I have a fine copy of Augustinus: De Civitate Dei (page [205]) that I discovered in Rome in its original binding years ago, printed in Jenson’s Gothic type in 1475. On the first page of text, in bold letters across the top, the printer has placed the words, Nicolaus Jenson, Gallicus. In addition to this signature, the explicit reads:
This work De Civitate Dei is happily completed, being done in Venice by that excellent and diligent master, Nicolas Jenson, while Pietro Mocenigo was Doge, in the year after the birth of the Lord, one thousand four hundred and seventy-five, on the sixth day before the nones of October (2 October)
Nicolas Jenson’s Explicit and Mark
Jenson’s Gothic Type. From Augustinus: De Civitate Dei, Venice, 1475 (Exact size)
Jenson was a printer who not only took pride in his art but also in the country of his birth! He was a Frenchman, who was sent to Mayence by King Charles VII of France to find out what sort of thing this new art of printing was, and if of value to France to learn it and to bring it home. Jenson had been an expert engraver, so was well adapted to this assignment. At Mayence he quickly mastered the art, and was prepared to transport it to Paris; but by this time Charles VII had died, and Jenson knew that Louis XI, the new monarch, would have little interest in recognizing his father’s mandate. The Frenchman then set himself up in Venice, where he contributed largely to the prestige gained by this city as a center for printing as an art, and for scholarly publications.
Jenson had no monopoly on extolling himself in the explicits of his books. The cost of paper in those days was so high that a title page was considered an unnecessary extravagance, so this was the printer’s only opportunity to record his imprint. In modern times we printers are more modest, and leave it to the publishers to sound our praises, but we do like to place our signatures on well-made books!
The explicit in the hand-written book also offered a favorite opportunity for gaining immortality for the scribe. I once saw in an Italian monastery a manuscript volume containing some 600 pages, in which was recorded the fact that on such and such a day Brother So-and-So had completed the transcribing of the text; and inasmuch as he had been promised absolution, one sin for each letter, he thanked God that the sum total of the letters exceeded the sum total of his sins, even though by but a single unit!
Among Jenson’s most important contributions were his type designs, based upon the best hand lettering of the day. Other designers had slavishly copied the hand-written letter, but Jenson, wise in his acquired knowledge, eliminated the variations and produced letters not as they appeared upon the hand-written page, but standardized to the design which the artist-scribe had in mind and which his hand failed accurately to reproduce. The Jenson Roman (page [22]) and his Gothic (page [205]) types have, through all these centuries, stood as the basic patterns of subsequent type designers.