In the 1473 reprint of the “Sextus Decretalium” we note that Schoeffer now considered himself venerable, or perhaps it would be fairer to say “worshipful” (“per venerandum virum Petrum schoiffer de Gernshem feliciter est consummatum”), but in his edition of S. Augustine’s “De Ciuitate Dei,” of the same year, we find a more important variant. This reads:
Igitur Aurelii Augustini ciuitatis orthodoxe sideris prefulgidi de ciuitate Dei opus preclarissimum, binis sacre pagine professoribus eximiis id commentantibus rubricis tabulaque discretum precelsa in urbe moguntina partium Alemanie, non calami per frasim, caracterum autem apicibus artificiose elementatum, ad laudem Trinitatis indiuidue, ciuitatis dei presidis, operose est consummatum per Petrum schoiffer de gernsheim. Anno domini M.cccc.lxxiij. die v. mensis septembris. Presidibus ecclesie catholice Sixto tercio pontifice summo Sedi autem moguntine Adolfo secundo presule magnifico. Tenente autem ac gubernante Christianismi monarchiam Imperatore serenissimo Frederico tercio Cesare semper augusto.
Thus the most renowned work of Aurelius Augustinus, a shining star of the city of orthodoxy, the De Ciuitate Dei, with the notes of two distinguished professors of Biblical Theology, set out with rubrics and index, in the exalted city of Mainz of the parts of Germany, not by the inditing of a reed, but skilfully put together from the tips of characters, to the praise of the undivided Trinity, ruler of the City of God, has been toilfully brought to completion by Peter Schoiffer of Gernsheim, in the year of the Lord 1473, on the fifth day of the month of September, the catholic church being under the rule of Sixtus III as supreme pontiff, and the see of Mainz under that of the magnificent patron Adolf II, while the most serene Emperor Frederick III, Caesar Augustus, held and guided the monarchy of Christendom.
The struggles of the fifteenth-century Latinists to express the technicalities of printing are always interesting, and the phrase “caracterum apicibus elementatum” is really gallant. Following the Greek στοιχεῖα, the Romans used the word “elementa” originally for the component sounds of speech and then, by transference, for the letters of the alphabet. “Elementatum,” therefore, is strictly appropriate, and might be rendered “with the letters built up or put together,” while “caracterum apicibus” of course refers to the engraving in relief which forms the face of the type.
In 1475, perhaps as an echo of some verses in the “Noua compilatio Decretalium Gregorii IX” of 1473, we find a new phrase tacked on to the “arte impressoria” in an edition of Justinian, noting the fact that though Providence did not consider antiquity worthy of the art, it had been granted to our times (“qua quidem etsi antiquitas diuino non digna est visa indicio, nostra nichilominus tempestate indulta”). In 1476 again Schoeffer advertises that his edition of Justinian’s Institutes was printed “in the noble city of Mainz am Rhein, the inventress and first perfectress of the printing art” (“In nobili urbe Maguncia Rheni, impressorie artis inuentrice elimatriceque prima”), while in the Clementine Constitutions of the same year he substitutes “alumnaque” for “elimatriceque,” presumably in the sense of pupil or practiser, reverting subsequently to “elimatrice.” In 1478 he once more varies the praises of Mainz by calling her “domicilium Minerve firmissimum,” “the most stable home of Minerva.” With this year 1478, which closes the period of Schoeffer’s chief activity, we may bring our survey of his colophons to an end. Thereafter he printed more intermittently, and, if the absence of colophons may be trusted, as I think it may, with less interest in his work. But during these twenty-two years from 1457 to 1478, inclusive, he had made his books bear continual testimony to one great fact, that the art of printing had been invented and brought to perfection in Germany, in the city of Mainz; and in any weighing of the comparative claims that have been advanced on behalf of Germany and Holland, I think that the evidence of Schoeffer’s colophons alone would suffice to give the priority to Germany and Mainz.
Of the clearness and energy of the claim made in these Mainz colophons, we have already given abundant illustration, nor can there be any doubt that it obtained wide publicity. Schoeffer printed at least one advertisement of his books, and he had an agency for their sale in Paris. Besides this, his editions were copied by other printers. So far as publicity could be insured in the fifteenth century, it was insured by Schoeffer, aided by the printer of the “Catholicon,” for the statement that printing was invented at Mainz; and despite the rivalry between city and city, and between country and country, during all the years that this assertion was being repeated in one colophon after another, no printer in any other book ventured to challenge it. No doubt there are facts on the side of Holland which have to be explained as best we may, but in the face of these Mainz colophons the explanation must be of such a kind as to leave undisputed the fact that it was at Mainz that printing with movable types—“mira patronarum formarumque concordia proporcione et modulo”—first became a practicable art. On the other hand, as to the individual inventor of this art the fifteenth-century colophons are absolutely silent. There is nothing in any Mainz colophon answering to the boast of John of Speier at Venice, “primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis,” by which he asserted his individual priority over any other firm. The only statement of the kind is in the extraordinarily crabbed verses added by the corrector Magister Franciscus, after the colophon, to the “Institutiones Justiniani” of 1468, and reprinted in that of 1472, and in the Decretals of 1473, but omitted in 1476. This states that two Johns, both of whom the town of Mainz produced (genuit), were the renowned first stampers of books (librorum insignes protocaragmaticos), and that with them was associated a Peter; and the natural interpretation of these allusions identifies the “protocaragmatici” (though the “proto” may refer to preëminence quite as well as to priority) with Johann Gutenberg, Johann Fust, and Peter Schoeffer.
So far as they are intelligible, therefore, these verses in the Institutes of Justinian confirm and extend the evidence of the colophons, and may be cheerfully accepted. Our last colophon in this chapter is not quite in the same case. This famous and ingeniously arranged addendum to the edition of the “Compendium de Origine regum et gentis Francorum” of Johann Tritheim, printed by Johann Schoeffer at Mainz in 1515, is shown as one of our illustrations, but may nevertheless be transcribed here for the sake of expanding its contractions:
