(4) On the same occasion Gutenberg had replied that Fust should
have furnished him with 800 guilders, wherewith to make his
“tools” (or apparatus; Germ. Geczuge), and he should be content
with this money, and might devote it to his own use. (5) Such tools
should be a pledge to Fust. (6) The latter should also give him
(lines 37 to 40) annually 300 guilders for maintenance and furnish
workmen’s wages, house-rent, parchment, paper, ink, &c. (7) If
they did not agree further, he should return Fust his 800 guilders,
and his tools should be free; but it was to be well understood that
he should finish “such work” (line 41) with the money which Fust
had lent him on his pledge, and he hoped that he had not been
bound to Fust to spend such 800 guilders on “the work of the books”
(line 41). (8) Fust had told him that he did not desire to take
interest from him; nor had these 800 guilders all, and at once,
come to him in accordance with the agreement. (9) Of the additional
800 guilders he wished to render Fust an account; hence he
allowed Fust no interest, nor usury, and hopes not to be legally
indebted to him.
We assume, though it is nowhere stated, that these clauses relate to the “printing of books,” to be executed by Gutenberg with the money which Fust advanced to him. But as he was already in debt at Strassburg since the 17th of November 1442 (and had to pay annually interest on this debt), and at Mainz since the 17th of October 1448 (also against interest), it is not surprising that when he contracted this fresh loan in 1450, at the high rate of 6%, he (by not giving any security except tools which he had still to make) practically admitted that he was penniless, and stipulated that Fust should give him also an annual sum for maintenance, and besides furnish workmen’s wages, house-rent, parchment, paper, ink, &c., in fact everything required for setting up a printing-office and keeping it going. Fust seems not to have complied with these demands, otherwise he would have mentioned them in his account and at the trial. But he advanced another 800 guilders in December 1452, barely two years after his first advance, merely to please Gutenberg, who had not been satisfied with the first 800.
It is argued that Gutenberg must have been able to show Fust some specimens of his work to induce him to lend him so much money, and we have seen above that German bibliographers attribute to him a poem on the “Weltgericht,” which they date c. 1443–1444, and the Paris Donatus which they date a little later, both printed, it is said, in the “first phase” of the “Gutenberg type,” but showing already some traces of wear and tear; and thirdly, an Astronomical Kalendar (a broadside of 4 leaves) which they ascribe to the end of 1447, and regard as a “masterpiece” printed in a new type, said to be a “development” or “second phase” of the Gutenberg type, which must have been used for several years afterwards, till a fresh or “third phase” was cast of it (for B36) with the alteration of some of the letters. But if Gutenberg had printed these three works in the years ascribed to them, however small they may be, he must be supposed to have had, from 1443 to 1448, types for printing them, and patrices and matrices for making his types, besides a press and various other tools for printing. Yet the notarial instrument of 1455, if it is genuine, reveals him as borrowing money, not so early as 1443, but so late as 1450, for “preparing his tools,” and as having, at the time, nothing to offer his creditor as security except the tools which he still had to make(!). But, says one theory, Gutenberg, intending to print a Bible, and finding the type in his possession too large for it, manufactured a smaller one with the aid of Fust’s money, while another theory would have it that he wanted to begin with the printing of a Missal, and for this purpose casted two types, one large and the other smaller. Difficulties, however, arose which induced him to use the smaller type for B42, which was finished about the beginning of 1453, and Dziatzko places the type of B36 also in the year 1453, while Schwenke assigns a life of nearly twenty years (1443–1462) to this type.
If, however, Gutenberg had cast all these types, and printed all these books, and sold them, straight from 1443 to 1450, and from 1450 straight on to, say, 1455, he could not have done this without Fust, his money-lender, becoming aware of it, especially as Fust, for his first advance of 800 guilders, was to have received, as security, the “tools” which Gutenberg had to make before he could begin to print. Yet in 1455, fully five years after Fust had entered into such close financial relations with Gutenberg, he claimed, in spite of what he must have known of Gutenberg’s supposed activity, the whole of the money which he had advanced, with interest and compound interest on it. And Gutenberg, instead of pleading on the first day of the trial that he had from 1450 to 1455 printed two large folio Bibles and a considerable number of other books, merely refers to the initial stages of his work, to “tools” to be prepared by him as a future pledge for Fust; he tells the judges that he had expected Fust to supply him with various necessaries for printing and his own existence, without saying whether Fust had complied with his demands or not, and finally declares that he had not felt called upon to devote the first 800 guilders to the “work of the books”; that he was ready to account for the second 800, but did not feel indebted to Fust either for interest or anything else, while, on the second day of the trial, he absented himself, and merely sent two of his workmen to hear what was going on (!). This does not look as if he had performed much from 1450 to 1455, but rather the reverse. Anyhow, if the Helmasperger instrument of November 1455 is not a fabrication, it shows that Gutenberg could not have begun to print before 1450; that in this year, 1450 (about August), when he borrowed money from Fust, he had no property such as a printing-office, presses, types, patrices, matrices, &c., which he must have possessed if he had been printing since 1443, to offer his creditor as security; had not a penny to maintain himself; besides being already in debt at Strassburg since 1442, and at Mainz since 1448.
