Of this book nine copies are known, and all vary slightly from each other.[7] Only two types are used throughout the Psalter, but both are very large. Mr. Weale, on account of the variations observable in the letters, insists that the book was printed from cut and not cast type; but he gives no reason for this opinion; and when we consider that books had already been produced from cast type, it is impossible to understand why Schœffer should have resorted to so laborious a method. The dissimilarity of some letters is not so strong a proof of their having been cut, as the similarity of the greater number is of their having been cast. Bradshaw, who was of this opinion, had also noted some curious shrinkages in the type, resulting from the way the matrices for the type were formed.

[7] For a very full account of this book see the Catalogue of MSS. and Printed Books exhibited at the Historical Music Loan Exhibition, by W. H. James Weale, London, 1886, 8vo, pp. 27-45.

The most striking thing about the Psalter are the wonderful capital letters; and how these were printed has always been a vexed question. In the editions of 1457 and 1459 they are in two colours, the letter in one colour and the surrounding ornamentation in another. Though it is impossible to determine exactly how they were produced, there is at any rate something to be settled on the question. In one case, in the edition of 1515, in which these initials were still used, the exterior ornament has been printed, but the letter itself and the interior ornament have not. This shows at any rate that the letter and the ornament were not on one block, and that the exterior and interior ornaments were on different blocks; and is also in favour of the suggestion put forward by Fischer, that the ornament and the letter, though on different blocks, were not printed at the same time. In support of his theory, Fischer mentioned a case of the letter overlapping the ornament in a copy of the edition of 1459, and such a slip could not have occurred had the letter and ornament been printed from inset blocks in the method new known as the Congreve process.

It has also been argued by some writers, among whom is William Blades, that the letter was not printed in colour, but that the design was merely impressed in blank upon the paper or vellum, and afterwards filled in with colour by the illuminator. This is shown, it is said, by some portions of lines here and there in the ornamentation remaining uncoloured, a result surely due to imperfect inking rather than to a careless illuminator. It is hardly probable that the rubricator would begin a line and leave the end uncoloured while it was plainly traced for him; but, on the other hand, it is just such a fault as would, and often did, occur in printing an elaborate and involved ornament. No doubt in some cases the capitals, like the letters of the text, were touched up by the rubricator; and this is, as a rule, most noticeable when the ornament or letter is in blue. The blue ink used had a green tinge, and in some cases looked almost grey, and was therefore very often touched up with a brighter colour. Mr. Weale is of opinion that these letters were not set up and printed with the rest of the book, but were ‘printed, subsequently to the typography, not by a pull of the press, but by the blow of a mallet on the superimposed block.’

It was probably about 1458, between the times of printing the two editions of the Psalter, that Schœffer printed the book called in his catalogue of 1469-70, Canon misse cum prefacionibus et imparatoriis suis. This was the Canon of the Mass, printed by itself for inserting in copies of the Missal. This particular part, being the most used, was often worn out before the rest of the book; and we know from early catalogues[8] that it was the custom of printers to print this special part on vellum. While the printing of a complete Missal would have been a doubtful speculation, the printing of this one part, unvarying in the different uses, required no great outlay, and was almost certain to be profitable. Two copies only are known, and these are of different editions. One is in the Bodleian, and was bound up with an imperfect copy of the Mainz Missal of 1493. The other is in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, in a copy of the Breslau Missal of 1483.

[8] In a catalogue issued by Ratdolt about 1491 we read: ... ‘videlicet unum missarum (?) in papiro bene corporatum et illigatum cum canone pergameneo non ultra tres florenos minus quarta: sed cum canone papireo duos florenos cum dimidio fore comparandum.’

The Bodleian copy consists of twelve leaves, printed on vellum in the large type of the Psalter, and ornamented with the same beautiful initials. The capital T of the Te igitur, commencing the Canon, is as large as the well-known B of the Psalter, and even more beautiful in execution. Besides the ordinary coloured capitals which occur also in the Psalter, there is a monogram composed of the letters V.D., standing for Vere dignum.

In 1459 a second edition of the Psalter was issued, and also the Rationale Durandi, both containing coloured capitals, though some copies of the latter book are without the printed initials. A Donatus without date, printed in the type of the forty-two line Bible, has also the coloured capitals, and may be dated before 1460. After that time we only find these letters in use for the editions of the Psalter which appeared in 1490, 1502, 1515, 1516; and for a Donatus in the 1462 Bible type. Their size and the trouble of printing them account, no doubt, for their disuse.

In June 1460, Schœffer issued the Constitutions of Clement V., a large folio remarkable for the care with which it was printed, and for the clever way in which the commentary was worked round the text. In 1462 appeared the first dated Bible, which is at the same time the first book clearly divided into two volumes.[9] In the next few years we have a number of Bulls and other such ephemeral publications, relating mostly to the quarrels which were going on in Mainz; but in 1465, Schœffer starts again to produce larger books, and in this year we have the Decretals of Boniface VIII. and the De Officiis of Cicero. This latter book is important as being the first containing Greek type, that is, if it is allowed to be earlier than the Lactantius of the same year printed at Subiaco. In 1466 it was reprinted.

