Fine Books

he Crystal Palace, and there a recognized part of the programme in each visit was to spend half an hour in solemnly pedalling backwards and forwards on a semicircu

f printing are very analogous to those of the old velocipede and the bicycle. Even if it could be proved decisively that some Dutch fragment of a Donatus was earlier than any experiment made at Mainz or Strassburg, it was at Mainz that the possibility wa

UST AND SCH

NALE DIVINORUM

ge. The first of the three was Johann Gutenberg, the Johannes Bonemontanus whom Fichet, as early as 1470, acclaimed as the first of all men to think out the printing a

there. When the town clerk of Strassburg came to Mainz the exile caused him to be arrested for a debt due to his family, and the matter had to be arranged to avoid a quarrel between the two cities. On the other hand, Gutenberg was himself called to account for unpaid duties on wine, and was sued for a breach of promise of marriage. In 1437 he was the defendant in a much more interesting trial. He had admitted two partners to work an invention with him, and on one of these part

cause the text of this fragment deals with the Last Judgment). Between these two are placed fragments of three editions of Donatus, De octo partibus orationis, two found recently in copies of an edition of Herolt's Sermones de tempore et sanctis printed at Strassburg19 by Martin Flach in 1488 and now at Berlin, the third one of the minor treasures of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, where it has lain for over a cent

able him to print books, himself, nominally or truly, borrowing the money from another capitalist, and thereby gaining the right to charge interest on it without breaking the canon law. By about December, 1452, the loan was exhausted, and Fust made a

ons of Donatus printed with it being still extant, also a prognostication, Manung widder die Durken, printed in December, 1454, a Bull of

used, the text of each of these Indulgences being printed in a separate fount of beautifully clear small type, while a larger type was used for a few words. In one of these Indulgences the larger type belongs, with some differences, to the same fount as the books named in our last paragraph. This Indulgence has thirty-one

effer, was a witness on the side of Fust, and we hear also, as servants of Gutenberg, of Heinrich Keffer and Bertolf von Hanau, who may apparently be identified with printers who worked subsequently at Nuremberg and Basel. T

g of a magnificent printed Bible in two volumes, now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the type of which used to be t

rly owned by a well-known German collector of the last century, Herr Klemm. While, however, this date appears to have been written at a period approximating to that of the production of the book, its relevance as evidence of the date of prin

nted simultaneously on six different presses, that the body of the type was twice reduced, forty-two lines finally occupying slightly less space than the forty which had at first formed a column, that after the printing had begun it was resolved to increase the size of the edition, and that there is some reason to think that eventually a hundred and fifty copies were printed on paper and thirty on vellum,20 and that the paper was ordered in large quantities and not in small parcels as it could be paid for. To the present writer it appears that if Gutenberg had possessed the financial means, the patience and the organizing power needed to push through this heavy piece of work in the way described, it is difficult to perceive any reason why the capitalist Fust should have quarrelled with him, or to imagine how Gutenberg exposed himself to such an action as that which Fust successfully carried against him. On the supposition that the Bible was completed in or soon after 1453 the difficulty becomes almost insuperable, for it is inconceivable that if Gutenberg had produced the book within a few months of receiving his second loan from Fust he should not, by the autumn of 1455, have paid his creditor

h we shall have to recur (see p. 51 sqq.), the invention is distinctly claimed for Mainz, and from 1467 this claim was taken over by Peter Schoeffer, who in the colophons of his subsequent books again and again celebrated Mainz as the city singled out by divine favour to give the art to the world. The fact that for nearly forty years (1460-99) these statements remained unchallenged, and passed into the contemporary history of the time, is the strongest evidence in favour of the substantial invention of the art at Mainz that can be conceived. A single reference in 149922 to prefigurations of a humbler kind in Donatuses printed in Holland and the presentation of a rival theory in 1568 cannot deprive of its due weight the evidence that during all the years when the facts were easily ascertainable judgment in favour of Mainz was allowed to go by default.

