Part 48
[292] Bernard’s conjectures as to the reason for this change are plausible. He says: The sales of the _Bible_ had not been so great as Fust had expected. Envious copyists had probably fostered a prejudice against the printed Bible as purely mechanical copying, and for that reason, or on account of its known errors, inferior to the ordinary manuscript. Fust hoped to remove these objections, and to attract purchasers by giving the unsold copies the appearance of a new edition. Madden does not accept this hypothesis. He thinks that the two kinds of copies were composed at the same time by different compositors, who, setting their types from dictation, not seeing the manuscript copy, made their abbreviations without uniformity, and, as a necessary consequence, produced pages of unequal length. This explanation is quite as reasonable.
[293] It could, with more propriety, be called a ritual. The psalms are followed by prayers, collects, litanies, the service for the dead, hymns, etc. But it is always described as a psalter.
[294] The rubricated capital letters on the larger body, which are very large and square, might be regarded as another incomplete font, for which small letters had not been provided.
[295] Savage said, before he had critically examined the ink of the book:
It is a curious fact that, under Fust and Gutenberg, the process [of printing in colors] should be carried nearly to perfection; for some of the works they printed, both in the quality of the ink and in the workmanship, are so excellent that it would require all the skill of our best printers, even at the present day, to surpass them in all respects: and I do not hesitate to say, that, in a few years after, the printers were actually superior to us in the use of red ink, both as to color and as to the inserting of a great number of single capital letters in their proper places in a sheet, with a degree of accuracy and sharpness of impression that I have never seen equaled in modern workmanship. _Decorative Printing_, London, 1822, pp. 6 and 7.
After a closer inspection, Savage discovered that the red was painted.
Papillon declared that the red ink was of the most perfect beauty. Chatto said that this earliest known production [of the press of Fust and Schœffer] remains to the present day unimpaired as a specimen of skill in ornamental printing. The art of printing was perfected by Fust and Schœffer. Jackson and Chatto, _Wood Engraving_, p. 168.
[296] He says the ink was dull yellow:
On some of the leaves where music is given there is an appearance as if the oil in the ink had penetrated through the vellum and tinged the opposite side of the leaf with a dingy yellow. This had been supposed to be the case, but I find that the original tune had been printed with a dull yellow ink, and that subsequently a different one had been written in over the first, with black ink to match the color of the text; and so exactly is this effect produced that, if it were not for the remains of the printing of the original tune, it might pass unsuspected of being any other than the production of the press. _Practical Hints on Decorative Printing_, pp. 49 and 51.
[297] _De l’origine_, etc., vol. I. p. 225.
[298] _History of Printing_, p. 85.
[299] Some writers say that the earliest printing inks were gum-water colors, which could be washed off the vellum with a wet sponge. But the ink of the _Psalter_ was a true printing ink, a smoke-black mixed with oil. The modern pressman, who has ineffectually tried to make ordinary printing ink stick to parchment imperfectly cleansed of oily matter, will at once attribute this failure of the printer of the _Psalter_ to the oiliness of the vellum and the weakness of his printing ink.
[300] _Practical Hints on Decorative Printing_, p. 50.
[301] This method of printing in colors was patented by Solomon Henry of Great Britain in 1786, and in another form by Sir William Congreve in 1819, and by him applied to the printing of maps. _Abridgment of Specifications relating to Printing_, London, 1859. Improvements in machine presses have put out of use these methods of printing in colors.
[302] _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, vol. II, p. liii, note.
[303] Blades shows fac-similes of the printed work of Colard Mansion, in which we see that his red and black were printed by the same impression. _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, vol. I, p. 43. Also, plates III and VIII.
[304] The modern printer who may regard this method of color-printing as puerile and wasteful of time, must be reminded that, slow as it may now seem, it was a quicker method than that of hand-drawing and painting. The difference between the old and the modern process of printing in colors will be fully stated, by saying that Schœffer printed, probably, but forty copies of this initial in one day, and that the modern pressman on a machine press would be required to produce, from two impressions, about twenty-five hundred copies in one day. Far from being a specimen of the skill of the early printers, this initial B is a flagrant example of their inexperience and the rudeness of their methods.
