Part 3 (2/2)
The _Catholicon_ is printed in a small type, not very cleanly cut. It was issued without printer's name, but with a long colophon, which has been translated:
By the help of the Most High, at Whose will the tongues of infants become eloquent, and who oft-times reveals to the lowly that which He hides from the wise, this n.o.ble book Catholicon, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1460, in the bounteous city of Mainz of the renowned German nation, which the clemency of G.o.d has deigned with so lofty a light of genius and free gift to prefer and render ill.u.s.trious above all other nations of the earth, without help of reed, stilus, or pen, but by the wondrous agreement, proportion and harmony of punches and types has been printed and brought to an end.
Upon this follow four Latin verses in honour of the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary and the words ”Deo Gracias.” We can imagine an inventor who, despite his invention, remained profoundly unsuccessful, writing the opening words of this colophon, and it is not easy to see their appropriateness to any one else. It is thus highly probable that Gutenberg set up this book and refused to follow Fust and Schoeffer in their advertising ways. He may even have had a special reason for this, for among the forty-one copies registered (almost all in great libraries) two groups may be distinguished, one embracing the copies on vellum and the majority of the paper copies, the other the rest of the paper copies. The groups are distinguished by various differences, of which the most important is that in the one case the workmen used four and in the other two pins to keep the paper in its place while being printed. An attractive explanation of all this would be that while Gutenberg set up the book and was allowed to print for himself a certain number of copies, there was a richer partner in the enterprise whose pressmen pulled the greater part of the edition. But Dr. Zedler, who has brought together all the available information about the book in his monograph _Das Mainzer Catholicon_, has a different explanation.
In the same type as the _Catholicon_ are two small tracts of little interest, the _Summa de articulis fidei_ of Thomas Aquinas, and the _Dialogus_ of Matthaeus de Cracovia; also an Indulgence of Pope Pius II.
In 1467 the type is found in the hands of Heinrich Bechtermunze at Eltvil, who died while printing a vocabulary. This was completed by his brother Nicholas, who also printed three later editions of it.
During the years which precede 1457, Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, the one a goldsmith, the other a clerk in minor orders of the diocese of Mainz, are involved in the obscurity and uncertainty which surround Gutenberg's career. Reasons have been offered for believing that it was Schoeffer who designed the small neat types used in the Mainz Indulgences of 1454-5, and that he with his skill and Fust with his money pushed the Forty-two Line Bible to a successful completion. If they printed this, they no doubt printed also a liturgical psalter in the same type, of which a fragment is preserved at the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. But we do not touch firm ground until we come to the famous Psalter of 1457, the colophon of which leaves us in no doubt as to its typographical authors.h.i.+p. This runs:
Presens psalmorum[23] codex venustate capitalium decoratus Rubricationibusque sufficienter distinctus Adinuentione artificiosa imprimendi ac caracterizandi absque calami ulla exaracione sic effigiatus, Et ad eusebiam dei industrie est consummatus, Per Iohannem fust ciuem maguntinum, Et Petrum Schoffer de Gernszheim Anno domini Millesimo .cccc.lvij. In vigilia a.s.sumpcionis.
The present book of the Psalms, decorated with beautiful capitals and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus fas.h.i.+oned by an ingenious invention of printing and stamping without any ploughing of a pen, And to the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d has been diligently brought to completion by Johann Fust, a citizen of Mainz, and Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim, in the year of the Lord, 1457, on the vigil of the a.s.sumption.
