Nor is his evidence for saying that B36 is a reprint of B42 conclusive. The types of B36 and B42 may be ascribed to Germany, but as both are used for the printing of a Bible and editions of Donatus, it is improbable that the printer of B42 and one set of Donatuses should manufacture, about the same time, another type for another Bible and another set of Donatuses. We have shown above that B42 must, on bibliographical grounds, be ascribed to Peter Schoeffer at Mainz, and as he used its type for a book which actually bears his name, all the other books in the same type must be ascribed to him. It follows that B36 and every other book in column A must be assigned to some other printer or printers.
Type v. is a Church type and resembles those of B36 and B42, but it can have nothing to do with Gutenberg or the invention of printing, as it is not earlier than 1480–1490. Types vi. and vii., which are nothing but imitations of the written Psalters of the time, are employed for a work, the colophon of which distinctly mentions Fust and Schoeffer as the printers; hence they cannot be claimed for Gutenberg. Of the Catholicon type we speak below. Therefore the books numbered i. to xxi. in column A of the above list are the only ones about which there can be any doubt or discussion.
Here we encounter another peculiarity of the above-mentioned “system,” which treats the three different types detected in these twenty-one works not as different, but as “phases” or “developments” of one and the same type, while the differences between them, and the absence or presence of certain forms of letters, are taken as guides for approximately dating the books, and for subdividing the type, hitherto known as the 36-line Bible or Gutenberg type, into three or more varieties. For instance, Schwenke (Centralbl., 1908, p. 74) explains that “the types b, c, i, s, t enable us to distinguish the earliest from the later elements in the Donatus type; the ‘Weltgericht’ shows, at least of i and s, the old forms still unmixed. But in the Paris Donatus, the new forms appear by the side of the old forms, though the latter are already to a great extent superseded. The new (Heiligenstadt) Donatus comes between these two works; it has chiefly the old b, which begins to a great extent to be absent in the Paris Donatus.”
As we cannot regard types which differ in form as “developments” of one type, we must deal with three types in column A, that is (1) the so-called Donatus type; (2) the Kalendar type; (3) the 36-line Bible type, besides the two employed for the Indulgence31. Gutenberg’s career, and the straightened circumstances in which he appears to have lived, so far as they are known to us, make it difficult to ascribe them all to him.
More than thirty documents have come to light which enable us to trace Johan Gutenberg from 1420 to 1468. Dr Carl Schorbach has published nearly all their texts, with elaborate explanations, in the Festschrift zum 500 jähr. Geburtstage von J. Gutenberg (suppl. to Centralbl. f. Biblioth., 1900, p. 163 sqq.), and they are further explained by Hessels (Gutenberg, was he the Inventor of Printing? 1886; idem, The so-called Gutenberg Documents, 1911).
At least six of them are known to be forgeries, among them the “relics” of a printing-press with the date “1441” which were accidentally(!) discovered in 1856 in the “Hof zum Jungen” which had always been supposed to have been Gutenberg’s first printing office at Mainz, but which we now know not to have been the case. Assuming that the Gutenberg mentioned in the remaining documents is no other than Henne (＝Hans or Johan) Gensfleisch—called Gutenberg from his mother (whose maiden name was Elsa Wyrich) having lived in the “Hof zum Gutenberg” at Mainz, where he is supposed to have been born about 1400—he appears to have lived at Strassburg from 1436 (?) till the 12th of March 1444, in easy and somewhat luxurious circumstances, at least during the first three years, as he was then paying duties for large quantities of wine (about 1924 liter). But this prosperity docs not seem to have continued, for on the 17th of November 1442 he borrowed 80 pounds Strassburg denarii (＝about 4800 marks) from the Strassburg St Thomas Chapter, a Strassburg citizen, Martin Brechter, being his surety. From the 12th of March 1444 till the 17th of October 1448 there is no trace of him, but on the latter day he again borrowed, this time at Mainz, 150 gold guilders. Both these loans he never redeemed, nor is it known whether he ever paid any interest on his Mainz loan. But the account books of the Thomas Chapter, still preserved in the Strassburg Public Archives, show that the interest of 4 pounds per annum on his loan of 1442 was regularly paid, by him or his surety, till 1457. The interest due in the latter year was also paid, but difficulties appear to have occurred before the Chapter received it, as there is an item in their account book for 1457–1458 of two shillings for expenses, incurred by them for arresting Gutenberg and his surety. In and after 1458 no further payments were made; the Chapter had recourse to law, and made various efforts to arrest the defaulters, but in vain; and in 1474, six years after Gutenberg’s death, the debt is no longer recorded in the Chapter’s accounts. He can be traced at Mainz from 1450 (when he borrowed money from Fust) till the 21st of June 1457, when he is a witness at the conveyance of property in Bodenheim near Mainz. After this date we hear no more of him until the 17th of January 1465, when the archbishop of Mainz appointed him as his servant and courtier for life on account of the “grateful and willing service which he had rendered to himself and to his Stift, and will and may render in future.” The nature of this “service” is not stated. It has always been supposed that he was then residing at Eltville, the residence of the archbishop, and that he died there about or before the 26th of February 1468, on which day Dr Kunr. Humery received from the archbisiliop some “printing apparatus which belonged to him, and which he had lent to Gutenberg.” But recent researches seem to have shown that Gutenberg remained at Mainz till his death, and was buried there.
