This undertaking brought to a happy termination, Gutenberg, no doubt weary of the annoyances incident to business, transferred his printing-office to his workmen, Henry and Nicholas Bechtermuncze, Weigand Spyes, and Ulric Zell. Then, having retired near to Adolphus II., elector and archbishop of Mayence, where he occupied the post of gentleman of the ecclesiastical court of that prince, he contented himself with the modest stipend attached to that office, and died at a date not authentically determined, but which cannot be later than February 24, 1468. His friend, Adam Gelth, erected in the Church of the Récollets at Mayence, a monument to his memory, with an epitaph styling him formally “the inventor of the typographic art.”
Fust and Schœffer did not the less continue to print books with indefatigable ardour. In 1462 they completed a new edition of the Bible, much more perfect than that of 1456, and of which copies were probably sold, as were those of the first edition, as manuscripts, especially in countries where, as in France, printing did not already exist. It seems that the appearance in Paris of this Bible, (called the Mayence Bible), greatly excited the community of scribes and booksellers, who saw in the new method of producing books, without the aid of the pen, “the destruction of their trade.” They charged, it is said, the sellers of these books with magic; but it is more probable the latter were proceeded against, and condemned to fine and imprisonment, for having omitted to procure from the University authority for the sale of their Bible; such permission being then indispensable for the sale of every kind of book.
In the meantime the town of Mayence had been taken by assault and given up to pillage (October 27, 1462). This event, in consequence of which the printing-office of Fust and Schœffer remained shut up for two years, resulted in the dissemination over the whole of Europe of printers and the art of printing. Cologne, Hamburg, and Strasbourg appear to have been the first towns in which the emigrants established themselves.
When these printers left Mayence, and carried their art elsewhere, it had never produced any book of classic literature; but it had proved by important publications, such as the Bible and the “Catholicon,” that it could create entire libraries, and thus propagate, ad infinitum, the masterpieces of human genius. It was reserved for the printing-office of Fust and Schœffer to set the example in that direction, and of printing the first classical work. In 1465, Cicero’s treatise “De Officiis,” issued from the press of these two faithful associates, and marked, as we may say, the commencement of the printing of books for libraries, and with so great success that in the following year a new edition of the treatise was published, in quarto.
At this period, Fust himself came to Paris, where he established a dépôt of printed books, but left the management of the concern to one of his own fellow-countrymen. This person dying soon afterwards, the books found in his house, being the property of a foreigner, were sold by right of forfeiture, for the king’s benefit. But upon the petition of Peter Schœffer, backed up by the Elector of Mayence, the King, Louis XI., granted to the petitioners a sum of 2,425 golden dollars, “in consideration of the trouble and labour which the said petitioners had taken for the said art and trade of printing, and of the benefit and utility which resulted and may result from this art to the whole world, as well by increasing knowledge as in other ways.” This memorable decree of the King of France bears date April 21, 1475.
We must mention, however, that about the year 1462, Louis XI., inquisitive and uneasy at what he had heard of the invention of Gutenberg, sent to Mayence Nicholas Jenson, a clever engraver, attached to the mint at Tours, “to obtain secret information of the cutting of the points and type, by means of which the rarest manuscripts could be multiplied, and to carry off surreptitiously the invention and introduce it into France.” Nicholas Jenson, after having succeeded in his mission, did not return to France (it was never known why), but went to Venice and established himself there as a printer. It would seem, however, that Louis XI., not discouraged at the ill success of his attempt, despatched, it is said, another envoy, less enterprising but more conscientious than the first, to discover the secrets of printing. In 1469, three German printers, Ulric Gering, Martin Crantz, and Michael Friburger, began to print in Paris, in a room of the Sorbonne, of which their fellow-countryman, John Heylin, named De la Pierre, was then the prior; in the following year they dedicated to the king, “their protector,” one of their editions, revised by the learned William Fichet; and in the space of four years they published about fifteen works, quartos and folios, the majority being printed for the first time. Then, when they were forced to leave the Sorbonne, because John de la Pierre, who had returned to Germany, had no longer authority over the institution, they set up in the Rue Saint-Jacques a new printing establishment, whose sign-board was the “Soleil d’Or,” from which, during the next five years, were issued twelve other important works.
The Sorbonne then, like the University, was the cradle and the foster-mother in Paris of the art of printing, which soon attained to a nourishing condition, and produced, during the last twenty years of the fourteenth[61] century, numerous fine books of history, poetry, literature, and devotion, under the direction of the able and learned Pierre Caron, Pasquier Bonhomme, Anthony Vérard, Simon Vostre (Fig. 398), &c.
After the capture of Mayence, two workmen, who had been dismissed from the establishment of Fust and Schœffer, Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz, carried beyond the Alps the secret that had been confided to them under the guarantee of an oath. They remained for a time in the Convent of Subiaco, near Rome, in which were some German monks, and there they organised a printing apparatus, and printed many fine editions of Lactantius, Cicero, St. Augustine, &c. They were soon invited to Rome, and met with an asylum in the house of the illustrious family of Massimi; but they found an opponent in the city in one of their own workmen from the convent, who had come to Rome and engaged himself as printer to the cardinal John of Torquemada. Henceforward sprang up between the two printing establishments a rivalry which showed itself in unparalleled zeal and activity on both sides. In ten years the greater number of the writings of the ancient Latin authors, which had been preserved in manuscripts more or less rare, passed through the press. In 1476 there were in Rome more than twenty printers, who employed about a hundred presses, and whose great object was to surpass each other in the rapidity with which they produced their publications; so that the day soon arrived when the most precious manuscripts retained any value only because they contained what had not been already made public by printing. Those of which printed editions already existed were so universally disregarded, that we must refer to this period the destruction of a large number. They were used, when written on parchment, for binding the new books; and to this circumstance may be attributed the loss of certain celebrated works which printing in nowise tended to preserve from the knife of the binder.
While printing was displaying such prodigious activity in Rome, it was
