Part 35

Every man, in his heart, desires to be learned and well read. Without books and without teacher, this cannot be. If it were otherwise, all of us would know Latin. These reflections have engaged me for a long time. To good purpose have I sought out and gathered the four stories of Joseph, Daniel, Judith, and also of Esther. God granted protection to these four personages, as He always does to the good. This little book, which is intended to teach us how to amend our lives, was completed in Bamberg, in which city Albert Pfister printed it, in the year which is numbered one thousand four hundred and sixty-two,—which is the truth,—soon after the day of Saint Walpurgis, who is able to obtain for us grace abundant, peace, and everlasting life. May God give them to all of us. Amen.

The _Book of Fables_, a folio of 88 leaves, printed with the types of the _Bible of 36 lines_, is another work which fairly exhibits the style of Pfister. It contains eighty-five fables, each illustrated with a coarse engraving on wood, in which monkeys represent men. The text is in rhyme, but the lines follow each other without break. The colophon says:

At Bamberg this little book was finished, after the Nativity of Jesus Christ, as one counts, one thousand four hundred years and sixty and one,—such is the truth,—on the day of Saint Valentine. God save us from His sufferings.

Another book attributed to Pfister is known as _Belial_, or the _Consolation of the Sinner_. It is a folio of 95 leaves, which exhibits on the last leaf the words _Albrecht Pfister su Bamberg_. Pfister also printed two editions of the _Bible of the Poor_, one in Latin and one in German, each containing eighteen engravings. His treatment of the old block-book is that of a mechanic and not of an artist: the designing, [p483] engraving and printing are of the lowest order. He also printed the _Complaint against Death_, and the _Judgment of Man after Death_. All were printed with the types of the _Bible of 36 lines_, and they were, apparently, his only types. [p484]

That Pfister was not a type-founder seems clearly enough established through the fact that he did all his typographic work with only one size and face of type. In all his books, the letters of the Latin alphabet appear old and worn, but the _w_, _k_, and _z_, characters of the German alphabet, are new and sharp. The types had evidently been used before for books in Latin, but not by Pfister, for the _Bible of the Poor_ seems to have been the only book he printed in that language.

The _Book of Fables_ bearing the date of 1461 seems the earliest of Pfister’s books, but it was published without any explanation stating that it was made by a new art. It may therefore be presumed that he began to print with types before 1461. The profusion of wood-cuts in his books is an indication that he was an engraver on wood—probably a maker of playing cards, images, and block-books, who had profited by an early opportunity to perceive the advantages of types. As a seller and maker of chap-books, he would prefer the types because they explained his pictures more cheaply than the slower process of engraving letter by letter; but his persistent use of types which other printers would have condemned as worn out, shows that he did not make and could not renew them. It is not probable that a man who seems to have rated his wretched wood-cuts as the most meritorious feature of his books could have invented types. It is possible, however, that an image printer of low aims and slender ability could have perceived the economical advantages of types, and may have purchased a discarded font for the sole purpose of printing explanations to his engravings. And this seems the only conjecture that will explain Pfister’s ownership of the types of the _Bible of 36 lines_.

The conjecture that Pfister printed the _Bible of 36 lines_ will not bear a critical examination. It is not enough to show that our first positive knowledge of the types and the copies of this book begins with Pfister and Bamberg. It still remains to be proved that Pfister made the types and printed the copies. The proof is wanting and the probabilities are [p485] strongly adverse. The _Bible of 36 lines_ is unlike any book of Pfister’s in size, character, and workmanship. It is not possible that the man who began his career as a printer with an admirable edition of the Latin Bible in three volumes folio, could have ended it with the publication of shabby little books in German, intended for children. A declension like this is without a parallel in typographical history.

It has been supposed that Pfister got his types and his imperfect knowledge of typography from Gutenberg after the dissolution of the partnership between Fust and Gutenberg, but Pfister could have gotten them before. There is a blank in Gutenberg’s history between the years 1442 and 1448, about which we know nothing. That he was then at work on his problem; that he must have communicated more or less of his secrets to the many unknown workmen and associates who succeeded Dritzehen, Saspach, Heilmann and Dünne; that he may have been induced to try his fortunes at Bamberg before he went to Mentz; that Albert Pfister may have been one of his workmen who followed him to Mentz and acquired some skill in the art,—these are conjectures that deserve consideration. But they are conjectures only: we have no exact knowledge concerning the introduction of typography in Bamberg. It is plain, however, that the appearance at Bamberg, in 1461,—a year before the sack of Mentz, the date usually fixed on as that of the dispersion of the printers, and the general divulgement of the secret,—of a book printed in the worn types of the _Bible of 36 lines_, and the subsequent discovery near this city of many copies of this book, which could not have been printed by Pfister, are indications that Gutenberg must have had business relations with Bamberg which are of importance in the history of printing.

The only documentary evidence which seems to favor the hypothesis that Pfister might have printed the _Bible of 36 lines_ is the following curious notice of early printing, which was written about 1463, by Paul of Prague, for a contemplated but unfinished encyclopedia of arts and sciences: [p486]

The _libripagus_[335] is an artisan who skillfully engraves on plates of copper, iron, hard wood, or other substances, images, writing, or anything he fancies, and afterward quickly prints them on paper, or on a wall, or on a smooth board. He cuts whatever he pleases, and is a man who can apply his art to pictures. When I was at Bamberg, a man engraved the whole Bible upon plates, and in four weeks skillfully preserved this engraving of the whole Bible on thin parchment.

Pfister’s name is not mentioned, but he was, probably, the _libripagus_ here noticed. The story is not credible. The whole _Bible_ was not printed in four weeks, neither at Bamberg nor elsewhere; nor was it ever engraved upon plates. The only book of Pfister’s to which this statement could be applied, is his edition of the _Bible of the Poor_.

We do not know when Pfister died; his last dated work is of the year 1462. Sebastian Pfister, who is supposed to be Albert’s son, was at the head of a printing office at Bamberg in the year 1470, and then printed a little book which seems to have been his first and last venture in printing.

Pamphilo Castaldi of Feltre, Italy, to whom a statue was erected in 1868, has also received the undeserved honor of an inventor of printing. This commemoration of the man by the people of a great nation seems to require in this book at least a statement of the legend on which his claims are based. This is the legend, abridged from a long panegyric on Castaldi’s services by one of his countrymen:

Pamphilo Castaldi was born in Feltre, of noble parents, at the end of the fourteenth century. He was highly educated and intelligent. Although a poet and a lawyer of good reputation, his love for literature induced him to open a school for polite learning, which soon became famous, and attracted students from foreign countries. None of his pupils acquired greater fame than John Fust, who is called by the historians of Feltre, Fausto Comesburgo. This Faust resided with [p487] Castaldi in Feltre as early as 1454. In the year 1442, Castaldi had seen a proof of Gutenberg’s attempts at the invention of typography. Gutenberg at that time (1442) was supported by the money of Faust and the skill of Schœffer, his partners. After ten years of experiment, Gutenberg had done nothing more than print from blocks of wood and with metallic characters. He had not yet invented movable types, for the _Bible of 1456_ should be classified with the block-books.

Castaldi, more ingenious or more fortunate, had already discovered movable types before the arrival of Faust in Feltre. It is well known that, a century before the publication of the _Mentz Psalter of 1457_, initial letters and capital letters formed of glass were manufactured at Murano, and used in Italy. These glass letters were, probably, the invention of Pietro de Natali, bishop of Equilo. Castaldi had noticed that these letters were of advantage to the scribes, who printed them in their manuscript books. He at once saw that it would be possible to print entire books, instead of occasional letters, with movable types. The facility with which this discovery had been made caused him to undervalue its importance. He gave the idea to Faust, who, returning to his partners in 1456, or a little before, enabled them to appropriate the invention of Castaldi. They greedily adopted this invention, and, in 1457, they produced the _Psalter_, the first book printed with movable characters of wood.[336]

The only portion of this absurd story which has any claim to respect is that about the early use in Italy by copyists of engraved or moulded initial letters. That they were, or could have been, made by the glass-blowers of Murano, and that Castaldi may have amused himself with experiments in stamping consecutive letters or lines, is possible. All else is pure fiction. It does not appear that Castaldi printed anything of value: we have no relics of his experiments in the form of a book, or even of a leaf, a line, or a letter. Nor did his dreams or teachings about the possible value of types ever incite any of his Italian pupils to make and use types.

To those who think that the merit of the invention of printing is in the conception of the idea of movable types, this legend about Castaldi is instructive. It reveals to us a man who is represented as having a very clear idea of the [p488] importance of types, who did nothing with his great discovery. His discovery, if it can be so called, was useless. He cannot be rated as an inventor of printing, for he printed nothing.

John Mentel, of Strasburg, who died in December, 1478, and was buried in the great cathedral of that city, has there a tablet to his memory, which contains the following inscription:

Here I rest: I, John Mentel, who, by the grace of God, was the first to invent, in Strasburg, the characters of typography, and to develop this art of printing, which should be perpetuated to the end of the world, to such a degree of perfection that a man can now write as much in a day as another could have done in a year. It is but just that thanks should be rendered to God, and without vanity, to me myself; but as this homage could not otherwise be rendered in a proper manner, God has ordained, as the reward for my invention, that the stones of this cathedral should serve for my mausoleum.[337]

The claim that Mentel was the inventor of typography was first made in 1520 by John Schott,[338] son of Martin Schott, who had married Mentel’s daughter and inherited his business. [p489] In the year 1521, Jerome Gebwiler, misled by the assertions of Schott, undertook to controvert the pretensions of Fust and Schœffer as the first printers. He writes that printing was practised in Strasburg by John Mentel, who had obtained the new art of chalcography, or of making books with tin pens (types) about the year 1447; that Mentel, and Eggestein, his partner, made an agreement that they should keep secret the new art; that John Schott, whom he praises, showed him a manuscript book, without date, written by Mentel, in which were drawings of typographic instruments, and observations on the manufacture of printing ink. It was by similar methods that John Schott induced James Spiegel to declare, in a book printed in 1531, that John Mentel invented printing in Strasburg in the year 1444.[339] John Schott is also the authority for the following version of the invention which was found in an old manuscript chronicle attributed to Daniel Specklin.

In the year 1440, the admirable art of printing was discovered in Strasburg by John Mentel. His son-in-law, Peter Schoiffer, and Martin Flach at once made use of the discovery; but a servant of Mentel, called John Gensfleisch, after stealing the secret, fled to Mentz, where he soon established the new art, through the help of Gutenberg, a very rich man. Mentel was so affected with grief by this perfidy that it caused his death. In honor of the art, he was buried in the monastery or cathedral church, and a representation of his press was cut on his tombstone. God swiftly punished the servant Gensfleisch, by striking him with blindness for the remnant of his life. I have seen the first press (of Mentel) and the types cut on wood, which were of syllables and words. They were pierced through the sides, that they could be conjoined by a wire and kept in line. It is to be regretted that these types, the first of the kind, should have been lost.[340] [p490]

These impudent falsifications of history would have been soon forgotten if they had not been renewed in the seventeenth century, by one James Mentel, a physician of Paris, the supposed descendant of John Mentel, who published two little books on the history of printing, in which he enlarged and distorted the versions of Gebwiler, Spiegel and Specklin. To support his claim, he did not scruple to alter the text and pervert the meaning of the authors from whom he pretended to quote.[341] It was a useless work, for no impartial critic can accept the statements of Mentel or of his predecessors. For these statements, like those in behalf of Coster, Castaldi and Schœffer, were made, for the first time, long after the invention had been perfected, by men who had the desire and the temptation to misrepresent the facts. All of them are tainted with the same calumny—the accusation that Gutenberg stole his knowledge of the invention—and all of them are contradicted by public records of undoubted authority.

Neither Mentel’s books nor the records of Strasburg give any warrant to the hypothesis that Mentel was an inventor of printing. His name appears for the first time on the tax list of the city of Strasburg, in the year 1447. He is called a _goltschriber_, and is enrolled with the goldsmiths. In another record of the city, for the same year, his name appears in a list of artists and painters, but he is not described as a printer. The earliest notice of him as a printer was made by Philip de Lignamine of Rome, who said, in 1474, that John Mentel of Strasburg, _since 1458_, had there a printing office, in which he printed three hundred sheets a day, “after the manner of Fust and Gutenberg.” By this statement we may suppose that Mentel practised printing soon after the dissolution of the partnership between Fust and Gutenberg. It was, no doubt, from Mentz that he got a knowledge of typography, for it cannot be shown that he was taught the art by any of Gutenberg’s early associates in Strasburg, nor is there any reason to believe that he was an independent inventor. We [p491] have no evidence that he experimented with types, or that he printed anything in Strasburg between 1439 and 1457. It is not even established that Mentel was the first practical printer in Strasburg, for there is evidence that he began to print there in partnership with one Henry Eggestein, who was a man of superior ability and of greater distinction, a master of arts and philosophy.[342]

Mentel did not affix his name to any of his books before 1473, but he had then printed many large theological works.[343] Schœpflin says that he soon made himself rich by his industry and his sagacity in the selection of salable books. He was a shrewd publisher, the first who issued a descriptive catalogue, and employed agents for the sale of his works.

[p492]

XXV

The Spread of Printing.

First Printers of Germany . . . Mentel at Strasburg . . . Zell at Cologne . . . Keffer and Koburger at Nuremberg . . . Fac-simile of a part of Koburger’s Map . . . Zainer at Augsburg . . . Fac-simile of Zainer’s Birth of Eve . . . John of Westphalia and Martens at Louvain . . . Mansion at Bruges . . . Gerard Leeu at Antwerp . . . First Printers of Italy . . . Sweinheym and Pannartz at Rome . . . De Spira at Venice . . . Jenson’s Types . . . Venice famous for Printing . . . Cennini at Florence . . . The Ripoli Press . . . Zarot at Milan . . . Appearance of Publishers . . . First Printers of France . . . Gering, Crantz and Friburger at Paris . . . The Printers of Elegant Books . . . First Printers in Spain and Portugal . . . In England . . . Caxton at Westminster . . . Printing did not find a general Welcome . . . Made Popular by the Cheapness of Books . . . Injudicious Selection of Books for Publication . . . Demand for Books in the Vernacular . . . First Check on the Liberty of the Press.

