Part 4 (1/2)

[22] In the Cologne Chronicle. See _supra_, p. 34.

[23] Misprinted _spalmorum_.

[24] It seems reasonable to believe that Ulrich Zell, the first printer at Cologne, who was a clerk of the diocese of Mainz, and Sweynheym and Pannartz, who introduced printing into Italy, owed their training to Fust and Schoeffer.

CHAPTER V

OTHER INCUNABULA

In August, 1462, the struggle between its rival Archbishops led to Mainz being sacked. Very little more printing was done there until 1465, and we need not doubt the tradition that journeymen trained by Gutenberg and Fust and Schoeffer, finding no work for them at Mainz, carried such experience as they had gained to other towns and countries, where they appear, after a few years spent in manufacturing presses and types, in all the glory of ”prototypographers.”

But even before 1462 two other cities possessed the art--Bamberg and Stra.s.sburg. At Bamberg it was practised possibly by Gutenberg, who may have printed there the Thirty-six Line Bible about 1457, certainly by Albrecht Pfister, who is found in possession of the type of this Bible, and may himself have had copies for sale. The books he himself printed at Bamberg are nine in number,[25] and three or four bound volumes seem to have preserved all the remnants of them that we possess, and all of these have found their way to public libraries.

The large and stately folios produced by the early Stra.s.sburg printers have naturally resisted the ravages of time better than the Bamberg popular books. Certainly clumsier than the contemporary Mainz books, they yet have a dignity and character of their own which command respect. The first Stra.s.sburg printer, Johann Mentelin, was at work there in or before 1460, and was helped during his life and succeeded after his death (1477) by his son-in-law, Adolf Rusch, who never put his name to a book, and most of whose impressions pa.s.s under the name of ”the R-printer,” from the peculiar form of that letter found in one of his types. Mentelin himself did not place his name at the end of a book till he had been at work more than a dozen years; Heinrich Eggestein, who began work about 1464, was equally reticent, and throughout the 'seventies and 'eighties a large proportion of the books printed at Stra.s.sburg were anonymous. Heinrich k.n.o.blochtzer, who started about 1476, combines some of the charm of the earlier printers with greater literary interest and the attraction of ill.u.s.trations and ornamental capitals and borders. Of him we shall have to speak in a later chapter.

But after 1485 the bulk of Stra.s.sburg printing was dull and commercial.

In the fifteenth century Basel was not yet, as it became in 1501, a member of the Swiss Confederacy, and typographically its relations with Mainz, Stra.s.sburg, Nuremberg and other German towns were very close. In what year printing began there is not known. There is no dated book from a Basel press until as late as 1474, but the date of purchase, 1468, in a book (S. Gregory's _Moralia in Job_), printed by Berthold Ruppel, of Hanau, takes us back six years, and it is possible that Ruppel was at work even before this. He is identified with reasonable certainty with one of the servants of Gutenberg mentioned in connection with the lawsuit ended in 1455, and he printed Latin Bibles and other large works such as appealed to the ambition of the German prototypographers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VI. COLOGNE, ULRICH ZELL, 1465-66

CICERO. DE OFFICIIS (7^b)]

The second and more interesting Basel printer, Michael Wenssler, seems to have taken Schoeffer as his model, and reprinted many of Schoeffer's editions, following the wording of his colophons and investing them with the same glories of red ink. Whereas, however, from about 1476 Schoeffer's activity was much less conspicuous, Wenssler for the next ten years poured out edition after edition of all the heaviest legal and theological works, until he must have overstocked the market. Then he devoted himself almost exclusively to liturgical printing, but his affairs became hopelessly involved, and in 1491 he fled from his creditors at Basel, and became a wandering printer, finding commissions at Cluny and Macon, and then settling for a time at Lyon. Many of the early printers in Italy made this mistake of flooding the market with a single cla.s.s of book, but Wenssler is almost the only notable example in Germany of this lack of business instinct.

Travelling along the Rhine from Mainz in the opposite direction we come to Cologne, and here Ulrich Zell, like Berthold Ruppel, a native of Hanau, but who calls himself in his books a ”clerk of the diocese of Mainz,” enrolled his name on the register of the University in June, 1464, doubtless for the sake of the business privileges which the Senate had it in its power to confer. The first dated book from his press, S.

John Chrysostom, _Super psalmo quinquagesimo_ (Psalm li., according to our English reckoning), was issued in 1466, but before this appeared he had almost certainly produced an edition of the _De Officiis_ (see the frontispiece to this chapter, Plate VI), the most popular of Cicero's works in Germany, which Fust and Schoeffer had printed in 1465 and reprinted the next year. Avoiding the great folios on which the early printers of Mainz, Stra.s.sburg, and Basel staked their capital, Zell's main work was the multiplication of minor theological treatises likely to be of practical use to priests. Of these he issued countless editions in small quarto, along with a comparatively few small folios, in which, however, his skill as a printer is seen to better advantage. He continued in active work until 1494, gave, as we have seen (Chapter III.), his version of the origin of printing to the compiler of the Cologne Chronicle published in 1499, and was still alive as late as 1507.

