Chapter XXI: Part 21

[194] The assurances of his wealth, leisure and respectability seem to have been provoked by the published statements, with which Junius was familiar, that Gutenberg, the rival German inventor, was of noble birth. It is not the only instance in which the Dutch legend is the echo of the German history. The first coincidence is that Coster, like Fust, was indebted to his son-in-law for valuable assistance in perfecting typography. And both sons-in-law were named Peter.

[195] If Junius had not said that Coster changed the characters of wood for letters of lead and of tin, and that the false workman was expert in composing letters and in founding types, there might be some doubt whether these characters of wood were made disconnected or conjoined. His language is obscure, for he has used the words form and character as the equivalent of type, where these words could be applied with equal propriety to a letter engraved on a block. This obscurity was not caused by the poverty of the Latin language, for he afterward described types with clearness. There was obviously some confusion in the mind of Junius. It is not certain that he clearly understood the broad difference between typography and xylography; it is certain that he intended to convey the idea that Coster was the inventor of printing in its broadest sense—the inventor of printing from blocks as well as from movable types. The absurdity of this broad claim must be obvious to all who have read about early image prints and playing cards and the printed fabrics of Italy and Sicily.

[196] The wine-flagons of Thomaszoon may have had some features which carried conviction to the observer of the seventeenth century, but the modern reader of the story will fail to see that they should have been made of worn-out types. But the tin wine-flagons and the noticeable house on the market-place are not to be despised. Useless as proofs of the credibility of the legend of Junius, they illustrate to some extent the pedigree of the Coster family, a pedigree with which Junius was well acquainted, but for which he could find no place in his legend. These wine-flagons were the pewter pots of a tavern about a century old.

[197] There were many Johns among the early printers of Mentz: John Fust, John Gutenberg, John Petersheim, John Meydenbach. When it was thought proper to acquit Fust of this accusation, John Gutenberg was selected as the man; but the discovery of records which proved that Gutenberg was making experiments in typography at Strasburg during the year 1436, compelled the withdrawal also of this accusation. Meerman, with a skill in casuistry equal to the occasion, then undertook to prove that there were two Gutenbergs—brothers, but with different surnames—Johan Gensfleisch, the elder, and Johan Gutenberg, the younger; and that it was the elder brother who betrayed Coster and revealed the secret to John Gutenberg. It was a weak artifice. German historians have fully proved that Gutenberg’s brother Frielo had nothing to do with typography; that John Gensfleisch, the elder, was an uncle, not a brother,—old, rich and blind—of all men, most incapable of any attempt at the purloining or practising of an intricate art like printing. There is no evidence to inculpate Petersheim or Meydenbach.

[198] The story of theft is not only improbable, but it is unsupported by external evidence. Jacobus Koning, a diligent searcher in the archives of Haarlem, discovered that, on and after Christmas day, 1440, the constabulary of Haarlem were often sent to Amsterdam upon important business. The inference attempted is that the constables were in search of the workman who stole Coster’s implements. The records do not say that they were sent for a thief. Their business was of another nature. There had been a great mortality in Haarlem, and the officers of the town had left it while the pestilence was raging. The journeys of the constables were made to the temporary residences of the magistrates who, from a more healthy city, sent directions for the government of the town. Koning knew this fact but suppressed it.

The accusation of unfair practice, is frequently made by men who have been defeated in a fair contest. Whenever such an accusation is accompanied, as it was in this instance, with dramatic details, it effects a lodgment in the popular belief, from which it is not easily removed. Junius was not the first, nor the last, to use this discreditable but effective method of making-up a case. There is an old French record which narrates how Nicholas Jenson was sent from Paris to Mentz in the year 1458 to get a knowledge of the German invention. Jenson did acquire this knowledge, and became an eminent printer. His detractors say that he stole the secret; his eulogists say that he learned nothing, that he was the real inventor.—The story of Richard Atkyns about the English theft is too full of absurdities for criticism.—Sometime between 1520 and 1570, Daniel Specklin wrote a chronicle of Strasburg, in which he relates that printing was invented at that city in the year 1440, by John Mentel; that Mentel’s unfaithful servant, one John Gensfleisch, stole the secret, not the punches, and took it to Mentz.—There is a popular legend in Italy that Pamphilo Castaldi invented printing types at Feltre in the year 1450; that John Fust, who happened to be in the town, abstracted the knowledge of the invention, carried it to Mentz, and arrogated all the honors of the rightful inventor.

[199] It was on the inner cover or binding of this account book that the fragment of a typographical _Donatus_ was found. See page 259.

[200] Lambinet had reason to speak of the aged witnesses, Cornelis, Gallius and Talesius, as “walking and talking centuries.” Van der Linde characteristically describes the story of Junius as “a story in which all the authorities hear the principal facts in their infancy, but only to communicate them to each other in their second childhood.”

[201] Erasmus says: “All those who apply themselves to the sciences are under no small obligations toward the excellent town of Mentz, on account of the excellent and almost divine invention of printing books with tin letters, which, as they assure us, was born there.”

[202] To satisfy these doubts, and to bridge the chasm between Coster of 1440 and Bellaert of 1483, Meerman undertook to show that Coster’s three grandsons, Peter, Andrew and Thomas, continued the practice of typography and printed many small works. Dr. De Vries maintained that “there was after Coster’s death, until about 1470, an uninterrupted, carefully concealed practice of printing. . . . That there existed in Holland for many years a seminary of the practicers of the art is confirmed by many and strong evidences.” But De Vries offers conjectures for evidences. History is silent about the printing office that was conducted by the sons of Coster. This office and these printers were really created by Meerman to fill a disagreeable gap in the story of Junius—a gap not seen by any of his numerous commentators from Scriverius to Seiz. There is no book that bears their names; there is no record that mentions them as printers; there is not even a tradition that they had anything to do with printing. If their names had not appeared upon the pedigree of Gerrit Thomaszoon, we should know nothing of them. The typographical successors of Coster are as fictitious as their progenitor.

