Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

One of the most definite pieces of testimony in regard to the connection of Gutenberg with the invention of printing, testimony which possesses special value as coming from a person possessing first-hand knowledge of the facts, is contained in an Epilogue written in verse by John Schöffer (son of Peter), and printed at the end of the Livy published by him in 1505. It is addressed to the Emperor Maximilian, and reads as follows:

“May your Majesty deign to accept this book which was printed at Mayence, the town in which the admirable art of typography was invented, in the year 1450, by John Gutenberg, and afterwards brought to perfection at the expense, and by the labour, of John Fust and Peter Schöffer.”

It would not belong to the plan of this historical sketch to give in detail a record of the successive concerns which carried on throughout Germany, with increasing rapidity and with undertakings of ever widening importance, the business of printing and publishing. I propose merely to present the records of a few of the earlier concerns, and to make such reference to typical firms of later generations as may give an impression of the gradual development of the book-trade, and as may serve also as examples from which to judge of the development of the idea of the literary property in Germany, and the varying positions taken under the enactments and other governmental measures in regard to such property.

The books printed during the first half-century were, as we shall note, almost exclusively reissues of ecclesiastical or pagan classics, and apart from such original work as may have been put into introductions or notes, did not call for the labour of contemporary authors. Among the earlier of original German publications is to be classed a German grammar entitled Die Leyenschul, printed by Peter Jordan in Mayence in 1531. This grammar, which remained for a considerable time an authority on its subject, does not bear the name of the author or editor.

Another of the earlier original works for the sale of which the author may have secured some compensation was the Astronomie of Joh. Stöffler, which was printed in Ottenheim in 1513.

One of the more important of the earlier publishing concerns of Mayence was that of Franz Behem, who printed in the ten years succeeding 1539 an important series of theological works. With the close of Behem’s business in 1552, Mayence appears to have lost its relative importance in connection with the work of printing and publishing.

In Strasburg, which had contested with Mayence the prestige of being the actual birthplace of the printing-press, important publishing undertakings were carried on from a very early date, and for a number of years the city of Basel alone could compete with Strasburg in the number and importance of the books issued from its presses. The two publishing concerns whose individual enterprises and whose rivalry with each other did so much to bring Strasburg into importance as a factor in the German book-trade, were those of Johann Mentel and of Heinrich Eggestein. Mentel’s first publications were a Latin Bible in two folio volumes, which was the first Bible printed in the smaller Gothic type; an edition of De Doctrina Christiana of S. Augustine; an edition of the Summa of Thomas Aquinas; an edition of the Bible in German, which appeared in 1466; the Speculum Historiale of Vincentius Bellovacensis, etc. Madden finds record of twenty-one publications which can certainly be identified as Mentel’s, and which comprise in all forty-one volumes, of which thirty-seven are in large folio. During the time of his business activity, (1465-1478) he appears to have published about two volumes a year.[438]

Humphreys points out that Mentel was in advance of the other German printers of the day in first using, in place of the confused old Gothic black letter, the clear Roman letter which was in use in Italy. Mentel’s most important publication, the collection of the Specula of S. Vincent of Beauvais, issued in 1473, in eight volumes folio, was printed in type of the Roman letter.[439] M. Bernard, in his Origines de l’Imprimerie, is of opinion that it was in printing these theological works which were in accord with the taste of the reading public of his day, that Mentel realised a fortune, while many of his competitors ruined themselves in reproducing the Latin classics, the taste for which before the close of the fifteenth century was not sufficiently developed to ensure a remunerative sale. He was also the first of the German printers to print descriptive catalogues of his books. At the head of the catalogue was a notice to the following effect: “Those who wish to possess any of these books have only to address themselves to the sign of——.” Here a blank was left, in order that each retail bookseller to whom the catalogue was sent might fill in his own name and sign. Such a detail (which is, I may mention, quite in accord with modern publishing methods) indicates that there was as early as 1470, a well developed bookselling machinery in western and central Germany.

Mentel’s principal rival in Strasburg was Heinrich Eggestein. Eggestein appears to have been a man of scholarly training, and had received from some university the degree “Magister.” To him belongs the credit of the issue, in 1466, of the first Bible printed in German. Important as was this work, the printer was not interested in associating with it his imprint, and the volumes are identified as the work of his press only by circumstantial evidence.[440] The first work which was edited and which bears his imprint was an edition of the Decretum Gratiani, printed in a gigantic folio in 1471. Before this date, he had issued three Bibles in Latin text. The Decretum was again printed by Eggestein in 1472, although the original issue of 1471 had been promptly pirated by the enterprising Schöffer. It is evident that it proved possible to secure for the book an immediate and presumably remunerative sale.

Another of Eggestein’s publications in 1472 was an edition of Clementinæ. In this he gives his imprint and gives notice also that he has already issued a long series of books treating of “divine and human law.” The last book bearing a date, issued by Eggestein is the Decretals of Innocent IV., printed in 1478.