Part 33
The few experts in printing who have examined copies of this book have been so cowed by the rulings of eminent bibliographers that they have not, apparently, dared to trust their own observation. Savage was the first to refuse the dictum of authorities and tell us what he saw with his own eyes. He distinctly says that the blackness of some notes of music was made by retracing with a pen[296] the faded lines of a paler printed color. Bernard[297] and Humphreys[298] plainly say that in the fine copy of the _Mentz Psalter_ at the British Museum, some lines of text have been written in by hand. Humphreys thinks that this filling in of lines may have been done when the book was published. We have here trusty evidence that the printing of the _Psalter_ was imperfect: that in some places the ink was too weak,[299] and that the deeper [p456] color was produced by painting the letters with a pen. The brilliancy of the black ink has consequently been unwisely praised, for it is a triumph not of printing, but of painting.
The same observation may be applied to the colored ink of the great initials. Savage denies the statement of Papillon that the red ink is of the most perfect beauty: he says that “it is a very heavy brick-dust color.” Heineken says it is a dull red. A closer examination of the book revealed the fact to Savage that the initials also had been retraced or painted.
I could not avoid expressing my astonishment at seeing in some pages two distinct red inks: one, the dull color before spoken of, and the other, a red which, in printing, might fairly be called of the most perfect beauty; and I had nearly left it with the belief that there were two inks, red and blue, used in the printing of the book, which, for brilliancy of color, would set at defiance all the efforts of the present day to equal them. Some accidental circumstance caused me to view the book in a different light, when I discovered that the beautiful red was not printed but written in, so exactly like the type that it could only be ascertained by the want of indentation in the paper, which is invariably produced by pressure in the process of printing. By the same means, I also ascertained that the fine delicate blue was painted. Thus the colors produced by printing in the capital letters are reduced to two, namely, dull blue and dull red.[300]
It is not difficult to explain this curious circumstance. The red and blue printing inks first used by Schœffer were so dull and faded that he would not suffer them to be compared with the brighter colors of fair manuscripts. He was compelled to brighten the colors by painting. Although sold as a printed book, the _Psalter_ was the joint work of the printer and the illuminator, and the features which the modern bibliographer most admires are those made by the illuminator.
The process employed by the printer of the _Psalter_ for securing an exact register of the colors was just as irregular. It is an error to assume that the two-colored initials were printed as similar work is now printed, by two impressions. Bernard says that the red and the blue blocks of the initials, [p457] each engraved on a separate piece of wood, were made to fit each other, so that the red block should fit accurately in the mortised blue block. In the process of printing, each block was separately inked, but the red block was dropped in the mortise of the blue block before impression was taken.[301] After these painstaking preparations, exact register was inevitable.
Blades does not accept this explanation. He thinks that the engraving for the red and the blue ink was done on one block, which was not printed with ink, but was embossed in the paper as a guide to the colorist. He says that his examination of the two-colored initial letters of a Bible made by Sweynheim and Pannartz in 1467 proves that they were not printed, but embossed, in the white paper; that the paper mask on the frisket was left uncut over the engraving, so as to shield the white paper from the ink, and to deepen the indentation of the engraved lines; and that the illuminator made use of this indentation, as he would of a pencil drawing, to guide his pen or brush when laying on the colors. He further says[302] that a similar operation was carelessly done in parts of the _Psalter of 1457_; that some of the spiral lines, finials and ornaments were left uncolored, but that the process was plainly exposed by the indentation of the engraved lines.
It is not necessary to accept Blades’ opinion that the coloring was done entirely with pen or brush: the few uncolored lines in the initials of the _Mentz Psalter_ may be regarded as blemishes occasioned by an accidental overlapping of the mask on the frisket. Savage’s statement that the blocks were printed with ink is too positive to be disputed. Nor is it necessary to accept the hypothesis of Bernard that the blocks were engraved in two pieces and mortised, that they might be printed by one impression. We may rightfully suppose [p458] that Schœffer tried to imitate the work of the illuminator by the imitation of his method. To engrave the initial and the ornament around it on one block, to paint the letter in one color and the ornament in another, and to print both colors by one impression, seemed the surest way to do the work. That this was the intention of the designer of the letters is evident from the manner in which the colors are divided. Contrary to the usage of the illuminators, who were fond of interweaving colors, each color was kept apart in a mass, that it might be inked with greater facility. And this inking was probably done with a brush. Blue ink was painted on the letter, and red ink on the ornament, at a great sacrifice of time, but with neatness and without any interference of the colors.[303] It should not surprise us that exact register was secured, but it was more a feat of painting than of printing.[304]
Setting aside the colors, the workmanship of the _Psalter_ is not neater than that of the _Bible of 42 lines_. The right side of every page is much more ragged[305] through bad spacing; typographical errors[306] are more frequent; the lines are often bowed or bent in the centre from careless locking up. The presswork is not good; the pages are dark and light from uneven inking, and the types have a grimy appearance, as if [p459] they had been inked with foul balls and printed on over-wet vellum. The colophon or imprint attached to this book says:
This book of Psalms, decorated with antique initials, and sufficiently emphasized with rubricated letters, has been thus made by the masterly invention of printing and also of type-making, without the writing of a pen, and is consummated to the service of God, through the industry of Johan Fust, citizen of Mentz, and Peter Schœffer of Gernszheim, in the year of our Lord 1457, on the eve of the Assumption [August 14].
