Part 46

[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.”