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522
TYPOGRAPHY
[HISTORY

royal palace, Lourens (son of) Jan, surnamed Coster, who, while walking in the wood near Haarlem, began to shape beechen bark first into figures of letters, by which, reversely impressed one by one on paper, he composed one or two lines to serve as an example for the children of his son-in-law. (c) When this succeeded, he began to contemplate greater things, and first of all invented, assisted by his son-in-law Thomas, (son of) Peter, a more gluey and substantial kind of ink (as the ordinary ink was found to blot), with which he printed whole tablets with pictures, with the letters added. (d) Junius had seen books of this kind printed by Coster (the beginnings of his labours) on the rectos of the leaves only, not on both sides; the book was written (in Dutch) by an anonymous author, and entitled Speculum nostrae salutis, in which care was taken that the blank versos could be pasted together, so that the blank pages should not present any unsightliness. (e) Afterwards (Coster) changed the beechen characters into leaden, and the latter again into tin ones. Very ancient wine-pots cast of the remains of these types were still to be seen in the house of Lourens, which was afterwards inhabited by his great-grandson Gerard (son of) Thomas, who had died an old man a few years before. (f) When the new merchandise attracted purchasers everywhere, workmen were added to (Lourens') household, among whom was a certain John (whether, as was suspected, Faust, or another of the same name, Junius did not inquire), who was bound to the work of printing by oath. But, when he thought he knew the art of joining the letters and of casting the types, &c., he stole away, when everybody had gone to church, the whole apparatus of the types and the tools prepared by his master, and hastened to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, until he arrived at Mainz, where he could remain in safety, and, having opened a work-office, issued within the space of one year, about 1442, the Doctrinale of Alexander Gallus and the Tracts of Petrus Hispanus, printed with the same types which Lourens had used at Haarlem. (g) Junius recollects that Nicolaas Gaal, his tutor, a man of firm memory and venerable old age, had told him that as a boy he had often heard a certain bookbinder, Cornelis (a man of more than eighty years of age, who had been an under-workman in the same office) narrating the story of the invention (as he had heard it from his master), the polishing and increase of the crude art, &c., and cursing those nights which he had passed, during some months, with the culprit in one bed. (h) The burgomaster Quirinus Talesius admitted to Junius that he had formerly heard nearly the same from the mouth of the same bookbinder.

(xlv.) Natalis Comes, in his Universa histofia, sui temporis (Venice 1581; the edition of 1572 contains only books 1 to 10), lib. xxiv. 521, says that Haarlem is memorable on account of the almost divine invention of printing books first contrived by John Gutenberg in the year 1453; who, when he had invented the rudiments of it, had a rather cunning servant, observant of his master's art, who, after the death (see xliii., xlvi., xlvii.) of Johan went to Mainz and there perfected the art, and hence the report that it was invented in that city. (xlvi.) Geo. Braunius, in the second volume of his Civitates orbis terrarum (Cöln, 1575?), says of Haarlem, that in this town and the whole province of Holland, there was a fixed tradition that the art of typography was first invented there. But before it was perfected and brought to light, the inventor died (see xliii., xlv.) and his servant went to Mainz, and made it known there. (xlvii.) Mich. Eyzinger on p. 75 of his Niederländsche Beschreibung (Cöln, 1584) says that the art of printing, as it was then done, with letters and characters on paper or otherwise, was invented by some one at Haarlem, but, on the death of his master (see xliii., xlv., xlvi.), was brought to light in perfection by his servant. (Repeated by Matthias Quadus Pictor Juliacus in Compendium Universi, sive Geographicae narrationes, lib. iii. c. 38, Colon. 1600.) (xlviii.) Chronicon Sublacense, per P. D. Cherubinum Mirtium Trevirensem monachum Sublacensem laboratum anno . . . 1629'. A MS. in 4to, on p. 150 of which is read: Non egre ferat, quaeso lector, si inseruero ratione temporis rem non plane ab instituto nostro alienam, nempe laudable studium monachorum Sublacensium teutonicorum . . . Nempe, quod nobilissima librorum typographia paucis ante annis in inferiori Germania enata est et in lucem producta (with a note by Mirtius: Hollandia A.D. 1453 in civitate Haarlem per Joannem Cutenbergam, quae tamen ars, postea Moguntiae per dicti inventor is famulum in meliorem redacta fuit excudendi formam). It is supposed that xlv. to xlvii. are derived from Test. xliii., but this seems impossible as regards xlviii.

(xlix.) In 1628 Scriverius in his Laurecranz (see xli.) placed the date of the Haarlem invention as far back as 1428, and mentioned as its inventor Lourens Janszoon, sheriff of Haarlem. He asserts that the art of printing appeared, “not in the manner as it is used now, with letters cast of lead and tin, but a book was cut leaf for leaf on wooden blocks," and the Haarlem inventor was robbed in 1440 by Johan Gutenberg. Scriverius based the date 1428 upon a Hebrew Chronicle compiled by Joseph ben Meir (1496-1575?), and published in 1554 at Sabionetta by Cornelius Adelkind, where, under the year of the Jewish era 5188 (= 1428), the author mentions a book (without giving the title) printed at Venice and seen by him. Scriverius, being convinced that this could only refer to a book printed at Haarlem, applied the entry to a xylographic Biblia pauperum, of which he gave a description, together with several other block books and early printed books.

