Part 47
[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.
[284] One day when I was reading this interesting passage [of Bodmann, concerning the types of Gutenberg], the idea presented itself to me that it would be well to examine with care a certain volume printed by Frederic Hauman, which was in a neglected corner of my library. I took it up, not thinking that I should make any discovery. I knew that the last productions of the presses of Nicholas Bechtermüntz were printed with other types than those of Gutenberg, and that, among the known impressions of the Brothers of the Life-in-Common at Marienthal, none were executed with these characters. But judge of my astonishment, of my joy, perhaps, when I recognized in this neglected book not only the types of the _Catholicon_ of 1460, the only ones appertaining to Gutenberg that could have been employed in the books that proceeded from the presses of Eltvill, but also the types that had been used in the _Letters of Indulgence_ of 1454 and 1455, in the _Appeal against the Turks_ of 1455, the _Calendar of 1457_ described by Fischer, the _Bible of 36 lines_, and all the characters of Albert Pfister—or, to be brief,—when I recognized the most ancient types of John Gutenberg. Helbig, _Une découverte pour l’histoire de l’imprimerie_, p. 4.
Helbig gives a list of seven books, of little value, printed by Hauman, in these types of Gutenberg. He expresses his astonishment that they had not before been identified, but he offers no explanation of the singular fact that these types were not used by any printer between 1469 and 1506.
[285] Helbig, _Une découverte pour l’histoire de l’imprimerie_, p. 4, note.
[286] See pages 315 and 316 of this book.
[287] Many authors who do not mention Gutenberg speak of Mentz as the city in which printing was first practised. Van Laar, at Cologne, in 1478; Caxton, at Westminster, in 1482; the archbishop Berthold of Mentz in 1486; Meydenbach of Mentz in 1494—these are a few of the many writers who have certified to this fact. A cloud of witnesses, says Van der Linde, join in the song of Celtes: “You wind yourself, already, O broad-waved Rhine! to the town of Mentz, which first of all printed with metal letters.” Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 32.
[288] In the year 1742, the Jesuits, who then had control of the church of Saint Francis, tore it down in order to rebuild another edifice upon the same ground. The tablet and the tomb of Gutenberg were destroyed. The inscription on this tablet was published for the first time in a book printed by Peter Friedburg at Mentz in the year 1499. Helbig, _Notes et dissertations_, p. 10.
[289] Ivo Wittig was an ecclesiastic of eminence, chancellor and grand rector of the University of Mentz, to which he gave his large library of books and manuscripts. When the Swedes approached Mentz, this precious library was removed. Unfortunately, it was put on a boat of the Rhine which was wrecked, and his rare collection of books was lost. Helbig says it is an irreparable loss, for Wittig was deeply interested in printing, and his collection, no doubt, contained materials of the highest importance concerning its history.
[290] This is an error. This house is not connected with the history of printing in any other way than in being the residence of Gutenberg when a child. When the Gensfleisch family were sent or went in exile, their houses were confiscated. It is not probable that Gutenberg died in the house bearing his name.
[291] The Jesuit Serarius says that he saw this tablet one hundred years after it was erected. Between 1632 and 1636, when the Swedes were in Mentz, this house was sacked, but the tablet was spared. In 1741, it was taken down and placed in the wall in the court of a house belonging to the University. But this monument, which escaped the barbarity of the Swedish soldiers, was destroyed by the conscripts of the French republic, who were lodged in this house between the years 1793 and 1797. Helbig says it is probable that these ruffians suspected John Gutenberg of aristocratic tendencies. They did not know that the old citizen of Mentz was, unwittingly, the leader of all democrats, revolutionists and reformers, the man above all others, who, by his invention, had paved the way for the French revolution.