After Lyons comes Toulouse; and the first dated book issued there was the Repetitio solemnis rubrice de fide instrumentorum, 20th June 1476. It was not till 1479 that a printer’s name appears in the colophon to a work by Johannes Alphonsus de Benevento. The printer, Jean Parix, was a native of Heidelberg. He had founts both of Gothic and Roman type, the Gothic being especially remarkable for the shapes of the letters, which are very distinctive, and though eccentric in form they are not at all unpleasing in appearance. In 1488, Henry Mayer began to print, issuing in that year a translation of the De consolatione philosophiæ of Boethius, ‘en romance,’ and the first French translation of the Imitatio Christi. This Henry Mayer has often been quoted as the first printer at Tolosa in Spain, owing to the name Tolosa in the colophons being considered to stand for that town, and not, as it really does, for Toulouse. M. Claudin, however, has found in the town registers of Toulouse a mention of Henry Mayer as a printer in 1488; and in the imprint of the Boethius which he printed in the same year it is distinctly stated that it was ‘impresso en Tolosa de Francia.’ At the end of the Cronica de España, printed by Mayer in 1489, is along peroration addressed to Queen Isabella as his sovereign by Mayer, from which it is sometimes argued that the book was printed in Spain. The real fact is that the book is an exact reprint, peroration and all, of the edition printed at Seville in 1482 by Dachaver, with the sole difference that Mayer has substituted his name for that of the Spanish printer.
Angers [Feb. 5, 1476-77], Chablis [April 1, 1478], Vienne [1478], and Poitiers [1479], are the four remaining towns into which printing was introduced before 1480. The first book issued at Angers, printed by Johannes de Turre and Morelli, is an edition of Cicero’s Rhetorica Nova, printed in a curious Roman type, apparently copied from that used by Kaiser and Stoll at Paris. The first printer at Chablis was Pierre le Rouge; but some time after 1483 he removed to Paris, and his place was taken by Guillaume le Rouge, who moved about 1492 to Troyes, and finally also settled in Paris. Johannes Solidi and Peter Schenck are the two most important of the early printers at Vienne. Solidi was the first; but Schenck, who began in 1481, printed the most interesting books, and always in French. Two of these are of great rarity, L’Abuze en court and Le hystoire de Griseldis. The first book printed at Poitiers, the Breviarium Historiale, 1479, has no printer’s name, nor indeed have any of the earlier books. [Hain *13,811] gives a book, Casus longi super sextum decretalium, printed by John and Stephen de Gradibus in 1483. The discovery of some fragments of Heures à l’usage de l’eglise d’Angers, with the names of the printers, Jean Bouyer et Pierre Bellescullée, printed partly in the types of the first books, make it possible that these two may have been the printers. The fragments were found in the binding of a book by M. Delisle.
Caen was the first town in Normandy where printing was practised, but only one book was printed there in the fifteenth century. It is an edition of Horace, the first to appear in France, and of the very greatest rarity, only three copies being known, one of which, printed on vellum, is in the Spencer Library. The printers were Jacobus Durandas and Egidius Quijoue, and the book was issued 6th June 1480. It is a quarto of forty leaves, with twenty lines to the page, printed in a good, bold Gothic type. There were several privileged booksellers attached to the University of Caen, but it is improbable that any of them printed, at any rate in the fifteenth century. They obtained their books from either Paris or Rouen.
Within the next seven years ten towns set up presses in the following order:—Albi (1481), Chartres (1482), Metz (1482), Troyes (1483), Chambéry (1484), Bréhant-Loudéac (1484), Rennes (1484), Tréguier (1485), Salins (1485), Abbeville (1486).
At Albi, on 17th November 1481, the wonderful edition of the Meditationes of Turrecremata, supposed to have been printed by Numeister, was issued. This was preceded by a book of Æneas Sylvius, without date, but ascribed to the same printer, though printed with a different type; and Hain [8723] quotes a third book, also without date, Historia septem sapientum. The arguments of M. Claudin, who has written a book to prove that Numeister was the printer at Albi, though ingenious, are very far from conclusive.
Two books were executed at Chartres in the fifteenth century, a Missal in 1482 and a Breviary in 1483, both for the use of that diocese. The printer was Jean du Pré of Paris.
The first printers at Metz, Johannes Colini and Gerhardus de Novacivitate, who printed in 1482 an edition of the Imitatio Christi, used a very peculiar type of Gothic with a number of Roman capitals mixed with it, resembling that of Nicholas Götz at Cologne, and which, leaving Cologne in 1480, appeared at Treves in 1481. In 1499, Caspar Hochfeder came to Metz from Nuremberg.
The earliest book with the name of Troyes in the colophon is a Breviarium secundum usum ecclesiæ Trecensis, of 25th September 1483. It was executed by Pierre le Rouge, who probably came over from Chablis for the purpose. In 1492, Guillaume le Rouge, who had before this printed at Chablis, set up the first permanent press in the town.
Bréhant-Loudéac was the first town in Brittany where books were printed; and from 1484 to 1485 the two printers, Robin Foucquet and Jean Crès, issued ten books, all in French, in a ragged Gothic type. The first printers at Abbeville, Jean du Pré of Paris and Pierre Gérard, to judge by their books, were well-skilled workmen, for both the printing and illustrations are very fine. Their first book was an edition of the Somme Rurale, and it was followed by a splendid edition, in two volumes, of La cité de Dieu of Augustine, a large folio with wonderful woodcuts. Their third work was Le Triomphe des neuf Preux; and this is the last book known to have been printed at Abbeville in the fifteenth century.