From a document dated 10th March 1446, we learn that Waldfoghel, having two years previously taught the art of printing to the Jew, had promised to cut for him a set of twenty-seven Hebrew letters and to give him certain other materials. In return for this, the Jew was to teach him to dye in a particular way all kinds of textile material, and to keep secret all he learnt on the art of printing.
In another document, of 5th April 1446, relating to the partnership of Waldfoghel, Manaudus Vitalis, and Amaldus de Cosselhac, and the selling of his share to the remaining two by Vitalis, we have mention made of ‘nonnulla instrumenta sive artificia causa artificialiter scribendi, tam de ferro, de callibe, de cupro, de lethono, de plumbo, de stagna et de fuste.’
There seems to be no doubt that these various entries refer to printing with movable types; they cannot refer to xylographic printing, nor to stencilling. At the same time, there is no evidence to point to any particular kind of printing; and the various materials mentioned would rather make it appear that the Avignon invention was some method of stamping letters or words from cut type, than printing from cast type in a press. Until some specimen is found of this Avignon work, from which some definite knowledge can be obtained, the question must be left undecided, for it is useless to try to extract from words capable of various renderings any exact meaning. Our information at present is only sufficient to enable us to say that some kind of printing was being practised at Avignon as early as 1444. It seems, too, impossible that, had this invention been printing of the ordinary kind; nothing more should have come of the experiment; and we know of no printing in France before 1470.
Les neuf Preux, the only block-book executed in France, has been already noticed. It is considered to have been printed at Paris about 1455.
The first printing press was naturally started at Paris, the great centre of learning and culture, and it seems strange that so important an invention should not have been introduced earlier than 1470. Many specimens of the art had been seen, for Fust in 1466 and Schœffer in 1468 had visited the capital to sell their books. If we may believe the manuscript preserved in the library of the Arsenal, the French King, in October 1458, sent out Nicholas Jenson to learn the art; but he, ‘on his return to France, finding Charles VII. dead, set up his establishment elsewhere.’ Probably a strong antagonism to the new art would be shown by the immense number of professional copyists and scribes who gained their livelihood in connection with the university, though the demand for manuscripts continued in France for some time after the introduction of printing. Many of the wealthy, moreover, refused to recognise the innovation, and admitted no printed book into their libraries, so that the scribes were not at once deprived of employment. Many of these men who had been employed in producing manuscripts, soon turned to the new art as a means of employment, becoming themselves printers, or assisting in the production of books, as rubricators or illuminators.
In 1470, thanks to the exertions of Jean Heynlyn and Guillaume Fichet, both men of high position in the University of Paris, a printing press was set up in the precincts of the Sorbonne by three Germans, Martin Crantz, Ulrich Gering of Constance, and Michael Friburger of Colmar. The first book they issued was Gasparini Pergamensis Epistolarum Opus, a quarto of 118 leaves, with a prefatory letter to Heynlyn, which fixes the date of its production in 1470, and an interesting colophon—
‘Ut sol lumen, sic doctrinam fundis in orbem,
Musarum nutrix, regia Parisius.
Hinc prope divinam, tu, quam Germania novit,
Artem scribendi suscipe promerita.