Part 45

[172] Leon de Bubure, in a paper published in the _Bulletins de l’académie royale de Belgique_, 2d series, vol. VIII, No. 11, shows that printing was practised at Antwerp as early as 1417. He submits an extract from the records of the city in which it appears that one Jan the printer publicly acknowledged, August 5th, 1417, that he was indebted to William Tserneels, manufacturer of parchment, in the sum of 2 pounds 12 shillings 4 pence, for which he bound himself and his chattels. It seems that this Jan the printer received a very liberal credit, for there are other acknowledgments of obligations for larger amounts, all incurred in 1417. After this date his name does not again appear on the record.

[173] Van der Meersch, _Imprimeurs Belges et Neèrlandais_, vol. I, p. 92.

[174] Some of the evidences that have been adduced to prove the priority of typographic printing in the Netherlands are really ludicrous. In 1777, Desroches, a member of the Academy of Brussels, published a pamphlet, in which he undertook to prove that the art of printing books was practised in Flanders in the beginning of the fourteenth century. His authority was an old rhymed chronicle of Brabant, written by Nicholas, clerk of the city of Antwerp. In that part of the chronicle which narrated events before 1313, it is stated of one Ludwig, that “He was one of the first who discovered the method of Stamping which is in use to this day.” Desroches construed the word _Stampien_ as printing. But the context shows that this Ludwig was a fiddler, and that he had invented nothing more than a method of beating time by stamping with the foot. In other examples which might be adduced, it is plain that the word translated as printing does not mean printing with ink. This word has been made to serve in notices of embossing, stamping, stenciling and moulding.

[175] Hessel’s translation, as given in _The Haarlem Legend_ of Van der Linde, p. 8.

[176] Van der Linde takes exception to this part of the chronicle. He says that Zell’s knowledge of geography was confused, and that he wrote Holland where he should have written the Netherlands. His reasons for suggesting this correction are, that the manufacture of block-books and the prints of images, and the cultivation of literature and of literary arts, during the first half of the fifteenth century, were in their most flourishing condition in the cities of Bruges, Antwerp, Brussels and Louvain, all of the Southern Netherlands, while they were comparatively neglected in Haarlem, Leyden, Delft and Utrecht, of the Northern Netherlands. At that period Holland had not taken its place as the foremost state of Europe, in its championship of liberty and civilization.

[177] Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 66.

[178] Behold what favor is due to the writing! Compare work with work and examine copy with copy [i. e. notice the uniformity of the letters]. Consider how clearly, how neatly, how handsomely, John Brito, a citizen of Bruges, prints these works, having discovered a very wonderful art, nobody having instructed him, and the very astonishing implements also, not less praiseworthy.

[179] Van Praet says that the word _imprimit_, or printed, was frequently used by the scribes and copyists of that period as the equivalent of _scripsit_, or wrote. It was also used to describe painting by stencils. _Notice sur Colard Mansion_, p. 11.

[180] The same face of types was used by Machlinia of London. It would seem that Veldener was not only working as a printer, but that, even at this date, he was doing business, to some extent, as a manufacturer of types for the trade.

[181] The date usually assigned for the introduction of printing in Cologne is 1466, but some authors suppose, and Hessels and Madden say it is probable, that Ulric Zell began to print there as early as 1462.

[182] We have in this country two remarkable illustrations of attempts to make types by men who had no experience in type-founding. Benjamin Franklin’s experiment is mentioned in the note on page 303. In 1794, Wing and White of Hartford, men entirely ignorant of type-founding, undertook to make type, never having seen a type-mould.

[183] Hessel’s translation as given in the _Haarlem Legend_, p. 50.