dence, moreover, that a large number of copies of the Bible itself were sold at Bamberg about 1460. The greater part of the text appears to have been set up from a copy of the Forty-two Line Bible. Where, when, and by whom it was printed we can only guess, but the place was more probably Bamberg than Mainz, and as the type is believed to have been originally Gutenberg's, and there is evidence that Pfister, when he began printing the popular books of 1461-2, was quite inexperienced, Gutenberg has certainly a better claim to have printed this volume than any one else who can be suggested. The

cleanly cut. It was issued without printer's name,

f the Lord's Incarnation 1460, in the bounteous city of Mainz of the renowned German nation, which the clemency of God has deigned with so lofty a light of genius and free gift to prefer and render i

He may even have had a special reason for this, for among the forty-one copies registered (almost all in great libraries) two groups may be distinguished, one embracing the copies on vellum and the majority of the paper copies, the other the rest of the paper copies. The groups are distinguished by various differences, of which the most important is that in the one case the workmen used four and in the other two pins to keep the pape

alogus of Matthaeus de Cracovia; also an Indulgence of Pope Pius II. In 1467 the type is found in the hands of Heinrich Bechtermünze a

g that it was Schoeffer who designed the small neat types used in the Mainz Indulgences of 1454-5, and that he with his skill and Fust with his money pushed the Forty-two Line Bible to a successful completion. If they printed this, they no doubt printed also a liturgic

imprimendi ac caracterizandi absque calami ulla exaracione sic effigiatus, Et ad eusebiam dei industrie est consummatus, Pe

ingenious invention of printing and stamping without any ploughing of a pen, And to the worship of God has been diligently brought to comp

discussion of the manner in which these were printed will be found in the Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Printed Books exhibited at the Historical Music Loan Exhibition (1886) by Mr. W. H. J. Weale. In an article in the first volume of Bibliographica Mr. Russell Martineau showed that part of the edition was printed twice. When Mr. Martineau wrote nine copies were known, all on vellum, viz. (i) five of an issue of 143 leaves containing the Psalms and Canticles only, these being at the British Museum, Royal Library Windsor, John Rylands Library, Bibliothèque Nationale Paris, and Royal Library Darmstadt

i," and was thus apparently commissioned by the Benedictine monastery of S. James at Mainz. Its arrangement is that generally in use at the time in German monasteries. Thirteen copies of this edition are preserved, all on vellum, viz. four in England (British Museum, B

issals otherwise in good condition, but with these much-fingered leaves badly worn. The unique copy of this edition of the Canon was discovered at the Bodleian Library in a Mainz Missal of 1493 and identi

printed in double columns with sixty-three lines in each column, and the type measures 91 mm. to twenty lines. A copy at Munich is printed partly on paper, partly on vellum. All the other forty-two copies described by Mr. De Ricci are entirely on vellum. The book has

titutions is printed in two columns in the centre of each page in a type measuring 118 mm. to twenty lines, with the commentary completely surrounding it in the 91 type used in

peror's confirmation of this, papal briefs as to the election of Adolf von Nassau, a petition of Diether's to the Pope, and the manifestos of the two archbishops. All these, and also a bull of the same year as to a crusade

e capitals and chapter-numbers in red and blue, though spaces were left for others to be supplied by hand. Three different colophons to this book have been described, and examples of all of these are in the British Museum. Of t

ir workmen are said to have left them and begun carrying the art into other towns and countries.24 When the partners resumed active work in 1465 they struck out a new line in their De Officiis and Paradoxa of Cicero, but attained no special excellence in such small folios and quartos. Fust died about this time, and Schoeffer, left to himself, displayed no further originality. The Bible of 1472, save for the absence of printed capitals, is a close copy of that of 1462. The Clementine Constitutions of 1460 were reprinted, and similar editions were issued

" from the fact that the first copy of the Prognostication in question to attract notice was that in the Darmstadt library. The books of t

tration, and will be found mentioned in Chapter VII. The only other Mainz printer in the fifteenth century was Peter von Friedberg, who is

e, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. But if no book had been printed there after the sack of the c

lived at the Hof zum Gutenberg at Mainz, and

rg offers just a grain of evidence in favour of the Do

ur de Ricci, eleven copies on vellum and thirty on paper can now be located, but some of these hav

anciscus in the Justinian of 14

ne Chronicle. S

inted sp

ogne, who was a clerk of the diocese of Mainz, and Sweynheym and Pannartz, w