Zell's earliest rival at Cologne was Arnold ther h.o.e.rnen, who printed from 1470 to 1482. He may very likely have been self-taught, for his early work is very uneven, but he developed into an excellent craftsman.

He is the first notable example of a printer getting into touch with a contemporary author, and regularly printing all his works, the author in this case being Werner Rolewinck, a Carthusian of Cologne, who wrote sermons and historical works, including the _Fasciculus Temporum_, an epitome of history, which found much favour all over Europe. Ther h.o.e.rnen used to be credited with the honour of having printed the first book with a t.i.tlepage, the _Sermo ad populum predicabilis In festo presentacionis Beatissime Marie semper virginis_ of 1470. Schoeffer, however, had preceded him by some seven years by devoting a separate page to the t.i.tle of each of his editions of a Bull of Pius II (see p.

93), and as neither printer continued the practice these isolated instances must be taken as accidental. In the same book, ther h.o.e.rnen for the first time placed printed numbers on the leaves, but this improvement also was not followed up. The third Cologne typographer, Johann Koelhoff the Elder, was the first (in 1472) to place printed ”signatures” on the quires of a book, so as to show the binder the order in which they were to be arranged. Hitherto the quires had been marked by hand, and this improvement was not suffered to drop for a time like the others, but quickly spread all over Europe.

At Augsburg Gunther Zainer completed his first book, an edition of the Latin Meditations on the Life of Christ taken from the works of S.

Bonaventura, on the 13th March, 1468. Though he followed this with three heavy books which had found favour at Mainz and Stra.s.sburg, Zainer had the wisdom to strike out a line for himself. Augsburg had long been the chief centre of the craftsmen who cut and printed the woodcuts of saints, for which there seems to have been a large sale in Germany, and also the pictures used for playing-cards. The cutters were at first inclined to regard the idea of book-ill.u.s.trations with suspicion, as likely to interfere with their existing business. It was decided, however, by the local Abbot of SS. Ulrich and Afra, an ecclesiastic with typographical tastes, that ill.u.s.trated books might be printed so long as members of the wood-cutters' guild were employed in making the blocks.

With this as a working agreement, ill.u.s.trated books greatly prospered at Augsburg, not only Gunther Zainer, but Johann Bamler and Anton Sorg (a very prolific printer), turning them out with much success throughout the 'seventies.

At Nuremberg printing was introduced in 1470 by Johan Sensenschmidt, who for a short time had as his partner Heinrich Kefer, of Mainz, another of Gutenberg's servants. Much more important, however, was the firm of Anton Koberger, who began work the next year, and speedily developed the largest business of any printer in Germany. Koberger was able to deal successfully in all the heavy books, which after 1480 other firms found it wiser to leave alone, and seems to have employed Adolf Rusch at Stra.s.sburg and perhaps other printers elsewhere, to print for him. He also printed towards the end of the century some very notable ill.u.s.trated books. Next to Koberger, Friedrich Creussner, who started in 1473, had the largest business in Nuremberg, and Georg Stuchs made himself a reputation as a missal printer, a special department from which Koberger held aloof.

At Speier, after two anonymous firms had worked in 1471 and 1472 without much success, Peter Drach (1477) developed an important business. At Ulm Johann Zainer, a kinsman of Gunther Zainer, of Augsburg, began in 1473 by printing ill.u.s.trated books, which were subsequently taken up in the 'eighties by Leonhard Holle, Conrad Dinckmut, and Johann Reger, while Zainer himself became a miscellaneous printer. At Lubeck Lucas Brandis produced a universal history called the _Rudimentum Nouitiorum_ in 1475 and a fine _Josephus_, important liturgical work being subsequently done by Bartholomaeus Ghotan, Matthaeus Brandiss and Stephan Arndes, similar work being also produced at Magdeburg partly by some of these Lubeck printers. Fine liturgical work was also done at Wurzburg by Georg Reyser, who may previously have printed anonymously at Speier, and who started his kinsman Michel in a similar business at Eichstatt. At Leipzig, where Marcus Brandis printed one or two books in 1481, and the following years, a sudden development took place about 1490, and a flood of small educational works was poured out by some half a dozen printers, of whom Conrad Kachelofen and Martin Landsberg were the most prolific.

Presses were also set up in numerous other places, so that by the end of the century at least fifty German cities, towns and villages had seen a printer at work. In many of these the art took no root, and in some the printer was only employed for a short time to print one or more books for a particular purpose. But the total output of incunabula in Germany was very large, and leaving out of count the fugitive single sheets, the scanty remnants of which can bear no relation to the thousands which must have been produced, out of about 25,000 different books and editions printed in the fifteenth century registered as extant at the time of writing probably nearly a third were produced in Germany. If, as is likely, a large proportion of the eleven thousand undescribed incunabula (among which, however, there must be many duplicates and triplicates) reported to have been discovered by the agents of the German Royal Commission for a General Catalogue of Incunabula are German, this rough estimate must be largely increased, and it may be proved that Germany was as prolific as Italy itself.

Considerable as was this output of German printing at home, it was probably nearly equalled by the work done by German printers in the other countries of Europe to which they hastened to carry the new art.