The remainder of the instrument records the verdict given on the first day of the trial which decided (1) when Gutenberg shall have rendered his account of all receipts and disbursements paid out by him on the “work for the use [or profit] of them both” (1. 49), whatever less[1] money he then has received and taken in above it, that shall be reckoned in the 800 guilders; (2) but if the account should show that Gutenberg had paid out more for Fust than 800 guilders which had not come in their common good [or use] (line 60) Gutenberg shall return it to Fust; (3) and if Fust adduces by oath or by reasonable evidence that he has borrowed the above money on interest, and not lent it of his own money, then Gutenberg shall also pay such interest according to the tenor of the schedule.
The verdict is followed by Fust’s sworn declaration regarding the amount of his claim, which he had been ordered to make in Gutenberg’s presence, but which he now made in his absence, declaring (4) that he had taken up 1550 guilders which Gutenberg had received and which also had gone on “our common work” (line 60); (5) that he had annually given interest and loss, part of which he still owed; six guilders for every 100 guilders which he had thus taken up; (6) of all that Gutenberg had received of this borrowed money, which has not gone on the “work” of them both, which is found in the account, he claimed from him the interest in accordance with the verdict.
Gutenberg appears not to have produced the account which he was expected (clause 1) to render, as Fust’s allusion to an account (in clause 6) must refer to his own account. Hence we know not whether he made any “disbursements.” The “receipts” seem to mean nothing more than the instalments of the first 800 guilders which he acknowledged to have received from Fust, though some authors think that allusion is made to things (printed books or broadsides?) from which he might have received money by sale or otherwise.
It is to be noticed that Fust speaks here (for the sake of accuracy?) of having taken up 1550 not 1600 guilders, as in his first account. On the whole the wording of the verdict and the sworn declaration is obscure, and open to different interpretations, but it is impossible to ascribe to Gutenberg, on the strength of this document, the manufacture of the types and the printing of all the books in column A above, especially when we have regard to his own inexplicable silence at the trial, when it was incumbent on him for his own sake to show what he had done with Fust’s money, and still more when we have regard to the pecuniary difficulties in which he had been placed at least eight years before he contracted these heavy new loans with Fust. Within the space of two years after the trial he was bankrupt, unable to pay either his loans or the small interest thereon, and might have ended his days in prison if the Strassburg St Thomas Stift had been able to have him arrested.
Certain circumstances point to Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg as the printer of the numbers vii., viii., ix., xviii. and perhaps those that come between them in column A. Even in former years when the church type of the Indulgence31 (1454) was believed to be identical with that of B36, it was the general opinion that, though Pfister could not have printed the indulgence, he had acquired its church type from Gutenberg for printing B36. Now that a closer examination has shown that the type of B36 need not be dated so early as 1454, the known dates of Pfister (1461, 1462) harmonize with the approximate date (1460) of B36. It is admitted that the types of vii., viii. and ix. differ from that
- ↑ The instrument says: “was er dan men gelts dar uber enpfangen . . . hait.” Senckenberg, Köhler, Van der Linde, &c., printed nun for the correct reading men. This latter word has hitherto been interpreted as meaning more (see Dziatzko, Gutenbergfrage, p. 34, note 1; Schorbach, in Festschr. of 1900, p. 259). Zedler (Gutenbergforschungen, p. 65, note) thinks that it is a dialectic by-form of the Mid. H. German mein found in mein-kouf, mein-rât, mein-swern, mein-tât, and still preserved in the Mod. H. German Meineid; he translates it therefore as “widerrechtlich” (unlawfully). But men is the same as the Mid. Dutch min (see Verdam’s Middel-Nederl, Woordenb, in voce)＝New Netherl. minder, and means less, the only meaning which can give sense to this clause.
