Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

These cases are evidence of a certain organisation of machinery for the distribution of books and for the management of a publishing business, within a comparatively brief period after the beginning of the work of the printing-presses, and they indicate also that the second firm which entered into the business of printing had succeeded in establishing such business on fairly assured foundations, and in carrying on successfully large undertakings. It is to be noted further that Fust & Schöffer, and other of the earlier German printers, did their work without the assistance of any patronage, and without even the advantage of a university connection. The early printers of Italy would have found it impracticable to carry on their operations without the assistance of certain wealthy and enterprising noblemen who were prepared to interest themselves in the new art either from curiosity or from philanthropy, and as late even as 1495, that is to say nearly half a century after the beginning of printing, the organisation of the business of Aldus was dependent upon the favour and services of certain of his noble friends. In Paris the first printers were helped, and in part supported, by the money of patrons or of the Crown, and by the co-operation and influence of the University. In England also the influence of Oxford was of material importance in securing for the first printers some assured foundation and support, while the work of Caxton and his immediate successors in London was also largely furthered by, if not actually dependent upon, the work or help of noble and wealthy friends.

In Germany, however, the printing work began, as we have seen, through the enterprise and ingenuity of a citizen manufacturer who was supported by the middle class of the community, and who made his first connections directly with the townspeople. The help of the universities appears to have been of comparatively smaller importance. It probably counted for more in Cologne than in any other of the university cities in which the earlier printers did their work.

In the course of the thirty-six years of his independent business activity, that is from the death of Fust in 1466 to the time of his own death, Schöffer printed in all fifty-nine works which bear date and which have been identified as his. His firm took rank for this period as by far the most important printing and publishing concern in existence.

With hardly an exception, the books issued from his press were folios. They were printed with fifty to sixty lines on the page, and contained an average of about 300 pages or 150 sheets.

Among the works included in the list are the Constitutiones of Clement V., the Institutions of Justinian, the Expositio Sententiarum of Thomas Aquinas, the Epistolæ of S. Jerome, the sixth book of the Decretals of Boniface VIII., the Decretals of Gregory IX., the Codex of Justinian, and the Expositio Psalterii of Joh. Torquemada. The last named volume had already been printed in Subiaco and again in Rome under the direct supervision of the author, who was supplying the funds for carrying on the first printing-office established in Italy.

After Schöffer’s death in 1502, his son printed an edition of the Mercurius Trimegistus.

I do not find record of the arrangement entered into by Schöffer for the editing of the texts of the works printed by him. The collection of manuscripts for use as “copy” for printers, and the collection of different manuscripts in order to secure the most complete and accurate texts, must have called for a considerable measure of scholarly and of general literary knowledge.

It does not appear that Schöffer had enjoyed opportunities for making himself a scholarly authority, or that he ever made claim to any special scholarly attainments. There is no record of editorial work done by himself in the books issued from his press, as was the case to so exceptional a degree a few years later with the books printed by Aldus; nor has Schöffer preserved in connection with his editions the names of the editors who supervised their publication, as came to be the practice later with the issues of the Aldine press, of Froben in Basel, and of Koberger in Nuremberg. As far as I can ascertain, however, the Schöffer texts compared favourably for accuracy and for authority with other of the earlier printed books, and it is to be assumed, therefore, that he had been able to organise an adequate critical staff or to secure from time to time, as required, the services of competent scholars.

The business founded by Gutenberg, taken possession of under mortgage by Fust, and carried on first by Fust & Schöffer, and later by Schöffer and other associates, lasted nearly one hundred years. The first publication was, as noted, the big Psalterium, printed in 1457, and the last, an edition of the German version of the books of Livy, printed by Ivo Schöffer in 1557.

It seems evident that while the credit for the great invention fairly belongs to Gutenberg, and the original planning and initiative of the business were his, a large measure of business capacity must have belonged to his partner Fust, who had also, to be sure, the advantage of being a capitalist to begin with, a factor as important in the earliest time of publishing as in the present day.