Turning first to Italian incunabula we find that the first book printed in Italy has perished utterly. The cruel little Latin grammar which pa.s.sed under the name of _Donatus_ had, as we have seen, been frequently printed in Holland and by the first Mainz printers, and there are several later instances of an edition of it being produced as soon as a press was set up, merely to show the printer's types. This was done by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, the two Germans who began printing at the monastery of Saint Scholastica at Subiaco, some forty miles from Rome, in 1465, or perhaps in the previous year. Being a school-book, the _Donatus_ was thumbed to pieces, so that no copy now survives, and it is only known from the printer's allusion to it as the book ”_unde imprimendi initium sumpsimus_” in a list of their publications drawn up in 1472. Of the three other books printed by them at Subiaco, Cicero's _De Oratore_ has no printed date, but a copy described by Signor Fumagalli bears a ma.n.u.script note dated Pridie Kal. Octobres M.cccclxv., i.e. 30 September, 1465, the authenticity of which has, however, been challenged, though probably without good reason. The two others both bear printed dates, the works of _Lactantius_, that of 29 October, 1465, and S. Augustine's _De Ciuitate Dei_, 12 June, 1467. Probably even before this last book was completed the printers were already moving some of their material to Rome, where they found shelter in the palace of Pietro de' Ma.s.simi, for their edition of the _Epistulae Familiares_ of Cicero was completed there in the same year, probably in or before November. Even so it is not certain that this was the first book printed at Rome, for Ulrich Han, a native of Vienna and citizen of Ingolstadt, whose later work, like that of Michael Wenssler at Basel, shows a tendency to imitate Schoeffer, completed an edition of the _Meditationes de vita Christi_ of Cardinal Turrecremata on the last day of the same year, and Mr. Proctor (after the publication of his _Index_) a.s.signed to Han's press and to an even earlier date than the _Meditationes_ a bulky edition of the Epistles of S. Jerome, which must certainly have taken a year to print.

The career of Sweynheym and Pannartz in partners.h.i.+p at Rome lasted but little over six years, their latest book bearing the date 31 December, 1473. Already in March, 1472, they were in difficulties, and printed a letter to Pope Sixtus IV begging for some pecuniary aid. They had printed, they said, no fewer than 11,475 volumes, and gave a list of the different books and of the numbers printed of each. Four of these editions were of 300 copies, the rest of 275, and we can see from the list that there had been three editions of the _Lactantius_ and _De Ciuitate Dei_ and two each of Cicero's _Epistulae Familiares_, _De Oratore_, and _Opera Philosophica_, and also of Virgil, so that clearly some of their books had shown a profit. But the list is entirely made up of Latin cla.s.sics, ”profane” and theological, and by March, 1472, printing had been introduced into at least ten other Italian cities (Venice, Foligno, Trevi, Ferrara, Milan, Florence, Treviso, Bologna, Naples, and Savigliano), and in most, if not all of these, the one idea of the first printers was to produce as many Latin cla.s.sics as possible, as though no other firm in Italy were doing the same thing. Unable to obtain help from the Pope, Sweynheym and Pannartz dissolved partners.h.i.+p, the former devoting himself to engraving maps for an edition of Ptolemy's _Geographia_, which he did not live to see (it was printed by Arnold Bucking in 1478), while Pannartz resumed business on a somewhat smaller scale on his own account, and died in 1476.

At Venice, the first printer, Johann of Speier, seems to have had some foreboding of what might happen, and thoughtfully protected himself against compet.i.tion by procuring from the Senate an exclusive privilege for printing at Venice during the s.p.a.ce of five years. This might seriously have r.e.t.a.r.ded the development of the press at Venice. Johann, however, after printing two editions of Cicero's _Epistulae ad familiares_ and Pliny's _Historia naturalis_ in 1469, was carried off by death while working on his fourth book, S. Augustine's _De Ciuitate Dei_, in 1470, and his brother Wendelin, or Vindelinus, who took over the business, had no privilege to protect him from compet.i.tion.

In 1470, the way thus being left clear, a Frenchman, Nicolas Jenson, set up the second press in Venice, and by the beauty of his fine Roman type speedily attained a reputation which has lasted to this day. Another fine printer, Christopher Valdarfer, produced his first book in the same year. In 1471 three other firms (an Italian priest, Clemente of Padua, and two Germans, Adam of Ammergau and Franz Renner of Heilbronn) began publis.h.i.+ng, and in 1472 yet seven more (three Germans and four Italians). But the pace was impossible, and by this time men were rapidly falling out. As we have seen, Sweynheym and Pannartz, after their ineffectual attempt to obtain a subsidy from the Pope, dissolved their partners.h.i.+p at Rome after 1473, and Ulrich Han in 1471 had taken a moneyed partner, with whose aid he weathered the storm. At Venice Wendelin, after producing thirty-one books in the previous two years, reduced his output to six in 1473, and soon after seems to have ceased to work for himself. Jenson's numbers sank from twenty-eight in 1471-2 to six in 1473-4. Valdarfer gave up after 1471, and is subsequently found at Milan. Other Venetian printers also dropped out, and only two new firms began work in 1473.