PAGE PRINTED FROM SEPARATE METAL TYPES
From the “Mirror of Human Salvation”
By an unknown Dutch printer
The pretensions of Holland are that one Laurens Janszoon Coster (Lawrence, son of John, the sexton or sheriff) printed with separate types about the year 1430 at Haarlem.
The earliest testimony on the subject is a chapter in the “Chronicle of Cologne” (1499) wherein the author speaks of information about the invention of typography received by him from Ulrich Zell, who printed books at Cologne, Germany, as early as 1464. He states that the “art was discovered first of all in Germany, at Mainz on the Rhine,” and that the “first inventor of printing was a citizen . . . named Junker Johann Gutenberg.” This statement is added to by the assertion that the new art “found its first prefiguration in Holland in the Donatuses which were printed there before that time.” It has been argued that the last assertion refers to block books.
An extract from the Cologne-Chronicle account may be of interest:
This highly valuable art was discovered first of all in Germany, at Mainz on the Rhine. And it is a great honor to the German nation that such ingenious men are found among them. And it took place about the year of our Lord 1440, and from this time until the year 1450, the art, and what is connected with it, was being investigated. And in the year of our Lord 1450, it was a golden year, they began to print, and the first book they printed was the Bible in Latin; it was printed in a large letter resembling the letter with which at present missals are printed. Altho the art was discovered at Mainz, in the manner as it is now generally used, yet the prefiguration was found in Holland, in the Donatuses, which were printed there before that time. And from these, the beginning of the said art was taken, and it was invented in a manner much more masterly and subtle than this, and became more and more ingenious.... But the first inventor of printing was a citizen of Mainz, born at Strassburg, and named Junker Johann Gutenberg. From Mainz the art was introduced first of all into Cologne, then into Strassburg, and afterwards into Venice. The origin and progress of the art was told me verbally by the honorable master Ulrich Zell, of Hanan, still printer at Cologne, anno 1499, by whom the said art came to Cologne.
There was printed in the year 1561 an address to the town officers at Haarlem by Dierick Coornhert, an engraver, in which he stated that he was
often told in good faith that the useful art of printing books was invented, first of all, here in Haarlem, altho in a crude way, as it is easier to improve on an invention than to invent; which art having been brought to Mainz by an unfaithful servant, was very much improved there, whereby this town, on account of its first having spread it, gained such a reputation for the invention of the art, that our fellow-citizens find very little credence when they ascribe this honor to the true inventor. . . . And because I implicitly believe what I have said before, on account of the trustworthy evidence of very old, dignified and gray heads, who often told me not only the family of the inventor, but also his name and surname, and explained the first crude way of printing, and pointed with their finger the house of the first printer out to me.
It will be noticed that Coornhert fails to mention the name of the alleged inventor, the location of his house, or the date of the invention. The claim that “the useful art of printing books was invented, first of all, here at Haarlem, altho in a crude way,” may refer to the printing of block books and not to typography.
The claims of Holland were first presented definitely about 1566 in a history of the Netherlands called “Batavia,” the author of which was known in his own tongue as Adrian de Jonghe; in English as Adrian the Younger, and in Latin as Hadrian Junius. The story as written by Junius has been dubbed the “Coster Legend” and it reads in part as follows:
About one hundred and twenty-eight years ago there dwelt in a house of some magnificence (as may be verified by inspection, for it stands intact to this day) in Haarlem, near to the market, and opposite the royal palace, Laurentius Joannes, surnamed Æditus, or Custos, by reason of this lucrative and honorable office, which by hereditary right appertained to the distinguished family of that name. . . . When strolling in the woods near the city, as citizens who enjoyed ease were accustomed to do after dinner and on holidays, it happened that he undertook as an experiment to fashion the bark of a beech tree in the form of letters. The letters so made, he impressed the reverse way, consecutively, upon a leaf of paper, in little lines of one kind and another.... Thereupon he made, by the addition of letters, explanations for pictures on engraved wood. Of this kind of printing, I myself have seen some stamped block books, the first essays of the art, printed on one side only, with the printed pages facing each other, and not upon both sides of the leaf. Among them was a book in the vernacular written by an unknown author, bearing the title “Spieghel onzer Behoudenis” [Dutch edition of the “Mirror of Salvation,” two pages of the Latin edition of which are here shown].... He subsequently changed the beech-wood letters for those of lead, and these again for letters of tin, because tin was a less flexible material, harder and more durable. To this day may be seen in the very house itself ... some very old wine flagons, which were made from the melting down of the remnants of these very types. The new invention met with favor from the public and ... attracted purchasers from every direction.... He added assistants to his band of workmen, and here may be found the cause of his troubles. Among these workmen was a certain John. Whether or not, as suspicion alleges, he was Faust ... or another of the same name I shall not trouble myself to ascertain. This man, altho bound by oath to the typographic art, when he knew himself to be perfectly skilled in the operation of type setting, in the knowledge of type founding, and in every other detail appertaining to the work, seized the first favorable opportunity ... and flew into the closet of the types, and packed up the instruments used in making them that belonged to his master, and ... immediately after slunk away from the house with the thief. He went first to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne and finally regained Mainz.... Within the space of a year, or about 1442, it is well known that he published, by the aid of the same types which Laurentius had used in Haarlem, the “Doctrinal” of Alexander Gallus ... and also the “Treatises” of Peter, of Spain.... I remember that Nicholas Gallius, the preceptor of my boyhood, a man of tenacious memory, and venerable with gray hairs, narrated these circumstances to me. He, when a boy, had more than once heard Cornelis, an old bookbinder and an underworkman in the same printing office when not an octogenarian and bowed down with years, recite all these details as he had received them from his master.