want Sij syn noch jm leuen die dat getzuigen dat men boicher druckte tzo Venedige ee der vursz Nicolaus genson dar quame, dair he began schrifft zo snijden vnd bereyden. Mer der eyrste vynder der druckerye is gewest eyn Burger tzo Mentz. ind was geboren van Straiszburch. ind hiesch joncker Johan Gudenburch. Item van Mentz is die vursz kunst komen alre eyrst tzo Coellen. Dairnae tzo Straisburch, ind dairnae tzo Venedige. Dat begynne ind vortganck der vursz kunst hait myr muntlich vertzelt d" Eirsame man Meyster Vlrich tzell van Hanauwe.
boich drucker zo Coellen noch zertzijt. anno. MCCCCxcix. durch den die kunst vursz is zo Coellen komen.
[15] The first trace of the legend is in a reference to Coster as having "brought the first print into the world in 1446" in a ma.n.u.script pedigree of the Coster family compiled about 1559.
[16] A page from a fragment of one of these in the British Museum forms the frontispiece to this chapter (Plate IV).
[17] Et tempore mei Pambergae quidam scripsit integrum Bibliam super lamellas, et in quatuor septimanis totam Bibliam super pargameno subtili presignavit scriptura.
CHAPTER IV
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 const.i.tuted 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 a.n.a.logous 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 Stra.s.sburg, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Bonemonta.n.u.s 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 a.s.sumed 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 Stra.s.sburg. At Stra.s.sburg Gutenberg remained till about 1446, and legal and munic.i.p.al records, so far as we can trust to their authenticity, offer us some tantalizing glimpses of his career there.
When the town clerk of Stra.s.sburg 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 Stra.s.sburg[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 Stra.s.sburg.
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 _Cisia.n.u.s_, 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 subst.i.tute two typographically distinct editions for the ma.n.u.script 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 doc.u.ment 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 subst.i.tuted a reference to a ma.n.u.script 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 t.i.tle 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 s.p.a.ce 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 quant.i.ties 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sertion[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 doc.u.ment which had previously circulated in ma.n.u.script. 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sert 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 pa.s.sed 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 Wolfenb.u.t.tel. 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d has deigned with so lofty a light of genius and free gift to prefer and render ill.u.s.trious 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 a.s.sumpcionis.
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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sumption.
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 ill.u.s.trates in a very remarkable way the determination of the new partners to produce a volume which should fully rival the best shop-made ma.n.u.scripts. 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 Ma.n.u.scripts 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 munic.i.p.al library at Angers. The distribution of the Psalms in this 1457 edition is that of the general "Roman use," but blank s.p.a.ces 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 4950.
Between the production of these two Psalters Fust and Schoeffer printed in the same types on twelve leaves of vellum the Canon of the Ma.s.s 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 _Const.i.tutions_ of Pope Clement V with the commentary of Joannes Andreae. The text of the Const.i.tutions 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 Na.s.sau, a pet.i.tion 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 s.p.a.ces 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 surpa.s.sed. 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 Const.i.tutions of 1460 were reprinted, and similar editions were issued of the Inst.i.tutes 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 Stra.s.sburg 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-ill.u.s.tration, 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 surpa.s.sed as a centre of printing by Stra.s.sburg, 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 Stra.s.sburg 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.