The first book of importance that was printed at a press
and from movable type was the celebrated Bible[[2]] which Gutenberg produced at Mentz about the year 1455. About the same time it is asserted that Laurent Janszoon Coster of Haarlem issued the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, and much discussion has risen as to which book has the prior claim. The Dutch insist on Coster as being the proto-printer; the Germans not only assert the claim of Gutenberg but say that Coster is a myth! The controversy is still carried on and there is little likelihood that it will ever be decided.
In the year 1462 there was a small revolution in Mentz, owing to the rival claims of two Archbishops, and the city was sacked. The printers in the employment of Gutenberg and his partners, Fust and Peter Schoeffer, were scattered in every direction. Fifteen years afterwards printing-presses were to be found in every large city of Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in Italy and France; and about 1477, Caxton set up his first press in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.
Speculum Humanae Salvationis—'The Mirror of Man's Salvation.'—This was the first book, printed from type, that had wood engravings. It is a small folio containing fifty-eight cuts, each of which is divided into two subjects, inclosed in an architectural frame, in which is the title in Latin. The cuts are placed at the head of the pages, of which they occupy one-third. It is to be noticed that, though the cuts are all printed in brown ink, the text beneath them is printed in black: probably because the prints were to be coloured.
The arrangement and scope of this work are much like those of the 'Biblia Pauperum'; the subjects are taken from the Old and New Testaments, including the Apocrypha, and a few are from classic history.
The illustrations are from the first page: Casus
Luciferi—'The Fall of Lucifer'—and Deus creavit hominem ad ymaginem et similitudinem suam—'God created Man after His own image and likeness.'
