In addition to their colophons, the printers, at least in Germany, used many modern forms of advertisement. When he returned to Augsburg from Venice, Ratdolt issued a splendid type-sheet with specimens of all his different founts. Schoeffer, the Brothers of the Common Life, Koberger, and other firms printed lists of their new books as broadsides, and gave their travellers similar sheets in which purchasers were promised “bonum venditorem” (a kindly seller), and a space was left for the name of the inn at which he displayed his wares, to be filled in by hand. We have all heard of Caxton’s advertisement of his Sarum Directory (most indigestible of “Pies”) and its final prayer, “Please don’t tear down the bill.” In 1474 Johann Müller of Königsberg (Iohannes Regiomontanus), the mathematician-printer, issued what I take to be the first fully developed publisher’s announcement, with a list of books “now ready” (haec duo explicita sunt), “shortly” (haec duo opera iam prope absoluta sunt), and those he hoped to undertake. Its last sentence is not strictly a colophon, but I am sure that I shall be forgiven for quoting it. “Postremo omnium,” it runs, “artem illam mirificam litterarum formatricem monimentis stabilibus mandare decretum est (deus bone faueas) qua re explicita si mox obdormierit opifex mors acerba non erit, quom tantum munus posteris in haereditate reliquerit, quo ipsi se ab inopia librorum perpetuo poterunt vindicare.”—“Lastly it has been determined to commit to abiding monuments that wondrous art of putting letters together (God of thy goodness be favorable!), and when this is done if the craftsman presently fall asleep death will not be bitter, in the assurance that he has left as a legacy to posterity this great gift by which they will forever be able to free themselves from lack of books.” Shortly after writing these words Müller was called to Rome by Sixtus IV to give his help in reforming the calendar, but his foreboding was not unfulfilled, for death came to him in 1476, only two years after this announcement was written.
V
PUBLISHERS’ COLOPHONS
The heading adopted for this chapter is not intended to imply that the colophons here grouped together are separated by any hard line from those already considered, only that they deal with the publishers’ side of book-making, the praises by which the printers and publishers recommended their wares, the financial help by which the issue of expensive and slow-selling books was made possible, the growth of competition, and the endeavors to secure artificially protected markets.
If colophons could be implicitly believed, the early printers would have to be reckoned as the most devout and altruistic of men. As a matter of fact, books of devotion and popular theology were probably the safest and most profitable which they could take up. Yet we need not doubt that the thought that they were engaged on a pious work, and so “accumulating merit,” gave them genuine satisfaction, and that colophons like this of Arnold therhoernen’s were prompted by real religious feeling:
Ad laudem et gloriam individue trinitatis ac gloriose virginis marie et ad utilitatem ecclesie impressi ac consummati sunt sermones magistri alberti ordinis predicatorum in colonia per me Arnoldum therhurnen sub annis domini M.cccc. Lxxiiii ipso die gloriosi ac sancti profesti nativitatis domini nostri Iesu Christi.