In 1473, printing starts simultaneously at Utrecht and Alost, and from that time onward its history is clear. More attention has been paid to the history of printing in the Netherlands than to that of any other country, and the work of Holtrop, Campbell, and Bradshaw offers a firm foundation to rest upon.
The first printers at Utrecht were Nicholas Ketelaer and Gerard de Leempt, and their first book was the Historia Scholastica of Petrus Comestor. Though they printed a large number of books, only three are dated, two in 1473 and one in 1474. About 1475 a printer named William Hees printed some books at Utrecht; and in 1478, Veldener moved to that town from Louvain, where he had been printing up to that time.
The first printer at Alost was Thierry Martens, an accomplished linguist and scholar, who is supposed by many bibliographers to have learned to print at Venice. He says in the colophon to the De vita beata libellus of Baptista Mantuanus—
‘Hoc opus impressi Martins Theodoricus Alosti,
Qui Venetum scita Flandrensibus affero cuncta.’
On this basis the story has arisen, and it is perhaps hardly sufficient to justify the conclusions. The first books, four in number, printed in 1473 and the beginning of 1474, were printed in partnership with John of Westphalia, a printer who in 1474 migrated to Louvain. Thierry Martens continued by himself at Alost for a while, but moved on, in 1493, to Antwerp, and in 1498 to Louvain. According to Van der Meersch, he left Louvain in 1502 to return to Antwerp, but left this town again in 1512, and settled definitely at Louvain till the end of his career in 1529.
Printing was introduced at Louvain in 1474, and it is, after Antwerp, the most important town in that respect in the Low Countries. The first printer was John of Westphalia,[28] whom we have just mentioned as a printer at Alost in partnership with Thierry Martens. He seems to have been the owner of the type used at Alost, for he continued to print with it, and in June 1474 issued the Commentariolus de pleuresi by Antonius Guainerius, the first book known to have been issued at Louvain. John of Westphalia continued to print up to the year 1496; and Campbell[29] enumerates over one hundred and eighty books as having been printed by him in these twenty-two years. In some of his books we find a small woodcut portrait of himself, used first in the Justinian of 1475; and a few of his books have the red initial letters printed in by hand. John Veldener, the second printer at Louvain, was matriculated at the university there, in the faculty of medicine, 30th July 1473. His first book was probably the Consolatio peccatorum of Jacobus de Theramo, which contains a prefatory letter, addressed ‘Johanni Veldener artis impressoriæ magistro,’ dated 7th Aug. 1474. Veldener continued to print at Louvain till 1478, and he is found in that year at Utrecht, where he printed till 1481. After this he moved to Kuilenburg, issuing books there in 1483 and 1484.
[28] John de Paderborn de Westphalia was in 1473 still a scribe, for in that year he wrote a MS. of the Scala of Johannes Climacus at and for the Augustinian House at Marpach.
[29] Annales de la Typographie Néerlandaise au xv. Siècle. 1874. 8vo.
Besides those that have been mentioned, seven other printers worked at Louvain before the close of the fifteenth century. These were—Conrad Braem (1475), Conrad de Westphalia (1476), Hermann de Nassou (1483), Rodolphe Loeffs (1483), Egidius vander Heerstraten (1484), Ludovicus de Ravescot (1487), and Thierry Martens (1498).