[305] See fac-simile, plate 15, _Humphrey’s History of Printing_.
[306] See fac-simile on page 455 for the frequent transposition of the letters _t_ and _c_. Also in first line of same fac-simile, _Presen spalmorum_ for _Presens psalmorum_.
[307] Fournier thinks that _all_ the letters of the _Psalter_ were cut on wood. _De l’origine, etc., de l’imprimerie_, p. 231. But Bernard says: “After a careful study of many copies, I declare that this book is certainly printed with types of founded metal, and founded, too, with admirable precision.” _De l’origine et des débuts_, etc., vol. I, p. 224.
[308] The last edition of the book, printed by his son, John Schœffer, in 1516, shows the great initial B entirely in red ink. It proves that the letter previously printed in two colors was engraved on one block. It proves also that the original method of painting the letter in two colors had been found expensive and impracticable.
[309] The one first printed is dated April 6th, 1462: it is a manifesto, from Diether, notifying all people that he is the lawful ruler, and that Adolph is the usurper. This document, which is in German, contains 106 lines of Great-primer type, and is printed on a sheet of the size 12-1/2 by 17-1/4 inches. But when Adolph captured Mentz, he issued counter proclamations. First of all was a proclamation dated August 8, 1461, from the Emperor Frederic III, announcing the deposal of Diether. It was printed on a half sheet, in German, and in the types of the _Bible of 1462_. The other proclamations were bulls or briefs in Latin, against Diether, from Pope Pius II, dated at Tivoli. All of them are in Round Gothic types on English body. The first bull warns the people to shun Diether as they would a pestilent beast; the second is the warrant for the installation of Adolph; the third orders the clergy to obey Adolph; the fourth orders the people to obey Adolph, and releases them from allegiance to Diether. The fifth bull relates to a different matter: it sets forth the unsuccessful mission of Cardinal Bessarion to the Turks. Bernard, _De l’origine_, etc., vol. I, p. 242.
[310] Bernard, _De l’origine_, vol. II, p. 273.
[311] We do not know whether Jenson acquired his knowledge of printing secretly or openly—in the office of Gutenberg or Schœffer, or elsewhere, but he succeeded in his undertaking. Nor is the date of his return to Paris known. Madden thinks that Jenson was taught the art not in Mentz, but in Cologne. During his absence, Charles VII died. On the 15th August, 1461, Louis XI, his son, was crowned at Rheims. A lover of books, and the founder of the great National Library, the king should have been deeply interested in the mission of Jenson, but he had formed a strong dislike to all the officers that had been appointed by his father, and began his reign by dismissing the court favorites. Jenson was treated as one of their number. All his efforts to get a suitable recompense for what he had done, and money to establish an office in Paris, were unavailing, and he was obliged to abandon Paris. He went to Venice, and made himself famous by his new design of Roman letter, and by the admirable presswork of his books.
[312] These _Bibles_ have been the occasion of an incredible legend which was first told by one John Walchius. It would not deserve repetition here if it had not so often appeared in modern literature. He says that Fust offered one copy of this _Bible_ to the king for sixty crowns, and another copy to the archbishop for fifty crowns. To tempt indifferent purchasers, he abated his price until it was but forty crowns, a price so small and so insufficient as to excite the greatest wonder. The purchasers of different copies, fearing trickery, compared their copies. Instead of discovering imperfection, they found an unvarying uniformity which was unaccountable. Meanwhile Fust was still offering for sale other copies, and all were exactly alike. As it was clearly impossible that any copyist could write so many books with this precision, it was obvious that Fust was in league with the Devil, and that the _Bibles_ were their joint production. The logical process by which this conclusion was reached is not stated; but we are told that complaint was made, that Fust was arrested, and thrown in prison, from which he was not released until he had revealed the secret. The absurdity of the story is transparent. Bernard has shown that it rests on no valid authority.
[313] See page 435 of this book.