[9] It has never, I think, been noticed in print that some of the capital letters in certain sheets of this Bible are not the work of the rubricator, but are printed. Attempts were made to print both the blue and the red on the same page, but it apparently was found too laborious, and was given up. The red letters were printed in colour; the letters which were to be blue were impressed in blank, and afterwards filled up in colour by the illuminator. He did not always follow the impressed letter, so that its outline can be clearly seen. Some copies of this Bible have Schœffer’s mark, and a date at the end of the first volume; others are without them. The colophons also vary.

SCHOEFFER’S CATALOGUE.

In or about 1469, Schœffer printed a most interesting document, a catalogue of books for sale by himself or his agent. It is printed on one side of a sheet, and was meant to be fixed up as an advertisement in the different towns visited, the name of the place where the books could be obtained being written at the bottom. There are altogether twenty-one books advertised, three of which were not printed by Schœffer, but probably by Gutenberg; and there are also in the list three unknown books. Nearly all the important works from the press are in it, the 1462 Bible on vellum, the Psalter of 1459, the Decretals, the Cicero, and others. At the foot of the list is printed in the large Psalter type, ‘Hec est littera psalterii,’ so that the sheet is the earliest known type-specimen as well as catalogue.

The three books which are unknown, at any rate as having been printed by Schœffer, are the Consolatorium timorate conscientie and the De contractibus mercatorum, both by Johann Nider, a famous Dominican, and the Historia Griseldis of Petrarch.

In 1470, Schœffer put out another advertisement relating to his edition of the Letters of St. Jerome, printed in that year. Of this broadside two copies are known, one in the Munich Library, the other, formerly belonging to M. Weigel, in the British Museum. From 1470 to 1479, Schœffer printed a large number of books. Hain mentions twenty-seven, almost all of which he himself had collated. This was the busiest time in Schœffer’s career, and he carried on business in several towns. His agent in Paris, Hermann de Stalhœn, died about 1474, and the books in his possession were dispersed. On the complaint of Schœffer, Louis XI. allowed him 2425 crowns as compensation,—a sum which shows that the stock of books must have been very large. In 1479 he was received as a citizen of Frankfort-on-the-Maine on payment of a certain sum, no doubt in order that he might there sell his books. At Mainz he became an important citizen, and was made a judge.

From 1457 to 1468, Schœffer had used only four types, the two church types which appear in the Psalter, and the two book types which appear in the Durandus. In this year he obtained a fifth type, like the smaller one of the Durandus, and about the same in body, but with a larger face. In 1484 and 1485 two new types appear, one a church type very much resembling that used in the forty-two line Bible, but with a larger face; the other, a vernacular type, which occurs first in the Hortus Sanitatis of 1485, a book containing Schœffer’s mark though not his name, and appears the year following in the Breydenbach, printed at Mainz by Erhard Reüwick. Reüwick was an engraver, and the frontispiece to the Hortus Sanitatis is perhaps from his hand, showing, if it be so, a connection between him and Schœffer, which his use of the latter’s type tends to confirm. In fact, it seems most probable that the text of the two editions of the Breydenbach, the Latin one of 1486 and the German one of 1488, was really printed by Schœffer, while Reüwick engraved the wonderful illustrations. The title-page of this book is an exquisite piece of work, and by far the finest example of wood engraving which had appeared. It is further noticeable as containing cross-hatching, which is usually said to have first been used in the poor cuts of that very much overpraised book, the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. It contains also a number of views of remarkable places, printed as folded plates. Some of these views are as much as five feet long, and were printed from several blocks on separate pieces of paper, which were afterwards pasted together.

Schœffer continued to print during the whole of the fifteenth century, though towards the end he issued few books, Another printer, Petrus de Friedberg, started to print at Mainz in 1493, and between that time and 1498 issued a fair number of books. About 1480 a group of six or seven books, all undated, were printed at Mainz, which were long supposed to be very early, and not impossibly printed by Gutenberg. One of these was a Prognostication, said to be for the year 1460, and therefore presumably printed in 1459. A copy is preserved in the library of Darmstadt; and some years ago this was examined by Mr. Hessels, who found that the date had been tampered with, and that it should really read 1482.

