Early Printed Books

by E. Gordon Duff

In 1459 a second edition of the Psalter was issued, and also the Rationale Durandi, both containing coloured capitals, though some copies of the latter book are without the printed initials. A Donatus without date, printed in the type of the forty-two line Bible, has also the coloured capitals, and may be dated before 1460. After that time we only find these letters in use for the editions of the Psalter which appeared in 1490, 1502, 1515, 1516; and for a Donatus in the 1462 Bible type. Their size and the trouble of printing them account, no doubt, for their disuse.

In June 1460, Schœffer issued the Constitutions of Clement V., a large folio remarkable for the care with which it was printed, and for the clever way in which the commentary was worked round the text. In 1462 appeared the first dated Bible, which is at the same time the first book clearly divided into two volumes.[9] In the next few years we have a number of Bulls and other such ephemeral publications, relating mostly to the quarrels which were going on in Mainz; but in 1465, Schœffer starts again to produce larger books, and in this year we have the Decretals of Boniface VIII. and the De Officiis of Cicero. This latter book is important as being the first containing Greek type, that is, if it is allowed to be earlier than the Lactantius of the same year printed at Subiaco. In 1466 it was reprinted.

[9] It has never, I think, been noticed in print that some of the capital letters in certain sheets of this Bible are not the work of the rubricator, but are printed. Attempts were made to print both the blue and the red on the same page, but it apparently was found too laborious, and was given up. The red letters were printed in colour; the letters which were to be blue were impressed in blank, and afterwards filled up in colour by the illuminator. He did not always follow the impressed letter, so that its outline can be clearly seen. Some copies of this Bible have Schœffer’s mark, and a date at the end of the first volume; others are without them. The colophons also vary.

SCHOEFFER’S CATALOGUE.

In or about 1469, Schœffer printed a most interesting document, a catalogue of books for sale by himself or his agent. It is printed on one side of a sheet, and was meant to be fixed up as an advertisement in the different towns visited, the name of the place where the books could be obtained being written at the bottom. There are altogether twenty-one books advertised, three of which were not printed by Schœffer, but probably by Gutenberg; and there are also in the list three unknown books. Nearly all the important works from the press are in it, the 1462 Bible on vellum, the Psalter of 1459, the Decretals, the Cicero, and others. At the foot of the list is printed in the large Psalter type, ‘Hec est littera psalterii,’ so that the sheet is the earliest known type-specimen as well as catalogue.

The three books which are unknown, at any rate as having been printed by Schœffer, are the Consolatorium timorate conscientie and the De contractibus mercatorum, both by Johann Nider, a famous Dominican, and the Historia Griseldis of Petrarch.

In 1470, Schœffer put out another advertisement relating to his edition of the Letters of St. Jerome, printed in that year. Of this broadside two copies are known, one in the Munich Library, the other, formerly belonging to M. Weigel, in the British Museum. From 1470 to 1479, Schœffer printed a large number of books. Hain mentions twenty-seven, almost all of which he himself had collated. This was the busiest time in Schœffer’s career, and he carried on business in several towns. His agent in Paris, Hermann de Stalhœn, died about 1474, and the books in his possession were dispersed. On the complaint of Schœffer, Louis XI. allowed him 2425 crowns as compensation,—a sum which shows that the stock of books must have been very large. In 1479 he was received as a citizen of Frankfort-on-the-Maine on payment of a certain sum, no doubt in order that he might there sell his books. At Mainz he became an important citizen, and was made a judge.

From 1457 to 1468, Schœffer had used only four types, the two church types which appear in the Psalter, and the two book types which appear in the Durandus. In this year he obtained a fifth type, like the smaller one of the Durandus, and about the same in body, but with a larger face. In 1484 and 1485 two new types appear, one a church type very much resembling that used in the forty-two line Bible, but with a larger face; the other, a vernacular type, which occurs first in the Hortus Sanitatis of 1485, a book containing Schœffer’s mark though not his name, and appears the year following in the Breydenbach, printed at Mainz by Erhard Reüwick. Reüwick was an engraver, and the frontispiece to the Hortus Sanitatis is perhaps from his hand, showing, if it be so, a connection between him and Schœffer, which his use of the latter’s type tends to confirm. In fact, it seems most probable that the text of the two editions of the Breydenbach, the Latin one of 1486 and the German one of 1488, was really printed by Schœffer, while Reüwick engraved the wonderful illustrations. The title-page of this book is an exquisite piece of work, and by far the finest example of wood engraving which had appeared. It is further noticeable as containing cross-hatching, which is usually said to have first been used in the poor cuts of that very much overpraised book, the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. It contains also a number of views of remarkable places, printed as folded plates. Some of these views are as much as five feet long, and were printed from several blocks on separate pieces of paper, which were afterwards pasted together.