* * * * *

About this time, the crafte of Enpryntyng was fyrste founde in magounce in Almayne, which crafte is multiplyed through the world in many places, and bookes ben had grete chepe and in grete nombre by cause of the same crafte.

_Caxton, 1482._

* * * * *

IN CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE.

When two rival printing offices had been established at Mentz it was no longer possible to keep secret the processes. Every printer who handled the types and every goldsmith who helped to make the tools must have felt a weakening of the obligation of secrecy. The sack of Mentz was a greater misfortune, for it dissolved all obligations and sent the printers to other cities to found new offices. Not one of these printers has told us when and how he began to print on his own account. All we know about the introduction of printing in many of the large cities has been gathered from the dates of books and the chance allusions of early chroniclers. It is from these imperfect evidences [p493] that the following tables of the spread of printing have been made up. They are based on the chronological arrangement of Santander’s _Dictionary_, but the names and dates have been collated with those of Cotton’s _Typographical Gazetteer_, and other works of authority, and some alterations have been made.

Place. Printer. Date.

Mentz John Gutenberg 1450 Bamberg Albert Pfister — Strasburg Mentel and Eggestein 1458 Cologne Ulric Zell 1462 Augsburg Gunther Zainer 1468 Nuremberg Henry Keffer 1469 Munster in Argau Helyas Helye 1470 Spire Peter Drach 1471 Ulm John Zainer 1473 Buda (Hungary) Andrew Hess 1473 Mersburg Lucas Brandis 1473 Laugingen 1473 Esslingen Conrad Fyner 1473 Marienthal Bros. of Life-in-Com 1474 Lubec Lucas Brandis 1475 Burgdorf — 1475 Blaubeuren Conrad Mancz 1475 Pilsen — 1475 Rostock Bros. of Life-in-Com. 1476 Geneva Ad. Steynschauer 1478 Prague — 1478 Eichstadt M. and G. Reyser 1478 Wurtzburg Dold, Ryser, _et al._ 1479 Leipsic Marcus Brand 1481 Aurach Conrad Fyner 1481 Erfurt Wider de Hornbach 1482 Memmingen Albert de Duderstadt. 1482 Passau Stahl, Mayer, _et al._ 1482 Reutlingen John Ottmar 1482 Vienna John Winterburg 1482 Magdeburg Rauenstein _et al._ 1483 Stockholm John Snell 1483 Winterberg John Alacraw 1484 Heidelberg Fred. Misch 1485 Ratisbon John Sensenschmidt 1485 Brinn Stahl & Preinlein 1486 Munster John Limburg 1486 Sleswick Stephen Arndes 1486 Frisia — 1488 Kuttenberg Von Tischniowa 1489 Ingolstadt John Kachelofen 1490 Hamburg J. and T. Borchard 1491 Wadstein — 1491 Czernigov Tzernoevic 1492 Zinna — 1492 Fribourg Kilianus Piscator 1493 Luneburg John Luce 1493 Copenhagen Gothof. de Ghemen 1493 Oppenheim — 1494 Freisingen John Schæffler 1495 Offenburg — 1496 Tubingen John Ottmar 1498 Cracow John Haller 1500 Munich John Schobser 1500 Olmutz De Baumgarten 1500 Pfortzheim Thomas Anselmus 1500

This is but a brief list for the vast and populous country north of Italy and east of France and the Netherlands.[344] Not less remarkable is the fact that some cities now deservedly famous for their printing were among the last to acquire a knowledge of the art, and those that gave it feeble support.

The master printers at Mentz before 1500, not previously named, were: Erhardus Reuwich, whose first book was dated 1486; Frederic Misch, who began after 1490; Jacob Meydenbach (a witness at the trial of 1455), between 1491 and 1496; and Peter Friedburg, between 1494 and 1497. There may [p494] have been others, whose names are lost, but the printers are few; they cannot be compared, either in number or in influence, with those of many smaller cities during the same period. Long before Schœffer died,[345] Mentz had ceased to be a great school and centre of printing.

STRASBURG. The statement of Lignamine, that Mentel printed at Strasburg after 1458, has been corroborated by the recent discovery in the Freiburg library of a Latin _Bible_ in two volumes folio, which is known to have been printed by Mentel, and which contains the subscriptions of the illuminator and the written dates, in one volume of 1460, in the other of 1461.[346] As this book should have been in press at least two years, it may be regarded as evidence that printing was practised here as early as in Bamberg. Strasburg gave greater encouragement to printers than Mentz, for sixteen master printers were working there before 1500.