Gutenberg returned to Mentz in 1456, and made a fresh start, aided financially by Dr Conrad Homery. Here again we are confronted with a want of direct evidence, and can point to no books as certainly being the work of Gutenberg. But there are good reasons for believing that under this new arrangement he printed the Catholicon, or Latin grammar and dictionary, of John of Genoa; the Tractatus racionis et conscientiæ of Matthæus de Cracovia; Summa de articulis fidei of Aquinas; and an Indulgence of 1461. There is a colophon to the Catholicon which may possibly have been written by Gutenberg, which runs as follows:—
“By the assistance of the Most High, at Whose will the tongues of children become eloquent, and Who often reveals to babes what He hides from the wise, this renowned book, the Catholicon, was printed and perfected in the year of the Incarnation 1460, in the beloved city of Mentz (which belongs to the illustrious German nation, whom God has consented to prefer and to raise with such an exalted light of the mind and free grace, above the other nations of the earth), not by means of reed, stile, or pen, but by the admirable proportion, harmony, and connection of the punches and types.” A metrical doxology follows.
A few other and smaller works have also been believed to have been executed by Gutenberg at this time, but with no certainty.
In 1465 Gutenberg was made one of the gentlemen of the court to Adolph II., Count of Nassau and Archbishop of Mentz, and presumably abandoned his printing on acceding to this dignity. In 1467 or 1468 Gutenberg died, and thus ends the meagre list of facts which we have concerning the life and career of the first printer.
To nearly every question which we might wish to ask about Gutenberg and his work, one of two answers has to be given—“It is not known,” or “Perhaps.” He does not speak for himself, and none of his personal acquaintance, or his family, if he had any, speak for him. We have no reason to believe that his work brought him any particular honour, and certainly it brought him no wealth. It has been suggested, however, that the post offered to him by the Archbishop was in recognition of his invention, since there is no other reason apparent why the dignity was conferred. But we may well conclude this account of Gutenberg with De Vinne's words, that “there is no other instance in modern history, excepting, possibly, Shakespeare, of a man who did so much and said so little about it.”
Fust, the former partner of Gutenberg, died in 1466, leaving a son to succeed him in the partnership with Schoeffer, and Schoeffer died about 1502. Of his three sons (all printers), the eldest, Johann, continued to work at Mentz until about 1533.
The most notable books issued by Fust and Schoeffer were the Psalter of 1457, and the Latin Bible of 1462. The Bible of 1462 is the first Bible with a date. The Psalter of 1457 is famous as being the first printed Psalter, the first printed book with a date, the first example of printing in colours, the first book with a printed colophon, and the first printed work containing musical notes, though these last are not printed but inserted by hand.[2] The colour printing is shown by the red and blue initials, but by what process they were executed has been the subject of much discussion. They are generally supposed to have been added after the rest of the page had been printed, by means of a stamp. The colophon is written in the curious Latin affected by the early printers, and Mr Pollard offers the following as a rough rendering:—
“The present book of Psalms, adorned with beauty of capitals, and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing and stamping, and to the worship of God diligently brought to completion by Johann Fust, a citizen of Mentz, and Peter Schoffer of Gernsheim, in the year of our Lord, 1457, on the Vigil of the Feast of the Assumption.”
These two printers also produced, in 1465, an edition of the De Officiis of Cicero, which shares with the Lactantius, printed in the same year at Subiaco, near Rome, by Sweynheim and Pannartz, the honour of exhibiting to the world the first Greek types, and with the same printers' Cicero De Oratore, that of being the first printed Latin classic, unless an undated De Officiis, printed at Cologne by Ulrich Zel about this time, is the real “first.”