Thus in the Psalter of 1457 we have the first example of a book informing us when and by whom it was manufactured; it also ill.u.s.trates in a very remarkable way the determination of the new partners to produce a volume which should fully rival the best shop-made ma.n.u.scripts. The effort to print rubrics had already been made in the Forty-two Line Bible, but the red printing was abandoned in that instance as too troublesome. Now it was revived with complete success, and with the printed rubrics came also printed capitals or initial letters in two colours, red and blue, and several different sizes. A good discussion of the manner in which these were printed will be found in the _Catalogue of the Ma.n.u.scripts and Printed Books exhibited at the Historical Music Loan Exhibition_ (1886) by Mr. W. H. J. Weale. In an article in the first volume of _Bibliographica_ Mr. Russell Martineau showed that part of the edition was printed twice. When Mr. Martineau wrote nine copies were known, all on vellum, viz. (i) five of an issue of 143 leaves containing the Psalms and Canticles only, these being at the British Museum, Royal Library Windsor, John Rylands Library, Bibliotheque Nationale Paris, and Royal Library Darmstadt; (ii) four of an issue of 175 leaves, containing also the Vigils of the Dead, these being at the Bibliotheque Nationale Paris, University Library Berlin, Royal Library Dresden, and Imperial Library Vienna. To these must now be added a copy of the larger issue, wanting five leaves, presented in 1465 by Rene d'Anjou to the Franciscans of La Baumette-les-Angiers and now in the munic.i.p.al library at Angers. The distribution of the Psalms in this 1457 edition is that of the general ”Roman use,” but blank s.p.a.ces were left for the insertion of the characteristic differences of the use of any particular diocese.
Two years later (29 August, 1459) Fust and Schoeffer produced another Psalter, in the same types and with the same capitals, with twenty-three instead of twenty lines to a page. This was stated in the colophon to have been printed ”ad laudem dei ac honorem sancti Jacobi,” and was thus apparently commissioned by the Benedictine monastery of S. James at Mainz. Its arrangement is that generally in use at the time in German monasteries. Thirteen copies of this edition are preserved, all on vellum, viz. four in England (British Museum, Bodleian, John Rylands Library, and the Earl of Leicester's library at Holkham), two at Paris, one at the Hague, five in Germany, and one in Mr. Morgan's collection at New York. This last was bought by Mr. Quaritch at the sale of the library of Sir John Thorold for 4950.
Between the production of these two Psalters Fust and Schoeffer printed in the same types on twelve leaves of vellum the Canon of the Ma.s.s only, obviously that it might be bought by churches which owned Missals otherwise in good condition, but with these much-fingered leaves badly worn. The unique copy of this edition of the Canon was discovered at the Bodleian Library in a Mainz Missal of 1493 and identified by Mr. Gordon Duff. It is described by Mr. Duff in his _Early Printed Books_, and by Dr. Falk and Herr Wallau in Part III of the Publications of the Gutenberg Gesellschaft, with facsimiles of ten pages.
In October, 1459, Fust and Schoeffer took an important step forward by printing in small type the _Rationale Diuinorum Officiorum_ of Gulielmus Duranti, a large work explaining the meaning of the various services of the Church and the ceremonies used in them. The text is printed in double columns with sixty-three lines in each column, and the type measures 91 mm. to twenty lines. A copy at Munich is printed partly on paper, partly on vellum. All the other forty-two copies described by Mr.
De Ricci are entirely on vellum. The book has also one large and two smaller capitals printed in two colours, and the first of these has been reproduced as a frontispiece to this chapter, together with a piece of the neat small type which, by demonstrating the possibility of cheap printing, set up a real landmark.
In 1460 Fust and Schoeffer gave another proof of their skill in their edition of the _Const.i.tutions_ of Pope Clement V with the commentary of Joannes Andreae. The text of the Const.i.tutions is printed in two columns in the centre of each page in a type measuring 118 mm. to twenty lines, with the commentary completely surrounding it in the 91 type used in the _Duranti_. Headings and colophon are printed in red, and the general effect is extremely rich and handsome. All the fourteen copies known to Mr. De Ricci are printed on vellum.
In 1461 printing was put to a new use by the publication of a series of eight placards (one in two editions) relative to the struggle between the rival archbishops of Mainz--a papal bull deposing Diether von Isenburg, the Emperor's confirmation of this, papal briefs as to the election of Adolf von Na.s.sau, a pet.i.tion of Diether's to the Pope, and the manifestos of the two archbishops. All these, and also a bull of the same year as to a crusade against the Turks, are printed in the neat 91 type, and though we may be struck by the difficulty of reading the long lines unrelieved by any headings, these publications must have been a great advertis.e.m.e.nt for the new art.
