Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

The authorities of the Church now began to take the ground that the reading of the Scriptures by individuals was not to be permitted, and that the Bible was to be given to the community only through the interpretation of the Church. At the same time, the authority of the Church was exerted to repress, or at least to restrict, the operations of the printing-press, and to bring printers and publishers under a close ecclesiastical supervision and censorship. It was now, however, too late to stand between the printing-press and the people. Large portions of the community had become accustomed to a wide circulation of books and to the selection without restriction of such reading-matter as might be placed within their reach, and this privilege they were no longer willing to forego.

It was nevertheless true that in certain countries, particularly in Italy and in France, the censorship of the Church was strong enough seriously to hamper and interfere with publishing undertakings and to check the natural development of literary production. Even in Italy, however, the critical spirit was found to be too strong to be entirely crushed out, and from Venice, the most important of the Italian publishing centres, it proved possible to secure for the productions of the printing-press a circulation that was practically independent of the censorship of Rome.

The Humanistic movement was, on other grounds, of immediate service for the printers and publishers, in that it brought about an active demand for the works of classical writers, a demand which it required the fullest resources of the earlier printers to supply.

If the invention of Gutenberg had taken shape during the period when there happened to be no such active intellectual literary interests, the first printers might easily have found it difficult to secure business for their presses and the development of the business of book production would have been seriously hampered. The long series of controversies which were brought into being by the Reformation, and the large mass of controversial literature which was the result of the Reformation, constituted, a generation later, another favourable influence in securing an assured foundation for the business of the printers. If it be the case that the work of the leaders of the Reformation could hardly have been carried on without the aid of the printing-press, it is also true that at a time when the business of the early printers was in a very critical and unremunerative condition, the impetus given to the production of literature, and the increased eagerness on the part of the common people for literature, formed an essential factor in making an assured foundation for the business of the printers and the publishers.

In 1462, on the 28th of October, Archbishop Adolph of Nassau captured the city of Mayence and gave it over to his soldiers for plunder. The typesetters and printers, with all other artisans whose work depended upon the commerce of the city, were driven to flight, and it appeared for the moment as if the newly instituted printing business had been crushed out. The result of the scattering of the printers, however, was the introduction of the new art into a number of other centres where the influences were favourable for its development.

The typesetters of Mayence, driven from their printing-offices by the heavy hand of the Church, journeyed throughout the world, carrying their new knowledge and training and they were able to give to many communities the means of education and enlightenment through which the great revolt against the Church was finally instituted. The work of the printers, checked for the time in Mayence, took shape promptly in Strasburg, and from there was taken down the Rhine to Cologne, and in a few years was also in active operation in Basel, Augsburg, Ulm, and Nuremberg. In 1464, as elsewhere described, German printers carried their invention into Italy and erected the first Italian printing-press in Subiaco. And in 1470, also through Germans, the work of the printers began in Paris.

The shrewd and enterprising merchant Fust, by means of whose capital Gutenberg had been able to begin his business operations, would hardly have pressed his suit against his associate, if he had not had confidence in the value of the invention. As soon as, through the decision of 1455, he came into possession of the presses, he at once put these again into operation. He found a practical superintendent or co-worker in Peter Schöffer. Schöffer was a German by birth, but had carried on work in Paris as a scribe or writer of higher class manuscripts, as illuminator, and as a manuscript-dealer. Returning to Mayence in 1454, he had entered the employ of Gutenberg as type-setter and proof-reader. Later, having married the daughter of Fust, he was taken into partnership by his father-in-law, and was able to make a satisfactory organisation and a wide development for the business of the printing-office. The first publication issued by Fust & Schöffer was a psalter printed (in Latin) on parchment, with the great missal type.

The second work, undertaken, not at the risk of the printers, but at the cost of two of the Mayence monasteries, was an edition of a great choir-book. This psalter, or rather psalterium, is the first printed work in which the name of the printer is given and the date of the publication. It apparently proved possible to secure for this book even with the very inadequate distributing machinery that was available, a remunerative sale, as it was printed again in 1490, in 1502, in 1515, and in 1516.

Among the earlier publications of Fust & Schöffer are the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum of the Dominican monk Durandus, which was issued in 1459, the Codex Constitutionum of Pope Clement, issued in 1460, and the Bull of Emperor Frederic III. against Diether von Isenburg, printed in 1461. The most beautiful and most important production of their press was, however, the great Latin Bible issued in 1462, in two folio volumes, and which is known as the “48 line Bible.”

The work of the printing-office was, as previously stated, stopped by the sacking of the city, and the two partners appear to have migrated for the time to Frankfort. In 1464, they were again in Mayence, and in that year they published the sixth book of the Decretals of Pope Boniface VIII., and the De Officiis of Cicero. The latter was the first of the German editions of the classics, and remained a favourite book with the German printers, being repeatedly reprinted.