of B36 in the form of certain capitals. But Pfister issued on the 14th of February 1401 at Bamberg, with the B36 type, an edition of Boner's Edelstein (88 leaves fol., with wood-engravings), and at least eight other works (Hessels, Gutenberg, p. 161, seq.), one of which bears the date 1462, the seven others none.
Most of the copies of the 36-line Bible now known to us were at one time or another preserved in the libraries of Bavaria, and several fragments have been found in monasteries of that country, even in a register of the year 1460 of the abbey of St Michael at Bamberg. Moreover, a transfer or sale of type from Gutenberg to Pfister is contrary to all analogy in the infancy of printing, when every printer started with a type of his own making.
It is alleged that, in consequence of the lawsuit between Gutenberg and Fust, the former was deprived of all tools, &c., The Catholicon Type. which he had made, or is supposed to have made, with the latter's money, and that afterwards a certain Dr Homery or Humery, a syndic of Mainz, lent him fresh money to enable him to set up another printing office.
This allegation is made on the strength of a letter of obligation (dated Feb. 26, 1468) referred to above, and given by Dr Homery to Adolph, the archbishop of Mainz, by which he acknowledges to have received from the said archbishop “several forms, letters, instruments, implements and other things belonging to the work of printing, which Johan Gutenberg had left after his death, and which had belonged and still did belong to him (Dr Homery).” It is to be observed that Homery, though willing to assist or oblige Gutenberg, had been cautious enough to reserve to himself all rights to this printing apparatus, in somewhat the same way as Fust in 1450 demanded, or was promised, to receive Gutenberg's “tools” as pledge for his advances. The Homery apparatus could hardly have been of large dimensions, seeing that it was readily passed on first from him to Gutenberg, then from the latter to the archbishop and returned again to its owner. But it is presumed that with these types, which appear in the above list as type VIII., Gutenberg had printed (1) Joannis de Balbis, Catholicon of 1460, copies of which exist in the Cambridge University Library, three in the British Museum, two in the Paris Library, in the Spencer collection of the Rylands Library, in the Wolfenbüttel and Mainz libraries, &c.; (2) Matthaeus de Cracovia, Tractatus rationis, 22 leaves, of 30 lines, 4to, three copies of which are in the British Museum, one in the Rylands, one in the Cambridge, two in the Paris Library, &c.; (3 and 4), two editions of Thomas Aquinas, Summa de articulis fidei, in 4to., the first of 13 leaves and 34 lines (two copies of which are in the British Museum, one in the Rylands and one in the Cambridge, Library, &c.); the second of 12 leaves and 36 lines (copies in the British Museum and the Paris Library); and (5) an indulgence of 1461 of 15 lines.
We have seen above that on the 17th of January 1465 Adolph II., archbishop of Mainz, had appointed “Johan Gudenberg, his servant and courtier.” It has always been inferred from this that Gutenberg had quitted Mainz and gone to Eltville (Elfeld) to reside at the archbishop's court, and that, his dignity as courtier preventing him from printing himself, he passed the Catholicon types on to Henry Bechtermuncze at Eltville. It seems certain that in 1467 the Catholicon type with some additions (already found in the indulgence of 1461) was at Eltville near Mainz, in the hands of Henry and Nicholas Bechtermuncze and Wigandus Spyes de Orthenberg, who issued on the 4th of November of that year (vi.) Vocabularius ex quo (a Latin-German vocabulary) in 4to, 166 leaves, 35 lines, the only known copy of which is in the Paris Library, and (vii.) Vocabularius ex quo, 2nd edition, with colophon dated the 5th of June 1469, 4to, 165 leaves, 35 lines, copies of which exist in the Rylands, the Blenheim, and the Paris libraries. It is therefore asked how the Bechtermunczes could have been using the Catholicon type in 1467, if we assume that it was this type to which Homery refers in his letter of obligation as being in his possession. Some, therefore, conclude that the Catholicon and the four other works in the same type were printed at Mainz by Henry Bechtermuncze, who may afterwards have transferred his printing office to Eltville. In that case it is difficult to see what type Homery could refer to, unless it were type II, a close imitation of which, if not the actual type, was used by Nicholas Bechtermuncze at Eltville in printing (March 12, 1472) a 3rd edition of the Vocabularius ex quo, 166 leaves, 35 lines, copies of which are preserved in the Paris and Hamburg libraries, and an edition of Thomas Aquinas, Summa de articulis fidei, 12 leaves, 35 lines (Munich Library).