(l.) In 1639 Boxhorn pushed the date of the Haarlem invention back to 1420, referring, as his authority, to the same Chronicle of Rabbi Joseph. Since that time the date of the Haarlem invention has been variously placed between 1420 and 1430.

Later testimonies are mere repetitions, of earlier statements.[1]

We need not discuss the story of Antonio Cambruzzi, who asserted that Pamfilo Castaldi invented printing at Feltre, in Italy, in 1456, and that Fausto Comesburgo, who lived in his house in order to learn the Italian language, learnt the art from him, and brought it to Mainz; the story, however, found so much credence that in 1868 a statue, was erected at Feltre in honour of Castaldi. Nor need we speak of Kuttenberg in Bohemia, where John Gutenberg is asserted to have been born and to have found the art of printing. Nor is it necessary to speak of Jean Brito, who printed at Bruges c. 1477-1488, and is asserted to have invented printing there. We may also pass over Johann Fust, later on called Faust (testimonies xiv., xviii., xxvi., xxviii., xxxi., xxxii., xxxiii., xxxviii.), as we know from the Mainz lawsuit of 1455 that he had simply assisted Gutenberg with loans of money. We may also pass over Johann Mentelin of Strassburg (testimonies xxxv., xxxix.), only remarking here that he had already printed a Bible in 1460, and that he is mentioned in Strassburg registers as a chrysographer or gold-writer from 1447 to 1450; but of his whereabouts between 1450 and 1460 there is no record. That he had gone, or had been called, after 1450 by Gutenberg to Mainz has been asserted but not proved, though there is no reason why he should not be one of the two Johannes alluded to as the prothocaragmatici of Mainz in the Justinian of 1468 (testimony viii.). That Nicolas Jenson came to be regarded in certain circles and for a time as the inventor of printing is owing to testimony xii. being misunderstood.

There remain, therefore, to be considered the testimonies which bear on the rival claims of Haarlem and Mainz. So far as we know, the controversy between Germany and Holland was publicly started as early as 1499 by the Cologne Chronicle (testimony xxiv.), that between the two towns mentioned not publicly before 1561 (testimony xli.); while the name of the Haarlem inventor was not mentioned publicly in' print earlier than 1588 (testimony xliv.).

The claims of Germany and Mainz, as centred in the person of Johann Gutenberg, have been discussed above while treating of the early printing at Mainz. A few more words about these claims are necessary. Though some of the documents relating to him connect him with the art of printing, they say nothing of him as the inventor of it; nor do any of the books ascribed to him.

The first document that connects him with the art of printing, the notarial instrument of the 6th of November 1455 (testimony i.), says nothing of an invention or a new mode of printing. And yet the occasion was such as to make it almost imperative on Gutenberg to speak of his invention, if he had made any, for he had spent 1600 guilders of Fust's money for making “tools,” apparently without printing anything,[2] and was on the point of being robbed by the latter and having taken away from him all that he is supposed to have made and done to give effect to his idea or invention. The next testimony (ii.) i.e. the earliest Mainz books with printed dates (1457 to 1467), shows that the art of printing was not treated as a secret at Mainz; it is openly proclaimed; its importance fully realized and appreciated, but it is distinctly advertised as a “by-invention of printing,” and still more distinctly as a “new art of printing”; the public were informed that books were now no longer produced by means of the pen, but by a new art of forming characters and printing. Such advertisements are natural and appropriate if we assume that the new art of printing had recently (say about 1450 to 1455) become known at Mainz, but not when we assume that Gutenberg had been printing there devotional and school books and folio Bibles since 1443. But, though the new art is so distinctly described and advertised, in none of these advertisements is there one word of a “Mainz invention” or an “inventor.” In testimony iii. (the Catholicon of 1460) there is an allusion to Mainz being favoured by God, but again not one word about an invention or an inventor. If Gutenberg had printed the Catholicon, it would be incredible that he, who had been wronged and robbed by his two rivals (Fust and Schoeffer), should join in with them in defining and proclaiming the new art, but never with one word assert his claim to the honour and profit of the invention, if he had made any, and should even omit his name, whereas he saw


  1. Over a hundred of them have been collected by Ger. Meerman, Origines typogr. ii. 58 seq.
  2. In line 42 Gutenberg distinctly declares that “he hoped he was under no obligation to Fust to devote the first 800 guilders to the work of the books”; and, as Fust, by advancing the second 800 guilders in 1452, had practically become Gutenberg's partner, it seems clear that the former claimed in October or November, 1455, when the trial may be said to have commenced, his money and interest because Gutenberg had as yet not printed anything.