Fine Books

by Alfred W. Pollard

In the development of the art of printing at Mainz three men had a share, though the precise part which each of them played is matter of conjecture rather than knowledge. The first of the three was Johann Gutenberg, the Johannes Bonemontanus whom Fichet, as early as 1470, acclaimed as the first of all men to think out the printing art, whom the popular verdict has recognized as the inventor, and whom patriotic German bibliographers delight to invest with every virtue that distinguishes themselves.

Gutenberg’s real name was Gänsfleisch, Gutenberg being an addition to his mother’s surname[18] which he assumed for reasons not known to us. He was born about 1400, and just when he attained manhood his family, which belonged to the patrician party at Mainz, was banished and sought refuge at Strassburg. At Strassburg Gutenberg remained till about 1446, and legal and municipal records, so far as we can trust to their authenticity, offer us some tantalizing glimpses of his career there. When the town clerk of Strassburg came to Mainz the exile caused him to be arrested for a debt due to his family, and the matter had to be arranged to avoid a quarrel between the two cities. On the other hand, Gutenberg was himself called to account for unpaid duties on wine, and was sued for a breach of promise of marriage. In 1437 he was the defendant in a much more interesting trial. He had admitted two partners to work an invention with him, and on one of these partners dying his brother claimed, unsuccessfully, to take his place in the partnership. The use of the words “presse,” “forme,” and “trucken” in connection with this invention leaves it hardly open to doubt that it was concerned with some kind of printing, and loans which Gutenberg negotiated in 1441 and 1442 were presumably raised for the development of this. About the middle of the decade he returned to Mainz and there also borrowed money, presumably again for the same object.

At this point we are confronted with five fragmentary pieces of printing, all but one of them only recently discovered. The latest of these, according to German bibliographers, is a fragment of an astronomical Calendar in German verse for an unspecified year, which might be 1429, 1448, or 1467, but does not exactly fit any of them; the earliest is part of a leaf of a Sibyllenbuch (originally known as Das Weltgericht, because the text of this fragment deals with the Last Judgment). Between these two are placed fragments of three editions of Donatus, De octo partibus orationis, two found recently in copies of an edition of Herolt’s Sermones de tempore et sanctis printed at Strassburg[19] by Martin Flach in 1488 and now at Berlin, the third one of the minor treasures of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, where it has lain for over a century. Granting that the Calendar was printed for use in 1448 (it has been argued, on the other hand, that its mention of movable festivals was intended to be only approximate), and that the other four pieces can be proved by typographical evidence to have preceded it, we may suppose the Sibyllenbuch to have been printed by Gutenberg shortly after his return to Mainz, i.e. about 1445, or shortly before this at Strassburg.

Soon after the supposed date of the Calendar the second of the three protagonists in the development of printing at Mainz comes on the scene. This was Johann Fust, a goldsmith, who in or about August, 1450, lent Gutenberg eight hundred guilders to enable him to print books, himself, nominally or truly, borrowing the money from another capitalist, and thereby gaining the right to charge interest on it without breaking the canon law. By about December, 1452, the loan was exhausted, and Fust made a fresh advance of the same amount. The inner history of the next four years is hid from us, and the undisputed facts which belong to them have consequently been interpreted in every variety of way that human ingenuity can devise. These facts are that—

(i) Printing was continued with the fount of type used for the Calendar attributed to 1448, fragments of more than a dozen different editions of Donatus printed with it being still extant, also a prognostication, Manung widder die Durken, printed in December, 1454, a Bull of Pope Calixtus “widder die Turcken” of 1456, a medical Calendar for 1456, and an undated Cisianus, another work of an astronomical character.

(ii) When the pardoners employed by the proctor-general of the King of Cyprus came to Mainz in the autumn of 1454 to raise money by means of a papal Indulgence, valid till 30 April of the following year, they were able to substitute two typographically distinct editions for the manuscript copies which they had previously used, the text of each of these Indulgences being printed in a separate fount of beautifully clear small type, while a larger type was used for a few words. In one of these Indulgences the larger type belongs, with some differences, to the same fount as the books named in our last paragraph. This Indulgence has thirty-one lines, and four issues of it have been distinguished, three of them dated 1454 (the earliest of these being the earliest dated piece of printing) and the fourth 1455. In the other Indulgence there are only thirty lines, the large type is neater, and three issues have been distinguished, one dated 1454, the other two 1455.