[203] Wolf, _Monumenta Typographica_, vol. 1, pp. 193 and 621.

[204] _Laurecrans voor Laurens Coster von Haarlem, eerste Vinder von de Boeck-druckery, etc._ Haarlem, 1628. Reprinted in Dutch, with description in Latin, in Wolf’s _Monumenta Typographica_, vol. 1, pp. 209–451. The poetry of Scriverius is as whimsical as his prose. Here is his charge of theft against John Gutenberg:

Ah, rascal! ah, are you there? is it you Hans Gutenberger? Why does this name become you? Yes, two-fold rascal, and worse! Notorious by theft, oh shameless man! This word is still too mild for your villainy. Because you concealed Laurens’ good and carried it away, And stole it falsely: so hear we now speak Of Goedenbergher’s praise; however they disguise it, By the Goeden-berg they betray the Guyten-(rogue)berg.

[205] Condensed from Hessels’ translation in _Haarlem Legend_, p. 113–14.

[206] Wolf, _Monumenta Typographica_, vol. 1, pp. 813–868.

[207] Seiz, _Annus Tertius Sæculoris Inventæ Artis, etc._ Haarlem, 1742.

[208] Condensed from Hessels’ translation in _Haarlem Legend_, p. 123.

[209] John Enschedé then said that “Jansen Koster used no wooden movable letters, as later, and still living scholars [Meerman] assert—scholars who know nothing of the mechanism of type-founding—and who, therefore, gently swerve from the path of simple truth.” Meerman’s reason for rating this Dutch edition of the _Speculum_ as first of all was the inferior appearance of the types and the printing, which inferiority, he maintained, had been produced by wood types and want of experience in presswork. Fournier told him truly that the types of his alleged first edition were metal types; that the printing of the book was inferior because the types were worn out; that his first edition had all the signs of a last edition—but Meerman refused this explanation.

[210] Dr. De Vries, the most eminent defender of the legend in this century, said: “The work of the learned but not very judicious Meerman had done more injury to the cause of Haarlem than the writings of all other antagonists.”

[211] _Éclaircissemens sur l’histoire de l’invention de l’imprimerie._ 1843.

[212] This Museum then contained, among other relics, copies of the _Apocalypse_, the _Ars Moriendi_, the _Canticles_, the _Donatus_, the _Speculum_, the _Temptations of Demons_, and other printed works that have here been noticed in the chapter on The Works and Workmanship of an Unknown Printer, most of which were claimed as the work of Coster’s office. The wood block of the _Horarium_ (see page 260), some official documents, some autographs of the sheriff Louwerijs Janszoon, a picture said to be a likeness of Coster, several engravings of Coster (curiously dissimilar, and one of which is an undeniable forgery), are also contained in this Museum. Van der Linde denounced the Museum as a municipal show-booth. _The Haarlem Legend_, p. 164.

[213] Gerrit Thomaszoon died about 1563 or 1564. In the year 1611, the pedigree belonged to Adrien Rooman, the town printer at Haarlem. At his death it fell into the hands of Dr. John Vlasveld. For nearly two centuries it was unknown to the public. In 1809, it was sold at auction, Jacobus Koning paying for it, and for an old wood-cut, supposed to be the work of Coster, four hundred guilders.

[214] Van der Linde, _The Haarlem Legend of the Invention of Printing_, p. 42. In the singular words “who brought the first print in the world” we may find the cause of that mysterious indefiniteness of description which may be observed in all the authorities. It is more than an indication that the story of Junius is based on the pedigree and on information derived from Thomaszoon and his friends.

[215] There is, of course, no reason why a chandler could not have invented typography, but we have no evidence that this chandler invented anything. Our knowledge of the tastes of the man, as shown in his selection of a new business, is enough to prove that he was not at all like the later chandler, Benjamin Franklin, with a leaning to types and letters.

[216] The variable orthography of the name of Coster, which is here copied literally from the records, is a sufficient explanation of the irregularities in the spelling of his name which are to be found in all the authorities. I have adopted the orthography as I find it in the book of Van der Linde.

[217] The exact nature of the relationship between Laurens Janszoon Coster and Gerrit Thomaszoon is not clearly defined, but the archives of the town and the vellum pedigree corroborate each other in establishing the existence—of Lourens Janszoon Coster (son of Jan Coster), tallow chandler and innkeeper, who left Haarlem in 1483—of Thomas Pieterszoon (probably the son-in-law of Coster), sheriff, who died in 1492—of Gerrit Thomaszoon (according to the pedigree, a great-great-grandson of Lourens Janszoon Coster), a sheriff and an innkeeper. He was, also, a sacristan or church-warden.