[314] In this year Conrad Sweinheym and Arnold Pannartz, who had established a printing office in the monastery of Subiaco, near Rome, printed an edition of _Lactantius_, in which Greek types were used.
[315] The phrase, _neque ærea_, must be understood as, not by engraving _in_ brass or copper plates, or not by the process then employed by the copper-plate printers.
[316] The use of the words, Peter, my son, may be understood as the first acknowledgment by Fust of the marriage of his daughter to Schœffer.
[317] The Library of Geneva has a copy of this edition of _Cicero_, which contains, in his own handwriting, the acknowledgment of Louis de Lavernade, first president of Languedoc, that the book had been presented to him in Paris, by John Fust, in July, 1466.
[318] The record of this church says that the mass was instituted to John Fust, printer of books, “by Peter Scofer and Conrad Henlif,” who gave to the church the _Epistles of Saint Jerome_, printed on parchment, and valued at 12 crowns of gold. In 1473, Schœffer established another mass for Fust and his wife Margaret, with the Dominicans at Mentz, for which he gave a copy of the _Epistles of Jerome_ and of the _Constitutions of Pope Clement V_. As two books were here required, it shows that the price of books was rapidly depreciating.
[319] Bernard says that this Conrad was the son of John Fust, and that Christina Fust, who married Schœffer, was Conrad’s daughter. The only evidence that this Christina was Conrad’s daughter is the statement in the application, which is printed above. But this statement is not enough to overturn the contradictory statements of other writers of that day, who had better knowledge of the true relationship of all the parties. Wetter thinks that Conrad was another son-in-law to Fust. We know very little about him. It does not appear that he had any thing to do with printing before the death of Fust, nor did he exercise any known influence as a printer. His name is not to be found in any of Schœffer’s books. It is not known when he died.
[320] This manuscript was returned, as had been agreed. It was probably used to collate the text of their edition of this book, a big folio of 548 double-columned pages in types on English body, which was completed by Schœffer and Conrad Fust, June 13th, 1469.
[321] This passage is an allusion to the running of the disciples to the sepulchre where Christ had been laid. “So they ran both together; and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre . . . . yet went he not in . . . . Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre.” St. John, XX, 4, 6.
[322] _Institutes of Justinian_, 1468.
[323] It seems that this was done to avoid the expense of making a new mould, and to save the labor of cutting new capital letters—an evasion of duty not at all creditable to the alleged inventor of the type-mould. Gutenberg made four sizes of Pointed Gothic—the Paragon of the _Bible of 42 lines_, the Double-pica of the _Bible of 36 lines_, the Double-great-primer and Meridian of the _Psalter of 1457_—and three sizes of Round Gothic, the large English of the _Letter of Indulgence of 31 lines_, the small English of the _Letter of Indulgence of 30 lines_, and the Pica of the _Catholicon of 1460_. They were cast on seven distinct bodies. Schœffer’s three faces of types, one of them imperfect, were cast on two bodies.
[324] He consigned his books to one Hans Bitz of Lubec, who died, leaving the debt unpaid.
[325] To become a freeman of the city of Frankfort, Schœffer paid a tax of 10 pounds 4 shillings.
[326] There is in Paris a treatise by Dun Scotus, printed by Anthony Koburger of Nuremberg in 1474, which contains a bill of sale written by Peter Schœffer, which states that the book was sold to one John Henry for three crowns of gold.
[327] His agent in Paris was Hermann Stathoen, who died there in 1474, before he had been made a citizen. According to the French law, all his effects reverted to the crown. The books of Schœffer were seized by the king’s commissioners, and were scattered and sold before his partner Conrad Fust, or Henlif, could make a reclamation. He appealed to the king, Louis XI, who ordered that Schœffer should be recompensed by the payment of 2,425 crowns. This was a large sum for that day: it was nearly four times as large as the sum fixed on in a valuation of all the books in the Louvre in 1459.
[328] His son, John Schœffer, who had some control over the printing office before his father’s death, timidly and tardily introduced paging-figures, but they were not regularly used in his later works. We may suppose that the father disliked the innovation. The invention of leads is the only improvement that can be attributed to Schœffer.
