The Story of Books

by Gertrude Burford Rawlings

The wood-block, however, was merely a stepping-stone to the greatest of all events in the history of printing, the invention of moveable types; that is, of letters formed separately, which, after being grouped into words, and sentences, and paragraphs, could be redistributed and used again for all sorts of books. Here once more our Chinese friends were ahead of the rest of the world, for, more than four centuries before German printers existed, Picheng, a Chinese smith, had shown his countrymen how to print from moveable types made of burnt clay. But the process which was to prove of such untold value to those who employed the simple Roman alphabet was almost useless to the Chinese, since the immense number of their characters rendered the older method the less tedious and cumbersome of the two. In China and Japan, therefore, the use of moveable types was of short duration. In Europe, however, when the art of printing from moveable types once became known, the case was very different.

Once upon a time, as a magnate of the city of Haarlem was walking in a wood near the city, he idly cut some letters on the bark of a beech tree. It then suddenly occurred to him that these letters might be impressed upon paper; whereupon he made some impressions of them for the amusement of his grandchildren. This, we have learned from our youth up, is how the art of printing came to be discovered. But unfortunately, this legend is not to be relied upon. As a matter of fact, the first inventor of printing is unknown, and even as regards moveable types it is impossible to say with absolute certainty when or by whom the idea was first conceived. Daunon, in his Analyse des Opinions diverses sur l'origine de l'Imprimerie, tells us that no less than fifteen towns claim to be the birthplace of printing, and that a still larger number of persons have been put forward as its inventors, from Saturn, Job, and Charlemagne downwards. The arguments for or against the pretensions of Saturn, Job, and Charlemagne, and, indeed, of the majority of the personages whose names have been mentioned in this connection, do not call for notice. For although the first printer is not known, many believe that they can point him out with tolerable certainty, and in the fierce battle which has raged round the question of the identity of the inventor of moveable types, two names alone have been used as the respective war-cries of the opposing armies. One is Johann Gutenberg of Mentz, and the other, Laurenz Coster of Haarlem.

Although the balance of opinion is now, and always has been, in favour of Gutenberg, the battle has been long and furious. The diligence of the disputants in collecting data in support of their theories has been equalled only by the vigour and ferocity with which some of their number have maintained their opinions. Each side has charged the other with forging evidence, and ink and abuse have been freely poured out in the cause of typographical truth. Yet though sought for during several centuries, no conclusive proof has been discovered by either side; typographical truth remains in her well, and the identity of the inventor of moveable types seems almost as hard to determine as that of the man in the iron mask or the writer of the letters of Junius. The partisans of Coster have been as eminent and as able as those of Gutenberg, and thus the unlearned enquirer finds it difficult to declare for one rather than the other, without investigating for himself all the ins and outs of this involved subject. Even then, without some previous bias in one or the other direction, he would probably find himself halting between two opinions. Such an investigation is obviously out of the question here, and even were it practicable it could hardly be lipped that where so many doctors disagree our modest effort would produce any valuable result. We shall therefore do no more than briefly set forth some of the chief arguments on either side as fairly as may be, but without attempting an exhaustive examination of the evidence, first, however, declaring ourselves as followers of the majority and partisans of Gutenberg, by way of sheet anchor.

Those who advocate the claims of Holland against Germany largely base their belief on the existence of various printed books and fragments of Dutch origin, undated, and affording no clue to the time and place at which they were printed, or to their printer, whether Coster or another. It is much more likely, they say, that these were the first rude attempts at typography, and that they gave the idea to the Mentz printers, who forthwith improved upon it, than that the Mentz printers should have given the idea to the Dutch, who, so far from improving upon it, produced these clumsy imitations of fine German work. And Mr Hessels, who made a complete examination of the evidence in favour of Gutenberg, was unable to say either that Gutenberg invented type-printing, or that he did not invent it. On the other hand, “it is certainly possible,” say the writers of the Guide to the British Museum, “that actual printing may have been previously executed in Holland; although, to our minds, the improbability of the printers who are asserted to have produced Donatus and the Speculum from moveable types ten years before Gutenberg having produced nothing but the like kind of work for nearly twenty years after him outweighs all the arguments which have been advanced in support of their claim. It is at all events certain that, without some very direct and positive evidence on the other side, mankind will continue to regard Gutenberg as the parent of the art, and Mainz as its birthplace.”