[218] For this unwarrantable confusion of the names and deeds of the two men Junius and Scriverius are responsible. Junius, who wrote in Latin, caught at the word Coster, which he found in the pedigree, as a subject for the display of his critical ability. He explains and expounds it: “Lourens Janszoon, surnamed Coster, by reason of the office which belonged to the family by hereditary right.” There was no need for this absurd expansion of the meaning of the word _custos_. This attribution of an honorable office to an insignificant man was purposely made to give him a dignified position. Gerrit Thomaszoon, who knew that Coster was a man of no note, gave him only the distinction of the first printer. This was not enough for Junius, who thought that he would be deficient in patriotism if he did not make Coster as reputable as his rival Gutenberg, who was represented as of noble blood. The word Coster was his opportunity, and he made the most of it. It is not probable that Junius studied the archives of Haarlem for the purpose of getting exact information about Coster, but it is possible that he had read or heard of Lourens Janszoon, the wealthy man, and that he confounded him with Coster, the chandler. Whether he made this confusion with intent or in ignorance cannot now be ascertained, but we can see that the wealth and respectability of Janszoon were attributed to Coster. Scriverius perpetuated the blunder. He found a document signed by Louwerijs Janszoon, as sheriff, in 1431. Without further research, he leaped to the conclusion that this man who died in 1439, who had nothing in common with Coster but similarity of name and similarity of occupation as innkeeper, was the very Lourens Janszoon Coster who, according to Junius, invented types and practised printing in 1440.

[219] Moxon’s copy of this engraving is shown on page 333 of this book.

[220] Van der Linde tells a curious story about Hollandish credulity:

The most amusing imitation was that of an amateur artist of the last century, C. Van den Berg, who wished to play the collector J. Marcus a trick. He engraved a small wood-cut after the portrait of Van Campen, with the name _Laur’ Jassoe_, in old-fashioned style, underneath. With a little soot and dirt, he gave the copies an antique appearance, and made Marcus happy for a few weeks. The poet Langendijk, the type-founder Enschedé, and other amateurs, each got a copy. Van den Berg was too honest to mean anything more than fun; he told afterward to Marcus himself the value of that antique wood-cut. Although every investigator could and ought to have known these things, yet Jacobus Koning was bold enough, in the second nomenclature of his collection of rare books and manuscripts, to describe a copy of this portrait as “_printed by_, or at the time of, Lourens Janszoon Koster.” . . . . . . The Haarlem painter L. Van der Vinne, in his youth, painted, in the beginning of the former century, a study, after a drawing of Van Campen. But lo! in 1762, this picture is offered for sale by Van Damme at Amsterdam (the same who produced the false inscriptions respecting the imaginary Corsellis of Oxford), provided at the back with a very old inscription, _Lours Jans to Harlem_ MCCCCXXXIII, and the monogram A O, which was explained to mean Albert Van Oudewater. Excellent discovery! Here was a genuine contemporaneous portrait by a painter of the fifteenth century! A trifle, however, was wanted to make the joy perfect. Albert Van Oudewater, who had painted the celebrated inventor of printing in 1433, was born in 1444! This history is full of despairing irony from beginning to end. Just as the sheriff Lourens Janszoon invents the art of printing _after his death_; just as Cornelis works at _Donatuses before his birth_; just as the chandler Lourens Janszoon Koster entirely forgets his invention _during his lifetime_; so the painter Albert Van Oudewater becomes a zealous Costerian “_long before he was born_.” Van der Linde, _The Haarlem Legend_, p. 145.

[221] The striking dissimilarity between the calm philosophic face of the Coster of Meerman and the sour look and misanthropic features of the Coster of Scriverius is neatly explained by Dr. Abr. De Vries:

The portrait given by Scriverius was painted from a sketch or study made after Coster’s death, and was, necessarily, gloomy and cadaverous; but no portrait, however beautiful, unless it was a true and genuine likeness, could satisfy the truth-loving Scriverius. The truth was to be well founded if he endorsed it. The cadaverous hue and the marks of death in Van Campen’s picture are strong evidences for the genuineness and faithfulness both of the original representation and of Van Campen’s copy!

[222] In Holland, Dr. Van der Linde’s book has been denounced as impolitic and unpatriotic, but it has not, as yet, met with a suitable answer. The indignation manifested toward the author has been so violent that he, a native Hollander, has found it expedient to remove to Germany.

[223] The only positive evidence which seems to give a color of probability to the assertion that typography was first practised in the Netherlands is the fact that an unknown printer had printed there some little books before the arrival of Ketelaer and De Leempt, in 1473. Whoever this printer may have been, it still remains to be proved that he did any typographic work before 1463.

[224] There is no known authentic autograph of Gutenberg. In his day the name was written by other persons, Guttemburg, Gudenburch, Goodenberger, Guthembergius, Gudenbergh, Kuttenberg, and in many other ways. The form of spelling used in this book is the one that is preferred by the German bibliographers. Gensfleisch, in German, is goose-flesh; Gutenberg is good hill.

[225] Bodmann, a librarian at Mentz, said that he had discovered two old documents which set forth that Gutenberg had a brother, Conrad, and two sisters, Hebele and Bertha. Helbig says that these documents, as reprinted by Fischer, are spurious.

[226] It seems that Else Gutenberg was the last surviving member of her family. According to a German custom prevailing at that time, a son was, under certain circumstances, permitted to take the name of his mother when it was feared that her family name might become extinct.

[227] The name of the brother of Frielo Gensfleisch, senior, was John Gensfleisch, senior. He is the man improperly described by Meerman as the elder brother of John Gutenberg. The identity of his baptismal name with that of the inventor of printing has been the occasion of many mistakes. The uncle has been confounded with the nephew. The family was wealthy: it had, in or near Mentz, three houses or estates, known as Zum Gudenberg, Zum Jungen and Zum Gensfleisch. The members of the family were sometimes called Sulgeloch or Sorgenloch, from a property on which they resided outside of Mentz.