Apart from the six forgeries, about which there is no dispute, Bockenheimer, a Mainz magistrate, explains (Gutenberg-Feier, Mainz, 1900) as forgeries also (1) the document of the 14th of March 1434, which represents Gutenberg as having at Strassburg arrested and released the secretary of Mainz for a debt which this city owed him; (2) a document of 1437 recording a breach of promise case between Gutenberg and a Strassburg lady; (3) the records of a Strassburg lawsuit between Gutenberg and some Strassburg citizens in 1439; (4) the Helmasperger notarial instrument of the 6th of November 1455, recording a lawsuit of Joh. Fust against Joh. Gutenberg.
The last two, and a third dated the 26th of February 1468, mentioned above, are the only documents that can be said to connect Gutenberg with the art of printing. Various external and internal circumstances throw serious doubts on the genuineness of the 1439 documents; but suppose they were genuine, they only show that Gutenberg had been engaged, with other Strassburg citizens, in “polishing stones” and “manufacturing looking-glasses,” and promised to give instruction in “new arts.” A “press,” however, is mentioned, and a clause reports that one of Gutenberg’s witnesses, Hans Dünne, a goldsmith, had testified that he had earned nearly 100 guilders from Gutenberg, “merely for that which belonged to printing” (alleine das zu dem trucken gehöret). The document contains nothing to connect Gutenberg with the art of printing, except this line, which has clearly been added (as an afterthought) by a different hand from the one that wrote the two first lines of this witness’s testimony, a circumstance which makes the whole document more than suspicious. Several theories, however, as to Gutenberg printing at Strassburg in or before 1439 have been built upon this document, and German bibliographers are even now expressing their hope of finding some day evidence of Gutenberg having printed Donatuses and other works in that town.
As to the notarial instrument of 1455, Bockenheimer suggests that as it contains absurdities which are contradictory to all the legal usages of the time, it may be a forgery of the Faust family, perhaps of Joh. Fr. Faust von Aschaffenburg (who pretended to descend from Joh. Fust, whom he called “Faust”), who appears to have possessed, in or about 1600, an “original” of the instrument. From this “original” are derived all the texts published before 1741. In that year, however, J. D. Köhler (Ehren-Rettung Joh. Guttenberg’s, Leipzig) printed the text again from an “original” which is now in the Göttingen University Library (republished by Dziatzko, Beiträge, Berlin, 1889), and is perhaps identical with Faust von Aschaffenburg’s “original.” Though an analysis of the text brings out various incongruities as to the business relations between Fust and Gutenberg, it is difficult to look upon the Göttingen document as a forgery, and we deal with it here as genuine.
It is dated the 6th of November 1455, and records some of the proceedings in the lawsuit between Johan Fust (q.v.) and Gutenberg, which had taken place on that day in the convent of the Barefooted Friars at Mainz, whereby the former sought to recover from Gutenberg 2026 guilders in repayment of 1600 guilders which he had advanced to him (800 about August 1450, and another 800 about December 1452), with the interest thereon. The document first relates that, on some previous day (not stated), Fust had testified (1) that by a written agreement between them, Gutenberg was to “finish the work” (line 24) with the 800 guilders to be advanced to him at 6%; Fust being unconcerned whether it cost more or less. (2) Gutenberg had not been content with these 800 guilders, and Fust, wishing to please him, advanced him another 800 guilders at 6%. (3) He had himself borrowed this money, and as Gutenberg had never paid any interest, the principal sum and the interest thereon amounted to 2026 guilders (＝between
15,000 and 16,000 marks), which he now demanded from him.