This imprint is ingeniously worded. Fust and Schœffer do not say, in plain words, that they were the inventors of printing; they invite attention to the red ink and the two-colored initials which were here used in printing, with fine effect. They speak of rubricated printing and of the invention of printing as if they were inseparable. They suppress the name of Gutenberg, and induce the reader to believe that Fust and Schœffer were not only the first to print with letters in red ink, but the first to discover and use the masterly invention. This insinuated pretense had the effect which was, no doubt, intended. By many readers of that century, Peter Schœffer was regarded as the man who planned and printed the _Psalter_, the man who made the types, not only of this book, but of the _Bible of 42 lines_. Made bold by the silence of Gutenberg, Schœffer allowed, if he did not positively authorize, the statement to be made by his friends, that he was the true inventor of printing; that he took up the art where Gutenberg left it incomplete, and perfected it.
Before this assertion can be examined, it will be proper to consider the date of 1457 in the imprint of the _Psalter_. If Schœffer planned and printed the book, he did all the work in the twenty-one months following Gutenberg’s expulsion from the partnership. This is an unreasonable proposition, for the book should have been in press or in preparation as long as the _Bible of 42 lines_. It is quite probable that the _Psalter_ was planned and left incomplete by Gutenberg. The types, which are like those of Gutenberg’s _Bible_, are unlike any types [p460] subsequently made by Schœffer. The great initials in colors are of the same design as the initials of the _Donatuses_ shown by Fischer, and by him attributed to Gutenberg. The careful manner in which they were engraved indicates experience as well as skill on the part of the engraver; but it is not possible that the engraver was Schœffer, or any workmen attached to his office, for Schœffer never after printed any engravings on wood of equal merit.[307] The sumptuous style of the _Psalter_ is unlike that of any book afterward made by Schœffer; it is in a style which he did not originate, and could not sustain. He reprinted it in 1459, in 1490, and in 1502, but the later editions were not printed so well as the first.[308] The inferiority of the later workmanship is evidence that the master mind who planned the work was not at the head of the printing office.
On the sixth day of October, 1459, Fust published the _Rationale Durandi_, or the exposition, by Durandus, of the services of the church. It is a folio of 160 leaves, 2 columns to the page, in types on English body, 63 lines to the column. It has many rubricated letters and lines, and ends with a colophon, in red ink, worded like the _Psalter of 1457_, but with the addition of the words, “clerk of the diocese of Mentz,” after the name of Peter Schœffer. The statement in the colophon, that it was made without the writing of a pen, is not entirely true. There are two kinds of copies: one has printed capitals like those of the _Psalter_, the other has illuminated initials. To provide suitable spaces for these written initials, which are of large size, the types were overrun and re-arranged.
If Schœffer had been an able calligrapher, he would have [p461] demonstrated his ability by the production of types of finer proportions than those of Gutenberg. If he was an expert type-founder, and the inventor of the type-mould, he should have proved his skill by casting types of neater finish. The first types made by him or by his order after his separation from Gutenberg are exhibited in the _Rationale Durandi_, but they do not warrant the opinion that he was a very skillful designer or an ingenious type-founder. The combination of Gothic and Roman which he there exhibited is evidently an imitation of the Round Gothic face used by Gutenberg in the _Letters of Indulgence_ and the _Catholicon_. Schœffer’s types present no features of superiority: they show mannerisms of engraving so like those of Gutenberg’s types as to lead to the opinion that both were made by the same punch-cutter.