[228] This is the version of chroniclers in the interest of the nobles. The childish dispute about precedence seems an insufficient cause for the quarrel. It was, probably, the occasion, but not the cause. It was the spark which set on fire the stifled resentment of the burghers against a long course of neglect and of misgovernment. The Gensfleisch families seem to have been always prominent in the civil disturbances of Mentz. Gutenberg’s great-great grandfather took sides with one of the rival archbishops, and, in 1332, aided him in burning some convents, for which he was put under ban by the Emperor Louis. In the same year, he and other noblemen made themselves so offensive to the burghers that they were obliged to flee for their lives.

[229] Charles Winaricky, a learned Bohemian, wrote a dissertation on the birthplace of Gutenberg—_Jean Guttenberg, né en 1412 a Kuttenberg en Bohème_, 12mo. Brussels, 1847—in which he tried to prove: that Gutenberg was born in the year 1412, in the town of Kuttenberg in Bohemia, from which town he derived his name; that he was a graduate of the university of Prague; that he acquired his knowledge of metallurgy from the metal workers of that old mining town; and that his proficiency in many curious arts was the result of his Bohemian education. Winaricky’s book abounds with curious information, but his reasoning is largely based on conjecture. It cannot be used to discredit the positive dates and facts of many German records.

[230] This is the form of complaint: “I, Johan Gensfleisch, the younger, also called Gutenberg, declare by this letter, that the worshipful sage burgomaster and the council of the town of Mentz owe me every year a certain interest, according to the contents of letters which contain, among other things, that, if they do not pay me, I am at liberty to seize and imprison them. As I have now to claim much rent in arrears from the said town, which they were hitherto not able to pay me, I caused M. Nicolaus, secretary of Mentz, to be seized, whereupon he promised me and swore to give me 310 valid Rguilders, to be paid at Oppenheim, before the following Whitsuntide. I acknowledge, by this letter, that the burgomaster and council of Strasburg have induced me to relieve of my own free will, in honor and love of them, the said M. Nicolaus from his imprisonment, and from the payment of the 310 guilders. Given on Sunday (12th of March), 1434.”

The ease with which Gutenberg relinquishes his monetary claim, and which at once shows him to be a better knight than financier, exhibits a trait of character which explains much in his later fate. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 13.

[231] For more than three hundred years this important document, with other records of the courts of Strasburg, rested unknown and undisturbed in the old tower _Pfennigthurm_, in which place it was discovered by Wenkler, the keeper of the records. He communicated this fact to Schoepflin, who, perceiving its value, made it the great feature of the _Vindiciæ Typographicæ_. The record is imperfect, for it does not contain all the testimony of all the witnesses. Whether this deficiency is due to the neglect of the recorder, or to the decay or mutilation of the record, has not been fully explained. Schoepflin, who says it is written in an almost obsolete German dialect hard to be understood, reprinted it in full, accompanied with a translation in Latin, which has been censured as inaccurate. Dr. Dibdin, and a few carping bibliographers, who looked with disfavor on all newly discovered documents which obliged them to revise their own theories, have tried to throw discredit on this record, but its authenticity is now recognized as beyond controversy. The records were placed in the Library of Strasburg for safety, but they were destroyed by the Prussians during the siege of that city in 1870.

[232] Conventionally used for I.

[233] The eighteen witnesses were Master Hirtz, Jacob Imerle, Midhart Honöwe, Heinrich Bisinger, Wilhelm von Schutter, the wife of Lorentz Beildick, M. Jerge Saltzmütter, Stösser Nese von Ehenheim, Martin Verwer, Henrich Seidenneger, M. Gosse Sturm, of Saint Arbogastus, Hans Ross, the goldsmith, and his wife, Andrew Heilmann, Claus Heilmann, Heinrich Olse, Hans Riffe and Johan Dritzehen. Their testimony is not on the record. It is unfortunate that we have lost the testimony of M. Gosse Sturm, of Saint Arbogastus, and Ross, the goldsmith. It is probable that these men, who had intimate relations with Gutenberg, could have described this secret art with greater clearness.

[234] After the development of the towns, all members of the nobility did not seek their occupation exclusively in deeds of knighthood. Industry, art, and the refinement of town life gradually superseded the warlike spirit of the nobility, to whom the town offered distinguished dignities and situations, while enterprises of commerce and industry gave them distinction and riches. The privilege of coining money, especially, was often farmed out to an association of ancient families. At Mentz this association consisted of twelve families (Münzer-Hausgenossen), among whom was also the family of Gensfleisch. They possessed, moreover, the privileges of the valuation of coin, of the assize of weights and measures, or offices for the exchange of money and of the sale of gold and silver staves to the mint. Such employment brought them chiefly in connection with the goldsmiths, whose work consisted, at that time, of one of the most considerable trades, which comprised mechanics and chemistry, nay, the whole dominion of plastic and graphic art, in its application to metals, whether separate or in conjunction with diamonds and other precious materials. They were mostly patricians who established powder-mills, paper-mills and similar new manufactories. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 17.

[235] Glass mirrors, almost unknown in the fourteenth century, were regarded as novelties in the fifteenth. It seems that they were first made in Germany. Winaricky lays great stress on the fact that the Bohemians were the earliest and the most skillful workers in glass, and that they also excelled as lapidaries and metallurgists. He says, but without proof, that the art of polishing stones and making mirrors was acquired by Gutenberg in Bohemia. The learned Beckmann says that

“Early German mirrors were made by pouring melted lead or tin over a glass plate while yet hot as it came from the furnace. In and around Nuremberg, convex mirrors were made by blowing with the pipe in the glass bubble while it was still hot a metallic mixture with a little salts of tartar. When the bubble had been covered and cooled, it was cut in small round mirrors. These small convex mirrors were called _ochsenaugen_, or ox-eyes. They were set in a round board, and had a very broad border or margin. One of them in my possession is two and a half inches in diameter. . . . This art is an old German invention, for it is described by Porta and Ganzoni, who both lived in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and who both expressly say that the art was then common in Germany. Curious foreigners often attempted to learn it, and imagined that Germans kept it a secret.”

[236] The most common prejudice is the supposition, _à priori_, legitimated strictly scientifically by nothing, that printing with movable types was only an improvement on that with wooden blocks on which the letters were cut; that it was a development of it, an extension, a fortunate application, the highest step of the ladder, consisting of playing cards, images of saints, pictures with super, sub and other scriptions, texts without pictures. In short, xylography, in a technical, logical and reformatorical sense, would be the mother of typography. But it is such only in the sense of an external impulse, of an external push to meditating on quite _another_ means than wood or metal engraving, or _another_ mode of obtaining books. Zell finds that push in the block-Donatuses, but the inspiration of genius, the first invention of a quite independent art, of a totally new principle, which has nothing in common with wood and metal engraving, he ascribes . . . to Gutenberg. In Gutenberg’s mind, the grand idea arose that all words, all writing, all language, all human thoughts, could be expressed by a small number, a score of different letters, arranged according to the requirements; that, with a large quantity of those different letters, united as one whole, a whole page of text could be printed at once, and, repeating this process continually, large manuscripts could be swiftly multiplied. . . . This thought, this idea, begot the invention of typography. . . . Every other explanation is at once unhistorical and unpsychological. _Haarlem Legend_, p. 11.

[237] Wolf, _Monumenta Typographica_, vol. I, p. 586.

[238] See page 315 of this book. The chronicler is in error in specifying Mentz as the place where the art was discovered, but the specification of the period between 1440 and 1450 as that in which “the art was being investigated” by John Gutenberg is sustained by other testimonies.

[239] The pilgrimage to ancient Aix-la-Chapelle took place every seventh year, and, commencing on the 10th of July, lasted fourteen days, during which time the ordinary service in the church did not take place, but a free market was held. The concourse of people was uncommonly great on that occasion, so that, for instance in the year 1496, 142,000 pilgrims were counted in the town, and 80,000 guilders in the offering boxes on one day. Aix-la-Chapelle possessed relics of the first rank, as the swaddling-clothes of Christ, his body-cloth at the Crucifixion, the dress worn by Mary at his birth, and the cloth on which St. John the Baptist was beheaded. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 18.

[240] There is no evidence that Gutenberg had been taught xylography, or any of the many branches of book-making. He was not, for that reason, incompetent to invent an entirely new branch. The history of great inventions shows that many inventors never received a thorough technical instruction in the arts or trades which they undertook to reconstruct. Jacquard, inventor of the automatic loom, was, in his boyhood, a bookbinder and a type-founder. Arkwright, inventor of the spinning jenny, was a barber until he was thirty years of age. Stephenson, inventor of the locomotive, tended a steam boiler, but had not served time as a machinist nor as a carriage-builder. Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, was not a sailor, machinist nor ship-builder. Morse, inventor of the electric telegraph, was an artist, not a mechanician, nor even a man of science. Koning, inventor of the cylinder printing machine, was not a printer. The greatest inventions have been made by men not within, but without, the arts they improved. It would seem that a thorough technical education in any art or trade cramps the inventive faculties, disqualifying the expert from making any attempt at radical changes, permitting him to attempt improvement in the details only.

[241] Some authors will not admit that Gutenberg derived any benefit from xylography. Bernard treats block-printing as an art so paltry, that he refused to describe the block-books, or to admit that xylography had any noticeable influence, direct or indirect, on the invention of types. Van der Linde says that history knows nothing of Gutenberg as a xylographer—that there is no documentary evidence that he ever cut or printed a block. These disclaimers—obviously provoked by the absurd statements of other authors that Gutenberg invented xylography, that he printed with types of wood, that typography is the natural outgrowth of xylography—cannot be accepted without qualification. The fact remains that Gutenberg, his associates and pupils, were benefited by the highest technical skill of that time in all the processes of engraving in relief, in the compounding of inks, in the construction and use of presses, and in the manipulation of paper. Compared with the invention of the type-mould, these may seem trivial matters, but the success of Gutenberg’s new ideas about printing depended upon his attention to every process that promised aid. It is not probable that the man who hired joiners and goldsmiths could have neglected to avail himself of whatever skill the block-printers possessed. The experience in printing acquired by the block-printers was far from contemptible, but the educating influences they had exerted over the book-buying public were of great importance. It was Gutenberg’s discernment of the fact that the block-printers had created a demand for printed work which could never be satisfied by the method of xylography, which gave him the impulse to seek for a more scientific method. Block-printing, although in no sense the mother of typography, was its forerunner, and for that reason alone demands respectful consideration.