(iii) In November, 1455, an action brought by Fust to recover the 1600 guilders which he had lent Gutenberg, with the arrears of interest, reached its final stage. In this suit the third of the Mainz protagonists, Peter Schoeffer, was a witness on the side of Fust, and we hear also, as servants of Gutenberg, of Heinrich Keffer and Bertolf von Hanau, who may apparently be identified with printers who worked subsequently at Nuremberg and Basel. The document which has come down to us and is now preserved at the University Library at Göttingen is that recording the oath taken by Fust, as the successful plaintiff, in order to obtain judgment for the amount of his claim.

(iv) In August, 1456, Heinrich Cremer, vicar of the collegiate church at Mainz, recorded his completion of the rubrication and binding of a magnificent printed Bible in two volumes, now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the type of which used to be thought identical with the larger type of the thirty-line Indulgence mentioned above, but is now considered to be only closely similar.

For this last undoubted date of rubrication, August, 1456, German bibliographers have lately substituted a reference to a manuscript date, 1453, in another copy of this printed Bible, now preserved in the Buchgewerbe-Museum at Leipzig, formerly owned by a well-known German collector of the last century, Herr Klemm. While, however, this date appears to have been written at a period approximating to that of the production of the book, its relevance as evidence of the date of printing is highly disputable, more especially as there appear to be signs of erasure near it. Its owner, Herr Klemm, preserved a discreet silence as to its existence, and it is certainly not obligatory at present to accept it as valid evidence.

In a work which does not pretend to the dignity of a history of printing it is impossible to discuss, or even to enumerate, the different theories as to the events of the years 1453-6, which have been formulated to account for these facts. The edition of the Bible of which Heinrich Cremer rubricated the copy now at Paris is so fine a book and so great a landmark in typographical history, that the desire to regard it as the production of the man who is credited with the invention of printing, Johann Gutenberg, easily becomes irresistible. To refuse to call it the Gutenberg Bible may, indeed, appear almost pedantic, though its old name, the “Mazarine Bible,” which it gained from the accident of the copy in the Mazarine Library at Paris being the first to attract attention, still survives, and it is also known among bibliographers as the “Forty-two Line Bible,” a safe uncontroversial title based on the number of lines in most of its columns. Whoever printed it appears to have been possessed of ample means and to have been a master of detail and an excellent organizer. Under the minute examination to which it has been subjected the book has yielded up some of its secrets, and we know that it was printed simultaneously on six different presses, that the body of the type was twice reduced, forty-two lines finally occupying slightly less space than the forty which had at first formed a column, that after the printing had begun it was resolved to increase the size of the edition, and that there is some reason to think that eventually a hundred and fifty copies were printed on paper and thirty on vellum,[20] and that the paper was ordered in large quantities and not in small parcels as it could be paid for. To the present writer it appears that if Gutenberg had possessed the financial means, the patience and the organizing power needed to push through this heavy piece of work in the way described, it is difficult to perceive any reason why the capitalist Fust should have quarrelled with him, or to imagine how Gutenberg exposed himself to such an action as that which Fust successfully carried against him. On the supposition that the Bible was completed in or soon after 1453 the difficulty becomes almost insuperable, for it is inconceivable that if Gutenberg had produced the book within a few months of receiving his second loan from Fust he should not, by the autumn of 1455, have paid his creditor a single guilder, either for principal or interest. After his quarrel with Fust, Gutenberg apparently had dealings with two other men, with Albrecht Pfister who is found in possession of a later casting of the heavier fount of type in which the Astrological Calendar attributed to 1448 had been printed, and with a Dr. Homery. He ended his days as a pensioner at the court of the Archbishop of Mainz, while Fust, with the aid of Peter Schoeffer, whom he made his son-in-law, developed a great business. The inventor who lacks organizing power and whose invention never thrives till it has passed into other hands is no unfamiliar figure, and such a conception of Gutenberg perhaps accords better with the known facts of his career than that of a living incarnation of heroism and business ability such as his German eulogists love to depict. According to a theory developed by the present writer in an article in The Library for January, 1907 (Second Series, Vol. VIII), though no originality is claimed for it, the key to the situation lies in the assertion[21] made on behalf of Peter Schoeffer that his skill in engraving had enabled him to attain results denied to the two Johns, Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust.