importance of types, who did nothing with his great discovery. His discovery, if it can be so called, was useless. He cannot be rated as an inventor of printing, for he printed nothing.
John Mentel, of Strasburg, who died in December, 1478, and was buried in the great cathedral of that city, has there a tablet to his memory, which contains the following inscription:
Here I rest: I, John Mentel, who, by the grace of God, was the first to invent, in Strasburg, the characters of typography, and to develop this art of printing, which should be perpetuated to the end of the world, to such a degree of perfection that a man can now write as much in a day as another could have done in a year. It is but just that thanks should be rendered to God, and without vanity, to me myself; but as this homage could not otherwise be rendered in a proper manner, God has ordained, as the reward for my invention, that the stones of this cathedral should serve for my mausoleum.[1]
The claim that Mentel was the inventor of typography was first made in 1520 by John Schott,[2] son of Martin Schott, who had married Mentel's daughter and inherited his business.
- ↑ Bernard, De l'origine, vol. ii, p. 94. This vain and scandalous inscription was probably made by one of Mentel's descendants. It is not stated when this tablet was erected. Bernard supposes that it is a second tablet, which was put up in place of one made soon after his burial.
- ↑ It was probably provoked by the false assertion of John Schœffer, that Peter Schœffer, his father, and John Fust, his grandfather, were the proper inventors, to the exclusion of Gutenberg. Schott, knowing that Mentel's claims as an inventor were as valid as those of Fust or Schœffer, placed on his books, after 1520, an armorial shield containing a crowned lion, with this inscription: "Arms of the Schott family, granted by the Emperor Frederic iii to John Mentel, the first inventor of typography, and to his heirs, in the year 1466." There are doubts concerning this patent of nobility. When it was demanded many years afterward, it could not be produced [De l'origine, vol. ii, p. 69]. It may have been granted to Mentel, not as the first printer, but as the first printer in Strasburg. Schœpflin, who speaks of this document as if he had seen the original, denies that it gave to Mentel the title of inventor of printing [Vindiciae Typographicæ, p. 98, note]. There was a tradition that the Emperor Frederic iii had given to a corporation of master printers known as the Typothetæ, an heraldic shield, representing an eagle holding in one claw a composing-stick, and in the other claw a copy-guide, surmounted by a griffin distributing ink with two balls. But these are not the arms displayed by Schott, nor did Mentel, nor his successor Flach, make any display of them in their books.
