with a qualified degree of appreciation. Gutenberg and Fust must have given employment to many presses and workmen: there was a demand for printed work of all kinds from almanacs to dictionaries, and the printers had reason to believe that they would be amply rewarded for their labor. Their hopes were destroyed by the sack of Mentz in 1462.
Fac-simile of the Types of The Mirror of the Clergy.
[From Bernard.]
The city of Mentz then held the first place in the league of the free cities of the Rhine, but her prosperity[1] was declining. Unceasing civil strifes had driven away the more feeble part of her population. In 1461, it was the wreck of its earlier greatness: it had but 50,000 inhabitants and was burdened with debt. Diether, Count of Isenburg, was then archbishop and elector of the city, by the consent of the majority of the inhabitants; but the rival archbishop, Adolph ii, Count of Nassau, supported by Pope Pius ii, claimed the archbishopric, and made war upon Diether. The consequences of the war, which nearly ruined the city, are forcibly stated by Schaab.
- ↑ In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Mentz, then the capital of Germany, contained a population of about 100,000 inhabitants. It the most powerful city of the empire, the great city where the emperors were crowned. In the fourteenth century, it was so strong that it could send out of its walls 10,000 was armed citizens to destroy the strongholds of the noble robbers who had ravaged its commerce.