It would seem, however, that Fust and Schoeffer were the printers and publishers of the Cotholicon, and the other three works mentioned above, as the latter advertised them for sale in a list which he printed and circulated in 1469-1470 (see Konr. Burger, Buchhändleranzeigen des 15 Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1907, No. 3). Schoeffer may of course have purchased the stock of these books from Gutenberg or acquired it after his death from Homery, but as nothing compels us to attribute the printing of these books to Gutenberg, there is still less reason to deny that Fust and Schoeffer printed them, as the much discussed colophon of the Catholicon is found, almost verbatim, in three books published by them in 1465 and 1467. Hence the numbers i. to vi. are the only ones that could be ascribed to Gutenberg.
Even this number, involving the manufacture of four different types (apart from the alterations in the forms of certain letters which involved the making of new patrices and matrices) would be large for a man who, after having lived in luxury for some years, practically subsisted from 1442 to 1455 on money which he borrowed from various parties and never repaid. But the poem on the “Weltgericht,” printed on paper, could scarcely be placed at the head of a list which includes and, but for this poem, begins with vellum printed works. Moreover, as it can hardly be regarded as a specimen of primitive printing, it takes a more natural place by the side of the paper-printed Turkkalendar, Cisianus and Conjunctiones, which all show that printing on paper was beginning to supersede that on vellum. It is asserted that its type is the same as that of the 1451 Donatus, but this is doubtful.
That the Astronomical Kalendar calculates the ephemerides for 1448 is no evidence of its having been printed at the end of 1447, as calendars of this kind seem to have been printed without any regard to time and circumstances. Some years ago the Cisianus was ascribed to Gutenberg and to the year 1444, because some of the saints and movable feasts mentioned in it were thought to relate to that year. But as the same saints and feasts occur in the same way in Cisianus editions printed long after 1500, this notion was abandoned. The Astronomical Kalendar in question lays down rules for blood-letting at certain times of the year, and was evidently intended to be hung up in houses as guides for this purpose. It is admitted that it contains mistakes if we apply its calculations to 1448, and it has not yet been proved that these rules required a special kalendar for each year in particular. Removing, therefore, Nos. ii. and vi. to somewhat later dates in the list, the Donatus No. iii. and that of 1451 (No. iv.) with another edition (No. v.) of the same school-book remain at the head of the column A, together with the Indulgence31, as the only works that could be ascribed to Gutenberg. They bring us down to the time (c. 1451) when he, according to the Helmasperger document, may be supposed to have been in a position to exercise the new art of printing.
It is necessary to point out that eight books—(1), Prognostication or Calendar; (2) Hermann de Saldis, Speculum sacerdotum; (3) Tractatus de celebration missarum; (4) a work in German treating of the necessity of councils; (5) Dialogus inter Hugonem Cathonem et Oliverium super libertate ecclesiastica; (6) Sifridus de Arena, Determinatio duarum quaestionum; (7) idem, Responsio ad quatuor quaestiones; (8) Klagspiegel, or New geteutscht Rechtbuch—have been ascribed to Gutenberg on the strength (a) of the date 1460, which was said to be found in a Prognostication in the Darmstadt library, and (b) of a so-called rubrication alleged to be in a copy of the Tractatus de celebration missarum, in which “Johannes dictus a bono monte” and Johannes Numeister are represented as offering this work on the 19th of June 1463 to the Carthusians at Mainz. But the date in the Prognostication has been falsified from 1482 into 1460, and the rubrication in the Tractatus is a forgery (Hessels, Gutenberg, pp. 107-114). The eight books are now considered to have been printed by Erhard Reuwich.
Apart from these disputed points there is no further difficulty as regards the history of Mainz printing. Fust and Schoeffer worked together from 1457 to 1466, starting in August 1457 with an edition of the Psalterium, printed in large missal types, which, as far as we know, is the first printed book which bears a date, besides the place where it was printed and the name of the printers. It was reprinted with the same types in 1459 (the second printed book with date, place and name of printer), in 1490, and in 1502 (the last work of Schoeffer, who had manufactured its types). In 1459 Fust and Schoeffer also published Gul. Durantus, Rationale divinorum officiorum, with the small type (usually called Durandus type) with which they continued to print long afterwards. In 1460 they published the Constitutiones of Pope Clement V., the text printed in a type (Clement type) about a third larger than the Durandus. This type was, however, in existence in 1459, as the colophon of the Durandus is printed with it.[1]
The Invention Controversy.—Now that we have traced the art of printing from the moment (1454) that it made its
- ↑ See further Bernard, Origine, i. 216 seq.