[242] This passage has been translated by Ottley: Gutenberg sent “to fetch all the forms that they might be loosened, and that he might see it [done], and that the joinings of some of the four pieces might be renewed.” This translation makes the action of Gutenberg unintelligible. Bernard’s translation is: “Gutenberg sent to get the forms, so that he could be sure that they had been separated; these forms had given him a great deal of solicitude.” This is obviously a very free and evasive translation. Wetter, who interprets the passage as descriptive of block-printing, says that “the words are too obscure for us to infer anything definite from them. We are in no case to understand by the word _formen_ separate letters, but whole blocks.” This is an unwarrantable assumption, and in contradiction to the statement that the forms were melted. Van der Linde says that “the words are plain. Translators have stopped at the words _zurlossen_ and _ruwete_. _Zurlossen_, or _zerlassen_, means melting, and ruwete is dialect for _reuete_, repented.”

[243] The commonest meaning of the word form, in most European languages, is a shape or figure prepared by carving; but it has also been applied, colloquially, to the mould made from this carved shape, and also to the article made from the mould. A type-founder’s punch is the form of a letter; the mould in which the type is cast is the form or former of the letter; the types prepared for printing are also known as the form. On a future page it will be shown that the word _formen_ as used in the trial, was also used at a later date to describe the most important tools in Gutenberg’s printing office at Eltvill.

[244] Here we may recall the surprise of Madame Zabern at the cost of the work. She would not have hazarded the low estimate of ten guilders, if Dritzehen had been surrounded by many types or printed sheets. The only tools appertaining to typography, which have a value out of all proportion to their apparent cost, are the punches, matrices and moulds. The modern inexpert would underrate the value of a similar collection as grossly as did Madame Zabern.

[245] It could not have been four pages of metal types, for types disconnected and put in disorder, in or under the press, would have betrayed the secret almost as plainly as if they had been in order. Nor could it have been any attachment to a press like the frisket or tympan. It is impossible to name any jointed or buttoned tool of four pieces, connected with composition or presswork, which would suggest to an inexpert the secret of typography.

[246] Bernard gives this form of type-mould a passing notice. He says:

M. de Berny showed me one of these primitive mechanisms in his own foundry. This mould, which is still [1853] in use, is constructed with two kinds of knees [or squares] enabling the type-maker to adjust it in various ways so as to cast any body desired. _De l’origine_, etc. vol. I, p. 44, note.

[247] The inability to produce any book printed by Gutenberg at Strasburg was the occasion of the following pithy answer: Koch had asserted before the Institute, that Strasburg was the cradle of printing. Schaab interrupted him, “Yes, but it is a cradle without a baby.”

[248] Schaab says that there is on record in Mentz a document which proves that John Gensfleisch leased this house in October, 1443. Reasoning from the two disconnected facts, that this house was used by Gutenberg for a printing office, and that it had been leased by Gensfleisch in 1443, careless readers have assumed that John Gensfleisch was the first printer in Mentz, and that he was either the true inventor of printing, or the unfaithful workman who stole the invention of Coster or of Mentel. It is not necessary to repeat what has been written concerning the impossibility of a theft from the fictitious Coster, nor about the absurdity of representing the uncle as a printer.

[249] Fischer, _Essai sur les monuments typographiques_, p. 70.

[250] Bernard refuses this statement. He says that the fragments of other editions of the _Donatus_ in this type, supposed to be of the same period, which he inspected in the British Museum, show ink that is permanent.

[251] The text letters are of the form known to librarians as _lettres de somme_, or letters of account, which may be understood as the carelessly made letters then used in books of account. The letters of the large lines are of the form known as _lettres de forme_, or letters of precision, the angular and carefully made letters of fine books. The _lettres de somme_ will be defined in this book under the name of Round Gothic; the _lettres de forme_, under the name of Pointed Gothic.

[252] Deceived by the close fitting-up of the matrices, earlier writers said that the letters were xylographic. The comments of Dr. Van der Linde on this error are pertinent:

. . . . It was thought necessary to find the wooden letters of the imagination, and hence bibliography presents the dismal spectacle that almost all monuments of the excellent invention, that fruit of a vigorous mind, of a simple, but ample and grand idea, have been declared by would-be connoisseurs one by one to be xylographic. This caused the double trouble of first making out, with much verbosity and an air of perspicuity, incontrovertibly typographical masterpieces to be wood, and then afterward putting aside this pedantry and returning to the simple truth. The origin of typography presents nowhere anything narrow-minded, worthless, or trifling, for it belongs to the _grand_ facts of history, but trifling minds have soiled it with their own littleness. _Haarlem Legend_, p. 77.

[253] It is possible that other books, now lost and forgotten, may have been printed in the small types, but Helbig thinks that the types were made expressly for the _Letters of Indulgence_, as bank-notes are now made, with the intention that the copies of each edition should be exactly alike in appearance, and that they should be difficult of imitation. Bernard dissents from the belief that the _Letters of Indulgence_ were printed by Gutenberg. He attributes them to some printer of unknown name in Mentz, supposed by him to have been either the false workman described by Junius, or some graduate or seceding malcontent of Gutenberg’s printing office. But we have no evidence of a typographical printer before Gutenberg. Jäck has endeavored to prove that two _Letters_ were printed by Pfister of Bamberg. De la Borde thinks one of the faces of type used in the _Letters_ was cut by Schœffer in a friendly competition with Gutenberg. These conjectures cannot be made plausible.

[254] It is sometimes described as the _Mazarin Bible_, and sometimes as _Gutenberg’s First Bible_.

[255] This is known as the _Bamberg Bible_, because nearly all the known copies of this edition were found in the neighborhood of the town of Bamberg; as _Pfister’s Bible_, because it has been attributed, incorrectly, to Albert Pfister, a printer of Bamberg; as the _Schelhorn Bible_, because it was fully described by the bibliographer of that name; as _Gutenberg’s Second Bible_, because it is the belief of many authors that it should have been printed by Gutenberg about 1459, after his rupture with John Fust.

