Two years later (29 August, 1459) Fust and Schoeffer produced another Psalter, in the same types and with the same capitals, with twenty-three instead of twenty lines to a page. This was stated in the colophon to have been printed “ad laudem dei ac honorem sancti Jacobi,” and was thus apparently commissioned by the Benedictine monastery of S. James at Mainz. Its arrangement is that generally in use at the time in German monasteries. Thirteen copies of this edition are preserved, all on vellum, viz. four in England (British Museum, Bodleian, John Rylands Library, and the Earl of Leicester’s library at Holkham), two at Paris, one at the Hague, five in Germany, and one in Mr. Morgan’s collection at New York. This last was bought by Mr. Quaritch at the sale of the library of Sir John Thorold for £4950.
Between the production of these two Psalters Fust and Schoeffer printed in the same types on twelve leaves of vellum the Canon of the Mass only, obviously that it might be bought by churches which owned Missals otherwise in good condition, but with these much-fingered leaves badly worn. The unique copy of this edition of the Canon was discovered at the Bodleian Library in a Mainz Missal of 1493 and identified by Mr. Gordon Duff. It is described by Mr. Duff in his Early Printed Books, and by Dr. Falk and Herr Wallau in Part III of the Publications of the Gutenberg Gesellschaft, with facsimiles of ten pages.
In October, 1459, Fust and Schoeffer took an important step forward by printing in small type the Rationale Diuinorum Officiorum of Gulielmus Duranti, a large work explaining the meaning of the various services of the Church and the ceremonies used in them. The text is printed in double columns with sixty-three lines in each column, and the type measures 91 mm. to twenty lines. A copy at Munich is printed partly on paper, partly on vellum. All the other forty-two copies described by Mr. De Ricci are entirely on vellum. The book has also one large and two smaller capitals printed in two colours, and the first of these has been reproduced as a frontispiece to this chapter, together with a piece of the neat small type which, by demonstrating the possibility of cheap printing, set up a real landmark.
In 1460 Fust and Schoeffer gave another proof of their skill in their edition of the Constitutions of Pope Clement V with the commentary of Joannes Andreae. The text of the Constitutions is printed in two columns in the centre of each page in a type measuring 118 mm. to twenty lines, with the commentary completely surrounding it in the 91 type used in the Duranti. Headings and colophon are printed in red, and the general effect is extremely rich and handsome. All the fourteen copies known to Mr. De Ricci are printed on vellum.
In 1461 printing was put to a new use by the publication of a series of eight placards (one in two editions) relative to the struggle between the rival archbishops of Mainz—a papal bull deposing Diether von Isenburg, the Emperor’s confirmation of this, papal briefs as to the election of Adolf von Nassau, a petition of Diether’s to the Pope, and the manifestos of the two archbishops. All these, and also a bull of the same year as to a crusade against the Turks, are printed in the neat 91 type, and though we may be struck by the difficulty of reading the long lines unrelieved by any headings, these publications must have been a great advertisement for the new art.
In 1462 the archiepiscopal struggle led to Mainz being sacked, but on 14 August there was completed there perhaps the finest of all the early Bibles, printed throughout in the 118 type, with headings in red and numerous two-line capitals and chapter-numbers in red and blue, though spaces were left for others to be supplied by hand. Three different colophons to this book have been described, and examples of all of these are in the British Museum. Of the sixty-one extant copies registered by Mr. De Ricci at least thirty-six are printed on vellum. The Lamoignon copy bequeathed to the Museum by Mr. Cracherode has good painted capitals added by hand and is a singularly fine book.
The Bible of 1462 marks the close of the great period of printing at Mainz. Whether six, seven, or nine years separate it from the Forty-two Line Bible the time had been splendidly employed. The capacity of the new art had been demonstrated to the full, and taken as a group these early Fust and Schoeffer incunabula have never on their own lines been surpassed. The disaster of the sack of Mainz and perhaps the financial strain involved in the production of the Bible almost reduced their press to silence until 1465, and it was during these years that their workmen are said to have left them and begun carrying the art into other towns and countries.[24] When the partners resumed active work in 1465 they struck out a new line in their De Officiis and Paradoxa of Cicero, but attained no special excellence in such small folios and quartos. Fust died about this time, and Schoeffer, left to himself, displayed no further originality. The Bible of 1472, save for the absence of printed capitals, is a close copy of that of 1462. The Clementine Constitutions of 1460 were reprinted, and similar editions were issued of the Institutes and Codex of Justinian, Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, etc. For his miscellaneous books Schoeffer seems rather to have followed the lead of other printers at Strassburg and Rome than to have set new fashions himself. In 1483 he printed a Breslau Missal, and this was followed by two reprints and editions for the use of Cracow, Meissen, Gnesen, and Mainz itself. He also printed the Hortus Sanitatis in 1485, and in 1490 the first of several Psalters in the style of the editions of 1457 and 1459. In 1503 he was succeeded by his son Johann.
About 1476-80 a few unimportant books were issued at Mainz by an anonymous printer known as the “Printer of the Darmstadt Prognostication,” from the fact that the first copy of the Prognostication in question to attract notice was that in the Darmstadt library. The books of this press attained undeserved notoriety from the forged dates inserted in many of them about 1800, in order to connect them with Gutenberg.
The work of three other printers, Johann Neumeister, Erhard Reuwich, and Jacob Meidenbach is chiefly important in the history of book-illustration, and will be found mentioned in Chapter VII. The only other Mainz printer in the fifteenth century was Peter von Friedberg, who is chiefly notable as having printed a little series of works by Johannes Trithemius (Tritheim or Trittenheim), the erudite Abbot of Spanheim.
After about 1472 Mainz was easily surpassed as a centre of printing by Strassburg, Cologne, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. But if no book had been printed there after the sack of the city ten years earlier, its fame as long as civilization lasts would still be imperishable.