In the following year (1460), Schœffer and Fust finished a stout folio, which was printed in a Round Gothic face on the larger body of Great-primer. This book, the _Constitutions_ (or Body of Divinity) _of Pope Clement V, with the Commentaries of Bishop John Andrew_, has been much admired by bibliographers for its composition. The fac-simile on a following page shows the text of the pope nested in the commentaries of the bishop—truly “a rivulet of text in a meadow of notes.” In some pages the text occupies about one-third, in other pages about one-sixth, of the space assigned to the print. [p462] The composition of pages so unevenly balanced must have taxed the ingenuity of the compositor, but he was materially aided by the licence permitting frequent use of abbreviations.
These types are cast in evener line than the types of the _Rationale_, but the face is not of neater cut. The presswork is not good. The colophon, which is like that of the _Psalter_, states that the red letters have been printed by the masterly invention of type-making; but the red letters are the ones interspersed in the text. The great initials were not printed; the blank space left for them was filled up by the illuminator. This book was even more popular than the _Psalter_; it was reprinted four times, but always in the same form.
In 1462 Schœffer printed a new edition of the _Latin Bible_, in the Great-primer types of the _Constitutions_, in folio form, two columns to the page, and 48 lines to the column. It is the first Bible with printed date. According to modern taste, Schœffer’s change from Pointed Gothic to Round Gothic was not happy, for the new face is inferior in design and execution. But the Round Gothic permitted the compression of the book within fewer pages, and was a more economical letter for the printer. The second volume has, in some copies, a colophon worded like that of the [p464] _Psalter of 1457_, setting forth that “this little book was made by the masterly invention of printing and of type-making, without any writing of a pen;” in other copies, obviously of the same edition, this clause does not appear. This is but one of many variations in this book which can be satisfactorily explained only by Madden’s theory of a double composition.
The war between Diether and Adolph for the possession of the electorate of Mentz was the occasion of some curious proclamations which were printed in the types of Schœffer.[309] Two editions, one in Latin, one in German, of a _Bull of Pope Pius II against the Turks_, dated October 22, 1463, have also been attributed to Schœffer.
The capture and sack of Mentz brought great misfortune to Fust and Schœffer. We are told that the house and materials of Fust were burned; but it is plain that he saved his punches and matrices, for we see that the old faces of type were used in all the later books of Fust and Schœffer. The printed proclamations of Adolph show that Fust soon refurnished his office, and began to print. With his fellow-citizens, he suffered from the paralysis to industry inflicted by the war. There was no encouragement for enterprise. There is no book bearing the imprint of Fust and Schœffer between the years 1462 and 1464. The unemployed workmen of Fust and [p465] Schœffer were obliged to leave the city. In leaving it, they carried with them the knowledge of the new art, which, in a few years, they established in all the larger cities of Europe.
The _Bible of 1462_ found few purchasers in Mentz. The demand in the city had already been supplied with the _Bibles of 36 lines_ and of _42 lines_, and buyers from abroad shunned a city subject to siege and to civil war. Leaving Schœffer to take care of the business of the printing office, Fust took the unsold _Bibles_ to Paris, where he believed they would find a more generous appreciation. For it seems that, in 1458, the king of France had sent Nicholas Jenson to Mentz to get a knowledge of the practice of typography, the fame of which had then reached France, and it is supposed that Jenson gave to Fust the information that there was a demand for printing in Paris. This is the official record of the proposed mission.[310]
On the third day of October, 1458, the king [Charles VII], having learned that Messire Guthemburg, chevalier, a resident of Mentz in Germany, a man dexterous in engraving and in types and punches, had perfected the invention of printing with types and punches, curious concerning this mystery, the king ordered the chiefs of the mint to nominate some persons of proper experience in engraving of a similar nature, so that he could secretly send them to the said place, to obtain information about the said form [type-mould] and invention, there to hear, to consider, and to learn the art. This mandate of the king was obeyed, and it was directed that Nicholas Jenson should make the journey, by means of which the knowledge of the art and its establishment should be achieved in this realm, and it should be his (Jenson’s) duty to first give the art of printing to the said realm.[311] [p466]
The description of printing here given is singularly exact. It is not surprising that the existence of the new art was then known in Paris, for the colophon to the _Psalter of 1457_ had announced the masterly invention; but it is strange that this document specified its characteristic features—the _formen_, or the matrices and type-mould, the types, punches and engraving. We see that the secret was revealed; that Frenchmen in 1458 had a correct idea of the vital principle of printing, and that all they required was a knowledge of its manipulations.