[184] The comments of a modern critic on the strange omissions of this positive statement are to the point:

“This forgetfulness of Coornhert has always seemed to me one of the most striking peculiarities of the Haarlem legend. How can it be! Here is a man, very learned, very patriotic, who appreciates the importance of the discovery, who contends with zeal to establish for his country the honor of being the cradle of the greatest of modern inventions. He knows the name, the family name and the family of the inventor, and he does not divulge them to his fellow-citizens! This surpasses belief. And what shall we say of the burgomaster Van Zuren? He writes a special treatise to retrieve the glory of the invention to the honor of the city of which he is a magistrate, but it never occurs to him that he should honor the memory of the inventor—I will not say by a monument of some kind, for that might be demanding altogether too much—but at least by a mention, by some souvenir, by giving his name to some street, or still less, by a simple record in a book. It is not possible to find another example of a forgetfulness so incredible.” C. Ruelens, _Bibliophile Belge_, vol. III, 1868.

[185] Ottley’s translation as quoted in Johnson’s _Typographia_, vol. I, 12.

[186] An attempted play or pun on the Latin _faustus_, happy. But the German printer’s name was not Faust, but Fust. This pun was the origin of the error.

[187] In Junius’s description of the thief, there is a strange confusion of singular and plural. Beginning with the specification of one John as the thief, the story ends with an intimation that there were two thieves. This substitution of _they_ for _he_ is not a typographical error, nor is it a slip of the pen. It seems to have been intended to sustain the insinuation of the complicity of Fust in this theft.

[188] The full title of the book from which this translation was made is _Hadriani Ivnii Hornani, Medici Batavia. In qua præter gentis & insulæ antiquitatem, originem, decora, mores, aliaque, ad eam historiam pertinantia, declaratur quæ fuerit vetus Batavia. Ex. offic. Plantiniana,_ 1588, 4to. Hadrianus Junius was born at Hoorn, in the year 1511. His education, as a boy, was received at a grammar school in Haarlem; as a young man at the university of Louvain. In 1537, with one Martin Costerus, he made a tour in foreign countries. In 1540 he obtained from the university of Bologna the degree of doctor of medicine. Two years afterward he was living in Paris. In 1543 he went to England, and for six years succeeding, he was employed as physician to the duke of Norfolk. Soon after the death of the duke, he published in London a Greek lexicon, which enhanced his reputation as a scholar, but did not mend his fortunes. In 1559 he returned to Haarlem, where he married a lady of wealth. Three years after his marriage he accepted the appointment of tutor to the crown prince of Denmark, but finding finding that the position or the climate was disagreeable, he resigned the office. In 1563 he was appointed town physician, and rector of the Latin grammar school at Haarlem, which appointments he held until 1569. About this period he wrote _Nomenclator_, a lexicon in eight languages, and _Batavia_, a description of Holland. At various times he was formally invited to enter the service of the kings of Hungary, Poland and Denmark. William of Orange sent front Delft for his services as a physican: at a meeting of the deputies from the States, he nominated Junius as the historian of Holland. In 1574 he was made town physican at Middleburg, with a liberal salary and a free living. When Haarlem was captured in 1573 by the Spaniards, the library of Junius was plundered, and many of his manuscripts were destroyed. He took this calamity greatly to heart, and died at Arnemuiden in 1575. Justus Lipsius said he was the most learned Netherlander after Erasmus.

[189] The publication of _Batavia_, the work upon which the fame of Junius rests, seems to have been suggested to William of Orange by Junius himself, who expected to receive from the States a salary for his services as historian. In 1565, the question of salary, first named at 200 pounds of 40 groots, was put to vote. The prudence of the Dutch character is shown in the deliberations of the deputies. Haarlem, Delft, Leyden, and Gouda assented; Dordrecht and Amsterdam requested time for its consideration. Dordrecht afterward consented, but on condition that the money should be paid out of the taxes; that Junius should publish a volume every year; and that he should publish nothing without the approval of the States. In the meantime other States receded from their action, saying that the publication was ill-timed during a period of general distress. After some influences had been used, the States gave a grudging and qualified assent. In 1570, Junius petitioned for the payment of 200 guilders, as he had then finished the first book of the history. The petition was not favorably received, and its consideration was postponed for one year, at which time it was finally decided by the deputies to pay Junius 300 guilders, to prohibit him from publishing the first volume of the book with a dedication to the States, and to release him from all obligation to continue the work. This disparaging treatment of the author prevented the publication of the book with the completeness and at the time Junius had proposed. After his death the manuscripts of _Batavia_ were collected and transcribed by his son Peter, who, with Peter Douza, undertook the publication. The book was published during 1588, from the office of Christopher Plantin, at Antwerp. The selection of a printer in a neighboring city shows that there was then no competent printer at Haarlem. It is another evidence of the indifference of the people of Haarlem toward typography.