[329] Ten years before, John Schœffer had conceded full justice to Gutenberg, and had told the story with more truth. In the dedication of an edition of Livy, printed by him in 1505, John Schœffer uses this language: “Will your Majesty [addressing the Emperor Maximilian] deign to accept this book, printed in Mentz, the city in which the admirable art of typography was invented, in the year 1450, by the ingenious John Gutenberg, and was afterward perfected at the cost and by the work of John Fust and of Peter Schœffer . . . ” This acknowledgment did not prevent the Emperor from making a subsequent official declaration, in the privilege or copyright for a grand edition of Livy, published by the same printer, and dated December 9, 1518, that the grandfather of John Schœffer had invented printing [_chalcographia_]. So much for the strength of audacious falsehood! Bernard, _De l’origine et des débuts_, vol. I, p. 309.
[330] _Annales Hirsaugienses_, vol. II, p. 421.
[331] The description of the more ingenious method of “founding the forms of all the letters of the Latin alphabet, which they called matrices, from which [matrices] they again founded types, either in tin or in brass,” has been denounced by many writers on typography as the confused statement of a man who did not thoroughly understand what he related, and who has reversed the proper order of the process of type-making. A more careful reading will show that Trithemius attempted to describe the process of matrix-making, which is set forth in page 302 of this book. He says the types were made either of brass or of tin, for his memory failed him, and he could not recollect that it was the matrix which should have been of brass, and the type of tin. The characters “which before this had been cut by hand” may be regarded not as types, but as punches of soft metal. They would necessarily be damaged by pressure in the semi-fluid metal selected for making the matrices. The tools which Trithemius vainly tried to describe were the punch of steel and the mould and matrices of brass. That punches and matrices of wood or of soft metal unequal to hard pressure were used by the earlier printers is proved by the variable shapes of their types.
[332] The impressions of Gutenberg, which clearly show that his types were cast and not cut, should outweigh the statements of all the chroniclers; but it may be proper to call attention to the fact that the types of the _Bible of 42 lines_ were used by Schœffer in 1476, and that the types of the _Letters of Indulgence_ and of the _Bible of 36 lines_ were in use by Hauman at the end of the fifteenth century. If these types had been cut, they would have been soon worn out. The reappearance of these faces fifty years after they were first used shows that the types of Hauman must have been cast from the matrices of Gutenberg.
[333] This version is found in _Wolf’s Monumenta Typographica_, vol. I, pp. 466 and 469, under the heading of _The Statement of an Unknown Author_, and is attributed by Wolf to one Jo. Frid. Faustus of Aschaffenburg (who died in 1620), or to his son. Wolf admits (p. 452, note) that the identity of the author is not clearly established. It is probable that the statement was written by a descendant of John Fust, who was predisposed to magnify his services and those of his partner. Van der Linde calls the writer an arch liar. Bernard rejects the entire statement as unworthy of credit, or even of notice.
[334] Five of the disputed works are the _Donatus of 1451_, the _Bible of 36 lines_, the _Letters of Indulgence of 1455_, the _Calendar of 1457_ and the _Almanac of 1455_. The chief reason for attributing these works to Pfister is that they exhibit the types of the _Bible of 36 lines_.
[335] There is no English equivalent for _libripagus_, which means a workman who is an engraver, a printer, and a stenciler. Like other writers of his day, Paul of Prague had to coin a word to define printers, who for many years after were called _typographi_, _typothetæ_, _chalcographi_, _excusores_ and _protocharagmatici_. Most writers called printers _impressores_, or impressors, from the process of impressing types. This word, which was finally accepted in all European languages, has served to foster the error that the vital principle of printing is impression.
[336] Ticozzi, Stefano, _Storia del letterati e degli artisti del dipartimento della Piave_, Belluno, 1813. See, also, _L’imprimerie_, No. 58, October, 1868.