Within recent years a claim for the honour of the invention has been put forward on behalf of quite another part of the world. Some early fifteenth century documents discovered at Avignon make unmistakable references to printing, and not to xylography, and from them we learn that Procopius Waldfoghel, a silver-smith of Prague, was engaged in printing at Avignon in 1444, and had undertaken to cut a set of Hebrew types for a Jew whom he had previously instructed in the art of printing. No specimens of his work are known, and it is therefore impossible to say exactly to what process these records refer, but it has been conjectured that it may have been some method of stamping letters from cut type, and not from cast type by means of a press.

Since Coster is the hero of the well-known story quoted above, and since as regards our present purpose there is less to be said of him than of Gutenberg, we will briefly recapitulate what is known about him, and the foundations on which his fame as a typographer rests, before dealing more at length with Gutenberg and the Mentz press.

It does not seem easy to account for the existence of what the partisans of Gutenberg contemptuously term the Coster legend. It has been conjectured, somewhat plausibly, that Haarlem's jealousy of the superiority and fame of Mentz and its printers began very early, and arose from the narrow vanity of those Haarlemers who imagined that the first printing press in Haarlem must necessarily be the first printing press in the world. However this may be, the legend arose, and waxed strong, and many believed in it.

Laurenz Janssoen, or Coster, was born in Haarlem about 1370. He is said to have held various high offices, such as sheriff, treasurer, officer of the city guard, and especially that of Coster to the great church of Haarlem. Coster means sacristan or sexton, but the position was one of far greater honour than is now associated with it. But another account, which is supported by all the available records, represents him as a tallow-chandler, and subsequently as an innkeeper, and if he had anything at all to do with the great church, it was only that he supplied it with candles. But whether chandler or coster, nothing is heard of him as a printer until 1568, more than a hundred years after his alleged success in printing from types—in itself a strange fact, since if Coster were the inventor, why were the Mentz printers allowed to appropriate all the credit to themselves, unchallenged by Coster's kinsfolk or countrymen, and supported by the opinions of sixty-two writers, including Caxton, the chronicler Fabian, Trithemius, and the compilers of the Cologne and Nuremberg chronicles? It is true that “few sometimes may know when thousands err,” but silence is no proof of truth, and if Coster's representatives possessed the truth, how came they to withhold it from a deluded world?

Although Coster is not named till 1568, the claims of Haarlem to be the birthplace of printing had been put forward (for the first time) some years earlier by Jan Van Zuyren in a work on the Invention of Typography, of which only a fragment remains. The claims of Haarlem, he says, “are at this day fresh in the remembrance of our fathers, to whom, so to express myself, they have been transmitted from hand to hand from their ancestors.” Thus, though probably writing in all good faith, Van Zuyren bases his statements on nothing better than tradition. “The city of Mentz,” he goes on to say, “without doubt merits great praise for having been the first to publish to the world, in a becoming garb, an invention which she received from us, for having perfected and embellished an art as yet rude and imperfect.… It is certain that the foundations of this splendid art were laid in our city of Haarlem, rudely, indeed, but still the first.”

Coornhert, an engraver, and a partner of Van Zuyren, repeats the same statements, and on the same basis, in the preface to a translation of Cicero which he published in 1561, but is acute enough to see that the case for Haarlem is nearly hopeless. “I am aware,” he says, “that in consequence of the blameable neglect of our ancestors, the common opinion that this art was invented at Mentz is now firmly established, that it is in vain to hope to change it, even by the best evidence and the most irrefragable proof.” He proceeds to declare his conviction of the justice of Haarlem's claim, because of “the faithful testimonies of men alike respectable from their age and authority, who not only have often told me of the family of the inventor, and of his name and surname, but have even described to me the rude manner of printing first used, and pointed out to me with their fingers the abode of the first printer. And therefore, not because I am jealous of the glory of others, but because I love truth, and desire to pay all tribute to the honour of our city which is justly her due, I have thought it incumbent upon me to mention these things.” Yet it is strange that he did not think it incumbent upon him to mention the name and surname of the inventor, since he had been told them so often.