In 1462 the archiepiscopal struggle led to Mainz being sacked, but on 14 August there was completed there perhaps the finest of all the early Bibles, printed throughout in the 118 type, with headings in red and numerous two-line capitals and chapter-numbers in red and blue, though s.p.a.ces were left for others to be supplied by hand. Three different colophons to this book have been described, and examples of all of these are in the British Museum. Of the sixty-one extant copies registered by Mr. De Ricci at least thirty-six are printed on vellum. The Lamoignon copy bequeathed to the Museum by Mr. Cracherode has good painted capitals added by hand and is a singularly fine book.
The Bible of 1462 marks the close of the great period of printing at Mainz. Whether six, seven, or nine years separate it from the Forty-two Line Bible the time had been splendidly employed. The capacity of the new art had been demonstrated to the full, and taken as a group these early Fust and Schoeffer incunabula have never on their own lines been surpa.s.sed. The disaster of the sack of Mainz and perhaps the financial strain involved in the production of the Bible almost reduced their press to silence until 1465, and it was during these years that their workmen are said to have left them and begun carrying the art into other towns and countries.[24] When the partners resumed active work in 1465 they struck out a new line in their _De Officiis_ and _Paradoxa_ of Cicero, but attained no special excellence in such small folios and quartos. Fust died about this time, and Schoeffer, left to himself, displayed no further originality. The Bible of 1472, save for the absence of printed capitals, is a close copy of that of 1462. The Clementine Const.i.tutions of 1460 were reprinted, and similar editions were issued of the Inst.i.tutes and Codex of Justinian, Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, etc. For his miscellaneous books Schoeffer seems rather to have followed the lead of other printers at Stra.s.sburg and Rome than to have set new fas.h.i.+ons himself. In 1483 he printed a Breslau Missal, and this was followed by two reprints and editions for the use of Cracow, Meissen, Gnesen, and Mainz itself. He also printed the _Hortus Sanitatis_ in 1485, and in 1490 the first of several Psalters in the style of the editions of 1457 and 1459. In 1503 he was succeeded by his son Johann.
About 1476-80 a few unimportant books were issued at Mainz by an anonymous printer known as the ”Printer of the Darmstadt Prognostication,” from the fact that the first copy of the Prognostication in question to attract notice was that in the Darmstadt library. The books of this press attained undeserved notoriety from the forged dates inserted in many of them about 1800, in order to connect them with Gutenberg.
The work of three other printers, Johann Neumeister, Erhard Reuwich, and Jacob Meidenbach is chiefly important in the history of book-ill.u.s.tration, and will be found mentioned in Chapter VII. The only other Mainz printer in the fifteenth century was Peter von Friedberg, who is chiefly notable as having printed a little series of works by Johannes Trithemius (Tritheim or Trittenheim), the erudite Abbot of Spanheim.
After about 1472 Mainz was easily surpa.s.sed as a centre of printing by Stra.s.sburg, Cologne, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. But if no book had been printed there after the sack of the city ten years earlier, its fame as long as civilization lasts would still be imperishable.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Her maiden name was Elsa Wyrich, but she lived at the Hof zum Gutenberg at Mainz, and the name Gutenberg thus came into the family.
[19] It will be noted that this connection with Stra.s.sburg offers just a grain of evidence in favour of the _Donatuses_ having been printed there rather than at Mainz.
[20] According to the excellent _Catalogue raisonne des premieres impressions de Mayence_ of Mr. Seymour de Ricci, eleven copies on vellum and thirty on paper can now be located, but some of these have only one of the two volumes. The vellum copy belonging to Mr. Robert Hoe sold in 1911 for $50,000.
[21] In the verses by Magister Franciscus in the _Justinian_ of 1468, subsequently twice reprinted.
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