[256] Bernard, _De l’origine et des debuts de l’imprimerie_, vol. II, p. 30.

[257] In the year of our Lord 1450, they began to print, and the first book they printed was the _Bible_ in Latin: it was printed in a large letter, resembling the letter with which, at present, missals are printed. _Cologne Chronicle_ of 1499.

[258] In the first essays of printing, great difficulties were encountered. For when they [the first printers] were printing the Bible, they were obliged to expend more than four thousand florins before they had printed three sections. Trithemius, as reprinted by Wolf, _Monumenta Typographica_, vol. II, p. 654.

[259] These evidences, which seem to favor the theory of the priority of the _Bible of 36 lines_, combine many features of probability, but they are not free from objections. Too little is known about the book to warrant a positive statement as to its age. In nearly all the popular treatises on printing, the _Bible of 42_ lines is specified as the first book of Gutenberg, but it is the belief of many of the most learned bibliographers, from Zapf to Didot and Madden, that the _Bible of 36 lines_ is the older edition. The theory that it must have been printed by Gutenberg between 1457 and 1459, and the proposition that it may have been printed by Albert Pfister of Bamberg at or soon after that time, will be examined on an advanced page.

[260] His name is often improperly written as Faust. In all the books subsequently printed by Fust and his partner, Schœffer, the name appears as Fust. It was so written and printed by all his contemporaries, and is so seen, wherever it occurs, in the record of the famous trial he instituted. It is so spelt in the church record of his burial. During his lifetime, and for at least thirty years after his death, the name is always given as Fust. The notorious reputation subsequently made by Dr. John Faust, who was born in Wurtemberg in 1480 (several years after the death of Fust), who studied magic in Cracow, and, by his learning and wickedness, horrified wise men like Luther and Melancthon; whose life, deeds and death are involved in a mystery that dramatists have turned to such good account, has been transferred by carelessness to John Fust, the printer. The confusion has been perpetuated by a legend. The fable, not yet weeded out of treatises on printing, that Fust was arrested in Paris for selling bibles, supposed to have been manufactured at the instigation of the devil, has served to foster the error.

[261] Those who favor this view of Fust’s character, find a peculiar significance in the radical meaning of his name, Fust—in German, fist, the symbol of all that is hard, close, grasping, and aggressive.

[262] These were the terms of the contract, made in August, 1450:

The partnership between Gutenberg and Fust should be for five years, in which time the work projected by Gutenberg should be completed.—For the purposes of this partnership, not specified, Fust should advance to Gutenberg 800 guilders, at 6 per cent. interest. The tools and materials made by Gutenberg for the uses of the partnership should remain mortgaged to Fust, as security for this loan of 800 guilders, until the whole sum should be paid.—When the aforesaid tools and materials should be made, Fust should, every year, furnish Gutenberg with 300 guilders to provide for the payment of the paper, vellum, ink, wages and the other materials that would be required for the execution of the work.—For these advances Fust should have one-half of the profits made from the sale of the products of the partnership.—Fust should be exempted from the performance of any work or service connected with the partnership, and should not be held responsible for any of its debts.

[263] There are two kinds of copies, with differences which seem to justify the opinion that they belong to two distinct editions. In one kind, all the copies have 42 lines to the column, and all the summaries of chapters are written and not printed. In the other kind, the first eight pages of the first section have 40 lines to the column; the ninth page has 41 lines; the tenth and all other pages (except two 40-line pages in the book of _Maccabees_) have 42 lines; and the pages of 40 and 41 lines have their five summaries printed in red ink. The same face of type is used in both kinds of copies, but the pages of 40 and 41 lines occupy the same space as the pages of 42 lines, begining and ending, for the most part, with the same words. Bernard says that the 40-line pages were reset by Peter Schœffer after Fust had acquired the unsold copies of the _Bible_, with intent to lead the purchaser of the book to form the belief that it was an entirely new edition. Other writers suggest that a portion of the first section may have been spoiled, and replaced by a subsequent reprinting. But the differences are not confined to the first section. In many other sections there are differences in the spelling and abbreviation of words which clearly prove that the two kinds of copies were printed from separately composed and distinct forms. The double composition of every page for the same edition seems a ridiculous waste of labor, but the proofs of this double labor are unmistakable.

[264] Bernard says that over-colored and under-colored pages are by no means rare. He attributes this unequal blackness to imperfections in the inking implements. _De l’origine de l’imprimerie_, vol. I, p. 182.

[265] See the fac-similes of Sotheby and Humphreys. The written summaries of this Bible, as they present them, are unlike the printed text.

[266] At the sale of the Perkins library near London, June 6, 1873, a copy of the _Bible of 42 lines_, on vellum, was sold for £3,400, and a copy on paper for £2,690—more than the first printers got for all the copies.

[267] Hessels’ translation, as printed in the _Haarlem Legend_, pp. 24 and 25.

[268] Philip de Lignamine, in a book entitled _A Continuation of the Chronicles of the Popes_, which he printed in Rome in 1474, writes concerning the year 1458: “Jacob Gutenberg of Strasburg, and another called Fust, very skillful in the art of printing with characters of metal on parchment, each printed three hundred leaves daily at Mentz.” Jacob is an error of memory or of typography, and the mention of Strasburg as Gutenberg’s birthplace is incorrect, but the statement that he printed in 1458 is, no doubt, true. It seems the testimony of a printer, whose knowledge of the facts had been derived either from personal observation, or from the reports of workmen once employed at Mentz.