From 1455 onwards, while the press of Schœffer was busily at work, we lose sight of Gutenberg. Three books, however, all printed about 1460 at Mainz, are ascribed to him. These are the Catholicon (a kind of dictionary) of 1460, the Tractatus racionis et conscientiæ of Matthæus de Cracovia, and the Summa de articulis fidei of Aquinas, both without date. To these may be added a broadside indulgence printed in 1461. Bernard attributes these books to the press of Henry Bechtermuntze, who afterwards printed with the same type at Eltvil. One fact appears to tell strongly against this conclusion. In 1469-70, when Schœffer issued his catalogue, we find these three books in it, the remainder being all of Schœffer’s own production. How did they get into Schœffer’s hands? Had they been printed by Bechtermuntze we should surely find the Vocabularius ex quo also in the catalogue, for he had issued editions in 1467 and 1469. It is more probable that they had formed the stock of a printer who had given up business, and had therefore got rid of all the books remaining on his hands.[10]

[10] In 1468 all the materials connected with Gutenberg’s press were handed over to Conrad Homery, their owner, who binds himself to use the type only in Mainz; and also binds himself, if he sells it, to sell it to a citizen of Mainz, provided that citizen offers as much as a stranger. The stock of printed books would also belong to Homery in his capacity of creditor, and would be sold in Mainz, where, so far as we know, there was no one except Schœffer to buy them.

In the copy of the Tractatus racionis belonging to the Bibliothèque Nationale the following manuscript note occurs: ‘Hos duos sexternos accomidauit mihi henrycus Keppfer de moguncia nunquam reuenit ut reacciperetur,’ etc. This Keppfer was one of Gutenberg’s workmen; and his name occurs in the notarial instrument of 1455, so that this inscription forms a link between the book and Gutenberg.

We have, unfortunately, no direct evidence as to the printer. We know that the books were printed at Mainz, for it is directly so stated in the Schœffer catalogue and in the colophon of the Catholicon. Now we know of no printers at Mainz in 1460 except Schœffer and Gutenberg, and Schœffer was certainly not the printer of these books. On the other hand, there are no books except these three that could have been printed by Gutenberg; and if these three are to be ascribed to any one else, Gutenberg is left in the position of a known printer who printed nothing. It has been shown above that it is very improbable that the books were printed by Bechtermuntze; and the fact that in 1470 the remaining copies were in the hands of a man who did not print them, points to their real printer having died or given up business. Though from these various facts we can prove nothing as regards the identity of the printer, we have some show of probability for imagining that he must have been Gutenberg.

There is no doubt whatever that the Catholicon type appears at Eltvil in the hands of the two brothers Bechtermuntze in 1467, for in the Vocabularius ex quo there is a clear colophon stating that the book was commenced by Henry Bechtermuntze and finished by Nicholas Bechtermuntze and Wygand Spyess of Orthenberg on the 4th of November 1467.

There has been a great deal of argument on the question how these types came into the hands of the Eltvil printers while Gutenberg was alive. We know that Gutenberg became a pensioner of Adolph II. in 1465, and would therefore presumably give up printing in that year. The types and printing materials which he had been using belonged to a certain Dr. Homery, and were reclaimed by him in 1468. The distance from Eltvil to Mainz is only some five or six miles, and the Rhine afforded easy means of communication between the two places, so that the difficulty of the transference of type backwards and forwards seems, as a rule, very much overstated. Although we have no evidence of printing at Eltvil before 1467, still it will be best to give an account of the press in this chapter, since it was so intimately connected with the early press at Mainz.

In 1467, on the 4th November, an edition of the Vocabularius ex quo was published. The colophon tells us that the book was begun by Henry Bechtermuntze, and finished by his brother Nicholas in partnership with a certain Wygand Speyss of Orthenberg. A second edition was published in June 1469 by Nicholas Bechtermuntze alone. Both these editions are printed in the type used for the Catholicon of 1460, but with a few additional abbreviations. In 1472 a third edition of the Vocabularius ex quo was issued, in a type very similar to the type of the thirty-one line Letters of Indulgence, but slightly smaller; and an edition of the Summa de articulis fidei of Aquinas [Hain, *1426] was issued in the same type. In 1477 a fourth edition of the Vocabularius ex quo was printed by Nicholas Bechtermuntze; the type is different from that used in the other books, and is identical, as Mr. Hessels tells us, with that used about the same time by Peter Drach at Spire.

Before leaving Mainz, it will be as well to notice the books printed by the Brothers of the Common Life at Marienthal. This monastery was close to Mainz on the opposite side of the river, and not far from Eltvil. The earliest book is a Copia indulgentiarum per Adolphum archiepiscopum Moguntinum concessarum, dated from Mainz in August 1468, and presumably printed in the same year. In 1474 they issued the Mainz Breviary, a book of great rarity, and of which the copies vary; in fact, of certain portions there seem to have been several editions. Their latest piece of printing with a date is a broadside indulgence of 1484, of which there is a copy at Darmstadt. Dr. F. Falk, in his article ‘Die Presse zu Marienthal im Rheingau,’ mentions fourteen books as printed at this press; but he includes some printed in a type which cannot with certainty be ascribed to Marienthal. The Brothers seem to have used only two types, both of which are found in the Breviary. Both are very distinctive, especially the larger, which is a very heavy solid Gothic letter, easily distinguishable by the curious lower case d.