Transcriber’s Notes.

The spellings of Schœffer and Schoeffer have been left as printed.

Footnotes were moved to the ends of the text they pertain to and numbered in one continuous sequence.

Differences in hyphenation of specific words and missing punctuation have been rectified where applicable.

Other changes made are noted at the [end of the book.]

FROM SCHOEFFER’S CANON OF THE MASS

Early Printed Books

By

E. Gordon Duff

London

Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.

MDCCCXCIII

TO

THE MEMORY OF

HENRY BRADSHAW

ἀποθανὼν ἔτι λαλεῖ

Preface

In the following pages I have endeavoured to give a short account of the introduction of printing into the principal countries and towns of Europe, and to bring our information on the subject as far as possible up to date.

Small books on large subjects are for the most part both superficial and imperfect, and I am afraid the present book forms no exception to this rule, but my excuse must be that I have attempted rather to draw attention to more out of the way information than to recapitulate what is already to be found in the majority of bibliographical books.

Above all, I have tried as far as possible to confine myself to facts and avoid theories, for only by working from facts can we help to keep bibliography in the position, to which Henry Bradshaw raised it, of a scientific study.

And, in the words of a learned Warden of my own college, ‘if any shall suggest, that some of the inquiries here insisted upon do seem too minute and trivial for any prudent Man to bestow his serious thoughts and time about, such persons may know, that the discovery of the true nature and cause of any the most minute thing, doth promote real knowledge, and therefore cannot be unfit for any Man’s endeavours who is willing to contribute to the advancement of Learning.’

I must express my best thanks to two friends, Mr. F. J. H. Jenkinson, University Librarian, Cambridge; and Mr. J. P. Edmond, Librarian to the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, for very kindly reading through the proofs of the entire book and making many useful suggestions and corrections.

E. G. D.

March 1893.

CONTENTS

Illustrations

[EARLY PRINTED BOOKS.]

CHAPTER I.

STEPS TOWARDS THE INVENTION.

When we speak of the invention of printing, we mean the invention of the art of multiplying books by means of single types capable of being used again and again in different combinations for the printing of different books. Taking the word printing in its widest sense, it means merely the impression of any image; and the art of impressing or stamping words or pictures seems to have been known from the very earliest times. The handles of Greek amphoræ, the bases of Roman lamps and vases, were often impressed with the maker’s name, or other legend, by means of a stamp. This was the basis of the art, and Cicero (De Nat. Deorum, ii. 37) had suggested the combination of single letters into sentences. Quintilian refers to stencil plates as a guide to writing; and stamps with letters cut in relief were in common use amongst the Romans. The need for the invention, however, was not great, and it was never made. The first practical printing, both from blocks and movable type, was done in China. As early as a.d. 593 the more important texts were printed from engraved wooden plates by the order of the Emperor Wên-ti, and in the eleventh century printing from movable type was introduced by a certain smith named Picheng. The multiplicity of Chinese characters rendered the discovery of movable type of little economical value, and the older system of block printing has found favour even up to the present time. In the same way, Corea and Japan, though both had experimented with movable type, returned to their former custom of block printing.

It is impossible now to determine whether rumours of the art could have reached Europe from China and have acted as incentives to its practice. Writers on early printing scout the idea; and there is little to oppose to their verdict, with our present uncertain knowledge. Modern discoveries, however, point to the relations of China with foreign countries in the fourteenth century having been much more important than is generally supposed.

The earliest productions in the nature of prints from wooden blocks upon paper which we find in Europe, are single sheets bearing generally the image of a saint. From their perishable nature but few of these prints have come down to our times; and though we have evidence that they were being produced, at any rate as early as the fourteenth, perhaps even as the thirteenth century, the earliest print with a definite and unquestioned date still in existence is the ‘St. Christopher’ of 1423. This print was discovered in 1769 by Heinecken, pasted inside the binding of a manuscript in the library of the Convent of the Chartreuse at Buxheim in Swabia. The manuscript, which is now in the Spencer Library,[1] is entitled Laus Virginum, is dated 1417, and is said to have been given to the Monastery of Buxheim by a certain Anna, Canoness of Buchau, ‘who is known to have been living in 1427.’ On the inside of the other board of the binding is pasted a cut of the Annunciation, said to be of the same age and workmanship as the St. Christopher. It is worth noticing that there seem to have been some wood engravers in this Swabian monastery, who engraved the book-plate for the books given by ‘Dominus Hildibrandus Brandenburg de Bibraco’ towards the end of the fifteenth century; and these book-plates are printed on the reverse sides of pieces of an earlier block-book, very probably engraved and printed in the monastery for presentation to travellers or pilgrims.

[1]The Spencer Library has now passed into the possession of Mrs. Rylands, of Manchester; but as many of the early printed books in it are described in Dibdin’s Bibliothecá Spencerianá, and as it is so widely known under the name of the Spencer Library, it has been thought best, in order to avoid confusion, to refer to it under its old name throughout the present book.

The date on the celebrated Brussels print of 1418 has unfortunately been tampered with, so that its authenticity is questioned. The print was found by an innkeeper in 1848, fixed inside an old chest, and it was soon acquired by the Royal Library at Brussels. Since the date has been touched up with a pencil, and at the same time some authorities consider 1468 to be the right reading, it is best to consider the St. Christopher as the earliest dated woodcut. Though these two are the earliest dated prints known, it is, of course, most probable that some others which are undated may be earlier; but to fix even an approximate date to them is in most cases impossible. The conventional way in which religious subjects were treated, and the extraordinary care with which one cutter copied from another, makes it difficult even for a specialist to arrive at any very definite conclusions.

In England, wood engraving does not seem to have been much practised before the introduction of printing, but there are one or two cuts that may be assigned to an earlier period. Mr. Ottley, in his Inquiry concerning the Invention of Printing, drew attention to a curious Image of Pity which he had found sewn on the blank leaf at the beginning of a manuscript service-book. This cut, of which he gives a facsimile in his book, is now in the British Museum. Another cut, very similar in design and execution, and probably of about the same date, was found a few years ago in the Bodleian, also inserted at the beginning of a manuscript service-book. In the upper part of the cut is a half-length figure of our Lord, with the hands crossed, standing in front of the cross. On a label at the top of the cross is an inscription, the first part of which is clearly O BACIΛEVC, but the second part is not clear. In the British Museum cut it has been read ‘hora 3ª;’ and though this interpretation is ingenious, and might be made to fit with the Museum copy (which has unfortunately been touched up), the clearer lettering of the Bodleian copy, which has evidently the same inscription, shows that this reading can hardly be accepted.

Below the figure we have the text of the indulgence—

‘Seynt gregor’ with othir’ popes & bysshoppes yn feer

Have graunted’ of pardon xxvi dayes & xxvi Mill’ yeer’

To theym that befor’ this fygur’ on their’ knees

Deuoutly say v pater noster & v Auees.’

Ottley was of opinion that his cut might be of as early a date as the St. Christopher; but that is, of course, a point impossible to determine. From the writing of the indulgence, Bradshaw considered it to belong to the northern part of England; and the subject is differently treated from other specimens of the Image of Pity issued subsequently to the introduction of printing, for in them the various symbols of the Passion are arranged as a border round the central figure. Inserted at the end of a Sarum Book of Hours in the British Museum is a drawing of an Image of Pity, with some prayers below, which resembles in many ways the earlier cuts.

The woodcut alphabet, described by Ottley, now in the British Museum, has been considered to be of English production, because on one of the prints is written in very early writing the two words ‘London’ and ‘Bechamsted.’ There seems very little reason beyond this for ascribing these letters to an English workman, though it is worth noticing that they were originally bound up in a small volume, each letter being pasted on a guard formed of fragments of English manuscript of the fifteenth century.

In the Weigel Collection was a specimen of English block-printing which is now in the British Museum; it is part of some verses on the Seven Virtues, but it is hard to ascribe any date to it. Another early cut is mentioned by Bradshaw as existing in Ely Cathedral. It is a cut of a lion, and is fixed against one of the pillars in the choir, close to the tomb of Bishop Gray, whose device it represents. This bishop died in 1479, so that an approximate date may be given to the cut. It is very probable that these last two specimens of block-printing are later than the introduction of printing into England, and the only ones that should be dated earlier are the British Museum and Bodleian Images of Pity.

A good many single woodcuts were executed in England before the close of the fifteenth century. They were mostly Images of Pity, such as have been mentioned, or ‘rosaries’ containing religious emblems, with the initials I. H. S. A curious cut in the Bodleian represents the Judgment, and below this a body in a shroud. Above the cut is printed, ‘Surgite mortui Venite ad Judicium,’ and below on either side of a shield the words, ‘Arma Beate Birgitte De Syon.’

A curious devotional cut is inserted in the Faques Psalter of 1504 in the British Museum, containing the emblems of the Passion and a large I. H. S. At the base of the cut are the initials d. h. b., perhaps referring to the place where the cut was issued. Most of these cuts were doubtless produced in monasteries or religious houses to give or sell to visitors, who very often inserted them in their own private books of devotion, and in this manner many have been preserved. The Lambeth copy of the Wynkyn de Worde Sarum Horæ of 1494 shows signs of having contained eighteen of such pictures, though only three are now left.

After the single leaf prints we come to the block-books, which we may look upon in some ways as the precursors of printed books.

‘A block-book is a book printed wholly from carved blocks of wood. Such volumes usually consist of pictorial matter only; if any text is added in illustration, it likewise is carved upon the wood-block, and not put together with movable types. The whole of any one page, sometimes the whole of two pages, is printed from a single block of wood. The manner in which the printing was done is peculiar. The block was first thoroughly wetted with a thin watery ink, then a sheet of damp paper was laid upon it, and the back of the paper was carefully rubbed with some kind of dabber or burnisher, till an impression from the ridges of the carved block had been transferred to the paper. Of course in this fashion a sheet could only be printed on one side; the only block-book which does not possess this characteristic is the Legend of St. Servatius in the Royal Library of Brussels, and that is an exceptional volume in many respects besides.’[2] These block-books must be considered as forming a distinct group of themselves, radically different from other books, though undoubtedly they gave the idea to the inventor of movable type. They continued to be made during the whole of the fifteenth century, almost always on the same plan, and each one as archaic looking as another. The invention of movable type did not do away with the demand, and the supply was kept up.

[2]Conway’s Woodcutters of the Netherlands. Cambridge, 1884. 8vo.

Unfortunately we have no data for determining the exact period at which these books were made; and it is curious to note that all the editions which are dated have a late date, the majority being between 1470 and 1480, and none being earlier than the first date, with the exception of the Brussels block-book, which is dated 1440.

The number of different block-books in existence is hard to estimate, but it must approach somewhere near one hundred. Many of these are of little importance, many others of too late a date to be of much interest.

The best known of the earlier block-books are the Ars Moriendi, the Biblia Pauperum, the Apocalypse, and the Canticum Canticorum. Of these, the first and third are probably German, the second and fourth Dutch. Of all these books there are a number of editions, not easily distinguishable apart, and which it is difficult to place in chronological order. These editions are hardly editions in the modern sense of the term. They were not produced by a printer who used one set of blocks till they were worn out, and then cut another. The woodcutter was the only tradesman, and he sold, not the books, but the blocks. He cut set after set of blocks to print the few books then in demand, and these were sold to private purchasers. We find wealthy people or heads of religious establishments in possession of such sets. In the inventory of Jean de Hinsberg, Bishop of Liège, 1419-1455, are noticed—

‘Unum instrumentum ad imprimendas scripturas et ymagines

‘Novem printe lignee ad imprimendas ymagines cum quatuordecim aliis lapideis printis.’

Thus, these editions do not necessarily follow one another; some may have been produced side by side by different cutters, others within the interval of a few months, but by the same man. Their date is another difficult point. The copies of the Biblia Pauperum, Apocalypse, and Ars Moriendi, which belonged to Mr. Horn, were in their original binding, and it was stamped with a date. The books were separated and the binding destroyed. Mr. Horn asserted from memory that the first three figures of the date were certainly 142, and the last probably an 8. Mr. Conway very justly points out that the resemblance of a 5 of that date to our 2 was very strong, and that Mr. Horn’s memory may have deceived him.

It will be noticed in examining block-books generally, that the letterpress in the majority of the later examples is cut in imitation of handwriting, and not of the square church hand from which printing types and the letterpress of the earlier block-books were copied. The reason of this probably is, that it was found useless to try to compete with the books printed from movable type in regularity and neatness. To do so would have involved a much greater expenditure of trouble by the woodcutter and designer. The illustrations were the important part of the book, and the letterpress was put in with as little trouble as possible.

The sheets on which the early block-books were printed were not quired, i.e. placed one inside the other to form a quire or gathering, as was done in ordinary printed books, but followed each other singly. In many of the books we find signatures, each sheet being signed with a letter of the alphabet as a guide to the binder in arranging them.

Among the dated block-books may be mentioned an edition of the Endkrist, dated 1472, produced at Nuremberg; an edition of the Ars Moriendi cut by Hans Sporer in 1473; and another of about the same period cut by Ludwig zu Ulm. Of the Biblia Pauperum there are three dated editions known, one of 1470 and two of 1471. A copy of the De generatione Christi has the following full colophon:—

‘Johannes Eysenhut impressor, anno ab incarnationis dominice Mº quadringentesimo septuagesimo Iº.’ Hans Sporer of Nuremberg produced an edition of the Biblia Pauperum in 1475, and Chatto speaks of another of the same year without a name, but containing as a mark a shield with a spur upon it, which he supposes to stand for the name Sporer. Many of these later books were not printed in distemper on one side of the paper only, but on both sides and in printer’s ink, showing that the use of the printing press was known to those who produced them.

PAGE 3 OF THE ‘MIRABILIA ROMÆ’

Among the late block-books should be noticed the Mirabilia Romæ [Hain 11,208]; for why it should have been printed as a block-book is a mystery. It consists of 184 pages of text, with only two illustrations, printed on both sides of the page, and evidently of late date. The letterpress is not cut in imitation of type, but of ordinary handwriting, and the book may have been made to sell to those who were not accustomed to the type of printed books. The arms of the Pope which occur in the book are those of Sixtus IV., who occupied the papal chair from 1471 to 1484, so that the book may be considered to have been produced within those two dates, probably nearer the latter. The accompanying facsimile is taken from the first page of text.

The best known of the block-books, and the one which has the most important place in the history of printing, is the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis. While it is called a block-book, it has many differences from those we have previously spoken of, and occupies a position midway between them and the ordinary printed book.

The earliest block-books were printed page by page, and the sheets were bound up one after the other; but the Speculum is arranged in quires, though still only printed on one side of the page. In it, too, the text is, as a rule, printed from movable type, except in the case of one edition, where some pages are entirely xylographic. There are four editions known, printed, according to the best authorities, in the following order:—

1. Latin, printed with one fount. [Hessels, 2.]

2. Dutch, printed with two founts. [Hessels, 3.]

3. Latin, with twenty leaves printed xylographically. [Hessels, 1.]

4. Dutch, with one fount. [Hessels, 4.]

In all these four books the same cuts are used, and the type with which they were printed was used in other books.

Edition 1 contains sixty-four leaves, made up by one gathering of six leaves, three of fourteen, and one of sixteen; the text is throughout printed from movable type. In two copies, those in the Meerman-Westreenen Museum at the Hague, and the Pitti Palace at Florence, are to be found cancels of portions of some leaves. Either the text or the illustration has been defectively printed; in each case the defective part has been supplied by another copy pasted on.

Edition 2 contains sixty-two leaves, made up in the same way as the first edition, but having only four leaves in the first gathering. Two leaves in this edition are printed in a different type from the rest of the book.

Edition 3 contains the same number of leaves, and is made up in the same way as edition 1. It is remarkable for having twenty leaves printed entirely from blocks, text as well as illustrations.

Edition 4 is made up in the same way as edition 2. The copy in the library at Lille contains some leaves with text printed upon both sides, seemingly by an error of the printer. The very fact of their existence shows that it was possible to print the text on both sides of the leaf. There must therefore have been some reason other than the ignorance or incapacity of the printer for printing these books on one side only, or, as it is called, anopisthographically.

There can be very little doubt that Mr. Sotheby is correct in his conjecture, that ‘the then usual process of taking off the wood engravings by friction, rendered it impossible to effect two impressions back to back, as the friction for the second would materially injure the first. On this account, and on no other, we presume, was the text printed only on one side.’ In the Lille copy above mentioned, two leaves, 25 and 26 (the centre sheet of the third quire), contain printed on their other side the text, not the illustrations, of leaves 47 and 62 (the first sheet of the fifth quire.)

From this we learn three things of great importance—1. That the text and the cut were not printed at the same time, and that the text was printed first. 2. That the printer could print the text, for which he used movable type, on both sides of the paper. 3. That the book was printed, not page by page, but two pages at a time.

Mr. Ottley was strongly of opinion, after careful examination, that the book was certainly printed two pages at a time. He says, ‘The proofs of this are, I think, conclusive. The upper lines of the text in those two pages always range exactly with each other.... Here and there, in turning over the book, we observe a page printed awry or diagonally on the paper; in such case, if the other page of the same sheet be examined, the same defect will be noticed. Upon opening the two Dutch copies of the edition, which I shall hereafter show to be the fourth at Harlem, in the middle sheet of the same gathering we find, upon comparing them, the exact same breadth and regularity of the inner margin in both, and the lines of the two pages range with each other exactly the same in both copies, which could not be the case had each page been printed separately.’

Where and when was this book printed? Conjectural dates have been given to it ranging from 1410 to 1470. The earliest date that can be absolutely connected with it is 1471-73. Certainly there is nothing in its printing which would point to its having been executed earlier than 1470. Its being printed only on the one side of the leaf was a matter of necessity on account of the cuts, and is not a sign of remote age, while the printing of two pages at a time argues an advance of knowledge in the printer, and consequently a later date. About 1480-81 the blocks which had been used for the four editions of the Speculum passed into the hands of John Veldener. This Veldener printed in Louvain between 1475 and 1477, and he was not then in possession of the blocks. ‘At the end of 1478 he began work at Utrecht, still, however, without this set of blocks. For his second edition of the Fasciculus temporum, published 14th February 1480, he had a few new blocks made, some of which were copied from Speculum cuts. At last, on the 19th April 1481, he published an Epistles and Gospels in Dutch, and into that he introduced two cut-up portions of the real old Speculum blocks. This was the last book Veldener is known to have printed at Utrecht. For two years we hear nothing more of him, and then he reappears at Kuilenburg, whither he removed his presses. There, on the 27th September 1483, he printed a quarto edition of the Speculum in Dutch. For it he cut up all the original blocks into their separate compartments, and thus suited them to fit into the upper portion of a quarto page. He had, moreover, twelve new cuts made in imitation of these severed portions of the old set, and he printed them along with the rest. Once more, in 1484 he employed a couple of the old set in the Dutch Herbarius, which was the last book known to have been issued by him at Kuilenburg. Thenceforward the Speculum cuts appear no more.’[3]

[3]Conway’s Woodcutters, p. 13.

The only place, then, with which the Speculum blocks are definitely connected is Utrecht, and there they must be left until some further evidence is forthcoming respecting their origin; nor have we any substantial reason for believing that when they passed into the possession of Veldener they had been in existence for more than ten or twelve years.

Some among the late block-books are of interest as having been produced by men who were at the same time printers in the ordinary sense of the word. There is part of a Donatus in the Bodleian, with a colophon stating it to be the work of Conrad Dinckmut, a printer at Ulm from 1482 to 1496. In the British Museum is a German almanac of about 1490 produced by Conrad Kacheloffen, who printed a number of books, many with illustrations, at Leipzig. For a book so small as the Donatus, a book which was always in demand, it would be almost as economical to cut blocks as to keep type standing, and we consequently find a number of such xylographic editions produced at the very end of the fifteenth century. In the Bibliothèque Nationale are two original blocks, bought by Foucault, the minister of Louis XIV., in Germany, and probably cut about 1500 or shortly before. The letters are cut in exact imitation of type, and with such regularity that a print from the block might almost pass for a print from ordinary type, did not the bases and tops of a few letters overlap.

The latest block-book of any size was printed at Venice. It is the Figure del Testamento Vecchio, printed about 1510 by Giovanni Andrea Vavassore.

In the library at Lambeth Palace are two curious block-printed leaves of early English work. Each leaf contains an indulgence printed four times, consisting of a figure of Saint Cornelius and five lines of text. ‘The hole indulgence of pardon granted to blessed S. Cornelis is vi score years, vi score lentes, ii M ix C and xx dais of pardon for evermore to endure.’

It shows us very clearly the cheapness with which such work could be produced; for, in order to save the time which would be occupied in taking impressions singly from one block, two blocks have been used almost exactly the same, so that two impressions could be taken off at once. This was usually done in printing indulgences from movable type, for there the trouble of setting up twice was very small compared to the gain in the time and labour which resulted from it.

There still remains to be noticed the one specimen of xylography produced in France. This is known as Les Neuf Preux. It consists of three sheets of paper, each of which contains an impression from a block containing three figures. They are printed by means of the frotton in light-coloured ink, and have been coloured by hand. The first sheet contains pictures of the three champions of classical times, Hector, Alexander, and Julius Cæsar; the second, the three champions of the Old Testament, Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabæus; the third, the three champions of mediæval history, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Boulogne. Under each picture is a stanza of six lines, all rhyming, cut in a bold type.

These leaves form part of the Armorial of Gilles le Bouvier, who was King-at-Arms to Charles VII. of France; and as the manuscript was finished between 9th November 1454 and 22nd September 1457, it is reasonable to suppose that the prints were executed in France, probably at Paris, before the latter date. The verses are, at any rate, the oldest printed specimen of the French language.

When we consider that printing of a rudimentary kind had existed for so many centuries, and that during the whole of the early part of the fifteenth century examples with words or even whole lines of inscription were being produced, we can only wonder that the discovery of printing from movable types should have been made so late. It has been said inventions will always be made when the need for them has arisen, and this is the real reason, perhaps, why the discovery of printing was delayed. The intellectual requirements of the mediæval world were not greater than could be satisfactorily supplied by the scribe and illuminator, but with the revival of letters came an absolute need for the more rapid multiplication of the instruments of learning. We may even say that the intellectual activity of the fifteenth century not only called printing into existence, but furnished it with its noblest models. The scholarly scribes of Italy at that epoch had revived the Caroline minuscules as used in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and it was this beautiful hand which the early Italian printers imitated, thereby giving us the ‘Roman’ type in which our books are still printed.

I cannot more fitly close this preliminary chapter than by quoting from the MS. note-books of Henry Bradshaw the opening sentences of his article ‘Typography’ for the Encyclopædia Britannica, an article which unfortunately was never completed.

‘Typography was, in the eyes of those who first used it, the art of multiplying books, of writing by means of single types capable of being used again and again, instead of with a pen, which, of course, could only produce one book at a time.[4]

[4] This is clearly brought before us by the words of the first printers at Avignon, ‘ars artificialiter scribendi,’ a phrase used several times over in speaking of their new invention.

‘The art of multiplying single sheets, for which woodcut blocks could be used to serve a temporary purpose, may be looked upon as an intermediate stage, which may have given the idea of typography. When the reproduction of books had long passed out of the exclusive hands of the monasteries into the hands of students or hangers-on of the universities, any invention of this kind would be readily and rapidly taken up. When there was no Greek press in Paris, we find Georgius Hermonymus making a living by constant copying of Greek books for the scholars who were so eager for them. So Reuchlin in the same way supported himself by copying.

‘In fact, the two departments of compositor and corrector in the printing office were the direct representatives and successors of the scribe and corrector of manuscripts from the early times. The kind of men whom we find mentioned in the early printing offices as correctors, are just such men as would be sought for in earlier times in an important scriptorium. In our modern world, printed and written books have come to be looked upon as totally distinct things, whereas it is impossible to bring before our minds the state of things when books were first printed, until we look upon them as precisely the same. They were brought to fairs, or such general centres of circulation as Paris, Leipzig, or Frankfort, before the days of printing, just as afterwards, only that printing enabled the stationer to supply his buyers with much greater rapidity than before, and at much cheaper rates; so that the laws of supply and demand work together in such a manner that it is difficult to say which had more influence in accelerating the movement.’

CHAPTER II.

THE INVENTION OF PRINTING.

The earliest specimen of printing from movable type known to exist was printed at Mainz in 1454. In making this statement, I do not wish to pass over the claims of France and the Low Countries to the invention of printing, but only to point out that, in considering the question, we must put the evidence of the printed books themselves first, and then work from these to such documentary evidence as we possess. France has the documents but no books; the Low Countries neither the one nor the other; and therefore, if we are to set about our inquiries on any rational plan, we must date the invention of printing from the date of its first product. This is the famous Indulgence of Nicholas V. to such as should contribute money to aid the King of Cyprus against the Turks.

In the copy of the Indulgence now preserved in the Meerman-Westreenen Museum at the Hague (discovered by Albert Frick at Ulm in 1762, and afterwards in the collections of Schelhorn and Meerman), the place of issue, Erfurth, and the date, November 15, have been filled in; thus giving us as the earliest authentic date on a printed document, November 15, 1454.

In the years 1454 and 1455 there was a large demand for these Indulgences, and seven editions were issued. These may be divided into two sets, the one containing thirty-one lines, the other thirty lines; the first dated example belonging to the former.

These two sets are unmistakably the work of two different printers, one of whom may well have been Peter Schœffer, since we find the initial letters which are used in the thirty-line editions used again in an Indulgence of 1489 certainly printed by him. Who, then, was the printer of the other set? He is generally stated to have been John Gutenberg; and though we have no proof of this, or indeed of Gutenberg’s having printed any book at all, there is a strong weight of circumstantial evidence in his favour.

What do we know about John Gutenberg, the presumed printer of the first dated specimen of printing? The earliest information comes from the record of a lawsuit brought against him at Strasburg in 1439 by George Dritzehn, for money advanced.

There is hardly room for doubt that the business on which Gutenberg was engaged, and for which money was advanced him, was printing. There is a certain ambiguity about some of the expressions, but the greater part of the account is too clear and straightforward to allow of any doubt.[5] It may safely be said that before 1439 Gutenberg was at work at Strasburg, experimenting on and perfecting the art of printing.

[5] A very careful literal and unabridged translation will be found in Hessels’ Gutenberg, pp. 34-57. The text used is Laborde’s with some corrections, and Schœpflin’s readings when they vary are given in notes. It should be noted that Mr. Hessels implies that the account of this trial is a forgery, or at any rate unreliable; but his negative and partial reasoning cannot stand against the evidence brought forward by many trustworthy authorities.

The next document which relates to him as a printer is the lawsuit of 1455, the original transcript of which was recently found at Göttingen. This was brought against him by Fust to recover a loan of 800 guilders. In this lawsuit mention is made of two of Gutenberg’s servants, Heinrich Keffer, afterwards a printer at Nuremberg, and Bertolf von Hanau, supposed to be the same as Bertold Ruppel, the first printer at Basle. Peter Schœffer also appears as a witness. We learn from this suit that somewhere about August 1450, Fust advanced the amount of 800 guilders, and about December 1452 a like amount; but these loans were advanced in the first instance by Fust towards assisting a work of which the method was understood, and we are therefore justified in considering that by that time Gutenberg had mastered the principles of the art of printing.

The first two books printed at Mainz were the editions of the Vulgate, known from the number of lines which go to the page as the forty-two line and thirty-six line Bibles. The forty-two line edition is generally called the Mazarine Bible, because the copy which first attracted notice was found in Cardinal Mazarin’s library; and the thirty-six line edition, Pfister’s or the Bamberg Bible, because the type used in it was at one time in the possession of Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg. On the question as to which of the two editions is the earlier, there has been endless controversy; and before going farther, it will be as well to state shortly the actual data which we possess from which conclusions can be drawn.

The Paris copy of the forty-two line Bible has the rubricator’s inscription, which shows that the book was finished before the 15th August 1456.

The only exact date we know of, connected with the other Bible, is 1461, this date being written on a copy of the last leaf, also preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.

The types of both Bibles were in existence in 1454, for they were used in the thirty and thirty-one line letters of Indulgence printed in that year.

The type of the forty-two line Bible is clearly a product of the Gutenberg-Fust-Schœffer partnership, for it is used afterwards by Schœffer as Fust’s partner, and must therefore have been the property of Fust. Mr. Hessels, who has worked out the history of the types with extreme care and accuracy, says: ‘I have shown above that one of the initials of the thirty line Indulgence is found in 1489 in Schœffer’s office. The church type of the same Indulgence links on (in spite of the different capital P) to the anonymous forty-two line Bible of 1456. This Bible links on to the thirty-five line Donatus, which is in the same type, and has Schœffer’s name and his coloured capitals.[6] This again brings us to the Psalter, which Joh. Fust and Peter Schœffer published together on the 14th August 1457, at Mentz, their first (dated) book with their name and the capitals of the Donatus.’

[6] The colophon of this book says: ... ‘per Petrum de Gernssheym in urbe Moguntina cum suis capitalibus absque calami exaratione effigiatus;’ and Mr. Hessels translates ‘cum suis capitalibus,’ ‘with his capital letters,’ a rendering which is surely impossible.

We may safely say of the forty-two line Bible, that it could not have been begun before about August 1450 (when Gutenberg entered into partnership with Fust), and that it could not have been finished later than August 1456 (the rubricated date of the Paris copy).

As regards the thirty-six line Bible, M. Dziatzko has brought forward, after much patient study, some remarkable evidence. He proves, from an examination of the text, that the thirty-six line Bible was set up, at any rate in part, from the forty-two line Bible. One copy survives which betrays this; for the compositor has passed from the last word of leaf 7 to the first word of leaf 9. In another place he has misread the beginning of a chapter, and included the last two words of the one before, which is explained by the arrangement of the text in the forty-two line edition.

Dziatzko concludes that this latter edition was the product of the Gutenberg-Fust confederation, and that Gutenberg may have produced the thirty-six line Bible more or less pari passu, either alone or in partnership with (perhaps) Pfister. An examination of the paper used in printing the two books points to the conclusion that there were substantial means available for the production of the forty-two line Bible, while the thirty-six line seems to show many separate purchases of small amounts of different papers.

It is impossible to assign any date for the commencement of the thirty-six line Bible. Fust had clearly nothing to do with it, and the type may have been made and some sheets printed before the partnership for printing the forty-two line Bible was entered into in 1450. The largeness of the type and consequent lesser number of lines to the page points to an early date, for the tendency was always to increase the number of lines to the page and economise paper. Thus we find that when the first gathering of the forty-two line Bible had been printed, which has only forty lines to the page, the type was recast, so as to have the same face of letter on a smaller body; and with this type the page was made to contain forty-two lines to the page.

The workmanship and the appearance of the type would also lead us to suppose that the thirty-six line Bible was printed earlier than the Manung widder die Durcke, which, being an ephemeral publication applicable only to the year 1455, must presumably have been printed in 1454.

We can therefore probably put both Bibles earlier than 1454.

The first book with a printed date is the well-known Psalmorum Codex of 1457, printed by Schœffer. Of this book nine copies are known, and all vary slightly from each other.[7] Only two types are used throughout the Psalter, but both are very large. Mr. Weale, on account of the variations observable in the letters, insists that the book was printed from cut and not cast type; but he gives no reason for this opinion; and when we consider that books had already been produced from cast type, it is impossible to understand why Schœffer should have resorted to so laborious a method. The dissimilarity of some letters is not so strong a proof of their having been cut, as the similarity of the greater number is of their having been cast. Bradshaw, who was of this opinion, had also noted some curious shrinkages in the type, resulting from the way the matrices for the type were formed.

[7] For a very full account of this book see the Catalogue of MSS. and Printed Books exhibited at the Historical Music Loan Exhibition, by W. H. James Weale, London, 1886, 8vo, pp. 27-45.

The most striking thing about the Psalter are the wonderful capital letters; and how these were printed has always been a vexed question. In the editions of 1457 and 1459 they are in two colours, the letter in one colour and the surrounding ornamentation in another. Though it is impossible to determine exactly how they were produced, there is at any rate something to be settled on the question. In one case, in the edition of 1515, in which these initials were still used, the exterior ornament has been printed, but the letter itself and the interior ornament have not. This shows at any rate that the letter and the ornament were not on one block, and that the exterior and interior ornaments were on different blocks; and is also in favour of the suggestion put forward by Fischer, that the ornament and the letter, though on different blocks, were not printed at the same time. In support of his theory, Fischer mentioned a case of the letter overlapping the ornament in a copy of the edition of 1459, and such a slip could not have occurred had the letter and ornament been printed from inset blocks in the method new known as the Congreve process.

It has also been argued by some writers, among whom is William Blades, that the letter was not printed in colour, but that the design was merely impressed in blank upon the paper or vellum, and afterwards filled in with colour by the illuminator. This is shown, it is said, by some portions of lines here and there in the ornamentation remaining uncoloured, a result surely due to imperfect inking rather than to a careless illuminator. It is hardly probable that the rubricator would begin a line and leave the end uncoloured while it was plainly traced for him; but, on the other hand, it is just such a fault as would, and often did, occur in printing an elaborate and involved ornament. No doubt in some cases the capitals, like the letters of the text, were touched up by the rubricator; and this is, as a rule, most noticeable when the ornament or letter is in blue. The blue ink used had a green tinge, and in some cases looked almost grey, and was therefore very often touched up with a brighter colour. Mr. Weale is of opinion that these letters were not set up and printed with the rest of the book, but were ‘printed, subsequently to the typography, not by a pull of the press, but by the blow of a mallet on the superimposed block.’

It was probably about 1458, between the times of printing the two editions of the Psalter, that Schœffer printed the book called in his catalogue of 1469-70, Canon misse cum prefacionibus et imparatoriis suis. This was the Canon of the Mass, printed by itself for inserting in copies of the Missal. This particular part, being the most used, was often worn out before the rest of the book; and we know from early catalogues[8] that it was the custom of printers to print this special part on vellum. While the printing of a complete Missal would have been a doubtful speculation, the printing of this one part, unvarying in the different uses, required no great outlay, and was almost certain to be profitable. Two copies only are known, and these are of different editions. One is in the Bodleian, and was bound up with an imperfect copy of the Mainz Missal of 1493. The other is in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, in a copy of the Breslau Missal of 1483.

[8] In a catalogue issued by Ratdolt about 1491 we read: ... ‘videlicet unum missarum (?) in papiro bene corporatum et illigatum cum canone pergameneo non ultra tres florenos minus quarta: sed cum canone papireo duos florenos cum dimidio fore comparandum.’

The Bodleian copy consists of twelve leaves, printed on vellum in the large type of the Psalter, and ornamented with the same beautiful initials. The capital T of the Te igitur, commencing the Canon, is as large as the well-known B of the Psalter, and even more beautiful in execution. Besides the ordinary coloured capitals which occur also in the Psalter, there is a monogram composed of the letters V.D., standing for Vere dignum.

In 1459 a second edition of the Psalter was issued, and also the Rationale Durandi, both containing coloured capitals, though some copies of the latter book are without the printed initials. A Donatus without date, printed in the type of the forty-two line Bible, has also the coloured capitals, and may be dated before 1460. After that time we only find these letters in use for the editions of the Psalter which appeared in 1490, 1502, 1515, 1516; and for a Donatus in the 1462 Bible type. Their size and the trouble of printing them account, no doubt, for their disuse.

In June 1460, Schœffer issued the Constitutions of Clement V., a large folio remarkable for the care with which it was printed, and for the clever way in which the commentary was worked round the text. In 1462 appeared the first dated Bible, which is at the same time the first book clearly divided into two volumes.[9] In the next few years we have a number of Bulls and other such ephemeral publications, relating mostly to the quarrels which were going on in Mainz; but in 1465, Schœffer starts again to produce larger books, and in this year we have the Decretals of Boniface VIII. and the De Officiis of Cicero. This latter book is important as being the first containing Greek type, that is, if it is allowed to be earlier than the Lactantius of the same year printed at Subiaco. In 1466 it was reprinted.

[9] It has never, I think, been noticed in print that some of the capital letters in certain sheets of this Bible are not the work of the rubricator, but are printed. Attempts were made to print both the blue and the red on the same page, but it apparently was found too laborious, and was given up. The red letters were printed in colour; the letters which were to be blue were impressed in blank, and afterwards filled up in colour by the illuminator. He did not always follow the impressed letter, so that its outline can be clearly seen. Some copies of this Bible have Schœffer’s mark, and a date at the end of the first volume; others are without them. The colophons also vary.

SCHOEFFER’S CATALOGUE.

In or about 1469, Schœffer printed a most interesting document, a catalogue of books for sale by himself or his agent. It is printed on one side of a sheet, and was meant to be fixed up as an advertisement in the different towns visited, the name of the place where the books could be obtained being written at the bottom. There are altogether twenty-one books advertised, three of which were not printed by Schœffer, but probably by Gutenberg; and there are also in the list three unknown books. Nearly all the important works from the press are in it, the 1462 Bible on vellum, the Psalter of 1459, the Decretals, the Cicero, and others. At the foot of the list is printed in the large Psalter type, ‘Hec est littera psalterii,’ so that the sheet is the earliest known type-specimen as well as catalogue.

The three books which are unknown, at any rate as having been printed by Schœffer, are the Consolatorium timorate conscientie and the De contractibus mercatorum, both by Johann Nider, a famous Dominican, and the Historia Griseldis of Petrarch.

In 1470, Schœffer put out another advertisement relating to his edition of the Letters of St. Jerome, printed in that year. Of this broadside two copies are known, one in the Munich Library, the other, formerly belonging to M. Weigel, in the British Museum. From 1470 to 1479, Schœffer printed a large number of books. Hain mentions twenty-seven, almost all of which he himself had collated. This was the busiest time in Schœffer’s career, and he carried on business in several towns. His agent in Paris, Hermann de Stalhœn, died about 1474, and the books in his possession were dispersed. On the complaint of Schœffer, Louis XI. allowed him 2425 crowns as compensation,—a sum which shows that the stock of books must have been very large. In 1479 he was received as a citizen of Frankfort-on-the-Maine on payment of a certain sum, no doubt in order that he might there sell his books. At Mainz he became an important citizen, and was made a judge.

From 1457 to 1468, Schœffer had used only four types, the two church types which appear in the Psalter, and the two book types which appear in the Durandus. In this year he obtained a fifth type, like the smaller one of the Durandus, and about the same in body, but with a larger face. In 1484 and 1485 two new types appear, one a church type very much resembling that used in the forty-two line Bible, but with a larger face; the other, a vernacular type, which occurs first in the Hortus Sanitatis of 1485, a book containing Schœffer’s mark though not his name, and appears the year following in the Breydenbach, printed at Mainz by Erhard Reüwick. Reüwick was an engraver, and the frontispiece to the Hortus Sanitatis is perhaps from his hand, showing, if it be so, a connection between him and Schœffer, which his use of the latter’s type tends to confirm. In fact, it seems most probable that the text of the two editions of the Breydenbach, the Latin one of 1486 and the German one of 1488, was really printed by Schœffer, while Reüwick engraved the wonderful illustrations. The title-page of this book is an exquisite piece of work, and by far the finest example of wood engraving which had appeared. It is further noticeable as containing cross-hatching, which is usually said to have first been used in the poor cuts of that very much overpraised book, the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. It contains also a number of views of remarkable places, printed as folded plates. Some of these views are as much as five feet long, and were printed from several blocks on separate pieces of paper, which were afterwards pasted together.

Schœffer continued to print during the whole of the fifteenth century, though towards the end he issued few books, Another printer, Petrus de Friedberg, started to print at Mainz in 1493, and between that time and 1498 issued a fair number of books. About 1480 a group of six or seven books, all undated, were printed at Mainz, which were long supposed to be very early, and not impossibly printed by Gutenberg. One of these was a Prognostication, said to be for the year 1460, and therefore presumably printed in 1459. A copy is preserved in the library of Darmstadt; and some years ago this was examined by Mr. Hessels, who found that the date had been tampered with, and that it should really read 1482.

From 1455 onwards, while the press of Schœffer was busily at work, we lose sight of Gutenberg. Three books, however, all printed about 1460 at Mainz, are ascribed to him. These are the Catholicon (a kind of dictionary) of 1460, the Tractatus racionis et conscientiæ of Matthæus de Cracovia, and the Summa de articulis fidei of Aquinas, both without date. To these may be added a broadside indulgence printed in 1461. Bernard attributes these books to the press of Henry Bechtermuntze, who afterwards printed with the same type at Eltvil. One fact appears to tell strongly against this conclusion. In 1469-70, when Schœffer issued his catalogue, we find these three books in it, the remainder being all of Schœffer’s own production. How did they get into Schœffer’s hands? Had they been printed by Bechtermuntze we should surely find the Vocabularius ex quo also in the catalogue, for he had issued editions in 1467 and 1469. It is more probable that they had formed the stock of a printer who had given up business, and had therefore got rid of all the books remaining on his hands.[10]

[10] In 1468 all the materials connected with Gutenberg’s press were handed over to Conrad Homery, their owner, who binds himself to use the type only in Mainz; and also binds himself, if he sells it, to sell it to a citizen of Mainz, provided that citizen offers as much as a stranger. The stock of printed books would also belong to Homery in his capacity of creditor, and would be sold in Mainz, where, so far as we know, there was no one except Schœffer to buy them.

In the copy of the Tractatus racionis belonging to the Bibliothèque Nationale the following manuscript note occurs: ‘Hos duos sexternos accomidauit mihi henrycus Keppfer de moguncia nunquam reuenit ut reacciperetur,’ etc. This Keppfer was one of Gutenberg’s workmen; and his name occurs in the notarial instrument of 1455, so that this inscription forms a link between the book and Gutenberg.

We have, unfortunately, no direct evidence as to the printer. We know that the books were printed at Mainz, for it is directly so stated in the Schœffer catalogue and in the colophon of the Catholicon. Now we know of no printers at Mainz in 1460 except Schœffer and Gutenberg, and Schœffer was certainly not the printer of these books. On the other hand, there are no books except these three that could have been printed by Gutenberg; and if these three are to be ascribed to any one else, Gutenberg is left in the position of a known printer who printed nothing. It has been shown above that it is very improbable that the books were printed by Bechtermuntze; and the fact that in 1470 the remaining copies were in the hands of a man who did not print them, points to their real printer having died or given up business. Though from these various facts we can prove nothing as regards the identity of the printer, we have some show of probability for imagining that he must have been Gutenberg.

There is no doubt whatever that the Catholicon type appears at Eltvil in the hands of the two brothers Bechtermuntze in 1467, for in the Vocabularius ex quo there is a clear colophon stating that the book was commenced by Henry Bechtermuntze and finished by Nicholas Bechtermuntze and Wygand Spyess of Orthenberg on the 4th of November 1467.

There has been a great deal of argument on the question how these types came into the hands of the Eltvil printers while Gutenberg was alive. We know that Gutenberg became a pensioner of Adolph II. in 1465, and would therefore presumably give up printing in that year. The types and printing materials which he had been using belonged to a certain Dr. Homery, and were reclaimed by him in 1468. The distance from Eltvil to Mainz is only some five or six miles, and the Rhine afforded easy means of communication between the two places, so that the difficulty of the transference of type backwards and forwards seems, as a rule, very much overstated. Although we have no evidence of printing at Eltvil before 1467, still it will be best to give an account of the press in this chapter, since it was so intimately connected with the early press at Mainz.

In 1467, on the 4th November, an edition of the Vocabularius ex quo was published. The colophon tells us that the book was begun by Henry Bechtermuntze, and finished by his brother Nicholas in partnership with a certain Wygand Speyss of Orthenberg. A second edition was published in June 1469 by Nicholas Bechtermuntze alone. Both these editions are printed in the type used for the Catholicon of 1460, but with a few additional abbreviations. In 1472 a third edition of the Vocabularius ex quo was issued, in a type very similar to the type of the thirty-one line Letters of Indulgence, but slightly smaller; and an edition of the Summa de articulis fidei of Aquinas [Hain, *1426] was issued in the same type. In 1477 a fourth edition of the Vocabularius ex quo was printed by Nicholas Bechtermuntze; the type is different from that used in the other books, and is identical, as Mr. Hessels tells us, with that used about the same time by Peter Drach at Spire.

Before leaving Mainz, it will be as well to notice the books printed by the Brothers of the Common Life at Marienthal. This monastery was close to Mainz on the opposite side of the river, and not far from Eltvil. The earliest book is a Copia indulgentiarum per Adolphum archiepiscopum Moguntinum concessarum, dated from Mainz in August 1468, and presumably printed in the same year. In 1474 they issued the Mainz Breviary, a book of great rarity, and of which the copies vary; in fact, of certain portions there seem to have been several editions. Their latest piece of printing with a date is a broadside indulgence of 1484, of which there is a copy at Darmstadt. Dr. F. Falk, in his article ‘Die Presse zu Marienthal im Rheingau,’ mentions fourteen books as printed at this press; but he includes some printed in a type which cannot with certainty be ascribed to Marienthal. The Brothers seem to have used only two types, both of which are found in the Breviary. Both are very distinctive, especially the larger, which is a very heavy solid Gothic letter, easily distinguishable by the curious lower case d.

CHAPTER III.

SPREAD OF PRINTING IN GERMANY.

Before 1462, when the sacking of Mainz by Adolf von Nassau is popularly supposed to have disseminated the art of printing, presses were at work in at least two other German towns, Strasburg and Bamberg.

The first of these places is mentioned by Trithemius, who records that after the secret of printing was discovered, it spread first to Strasburg. Judging merely from authentic dates, this is evidently correct, for we have the date 1460 for Strasburg, and 1461-62 for Bamberg. There are, however, strong reasons for supposing that this order is hardly the correct one, and that Bamberg should come first. Since, however, the statement and the dates exist, it will be safer for us provisionally to consider Strasburg as the first, and state later on the arguments in favour of Bamberg.

Though no dated book is known printed at Strasburg before 1471, in which year Eggestein printed the Decretum Gratiani, and though Mentelin’s first dated book is of the year 1473, yet we know from the rubrications of a copy of the Latin Bible in the library at Freiburg, that that book was finished, the first volume before 1460, and the second before 1461. Concerning the printer, John Mentelin, a good deal is known. Born at Schelestadt, he became a scribe and illuminator; but, like many others, abandoned the original business to become a printer. P. de Lignamine in his Chronicle says that by 1458, Mentelin had a press at Strasburg, and was printing, like Gutenberg, three hundred sheets a day. By 1461 he had finished printing the forty-nine line edition of the Latin Bible. He died on the 12th December 1478, leaving two daughters, one married to Adolf Rusch d’Ingwiller, his successor; the other, to Martin Schott, another Strasburg printer. Very few of his books are dated; and as his types have not yet been systematically studied, the books cannot be ranged in any accurate order.

Taking the information in Lignamine’s Chronicle as exact, and we have no reason to doubt its accuracy, we may take certain books in the type of the Bible as the earliest of Mentelin’s books.[11] Round 1466 we can group some other books, the Augustinus de arte predicandi and the Homily on St. Matthew by St. Chrysostom. A copy of the former book in the British Museum is rubricated 1466; and of the latter a copy in the Spencer Collection has the same year added in manuscript. In Sir M. M. Sykes’ sale was a volume containing copies of these two books bound together in contemporary binding. About 1470, Mentelin issued a catalogue containing the titles of nine books, including a Virgil, a Terence, and a Valerius Maximus. Mentelin also printed the first edition of the Bible in German, a folio of 406 leaves. Several copies are known with the rubricated date of 1466; and the same date is also found in a copy of the Secunda secundæ of Aquinas. Many other of his books contain manuscript dates, and show that they are considerably earlier than is usually supposed.

[11] In the University Library, Cambridge, is a very interesting copy of the first volume of this Bible, bought at the Culemann sale. It consists for the most part of proof-sheets, and variations from the ordinary copies occur on almost every page. It is printed on small sheets of paper in the manner of a broadside, the sheets being pasted together at the inner margin.

Henry Eggestein, whose first dated book was issued in 1471, was living in Strasburg as early as 1442, and probably began to print almost as soon as Mentelin. The earliest date attributable to any of his books is 1466, the date written by Bamler, at that time an illuminator, in the copy of one of his forty-five line editions of the Bible now in the library at Wolfenbüttel. In 1471, Eggestein himself tells us that he had printed a large number of books. A little time before this he had issued a most glowing advertisement of his Bible. He appeals to the good man to come and see his wonderful edition, produced, as the early printers were so fond of saying, not by the pen, but by the wonderful art of printing. The proofs had been read by the best scholars, and the book printed in the best style. This Bible, which has forty-five lines to the column, was finished by 1466, for the copy now in the library at Munich was rubricated in that year. The only printed dates that occur in Eggestein’s books are 1471 and 1472. Hain gives three books of the years 1474, 1475, and 1478 as printed in his type, but these contain no printer’s name.

The most mysterious printer connected with the history of the Strasburg press, is the printer who used a peculiarly shaped capital R, and is therefore known as the R printer. He seems to have been very generally confounded with Mentelin till 1825, when the sale catalogue of Dr. Kloss’ books appeared. In this sale there happened to be two copies of the Speculum of Vincent de Beauvais, one the undoubted Mentelin edition, the other by the R printer. The writer of the note in the catalogue stated that, on comparison, the types of the two editions, though very like each other, were not the same. Since the type is different, and the peculiar R has never yet been found in any authentic book printed by Mentelin, we may safely say that Mentelin was not the printer. To whom, then, are the books to be ascribed? Many consider them the work of Adolf Rusch d’Ingwiller. M. Madden attributes them all to the Monastery of Weidenbach at Cologne, in common with most of the other books by unknown printers, and dates them about 1470. Bradshaw, writing to Mr. Winter Jones in 1870, says: ‘In turning over a volume of fragments yesterday, I found a Bull of Sixtus IV., dated 1478, in the type of the famous “R” printer so often confounded with Mentelin. His books are commonly put down to 1470 or earlier, and I believe no one ever thought of putting his books so late as 1478.[12] Yet this little piece is almost the only certain date which is known in connection with this whole series of books.’ Complete sets of the Speculum of Vincent de Beauvais are very often made up, partly from Mentelin’s and partly from the R printer’s editions, which points to their having been probably printed at the same place and about the same time. The earliest MS. date found in any of the books by the R printer is 1464; for a note in the copy of the Duranti Rationale divinorum Officiorum in the library at Basle, states that the book was bought in that year for the University. If this date is authentic, it follows that Strasburg was the first place where Roman type was used.

[12] This indulgence had been noticed by Bernard, De l’Origine de l’Imprimerie, vol. ii. pp. 108, 109.

The next important printer at Strasburg is George Husner, who began in 1476 and printed up till 1498. His types may be recognised by the capital H, which is Roman, and has a boss on the lower side of the cross-bar. John Gruninger, who began in 1483, issued some beautifully illustrated books, the most celebrated being the Horace, Terence, and Boethius, and Brandt’s Ship of Fools. He and another later Strasburg printer, Knoblochzer, share with Conrad Zeninger of Nuremberg the doubtful honour of being the most careless printers in the fifteenth century.

Albrecht Pfister was printing at Bamberg as early as 1461, and his first dated book, Boner’s Edelstein, was issued on 4th February of that year. He used but one type, a discarded fount from Mainz which had been used in printing the thirty-six line Bible and the other books of that group. By many he is credited with being the printer of the thirty-six line Bible,—a theory which a short examination of the workmanship of his signed books would go far to upset. Pfister seems to have been more of a wood engraver than a printer, relying rather on the attractive nature of his illustrations than on the elegance of his printing. We can attribute to him with certainty nine books, with one exception all written in German, and with two exceptions all illustrated with woodcuts. Mr. Hessels is of opinion that certain of these books ought to be placed, on account of their workmanship, before the Boner of 1461; as, for instance, the Quarrel of a Widower with Death, in which the lines are very uneven. There are certain peculiarities noticeable in Pfister’s method of work which occur also in the Manung widder die Durke, a prognostication for 1455, preserved in the Royal Library, Munich, and in the Cisianus zu dutsche at Cambridge, the most marked being the filling up of blank spaces with an ornament of stops. The curious rhyming form of these calendars, and the dialect of German in which they are written, resemble exactly the rhyming colophon put by Pfister to the Boner’s Edelstein. In all three cases the ends of the lines are not marked, but the works are printed as prose.

Paulus Paulirinus of Prague, in his description of a ‘ciripagus’ wrote: ‘Et tempore mei Pambergæ quidam sculpsit integram Bibliam super lamellas, et in quatuor septimanis totam Bibliam super pargameno subtili presignavit scriptura.’ Some writers have suggested that these words refer to the thirty-six line Bible; but a ‘Bible cut on thin plates’ can only be a block-book, and probably an edition of the Biblia Pauperum. Paul of Prague composed a large part of his book before 1463, when no other printer besides Pfister was at work at Bamberg, and these words probably apply to either the Latin or German edition of the Biblia Pauperum which Pfister issued.

We have no information as to when or where Pfister began to print, and the extraordinary rarity of his books prevents much connected work upon them. There is no doubt that he came into possession of the type of the thirty-six line Bible, and in this type a number of books were printed. The earliest of these books is probably the Manung Widder die Durke, which, since it was a prognostication for 1455, was presumably printed in 1454. This book, as far as it is possible to judge, was manifestly printed after the thirty-six line Bible, and by a different printer. In it we first find the peculiar lozenge-shaped ornament of stops which continues through the series of books in this type. The calendar of 1457 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, probably printed in 1456, is the next piece in the series to which an approximate date can be given. Of this calendar, originally printed on a single sheet, only the upper half remains, found in 1804 at Mainz, where it had been used as a cover for some ecclesiastical papers. It bears the following inscription: ‘Prebendarum. Registrum capituli ecclesie Sancti Gengolffi intra muros Moguntiæ receptorum et distributorum anno LVII., per Johan: Kess, vicarium ecclesie predicte.’ Thus, at the end of the year 1457 or beginning of 1458, it was treated at Mainz as waste-paper. With this calendar may be classed the Cisianus zu dutsche at Cambridge, a rhyming calendar in German.

There are, then, the series of nine or ten books, usually all given to Pfister, though only two bear his name; and of these some are after and some can be placed before 1461. The typographical peculiarities of Pfister’s signed books are the same as those of the early calendars, and point to his having also produced them. This brings us at once into the obvious difficulties, for we should have Pfister printing as early as 1454, while Gutenberg was still in partnership with Fust. The knowledge about Pfister’s press is too meagre to allow any of these difficulties to be cleared up, though something may yet result from a more careful examination of the books themselves. The only examples in England of books printed by Pfister (with the exception of the Cisianus) are in the Spencer Library. There are there four books and a fragment of a fifth.

The conjecture put forward by M. Dziatako, that Gutenberg may have printed the thirty-six line Bible in partnership with some other printer, as, for example, Pfister, would certainly, if any proof in its favour could be adduced, simplify matters very much. We should then have all the books in a natural sequence, from the Bible to the latest books of Pfister, and we could account for the printing of the Manung in 1454, while Gutenberg was still in partnership with Fust and Schœffer for the production of the forty-two line Bible. The workmanship of the thirty-six line Bible is in some points different from the later books, all of which were probably the work of Pfister, who, according to this theory, must have been at work at Mainz as early as 1454. The contract between Gutenberg and Fust did not necessarily bind the former to print only with Fust, so that he may also have worked with Pfister, and taught him the art.

Pfister’s last dated book, The Histories of Joseph, Daniel, Judith, and Esther, was printed in 1462, not long after the day of St. Walburga (May 1).

After this time we hear of no book printed at Bamberg till 1481, when John Sensenschmidt printed the Missale Ordinis S. Benedicti, commonly known as the Bamberg Missal.

Cologne, from its situation on the Rhine, was in a favourable position for receiving information and materials from Mainz, and we find that by 1466, Ulric Zel of Hanau, a clerk of the diocese of Mainz, was settled there as a printer. His first dated book was the Chrysostom Super psalmo quinquagesimo; but some other books were certainly issued before it. The Cicero De Officiis, a quarto with thirty-four lines to the page, is earlier, and is perhaps the first book he issued. It has many signs of being a very early production, and may possibly have been issued before Schœffer’s edition of 1465.

M. Madden, in his Lettres d’un Bibliographe, has argued that a very early school of typography existed at Cologne, in the Monastery of Weidenbach. Though his researches have thrown a great deal of light on various points connected with early printing, and are in some ways of real value, much that he has theorised about Weidenbach requires confirmation. We can hardly be expected to believe, as he would try to persuade us, that Caxton, and Zel, and Jenson, and many other printers whose types belong to different families, could all learn printing at this one place. It would be impossible for men who had learnt to print in the same school to produce such radically different kinds of type, and work in such different methods. The early tentative essays of Zel’s press can be clearly identified, and their order more or less accurately determined, from their typographical characteristics. His earliest books were quartos; and of these the first few have four point holes to the page. These point holes are small holes about an inch from the top and bottom lines, and nearly parallel with the sides of the type, made by the four pins which went through the paper when one side of the page was printed, and served as a guide to place the paper straight when the other side was printed.[13]

[13] The use of four points to obtain a correct register is generally a sure sign of the infancy of a press. Blades says they are to be found in all the books printed in Caxton’s Type 1.

Then, before he settled down to printing his quartos with twenty-seven lines to the page, he experimented with various numbers of lines. We can safely start with the following books in the following order:—

These form an early group by themselves, and commence on the first leaf; the second group begins with

B. Augustinus, De vita christiana and De singularitate clericorum, 1467, 28 and 27 lines to the page.

Then follows a number of tracts by Gerson and Chrysostom, all having four point holes, and all probably printed before 1470. Zel continued to print throughout the whole of the fifteenth century.

At a very early date there were a number of other printers settled at Cologne, all using types which, though easily distinguishable, are similar in appearance and of the same family; and their books have generally been ascribed to Zel. To many of them it is impossible to put a printer’s name; and certain of them have been divided into groups known by the title of the commonest book in that group which has no edition in another group. For instance, we have a certain number of books printed by the printer of the Historia Sancti Albani; another printer is known as the printer of Dictys (perhaps Arnold ther Hoernen); another as the printer of Augustinus de Fide (perhaps Goiswin Gops), and so on. No doubt, in time, when the Cologne press has been more carefully studied, the identity of some of these printers will be discovered; but at present there are a great many difficulties waiting to be cleared away.

Arnold ther Hoernen, who began to print in or before 1470, was the pioneer of several improvements. The Sermo ad populum, printed in 1470, has a title-page, and the leaves numbered in the centre of the right-hand margin; very soon after he printed a book with headlines. He printed ‘infra sedecim domos,’ and used a small neat device, of which there are two varieties, always confused. John Koelhoff, a native of Lubeck, printed at Cologne from 1472 (?) to 1493, when he died. If the date of 1472 in his Expositio Decalogi of Nider be correct, he was the first printer who used ordinary printed signatures; but the date of the book is questioned. The shapes of the capital letters in Koelhoff’s types are very distinctive; and it is curious to notice that a fount unmistakably copied from them was used by a Venetian printer named John de Colonia. Nicholas Gotz of Sletzstat, who began printing about 1470, though we find no dated book of his before 1474, and who finished in 1480, used a device engraved upon copper in the ‘manière criblée,’ or dotted style. It consists of a coat-of-arms surmounted by a helmet and crest, with his motto, ‘Sola spes mea inte virginis gratia.’ In some books we find the motto printed in a different form—‘Spes mea sola in virginis gratia.’ In 1475 was issued the Sermo de presentacione beatissime virginis Marie, the only book known containing the name of Goiswinus Gops de Euskyrchen. In 1476, Peter Bergman de Olpe and Conrad Winters de Homborch began to print, and were followed in 1477 by Guldenschaff, and in 1479 by Henry Quentell, the last named being the most important printer at Cologne during the latter years of the fifteenth century.

Gunther Zainer was the first printer at Augsburg; and in March 1468 issued his first dated book, the Meditationes vite domini nostri Jesu Christi, by Bonaventure. Some of his undated books show signs from their workmanship of having been printed at a still earlier date. At first he used a small Gothic type, but in 1472 he published the Etymologiæ S. Isidori in a beautiful Roman letter, the first, with a date, used in Germany. His later books are printed in a large, thick, black letter, and have in many cases ornamental capitals and borders. He was connected in some way with the Monastery of the Chartreuse at Buxheim, and to their library he gave many of his books; and we learn from their archives that he died on the 13th April 1478. By 1472 we find two more printers settled in Augsburg, John Baemler and John Schussler. The first of these, before becoming a printer, had been a scribe and rubricator, and as such had sometimes signed his name to books. This has given rise to the idea that he printed them, and he is often quoted as the printer of a Bible in 1466. He worked from 1472 to 1495, printing a very large number of books. Schussler printed only for three years, from 1470 to 1473, issuing about eight books, printed in a curious small type, half-Gothic, half-Roman, and very like that used at Subiaco. About 1472-73, Melchior de Stanheim, head of the Monastery of SS. Ulric and Afra, purchased some presses and began to print with types, which seem to have been borrowed from other Augsburg printers, such as Zainer, Schussler, and Anthony Sorg. The latter started on his own account in 1475, and issued a very large number of books between that year and 1493.

The early Augsburg books are especially noted for their woodcuts, which, though not perhaps of much artistic merit, are very numerous and curious. Some very beautifully printed books were also produced about the end of the century by John Schœnsperger, who is celebrated as the printer of the Theurdanck of 1517.

In 1470, John Sensenschmidt and Henry Keppfer of Mainz, whom we have before spoken of as a servant of Gutenberg, began to print at Nuremberg. Their first book was the Codex egregius comestorii viciorum, and in the colophon the printer says: ‘Nuremburge anno, etc., LXXº patronarum formarumque concordia et proporcione impressus.’ These words are exactly copied from the colophon of the Catholicon, which is considered to have been printed by Gutenberg.

In 1472, Frederick Creusner and Anthony Koburger, the two most famous Nuremberg printers, both began to print. They seem to have been closely connected in business, and we sometimes find Creusner using Koburger’s type; for instance, the Poggius of 1475 by Creusner, and the Boethius of 1473 by Koburger, are in the same type. Most of the early Nuremberg types are readily distinguished by the capital N, in which the cross stroke slants the wrong way. Koburger was perhaps the most important printer and publisher of the fifteenth century. He is said to have employed twenty-four presses at Nuremberg, besides having books printed for him in other towns. About 1480 he issued a most interesting catalogue, of which there is a copy in the British Museum, containing the titles of twenty-two books, not all, however, printed by himself. In 1495 he printed also an advertisement of the Nuremberg Chronicles.[14]

[14] These early book catalogues supply a very great deal of curious information, and are very well worth careful study. An extremely good article by Wilhelm Meyer, containing reprints of twenty-two, was issued some years ago in the Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen; and since that time reprints of a few others have appeared in the same magazine.

Though Spire was not an important town in the history of printing, a book was printed there as early as 1471. This was the Postilla super Apocalypsin [Hain, 13,310]. It is a quarto, printed in a rude Roman type, but with a Gothic V. Two other works of Augustine and one of Huss (Gesta Christi) are known, printed in a larger type, but without date, place, or name of printer. It has usually been assumed, on what grounds is not stated, that these books were printed by Peter Drach; but as at present no book is known in this type with his name, it is perhaps wiser to assign them to an unknown printer. Peter Drach’s first dated book was issued in 1477, and the history of his press at this time is particularly interesting. The type in which his Vocabularius utriusque Juris of May 1477 is printed, is absolutely the same as that used in December of the same year for printing the Vocabularius ex quo, printed, according to its colophon, by Nicholas Bechtermuntze at Eltvil. On this subject it is best to quote Mr. Hessels’ own words, for to him this discovery is due:[15]—

[15] Gutenberg; Was he the Inventor of Printing? By J. H. Hessels. London, 1882. 8vo. P. 181.

‘I may here observe that Type 3 [that of Bechtermuntze in 1477] is exactly the same as that used by Peter Drach at Spire. When I received this Vocabulary [ex quo of 1477] from Munich, the only book I had seen of Drach was the Leonardi de Utino Sermones, published in 1479; and it occurred to me that Bechtermuncze had probably ceased to print about this time, and might have transferred his type to Drach. But this appears not to have been the case, as Drach published already, on the 18th May 1477, the Vocabularius Juris utriusque, printed with the very same type, and must therefore have been in possession of his type simultaneously with Bechtermuncze. The question therefore arises, Did Drach perhaps print the 1477 Vocabulary for Nicolaus Bechtermuncze?’

This question must, unfortunately, be left for the present where Mr. Hessels has left it, but it offers a most interesting point for further research.

From 1477, Peter Drach continued to print at any rate to the end of the fifteenth century; but it is perhaps possible that there were a father and son of the same name, whose various books have not been separated. The Omeliarum opus of 1482 [Hain, 8789] is spoken of as ‘factore Petro Drach juniore in inclita Spirensium urbe impressum.’ The only other interesting printers at Spire were the brothers John and Conrad Hijst, whose names are found in the preface to an edition of the Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, which they, printed about 1483. They used an ornamental Gothic type, generally confused with that belonging to Reyser of Eichstadt, and their unsigned books are almost always described by Hain and others as printed ‘typis Reyserianis.’

Only one printer is known to have been at Esslingen in the fifteenth century. This was Conrad Fyner, who began to print in 1472, and continued in the town till 1480. Though the first dated book is 1472, it is most probable that several of the undated books should be placed earlier. Fyner’s first small type is extremely like one used at Strasburg by Eggestein, if indeed it is not identical, and their books are constantly confused. In 1473, Fyner printed Gerson’s Collectorium super Magnificat, the first book containing printed musical notes; and in 1475, P. Niger contra perfidos Judeos, which contains the first specimen of Hebrew type. One book in Fyner’s type [Hain, *9335] is said to be printed by Johannes Hug de Goppingen. In 1481, Fyner moved to Urach, where he printed one book, and after that date he disappears.

At Lavingen only one book is known to have been printed in the fifteenth century. It is the Augustinus de consensu evangelistarum [Hain, *1981], issued on April 12, 1473. Madden conjectures from the appearance of the type and the capital letters that the book was printed by John Zainer of Ulm. Both type and capitals, however, are different, but their resemblance is quite natural considering the short distance between Ulm and Lavingen.

At an early period Ulm was very important as a centre for wood engraving, and several block-books are known to have been produced there. An edition of the Ars Moriendi is signed Ludwig ze Ulm, whom Dr. Hassler conjectures to have been Ludwig Hohenwang. The earliest printer that we find mentioned in a dated book is John Zainer of Reutlingen, no doubt a relation of Gunther Zainer the printer at Augsburg. He issued in 1473 a work by Boccaccio, De præclaris mulieribus, illustrated with a number of woodcuts, and having also woodcut initials and borders. He printed from this time to the end of the century, many of his books being ornamented. Another printer at Ulm to be noticed is Conrad Dinckmut, who printed from 1482 to 1496. He was probably a wood engraver, for he illustrated many of his books with woodcuts, and also produced a xylographic Donatus, of which there is an imperfect copy in the Bodleian.

In 1473, printing was introduced into Merseburg by Luke Brandis, who moved in 1475 to Lubeck. In 1475, also, Conrad Elyas began to print at Breslau, and by 1480 no fewer than twenty-three towns had printing presses. Between 1480 and 1490 the art was introduced into fifteen more towns, and between 1490 and 1501 into twelve. So that the total number of plates in Germany where printing was practised in the fifteenth century is fifty.

Basle was the first city of Switzerland into which printing was introduced, but it is hard to determine when this took place. The earliest printer was Berthold Rodt, or Ruppel of Hanau, who is supposed to be the same man as the Bertholdus of Hanau who figures in the lawsuit of 1455 as a servant of Gutenberg. It is not till 1473, in the colophon of the Repertorium Vocabulorum of Conrad de Mure, that we find either his name or a date; but many books are known printed in the same type. One of these, the Moralia in Job of St. Gregory, was printed in or before 1468, for one copy contains a manuscript note showing that it was bought in that year by Joseph de Vergers, an ecclesiastic of Mainz. About 1474, Berthold began to print a Bible, but finished only the first volume, dying, it is supposed, about that time. The second volume was printed by Bernard Richel, and is dated 1475. The most important printers of Basle were Wenssler, Amorbach, and Froben. About 1469, Helyas de Louffen, a canon of the Abbey of Beromunster, began to print, and in 1470 issued the Mammotrectus of Marchesinus, finished on the Vigil of St. Martin, the exact day and year in which Schœffer finished his edition of the same book. Bernard says that the two editions are certainly different, and could not have been copied one from the other, so that the similarity of date must be looked upon as a curious coincidence. This Mammotrectus is the first dated book issued in Switzerland, and is printed in the most remarkable Gothic type used anywhere in the fifteenth century. Many of the capital letters if found by themselves could not be read, and it is a type which once seen can never be forgotten. At the foot of each column in the book is a letter which looks like a signature, but which is put there for the purpose of a number to the column. Helyas de Louffen died in 1475, having printed about eight books, some in Gothic and some in Roman type.

Before the end of the fifteenth century printing presses were at work in five other towns of Switzerland: Geneva (1478), Promentour (1482), Lausanne (1493), Trogen (1497), and Sursee (1500).

CHAPTER IV.

ITALY.

Italian historians have several times attempted to bring forward Pamphilo Castaldi as the inventor of printing. It is little use to recapitulate here the various unsupported assertions on which this claim is based,—a claim which, if it ever had, has now ceased to have any sensible supporters.

We may safely assume, with our present knowledge, that the art of printing was introduced into Italy in 1465 by two Germans, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz. On their arrival in Italy they settled first in the Monastery of Saint Scholastica at Subiaco, an establishment of Benedictines, of which Cardinal Turrecremata was Abbot, where they would be in congenial society, since, as Cardinal Quirini says, many of the inmates were Germans.

The first book which they printed was a Donatus pro puerulis, of which they said in their list, printed in 1472, ‘unde imprimendi initium sumpsimus.’ Unfortunately, of this Donatus no copy is known, though rumours of a copy in a private collection in Italy have from time to time been circulated. The earliest book from their press of which copies are in existence, is the Cicero De Oratore, printed before 30th September 1465.[16] It has been always a moot point whether this Cicero De Oratore or the Mainz Ciceronis Officia et Paradoxa, printed in the same year, can justly claim to be the first printed Latin classic, while the claims of the De Officiis of Zel, which, though, undated, is very probably as early, have been entirely ignored.

[16] This book has usually been dated later than the Lactantius, that is, after 29th October 1465; but M. Fumagalli, in his Dei primi libri a stampa in Italia, Lugano, 1875, 8vo, describes a copy containing a manuscript note dated ‘Pridie Kal. Octobres, M.cccc.lxv.,’ so that the Cicero must be considered the first known book printed in Italy. On the other hand, it should be noticed that some authorities consider the inscription to be a forgery.

The Subiaco De Oratore is a large quarto of 109 leaves, with thirty lines to the page. Like the first German books, it is beautifully printed, and shows few signs of being an early production. Sweynheym and Pannartz must have learnt their business carefully, for this their first book is printed by half sheets, i.e. two pages at a time, though other printers were still printing their quartos page by page.

On the 29th October 1465 these printers issued their first dated book, the first edition of Lactantius De divinis institutionibus. Of this book 275 copies were printed. It is a small folio of 188 leaves, and thirty-six lines to the page, printed in a type which, though Roman, is very Gothic in appearance, and is sometimes called semi-Gothic. The smaller letters have a curious resemblance to those used by Zainer at Ulm and by Schussler at Augsburg in their earliest books, though the capital letters are quite different.

The fourth and last book printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Subiaco was an edition of the De civitate dei of Saint Augustine. This is a large folio, of 270 leaves, with two columns, and forty-four lines to the page. It was issued on the 12th June 1467; and though it contains no name of either printer or place, can be easily identified by the type. A copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale has an extremely interesting manuscript note, which tells us that Leonardus Dathus, ‘Episcopus Massanus,’ bought the book from the Germans themselves, living at Rome, who were producing innumerable books of that sort by means of printing, not writing, in November 1467, This note is valuable in two ways; it puts it beyond doubt who the printers of the book were, and it also enables us to determine more precisely the date when they left Subiaco. The Augustine was finished in June, and by November the printers were at Rome. As they issued a book in Rome in 1467, and would take some time to settle in their new establishment and prepare their new types, we may take it as probable that they left the Monastery of Subiaco as soon as possible after the printing of the Augustine.

About June, then, Sweynheym and Pannartz left the Monastery of Subiaco and transferred their printing materials to Rome, finding a home in a house belonging to the brothers Peter and Francis de Maximis. The semi-Gothic fount of type which had been used at Subiaco was discarded in favour of one more Roman in character, though heavily cut and not so graceful as the Venetian of the same period. A curious appearance is given to it by the invariable use of the long s. Their first venture was again a work of Cicero, the Epistolæ ad familiares, a large quarto of thirty-one lines to the page. It has the following colophon:—

‘Hoc Conradus opus Suueynheym ordine miro

Arnoldusque simul pannarts una aede colendi

Gente theotonica: romæ expediere sodales.

In domo Petri de Maximo. M.CCCC.LXVII.’

From this time forward, under the able supervision of the Bishop of Aleria, Sweynheym and Pannartz continued to print with the greatest industry, but they did not meet with the support which they merited. In 1472 they had become so badly off that a letter was written to Pope Sixtus IV. pointing out their distress, and asking for assistance. This letter, printed on one sheet, is usually found in the fifth volume of Nicholas de Lyra’s Commentary on the Bible, printed in 1472. Its great bibliographical interest lies in the fact that the printers gave a list of what they had printed and the number of copies they issued. In the list twenty-eight works are mentioned, and the number of volumes amounted altogether to 11,475. They usually issued 275 copies of each work which they printed.

This list also clearly shows the extraordinary influence of the new learning so actively promoted by Cosmo de Medici and encouraged by his grandson Lorenzo. The majority of the books in this list are classics, either in their original Latin or in Latin translations from the Greek; and that the printers were anxious to benefit scholars, is shown by the assertion of the Bishop of Aleria in the prefatory letter to the Ciceronis Epistolæ ad Atticum of 1470, where it is said that they had produced their editions of Cicero at the lowest possible price, “ad pauperum commoditatem.”

To judge from the results, the appeal to the Pope was of little effect, for in 1473 Conrad Sweynheym gave up the business of printing, and confined his attention to engraving on metal; while Pannartz continued to print by himself up till the end of 1476, issuing in those three years about twelve books. The last book on which Pannartz was engaged was a new edition of the Letters of St. Jerome, but he only finished one volume. Three years later, George Laver, who seems to have acquired the type, issued the second volume. It is therefore quite probable, as is generally asserted, that Pannartz died in 1476 or early in 1477. Sweynheym, ever since he had given up printing, had been engaged in engraving a series of maps to illustrate Ptolemy’s Geography; but, after working three years upon them, died before they were finished. The edition of Ptolemy was finally issued in 1478 by Arnold Buckinck, a German, who in his preface said that he was anxious ‘that the emendations of Calderinus—who also died before the book was printed—and the results of Sweynheym’s most ingenious mechanical contrivances might not be lost to the learned world.’

‘Magister vero Conradus Sweynheym, Germanus, a quo formandorum Romæ librorum ars primum profecta est, occasione hinc sumpta posteritati consulens animum primum ad hanc doctrinam capescendam applicuit. Subinde mathematicis adhibitis viris quemadmodum tabulis eneis imprimerentur edocuit, triennioque in hac cura consumpto diem obiit. In cujus vigilarum laborumque partem non inferiori ingenio ac studio Arnoldus Buckinck e Germania vir apprime eruditus ad imperfectum opus succedens, ne Domitii Conradique obitu eorum vigilæ emendationesque sine testimonio perirent neve virorum eruditorum censuram fugerent immensæ subtilitatis machinimenta, examussim ad unum perfecit.’

The book contains twenty-seven maps, each map being printed on two separate leaves facing each other, and printed only on one side. The letters which occur on the maps in the names of places are evidently punched from single dies, and not cut on the plate, as would have been expected. The letterpress of the book is not printed in any type used by Sweynheym or Pannartz, which shows that Buckinck was the absolute printer of the book.

Ulric Hahn, who contests with Sweynheym and Pannartz for the honour of having introduced printing into Rome, issued as his first book, in 1467, the Meditations of Cardinal Torquemada, better known perhaps as Turrecremata. It is illustrated with thirty-three woodcuts of inferior execution, and is printed in a large Gothic type. This type the printer discarded the following year for one of Roman letter; but odd types from the Gothic fount frequently make their appearance among the Roman, and serve as a means of distinguishing Hahn’s books from others in similar Roman type. As a case in point, we may mention the early and probably first edition of Catullus, wrongly ascribed to Andrea Belfortis of Ferrara and other printers. This book is in Hahn’s Roman type, and contains three capital letters from his Gothic fount;—a more sure means of identification than a fancied allusion to a printer’s name.[17] For a short time, from 1470 to 1472, Hahn’s books were edited by Campanus, a scholar of such fame and erudition, that the printer was able to rival Sweynheym and Pannartz, with their editor the Bishop of Aleria; but on Campanus taking his departure for Ratisbon, the prestige of Hahn’s press declined. From the pen of Campanus came perhaps the punning colophons which play upon the name of Hahn, in Latin, Gallus, meaning in English a cock. Upon the departure of Campanus, Hahn, took in partnership one Simon Nicolai Chardella of Lucca, who seems to have supplied the money as well as superintended the publishing, and they continued to work together till 1474. From this date till 1478, Hahn continued to work alone, ending in that year as he had begun, with an edition of the Meditationes of Torquemada. His former partner, Simon Nicolai, started a press on his own account, having as an associate his cousin.

[17] The edition of Catullus, mentioned above, is ascribed to Andrea Belfortis, because the words ‘cui Francia nomen’ occur in the prefatory verses; and the same words occur, referring to Belfortis, in a book printed by him. But the types of the Catullus and those used by Andrea Belfortis are certainly different, while both the types of the Catullus are found in other books printed by Hahn. The Catullus has also a Registrum Chartarum, which was almost invariably put to his books by Hahn.

The latest writer [18] on the early history of printing in Venice has again revived the question as to the correctness of the date of the Decor Puellarum. Though he still clings to the possibility of the date 1461 being trustworthy, the weight of evidence, all of which is carefully stated, is decisively in favour of its being a misprint for 1471.

[18] The Venetian Printing Press. By Horatio F. Brown. London, 1891. 4to.

It would be useless to recapitulate here all the arguments in favour of Jenson having printed in 1461, when it is now generally admitted that John of Spire was the first printer at Venice, and that his first book was the Epistolæ familiares of Cicero, issued in 1469. Of this book only one hundred copies were printed. On the 18th September 1469, the Collegio of Venice granted to John of Spire a monopoly of printing in that district for five years; and this document distinctly indicates that he was the first printer at Venice. He did not, however, live to obtain the advantage of this privilege, ‘nullius est vigoris quia obiit magister et auctor,’ says a contemporary marginal note to the record, for he died in 1470. Previous to his death he printed a Pliny, the first volume of a Livy, two editions of the Epistolæ ad familiares, and part of the Augustine De civitate dei, which was finished by his brother Windelin.

‘Subita sed morte peremptus

Non potuit cœptum Venetis finire volumen.’

Windelin of Spire was a very prolific printer, and continued to issue books without intermission from the time of his brother’s death, in 1470, to his own in 1478. But among the early Venetian printers the most important was certainly Nicholas Jenson. A Frenchman by birth, he passed his apprenticeship in the Paris Mint, and became afterwards the head of the Mint at Tours. In 1458, in consequence of the stories of the invention of printing, he was sent by Charles VII. to Mainz to learn the art, and introduce it into France. Jenson returned in 1461, when Louis XI. had just been crowned; but he does not seem to have settled in France, and we first hear of him again in 1470 as a printer at Venice. From 1470 to 1480 he printed continuously, issuing, according to Sardini, at least one hundred and fifty-five editions, though this number must be considerably under the mark. His will was drawn up on the 7th September 1480, and he died in the same month. The fame of Jenson rests on the extraordinary beauty of his Roman type, of which he had but one fount, and which, though frequently copied, was never equalled. In 1474 he began to use Gothic type, owing to its great saving of space; and in 1471, in the Epistolæ familiares, he used Greek type in the quotations, the first instance of its employment in Venice. It is curious that, with its devotion to the new learning, Venice should not have been the first to issue a Greek book. Jenson had frequently to use Greek type in his books, but he never printed a complete work in that language. Milan led the way, printing the Greek Grammar of Lascaris in 1476; and it was not till 1485 that Venice issued its first Greek book, the Erotemata of Chrysoloras.

In 1470, another German, Christopher Valdarfer of Ratisbon, began to print. He left Venice in 1473, and settled at Milan, and the books which he printed at the former-place are very rare and few in number. The best known is the Decameron of 1471, the first edition of the book, familiar to all readers of Dibdin.

In 1471 was issued the De medicinis universalibus, printed by Clemens Sacerdos (Clement of Padua), the first Italian printer in Venice; and in the year following, Philippus Petri,[19] the first native Venetian printer, began to print.

[19] This printer’s name seems to have led to a certain amount of confusion. He was Filippo the son of Piero, in Latin, Philippus Petri; but after his father’s death, about the end of 1477, he calls himself Philippus quondam Petri, Filippo son of the late Piero.

Between 1470 and 1480 at least fifty printers were at work in Venice, and among the most important were John de Colonia, John Manthen de Gerretzem, Erhard Ratdolt, Octavianus Scotus. Erhard Ratdolt is especially of importance, for he was practically the first to introduce wood engravings in his books. In 1476, Ratdolt and his partners, Peter Loeslein and Bernard Pictor, began their work together by issuing a Calendar of Regiomontanus, with a very beautiful title-page surrounded by a woodcut border. From that time onwards, woodcuts were used in many Venetian books; and at last, in 1499, there appeared there that unsurpassed illustrated book the Hypnerotomachia of Franciscus Columna.

The history of the later Venetian press during the last ten years of the fifteenth century would require at least a volume. So far as the history of typography itself is concerned, there is nothing of interest to be noticed; but in the general history of printing Venice holds the highest place; for more printers printed there than in any other city of Europe. Of course, amongst this endless outpour of the press many important books were issued, but there are few which have any interest for the historian of printing.

There is, however, one printer who must always make this period celebrated. Aldus Manutius was born at Bassiano in 1450, and began to print at Venice in 1494. His main idea when he commenced to work was to print Greek books; and it was perhaps for that reason that he settled in Venice, where so many manuscripts were preserved, and where so many Greeks resided. His first two books, both issued in 1494, are the Galeomyomachia and the De Herone et Leandro of Musæus. In 1496 he obtained a copyright for twenty years in such Greek books as he might print, and from this time forward a large number were issued as fast as possible. So great was the hurry, that the editors in some cases did not scruple to hand over to the compositors the original manuscripts themselves from which the edition was taken, with their own emendations and corrections scribbled upon them. But this custom was not confined to the Aldine press, for Martin[20] tells us that the Codex Ravennas of Aristophanes was actually used by the compositors as the working copy from which part of the Giunta edition of 1515 was set up.

[20] Martin, Les scholies du Manuscrit d’Aristophane à Ravenna.

In 1499, Aldus married the daughter of Andrea de Torresani, himself a great printer, and in 1500 founded the Aldine Academy, the home of so many editors, and the source of so many scholarly editions of the sixteenth century. The end of the fifteenth century saw, at any rate, two rivals in Greek printing to Aldus: Gabriel da Brasichella, who with his associates published in 1498 the Epistles of Phalaris and Æsop’s Fables; and, in 1499, Zaccharia Caliergi of Crete, who printed with others or alone up till 1509. Caliergi, it would appear, was hardly a rival of Aldus; they were, at any rate, so far friendly that Aldus sold Caliergi’s editions along with his own.

In 1476 a press was set up at Foligno, in the house of Emilianus de Orsinis, by John Numeister, a native of Mainz, who is generally said to have been an associate and pupil of Gutenberg. This story seems to be founded upon an assertion put forward by Fischer, that a copy of the Tractatus de celebratione missarum, in the University Library at Mainz, contains a rubric stating that the book was printed by Gutenberg and Numeister in 1463. If this note ever existed, which is very doubtful, it is clearly a forgery, for the book in which it is said to occur was not printed till about 1480.

The first book in which we find Numeister’s name is the De bello Italico contra Gothos, by Aretinus, printed in 1470; and about the same date he printed an edition of the Epistolæ familiares of Cicero. In 1472 appeared the first edition of Dante; between that year and 1479 we hear nothing of Numeister. In 1479 an edition of the Meditationes of Turrecremata appeared with his name, printed in a large church type, not unlike, though not, as is often said, the same as, the type of the forty-two line Bible, and containing very fine engraved cuts. This book is generally stated, for some unknown reason, to have been printed at Mainz. After this date we find no further mention of Numeister; but M. Claudin[21] has written a monograph to show that he was the printer of the edition of the Meditationes of Turrecremata issued at Albi in 1481, a book remarkable for its wonderful engravings on metal, and of the Missale Lugdunense, printed at Lyons in 1487, which is stated in the colophon to have been printed by ‘Magistrum Jo. alemanum de magontia impressorem.’

[21] Origine de l’Imprimerie à Albi et en Languedoc.

After 1470 the spread of printing in Italy was very rapid. In 1471 we find it beginning at Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Milan, Naples, Pavia, and Treviso.

The first complete edition of Ovid was produced in 1471, and is the first book printed at Bologna, the printer being Balthasar Azzoguidi, ‘primus in sua civitate artis impressoriæ inventor,’ as he calls himself in the preface to the book. Andrea Portilia must also have been amongst the earliest printers at Bologna, though his only dated book is 1473, for in that year he returned to Parma. Among the many printers who worked in the town, none are better known, from the frequency with which their names occur in colophons, than the various members of the family ‘de Benedictis,’ who worked from 1488 onwards.

Andreas Belfortis, a Frenchman, was the first to print at Ferrara, issuing in 1471 at least three books, of which the earliest, published in July, is an edition of Martial (which has catchwords to the quires in the latter portion). This was followed by editions of Poggio and Augustinus Dathus. Belfortis continued to print till 1493. A certain Augustinus Carner, who printed a few books between 1474 and 1476, printed in 1475 the rare Teseide of Boccaccio, the first printed poem in the Italian language. De Rossi, in his tract, De typographia Ebræo-Ferrariensi, gives a long description of some Hebrew books printed at Ferrara in 1477, which must be the first printed in that language, though some words are found in a book printed at Esslingen in 1475.

The first printer at Milan was Anthony Zarotus, and his earliest book, with both name and date, is the Virgil of 1472. In the previous year, four books had been issued without any printer’s name, but the identity of the type with that of the Virgil shows Zarotus to have printed these also. Mention has often been made of a certain Terence, printed in 1470, March 13. It is quoted by Hain (15,371), who had not seen it, and by Panzer (ii. 11. 2), and a copy was said to be in the library of the Earl of Pembroke, the home of many mysterious books. It is often quoted as the first book with signatures. It was doubtless a copy of the edition of March 13, 1481, in which some ingenious person had erased the last two figures, xi, of the date. It is very probable that there was at first some connection between Zarotus and Philip de Lavagna; and it was perhaps at the latter’s expense, and through his means, that Zarotus first printed. Certainly, in the colophon of a book printed in 1473, probably by Christopher Valdarfer, are the words ‘per Philippum de Lavagnia, hujus artis stampandi in hac urbe primum latorem atque inventorem;’ but it is quite possible that the words should not be taken in too narrow a sense, and that Philip de Lavagna simply means to speak of himself as the first person to introduce printing into Milan, not as printer, but as patron.

The history of the first printers in this town is very interesting, for they entered into various partnerships, and the documents relating to these have been preserved and published,[22] throwing a good deal of light on some of the customs and methods of the early printers. In 1476 was printed at Milan the Grammar of Constantine Lascaris, the first book printed in Greek; and in 1481, a Greek version of the Psalms, the first portion of the Bible printed in this language.

[22]Saxius, Bibliothecá scriptorum Mediolanensium. Milan, 1745. Fol.

At Florence, Bernard Cennini, the celebrated goldsmith and assistant of Ghiberti, printed, with the assistance of two of his sons, an edition of the Commentary of Servius on Virgil. It was begun towards the end of 1471, and not finished till October 1472, but is the first book printed at Florence. This is the only book known to have been printed by Cennini; but it is not unlikely that in his capacity of goldsmith he did work for other printers in cutting type. The most interesting press at Florence in the fifteenth century, was that founded in the Monastery of St. James of Ripoli by Dominic de Pistoia, the head of the establishment. Beginning with a Donatus, of which every copy has disappeared, it was carried on briskly up till the time of his death in 1484, issuing, according to Hain, just over fifty works; according to De Rossi, nearly one hundred. The account books connected with this press have been preserved, and from them we can learn the price of the various articles used by the printers, such as paper, ink, type-metal. Several kinds of paper are mentioned, and identified, as a rule, by their watermarks. We have paper from Fabriano with the mark of a crossbow, a different paper from the same place marked with a cross, and two sorts of paper from Pescia marked with spectacles and a glove. There are several celebrated books printed at Florence before 1500 which cannot be passed over. In 1477 was issued the Monte Santo di Dio, said to contain the first copperplate engraving; and in 1481, the celebrated Dante, with engravings by Baccio Baldini after the designs of Botticelli. Most copies of this book contain only a few of the plates, while about eight copies are known with the full number. Some celebrated Greek books also were issued at Florence, notably in 1488 the first edition of Homer printed by Demetrius Chalcondylas at the expense of two brothers, Bernardus and Nerius Nerlii. There is a copy of this book in the British Museum, which was bought by Mr. Barnard, librarian to George III., for seven shillings. One complete copy on vellum is known, in the library of St. Mark’s at Venice.

Towards the end of the fifteenth century, Francis de Alopa printed five Greek books entirely in capital letters, the Anthologia of 1494, Callimachus, Euripides (four plays only), Apollonius Rhodius, 1496, Poetae Gnomici, and Musæus. It is very probable that the ‘editio princeps’ of Lucian, which was printed at Florence, but is ascribed by Ebert to Caliergi at Venice, was also printed at this press.

Under the patronage of Ferdinand I., King of Naples, Sixtus Riessinger of Strasburg began to print there in 1471, and continued till 1479. He seems to have been in high favour with the king, who offered him a bishopric, which was, however, refused. In 1472, Arnaldus de Bruxella set up his press, using (unlike most other printers) Roman type only. The large M and small y are of a curious form and easily recognisable, while the final us in words is always represented by an abbreviation. Most of the books printed by him are rare; of the Horace and Petrarch, only single copies are known; and it was for the sake of acquiring these two books, so Dibdin tells us, that Lord Spencer bought the Cassano Library. Hain mentions seventeen books printed by this Arnaldus de Bruxella, and out of that number he had seen only one. Van der Meersch gives twenty-three; but some are doubtful.