[190] He relates not as a legend, but as veritable history, that the virgin Soter, who possessed but three pennies, gave them for the building of a church in Dordrecht. Other three pennies were miraculously and regularly found in her purse, and were as regularly bestowed, until the church was built. He repeats, with simplicity, the story of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne, who came from England to the now unknown port of Verona in Holland. He says that a certain stone in a church in Leyden was once a loaf of bread, and that the transubstantiation was made by a curse. He formally records the delivery by one Margaret, countess of Hennenberg, of 365 babies—a miracle, writes Van der Linde, “that makes you think of an upset pot of shrimps.” Junius adds that this would be a miracle beyond belief, if it had not been attested by the authority of public monuments . . . . but he accepts the common belief. These examples of the credulousness of the author of _Batavia_ warn us not to accept his criticisms on other traditions. Junius begins his description of printing at Haarlem with a solemn declaration of his intention to tell the truth. The declaration of candor is not needed: what the reader of _Batavia_ does need is, not the protestation of the intention of the author to tell the truth, but some convincing evidence of his ability to distinguish the true from the false. His preface is long, pedantic, and in every way irrelevant, as may be inferred from a glance at the following classical names which he has sprinkled in the first paragraph: Carneades, the Daughter of Time, Democritus, Phœnicians and Egyptians, Cadmus, Athenians, Greeks and Thebans, Cecrops, Philostratus, Linus, Tacitus, Palamedes, Hyginus, Carmenta, Evander, Crassus, Scævola and Plutarch!

[191] In the year 1630, Adrien Rooman, of Haarlem, published a print which contained the engraved representation of a printing office, to which he put the words—“Invented at Haarlem about 1430;”—but “The magistrates and citizens of Haarlem, in everlasting remembrance of the event and the man,” erected a monument in front of the Coster house, with an inscription on it, which fixed the date at 1440.

[192] Lambinet caustically observes that the romance of Junius obeys the dramatic law of unity, in time, place, and hero; the typographic art is invented complete in one day. The vague language of Junius has been used as a proper warrant for a very liberal construction of the date. When Van Lennep objected, in 1823, to the chimerical year of the invention, 1423, fixed upon by a Haarlem committee, the synod enjoined him: “If he will again carefully read the account of Junius, and not forsake, out of his prejudice, all common sense, he will plainly see himself, and be obliged to acknowledge, that Junius said not a single word about the time of the invention.” Van der Linde, _The Haarlem Legend_, p. 68.

[193] There has been much dispute concerning the functions of this keeper. Junius says that this Lourens Janszoon was the keeper of a church; that this keepership was an honorary office which belonged to Coster’s family by hereditary right. The duties of the office seem to have been those of a church trustee. Some writers say that this custos was nothing more than a sexton, but it is of no moment whether custos means sexton or trustee. The care with which Junius introduces evidences of the respectability of Coster’s house and the dignity of his family implies his fear that there might be, on the part of a heedless reader, some doubt concerning the social position of a custos. Nothing is said of the ancestors of Coster. Probably, there was reason for this omission. Coster’s distinction in Haarlem was not that of patrician blood. His wealth was not, so far as we can learn, derived from any inheritance, nor could it have been acquired through the emoluments of a custos, which was an honorary but not a lucrative office. He had been engaged in some occupation which Junius considered derogatory to his dignity. Of this occupation we shall hear more hereafter.

[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.