[269] This _Catholicon_ was written, or edited, as the title informs us, by John of Genoa, of the fraternity of preachers, or mendicant friars. It contains an elaborate Latin grammar and an etymological dictionary in five divisions. It was a text book of authority in the higher schools.

[270] Van Praet says that Gutenberg, as a noble, dared not advertise his connection with a mechanical art. This is absurd, for Gutenberg’s connection with printing in Mentz had been known for at least ten years, and printing was not then regarded as a business derogatory to the standing of a noble. Wetter says that Gutenberg was humiliated by the superior workmanship of Fust and Schœffer. But the work of these printers was not of such unquestionable superiority. Helbig’s conjecture seems most plausible, but Gutenberg may have been so intent on the personal satisfaction he derived from the realization of his ideas, that he was comparatively indifferent to the gratification derived from notoriety.

[271] In Germany, the punch or the model letter is known as the _patrice_, a word obviously derived from the root of the Latin _patronarum_ of the text. The reversed duplicates of punches, here translated as matrices, are noticed in the text as _formarum_, a variation of the word form, which we find so often in the record of the Strasburg trial. “The admirable proportion, harmony and connection of the punches and matrices,” should be understood, not as a commendation of the beauty of the printed letters, but as a specification by the inventor of what he conceived was the great feature of typography, the making of types of different faces and thickness on bodies of absolute uniformity, so that they could be combined with ease. It should be noticed that the invention or the use of isolated letters or types is not boasted of; it was the method of making the types which the inventor regarded as the most admirable feature of his invention.

[272] This work is attributed to Gutenberg, chiefly on the authority of this inscription, which was found in a copy in the possession of the Carthusian Friars at Mentz:

The Carthusian Friars near Mentz, through the liberality of John Gutenberg, own this book, which was made by his wonderful art, and by the skill of John Nummeister, clerk. In the year of our Lord 1463, on the 13th calend of July [June 19].

Helbig doubts the genuineness of this annotation, and intimates that it may be the work of Bodmann, a librarian at Mentz, who has been suspected of attempts to foist spurious documents on those who were eager to know more of the life and labors of Gutenberg. In his treatise on the _Typographic Monuments of Gutenberg_, Fischer, on the authority of Bodmann, printed the copy of a verbose document which set forth that John Gutenberg and Frielo Gensfleisch assented to the action of their sister Hebele in conveying to the Convent of Saint Clare, of which she was then a nun, her share in the paternal inheritance. It also recites that John Gutenberg will give to the convent a copy of every book to be printed by him. This document, which is dated 1459, is not accepted as genuine by discreet bibliographers.

[273] Bernard says that some of these works were probably printed by an unknown printer at Mentz (not the printer of the _Indulgence of 31 lines_); but this conjecture of two printing offices, about which history and tradition are silent, which never produced any work of value, cannot be accepted.

[274] A copy of this book in the National Library at Paris has an annotation which sets forth that “Henry Kepfer of Mentz put this book in pledge for twelve days, and has not reclaimed it. . . .” Henry Kepfer was one of Gutenberg’s workmen who appeared for him on the trial.

[275] Fischer says that a library at Mentz once contained several pamphlets printed by Gutenberg in the large types of the _Bible of 36 lines_. He gives fac-similes of the illuminated initials in one of these pamphlets, which closely resemble those of the _Psalter of 1457_. This similarity is more than an indication that the letters of this _Psalter_ were made by Gutenberg.

[276] In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Mentz, then the capital of Germany, contained a population of about 100,000 inhabitants. It was the most powerful city of the empire, the great city where the emperors were crowned. In the fourteenth century, it was so strong that it could send out of its walls 10,000 armed citizens to destroy the strongholds of the noble robbers who had ravaged its commerce.

[277] Helbig says that all the larger houses that had not been destroyed by fire were confiscated. The booty was divided in three parts: Adolph took the first and the best part, the nobles of his army claimed the second; the soldiers, “a band of mercenary savages,” took the remainder. _Notes et dissertations_, p. 52.

[278] Hessels’ translation.

[279] Schaab says that an aristocratic appointment at the court procured this nobleman a comfortable life. Voluntarily he followed the princely court, where he had a free table and fodder for his horses. Even for his dress he received cloth in the court colors, and generally wore a kind of mantle, called Tabard. It was in accordance with the morals of that time to carouse at court. They went there with empty cups and returned with full ones. The princes tried not before the sixteenth century to put a check to this excess by special orders. The elector Johan Schweikard von Kronenberg ordered, even in the year 1605, to leave the _grossen Saumagen_—this was the name of the cups then used—for the future at home . . . . However comfortable and German-like all this may look, miserable were these court-wages, this dress, these alms presented to the inventor of typography. But no, it is perfectly in harmony with the general course of earthly things. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 29.

[280] Henry Bechtermüntz had died before the book was finished.

[281] The _Vocabularium ex quo_ was reprinted by Nicholas Bechtermüntz, in the same types and in the same form, in the years 1469, 1472, and 1477. Only one copy is known of the first edition of the book.

[282] From the preface to a curious and little-known poem entitled _Encomion Chalcographiæ_, by Arnold Bergellanus, as reprinted by Wolf in his _Monumenta Typographica_, vol. I, p. 5.

[283] It appears from this, that Humery, who owned the printing office, had neglected to properly record or establish his title. It was through the grace of the archbishop, who understood the matter, that he was spared the trouble of re-establishing his right by legal process.