Pavia is more celebrated for the number of books it produced than for their interest, and it is only mentioned here as one of the towns to which printing is said to have been introduced in 1471.

The last town to be mentioned in this group is Treviso, where, in 1471, that wandering printer Gerardus de Lisa began to print. In his first year he printed several books, but his industry gradually got less. In 1477 we find him at Venice, in 1480 at Cividad di Friuli (Civitas Austriæ), and in 1484 at Udina.

1472 saw printing established in Cremona, Mantua, Monreale, Padua, Parma, and Verona, and from this time onwards it spread rapidly over the whole of Italy, being introduced into seventy-one towns before the end of the fifteenth century. For the study of typography the Italian presses are not nearly so interesting as those of other countries, but from a literary point of view they are immeasurably superior. The Renaissance movement had been at work in Italy during the whole of the fifteenth century, and the great impetus given by the fall of Constantinople was acting most powerfully when the printing press was introduced. Italy was then the sole guardian of the ancient civilisation, and was prepared for a more rapid method of reproducing its early treasures and spreading the learning of its newer scholars.

CHAPTER V.

FRANCE.

A curious prelude has been discovered within the last few years to the history of the introduction of printing into France. L’Abbé Requin, searching through the archives of Avignon, brought to light a series of entries relating to printing, ‘ars scribendi artificialiter,’ as it is there called, dated as far back as the year 1444.[23]

[23] L’Imprimerie à Avignon en 1444. By L’Abbé Requin. Paris, 1890. Origines de Imprimerie en France (Avignon, 1444). By L’Abbé Requin. Paris, 1891. Les Origines de l’Imprimerie à Avignon. Par M. Duhamel. 1890.

The information obtained from the notarial books, fairly complete in its way, is as follows:—A certain silversmith, named Procopius Waldfoghel of Prague, was settled at Avignon by the beginning of 1444, and was working at printing, in conjunction with a student of the university, Manaudus Vitalis, whom he had supplied with printing materials.

In a notarial act of the 4th July of that year, the following materials are mentioned:—‘Duo abecedaria calibis et duas formas ferreas, unum instrumentum calibis vocatum vitis, quadraginta octo formas stangni necnon diversas alias formas ad artem scribendi pertinentes.’ Waldfoghel was evidently the maker of the materials and the teacher of the art, and he seems to have supplied his apprentices with such tools as would enable them to print for themselves.

In 1444, besides Manaudus Vitalis, Waldfoghel had as apprentices, Girardus Ferrose of Treves, Georgius de la Jardina, Arnaldus de Cosselhac, and a Jew named Davinus de Cadarossia.

From a document dated 10th March 1446, we learn that Waldfoghel, having two years previously taught the art of printing to the Jew, had promised to cut for him a set of twenty-seven Hebrew letters and to give him certain other materials. In return for this, the Jew was to teach him to dye in a particular way all kinds of textile material, and to keep secret all he learnt on the art of printing.

In another document, of 5th April 1446, relating to the partnership of Waldfoghel, Manaudus Vitalis, and Amaldus de Cosselhac, and the selling of his share to the remaining two by Vitalis, we have mention made of ‘nonnulla instrumenta sive artificia causa artificialiter scribendi, tam de ferro, de callibe, de cupro, de lethono, de plumbo, de stagna et de fuste.’

There seems to be no doubt that these various entries refer to printing with movable types; they cannot refer to xylographic printing, nor to stencilling. At the same time, there is no evidence to point to any particular kind of printing; and the various materials mentioned would rather make it appear that the Avignon invention was some method of stamping letters or words from cut type, than printing from cast type in a press. Until some specimen is found of this Avignon work, from which some definite knowledge can be obtained, the question must be left undecided, for it is useless to try to extract from words capable of various renderings any exact meaning. Our information at present is only sufficient to enable us to say that some kind of printing was being practised at Avignon as early as 1444. It seems, too, impossible that, had this invention been printing of the ordinary kind; nothing more should have come of the experiment; and we know of no printing in France before 1470.

Les neuf Preux, the only block-book executed in France, has been already noticed. It is considered to have been printed at Paris about 1455.

The first printing press was naturally started at Paris, the great centre of learning and culture, and it seems strange that so important an invention should not have been introduced earlier than 1470. Many specimens of the art had been seen, for Fust in 1466 and Schœffer in 1468 had visited the capital to sell their books. If we may believe the manuscript preserved in the library of the Arsenal, the French King, in October 1458, sent out Nicholas Jenson to learn the art; but he, ‘on his return to France, finding Charles VII. dead, set up his establishment elsewhere.’ Probably a strong antagonism to the new art would be shown by the immense number of professional copyists and scribes who gained their livelihood in connection with the university, though the demand for manuscripts continued in France for some time after the introduction of printing. Many of the wealthy, moreover, refused to recognise the innovation, and admitted no printed book into their libraries, so that the scribes were not at once deprived of employment. Many of these men who had been employed in producing manuscripts, soon turned to the new art as a means of employment, becoming themselves printers, or assisting in the production of books, as rubricators or illuminators.

In 1470, thanks to the exertions of Jean Heynlyn and Guillaume Fichet, both men of high position in the University of Paris, a printing press was set up in the precincts of the Sorbonne by three Germans, Martin Crantz, Ulrich Gering of Constance, and Michael Friburger of Colmar. The first book they issued was Gasparini Pergamensis Epistolarum Opus, a quarto of 118 leaves, with a prefatory letter to Heynlyn, which fixes the date of its production in 1470, and an interesting colophon—

‘Ut sol lumen, sic doctrinam fundis in orbem,

Musarum nutrix, regia Parisius.

Hinc prope divinam, tu, quam Germania novit,

Artem scribendi suscipe promerita.

Primos ecce libros quos hæc industria finxit

Francorum in terris, ædibus atque tuis.

Michael, Udalricus Martinusque magistri

Hos impresserunt ac facient alios.’

The classical taste of the patrons of the first press is strongly shown by its productions, for within the first three years a most important series of classical books had been published. Florus and Sallust (both first editions), Terence, Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics, Juvenal and Persius, Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, and Valerius Maximus, are amongst the books they issued.

In 1470-71 these printers finished thirteen books, while in the following year, before moving from the Sorbonne, they printed no less than seventeen. Some time towards the end of 1472 they left the Sorbonne and migrated to the Rue St. Jacques, where two other printers—Kaiser and Stoll—were already settled in partnership at the sign of the Green Ball (Intersignium viridis follis).

In 1472 was issued the Gasparini Orthographia. The copy of this book in the library at Basle contains a unique supplementary letter from Fichet to Robert Gaguin, in which is the following interesting statement about the invention of printing:—‘Report says that there (in Germany), not far from the city of Mainz (Ferunt enim illic, haud procul a civitate Maguncia), there was a certain John, whose surname was Gutenberg, who first of any thought out the art of printing ... by which art books are printed from metal letters.’[24]

[24] Mr. Hessels, in his Haarlem the Birthplace of Printing, not Mentz, attempts to weaken the value of this evidence, and translates ‘ferunt enim illic’ as ‘a rumour current in Germany,’—a striking example of ingenious mistranslation. ‘Illic’ is, of course, to be taken with what follows, and is further defined by ‘haud procul a civitate Maguncia.’

Between the two printing offices in the Rue St. Jacques a keen spirit of rivalry arose; and this was carried to such an extent, that no sooner was a book printed by one than another edition was issued by the other—a sign that the demand for such books must have been large. The earliest type used by these first printers is an exquisite Roman, the letters being more square than the best Roman type of Venice, and far surpassing it in beauty. Round brackets are used, and all the generally used stops are found. The first type of Kaiser and Stoll is also Roman, with neat and very distinctive capitals, and the small l has a short stroke coming out on the left side about half-way up, a peculiarity still retained in all the Roman type belonging to the ‘Imprimerie Nationale.’ The popular taste seems to have been for Gothic type, and very few printers made use of Roman before the year 1500.

PAGE OF FIRST PARIS BOOK.

About 1478, Gering’s two partners, Crantz and Friburger, left him; but he himself continued to print on for many years. About this date, too, the character of the books issued from the Paris presses began entirely to change. In 1477, Pasquier Bonhomme had issued the first French book printed in that city, the Grandes Chroniques de France, and from this time forward classical books were neglected, and nothing printed but romances and chronicles, service-books and grammars, and such books as were in popular demand. During the twelve or fourteen years after the first French book appeared, not one classical book a year was issued; and it was not till 1495, the year of Charles VIII.’s return from Italy, that the printing of classical books began to revive and increase.

In 1485, Antoine Verard, the most important figure in the early history of Parisian printing, begins his career with an edition of the Decameron. He was, however, more of a publisher than a printer, the majority of the books which contain his name having been printed for him by other printers. From his establishment came numberless editions of chronicles and romances, some copies of which were printed on vellum and illuminated. A very fine series of such books is now in the British Museum; these were originally bought by Henry VII., and formed part of the old Royal Library.

Among the more important printers who printed before 1490 should be mentioned Guy Marchant, Jean du Pré, Guillaume le Fèvre, Antoine Cayllaut, Pierre Levet, Pierre le Rouge, and Jean Higman. Levet is especially interesting, for the type which came into Caxton’s hands about 1490, and was used afterwards by Wynkyn de Worde in some of his earlier books, was either obtained from him or from the type-cutter who cut his type, for the two founts seem to be identical. Guy Marchant is celebrated as the printer of some curious editions of the Dance of Death.

After 1490 the number of printers and stationers increased rapidly. Panzer enumerates no fewer than eighty-five printers, and nearly 800 books executed during the fifteenth century; and there is no doubt that his estimate is considerably under the mark. The most important productions of the Parisian press at that time were service-books, of which enormous numbers were issued. The best known publisher of such works was Simon Vostre, who, with the assistance of the printer Philip Pigouchet, began to issue Books of Hours, printed on vellum, with exquisite borders and illustrations. These books began to be issued about 1488, and commence with an almanac for the years 1488 to 1508. In many cases the printers did not take the trouble to make new almanacs, but were content to copy the old; indeed, we find the same almanac in use ten years later. This has led to a great deal of confusion in the bibliography of the subject, for it is a common custom of librarians and cataloguers to ascribe the printing of a book of this class to the date which occurs first in the almanac, when there is no date given in the colophon. The most celebrated publishers of these books were Simon Vostre, Philippe Pigouchet, Antoine Verard, Thielman Kerver, Gilles Hardouyn, Guillaume Eustace, Guillaume Godard, and François Regnault. Vostre and Verard do not seem themselves to have printed, but were merely publishers, far the most important printer being Pigouchet. Of the nine or ten Books of Hours for the use of Sarum, printed abroad during the fifteenth century, Pigouchet probably printed half, and all but two were printed in Paris. In examining early foreign-printed English service-books, it is curious to notice that while nearly all the Horæ were printed at Paris, the majority of Breviaries were printed at Venice, and only two at Paris. No Horæ is known to have been printed at Venice.

The end of the century saw the commencement of the celebrated Ascensian press, the rival in some ways of the Aldine. The founder, Jodocus Badius Ascensius (Josse Bade of Asch), was a man of great learning, and was for a time professor of humanity at Lyons, and press-corrector to Trechsel, whose daughter he married. Trechsel died in 1498, and in 1499, at the invitation of Robert Gaguin, Badius came to Paris and established himself there as a teacher of Greek and a printer. It was not, however, till 1504 that the Ascensian press became important.

It is curious to notice that, in spite of the classical tastes of the first promoters of printing in Paris, and the enormous development of printing in that city towards the end of the fifteenth century, no Greek book was produced till 1507. Through the exertions of François Tissard of Amboise, who had studied Greek in Italy, and was anxious to introduce Greek learning into France, Gilles Gourmont set up a press provided with Greek types, and issued in 1507 a book entitled βίβλοϛ ἡ γνωμαγυρικήο, a small grammatical treatise, the first Greek book printed in France. From the same press, in the year following, came the first Hebrew book printed in France, a Hebrew grammar, written by Tissard. Greek printing, however, did not flourish; the supply of type was meagre and the demand for books small,[25] and it was not till 1528, in which year Sophocles, Aristophanes, Lucian, and Demosthenes were issued, that any signs of a revival were to be seen.

[25] Aleander in 1512, in the preface to his Lexicon Græco-Latinum, complained that the stock of Greek type was so meagre, that sometimes letters had to be left out here and there, and the work was often at a standstill for days.

Lyons was the second city in France to receive the art of printing, and it was introduced into that town by Guillaume le Roy of Liège soon after 1470. The first dated book, the Compendium of Innocent III., appeared in September 1473. From its colophon we learn that it was printed at the expense of Bartholomieu Buyer, a citizen of Lyons; and we know from other colophons that the press was set up in Buyer’s house. Bernard doubts whether Buyer was himself a printer, though he is certainly mentioned as such in several books, such as La légende dorée of 1476. Le miroir de vie humaine, and La légende des saintz of 1477, which are described in their colophons as ‘imprimés par Bartholomieu Buyer.’ His name is not found in any book after 1483, so that it is usually supposed that he died about that date. Le Roy continued to print alone for some years, but had ceased before 1493, in which year we know that he was still alive.