Eager to prevent the threatened rivalry of Jenson, Fust appeared in Paris, in 1462, with copies of the _Bible_,[312] while Jenson was ineffectually soliciting the new king to aid him. So far from being persecuted in Paris, Fust was received with high consideration, not only by the king, but by the leading men of the city. He was encouraged to establish in Paris a store for the sale of his books, and to repeat his visit.
In 1465, Schœffer printed the _Decretals of Boniface VIII_, a folio of 141 leaves, each page containing a text in large types, surrounded by notes in small types. Red letters and lines are introduced, but there are no engravings, and the presswork is in no point better than that of the _Bible of 1462_. The colophon exhibits an unscrupulous appropriation of the [p467] words of the colophon of the _Catholicon of 1460_;[313] but, unlike the printer of that book, Fust and Schœffer here advertise themselves as the men most intimately connected with the great invention. We can plainly see their strong desire to be regarded as the first printers, but there is as yet no clear statement that Schœffer was the real inventor of printing.
In the same year was printed by Fust and Schœffer an edition of _The Offices of Cicero_, a small quarto of 88 leaves, in their smaller size of Round Gothic types. To make the book of proper thickness, and perhaps to improve the appearance of the types, which show signs of wear, Schœffer put thick leads, about one-tenth of an inch thick, between the lines. As it is the first book in which leads of perceptible thickness were used, this real improvement in printing may be attributed to Schœffer. This edition of _Cicero_ is also distinguished as the first book in which Greek letters were printed; but these letters were not types—they were engraved on wood in a rude manner.[314] This edition of _Cicero_ has the following colophon:
This very celebrated work of Marcus Tullius, I, John Fust, a citizen of Mentz, have happily completed, through the hands of Peter, my son, not with writing ink, nor with pen, nor yet in brass,[315] but with a certain art exceedingly beautiful. Dated 1465.[316]
The _Cicero_ was reprinted on February 4, 1466. Soon after its publication, Fust made another Journey to Paris.[317] Before he could perfect his arrangements for the sale of his books, Paris was depopulated by the plague, and it is the common [p468] belief that Fust was one of its victims. This is not certainly known, but he was dead on the thirtieth day of October, 1466, the date of the first mass instituted for him at the Church of Saint Victor at Paris, where his body was buried.[318]
After Fust’s death, Peter Schœffer took his place at the head of the printing house. It seems, however, that he had a partner, one Conrad Fust, or Conrad Hanequis, who was, no doubt, the Henlif mentioned in the record of the Church of Saint Victor.[319] A book belonging to the Church of Saint Peter of Mentz contains the following record of their application for the manuscript of a book to which they wished to refer:
On Tuesday evening, January 14, 1468, the dean and the canons of the chapter being assembled in the court of Rhingrave, the discreet man, Conrad Fust, citizen of Mentz, respectfully requested of their reverences that they would be pleased to lend to him, and also to Peter, the husband of his daughter, a book from the library of our church, to be used as a copy, namely: the _Saint Thomas_ [of Aquinas], entitled _Liber super quarto sententiarum_, and of which they wish to make many copies. The canons, considering that this request was just and pious, and that it would be productive of good, consented to the request, on condition, however, that he should replace this book, together with the _Decretals of Boniface_, and further, that he should give proper security to the canons. It was so done.[320] [p469]
Soon after Gutenberg’s death, Schœffer put forth this artful claim for recognition as one of the inventors of the new art:
Moses, in the plan of the tabernacle, and Solomon, in the plan of the temple, did nothing more than imagine a meritorious work. The merit of constructing the temple was greater than Solomon’s thought. Hiram and Beselehel, greater than Solomon, improved on the plans of Solomon and Moses. He who is pleased to endow mighty men with knowledge has given us two distinguished masters in the art of engraving, both bearing the name of John, both living in the city of Mentz, and both illustrious as the first printers of books. In company with these masters, Peter hastened toward the same end.[321] The last to leave, he was the first to arrive; for he excelled in the science of engraving, through the grace of Him only who can give genius and inspiration. Hereafter every nation may procure proper types of its own characters, for he excels in the engraving of all kinds of types. It would be almost incredible were I to specify the great sums which he pays to the wise men who correct his editions. He has in his employ, the professor Francis, the grammarian, whose methodical science is admired all over the world. I, also, am attached to him, not by any greed of filthy lucre, but by my love for the general good, and for the honor of my country. Oh that they who set the types and they who read the proofs would free their texts from errors! The lovers of literature would certainly reward them with crowns of honor when with their books, they come to aid the students in thousands of schools.[322] [p470]