[337] Bernard, _De l’origine_, vol. II, p. 94. This vain and scandalous inscription was probably made by one of Mentel’s descendants. It is not stated when this tablet was erected. Bernard supposes that it is a second tablet, which was put up in place of one made soon after his burial.
[338] It was probably provoked by the false assertion of John Schœffer, that Peter Schœffer, his father, and John Fust, his grandfather, were the proper inventors, to the exclusion of Gutenberg. Schott, knowing that Mentel’s claims as an inventor were as valid as those of Fust or Schœffer, placed on his books, after 1520, an armorial shield containing a crowned lion, with this inscription: “Arms of the Schott family, granted by the Emperor Frederic III to John Mentel, the first inventor of typography, and to his heirs, in the year 1466.” There are doubts concerning this patent of nobility. When it was demanded many years afterward, it could not be produced [_De l’origine_, vol. II, p. 69]. It may have been granted to Mentel, not as the first printer, but as the first printer in Strasburg. Schœpflin, who speaks of this document as if he had seen the original, denies that it gave to Mentel the title of inventor of printing [_Vindiciæ Typographicæ_, p. 98, note]. There was a tradition that the Emperor Frederic III had given to a corporation of master printers known as the Typothetæ, an heraldic shield, representing an eagle holding in one claw a composing-stick, and in the other claw a copy-guide, surmounted by a griffin distributing ink with two balls. But these are not the arms displayed by Schott, nor did Mentel, nor his successor Flach, make any display of them in their books.
[339] In another book Spiegel says 1442.
[340] Meerman, _Origines Typographicæ_, vol. II, p. 199. It is not clearly proved that Specklin, who was a magistrate of Strasburg at the close of the sixteenth century, is the author of this statement. Bernard says that this version contains about as many errors as words.
[341] Lichtenberger, _Initia Typographica_, p. 56.
[342] The first book printed at Strasburg with a date was a copy of the _Decretals of Gratianus_, a folio in two volumes, which bears this imprint: “By the venerable Henry Eggestein, master of liberal arts, and citizen of the renowned city of Strasburg, in the year 1471.” This was not his first book, for in another book printed in the same year, he tells the reader that he has printed “innumerable volumes of law, philosophy and divinity.” He printed two or three editions of the _Bible_ in Latin, and one in German, and many other books in folio. The types of these books are unlike those used by Mentel. Eggestein was recorded in the tax list among the city officers, and was afterward bishop’s chancellor in the court of Strasburg. The partnership between Mentel and Eggestein was of short duration. The date of Eggestein’s death is not known: his name is not found in any books printed with his types after 1472.
[343] It is supposed that he printed the _Bible_ in German and in Latin, _Questions of Conscience_, _A Concordance of the Bible_, _The Epistles of Saint Jerome_,_The City of God_, _The Specula of Vincent of Beauvais_. All these books are thick folios—many of them in types on English body. Some are in two, and the last named in eight, volumes. Other works have been attributed to him, but Madden says that some of them (books with a curious form of the letter R—which others say were the work of Zell) were printed at the Monastery of Weidenbach.
[344] For a table of the chronological order in which printing was established in the Netherlands, see page 323 of this book.
[345] The high reputation of Schœffer’s office was fairly sustained by his son John, who died in 1531. Peter Schœffer, junior, another son, was equally able, for he printed books in Hebrew, Latin, German and English. He found no proper encouragement at Mentz, and had to establish his office successively at Worms, Strasburg and Venice. His last known work, with date 1542, was printed at Venice, where it is supposed he died. Ives Schœffer, son of Peter, junior, who succeeded John Schœffer in the management of the office at Mentz, was an industrious publisher from 1531 to 1552, the supposed year of his death. Victor, the son of Ives, gave up the business, and the name of Schœffer disappeared from the roll of printers at Mentz. Helbig, _Notes et dissertations_, etc., p. 47–50.
[346] A description of this _Bible_, with other particulars of importance, was given by Dr. Dziatzko, the librarian at Freiburg, in a letter to Hessels, and by him printed in the introduction to the _Haarlem Legend_, p. XXII.