Fine Books Part 2

Block-books possess two permanent attractions in addition to their supposed historical importance in the development of the invention of printing on which doubt is now cast--the attraction of popular literature and the attraction of the ill.u.s.trated book. As we have seen, it would not have been worth any one's while to cause a block-book to be laboriously engraved, or cut, unless a large and speedy sale could be expected for it. The most famous block-books are nearly all of a religious character, and they prove a widespread desire for simple instruction as to the incidents of the life of Christ and the events in the Old Testament history which were regarded as prefigurements of them, as to the dignity of the Blessed Virgin and the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, as to the end of the world and the coming of Antichrist, and as to the spiritual dangers and temptations of the dying and the means by which they might be resisted. As early specimens of book-ill.u.s.tration the value of the block-books varies very greatly. The majority of them are more curious than beautiful, but the pictures of the _Cantica Canticorum_, the _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_, and the _Ars Moriendi_ have all very great merit. The tall, slender figures in the Song of Songs have a charm as great as any Dutch book-ill.u.s.trations of the fifteenth century; the cuts of the _Speculum_ are full of vigour, while the serene dignity of the scenes in the _Ars Moriendi_ ill.u.s.trating the Inspirations of the Good Angel is as impressive as the grotesque force used in depicting the diabolic suggestions. If we must grant, as the weight of authority now bids us, that these woodcuts are copies from the copper engravings of the Master E. S., it can hardly be disputed that the wood-cutter was the better artist of the two.

The block-books are a striking example of the difficulty of gleaning where the earlier collectors have reaped, a difficulty to which we shall often have to call attention. They vary greatly in positive rarity. Of the _Biblia Pauperum_ and _Ars Moriendi_, which in their different issues and editions enjoyed the longest life and early attracted attention, Dr. Schreiber (if I have counted rightly) was able to enumerate in the one case as many as eighty-three copies--many of them, it is true, mere fragments--in the other sixty-one. Of the _Apocalypse_ fifty-seven copies were known to him, of the _Speculum_ twenty-nine, of the _Antichrist_ thirteen, of the _Defensorium_ twelve, and of the _Mirabilia Romae_ six. But of these 261 copies and fragments no fewer than 223 are recorded as being locked up in public libraries and museums, the owners.h.i.+p of thirteen was doubtful, and only twenty-five are definitely registered as being in the hands of private collectors, viz. of the _Apocalypse_, eight copies or fragments; of the _Biblia Pauperum_, six; of the _Speculum_ and _Ars Moriendi_, four each; of the _Defensorium_, two; and of the _Cantica Canticorum_, one. The chief owners known to Dr. Schreiber were the Earl of Pembroke, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, and Major Holford, to whom must now be added Mr. Pierpont Morgan and Mr. Perrins. No doubt the copies in public inst.i.tutions are much more easily enumerated than those in private hands, and probably most of the untraced copies are owned by collectors. But when allowance has been made for this, it remains obvious that this is no field where an easy harvest can be reaped, and that the average collector may think himself lucky if he obtains one or two single leaves. The last great opportunity of acquiring such treasures was at the sale in 1872 of the wonderful collection formed by T. O. Weigel,[11] at which the British Museum bought a very fine copy of the first edition of the _Ars Moriendi_, the first edition, dated 1470, of the _Biblia Pauperum_, in German, a block-book ill.u.s.trating the virtues of the hymn _Salve Regina_, and the compa.s.sion of the Blessed Virgin, printed at Regensburg about 1470, besides fragments and woodcut single sheets. The foundation of the Museum collection of block-books had been laid by George III, added to by Mr. Grenville, and completed by a series of purchases from 1838 to this final haul of 1872, since when there have been few opportunities for new acquisitions. It is now quite adequate for purposes of study, though not so rich as that of the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The authenticity of a still earlier date, 1418, on a cut of the Blessed Virgin at Brussels is disputed.

[4] The _Libro di M. Giovanbattista Palatino_, printed at Rome in 1548, is spoken of by Mr. Campbell Dodgson as a "belated specimen" of a block-book. But this was a writing-book, and hardly counts.

[5] Numerous references in colophons show that the metal mostly used was bra.s.s, e.g. "_Primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis Vrbe libros Spira genitus de stirpe Johannes_," and the use of Chalcographi as a name for printers. But there are one or two references to printing "_stanneis typis_," with types of tin.

[6] Of the first book printed at Venice only 100 copies were struck off, but the number was trebled in the case of its immediate successors. At Rome Sweynheym and Pannartz mostly printed 275 copies, only in a few instances as many as 300. But at the end of the century Pynson was printing at least 600 copies of large books and as many as 1000 of small ones.

[7] A very small third group, earlier than either of these, consists of woodcuts with ma.n.u.script text. The most important of these is a German _Biblia Pauperum_ quite distinct from those started in the Netherlands.

[8] Some early woodcuts were printed by pressing the block down on the paper by hand; for the early block-books, however, the usual method seems to have been to press the paper on to the face of the block by rubbing it on the back with a burnisher. The paper was thus quite as strongly indented as if pa.s.sed through a press, but the impression is usually less even. The friction on the back of the paper often gives it a polished appearance. As long as this method continued in use it was, of course, impossible to print on both sides of the paper.

[9] It is possible that the earliest specimens of block-printing were intended not to be bound in books but to be pasted on walls. In the case of the _Biblia Pauperum_, for instance, the s.p.a.ce between the two woodcuts placed on each sheet is so small in some issues that the sheets cannot be bound without concealing part of the pictures.

[10] Different issues are distinguished by the signs of wear in the blocks, or occasionally by their being differently arranged, or with changes made in the blocks. In a different edition we have to deal with a new set of blocks.

[11] Since this was written the interesting collection formed by Dr.

Schreiber himself has been dispersed.

CHAPTER III

THE INVENTION OF PRINTING--HOLLAND

Up to the year 1465 only one firm of printers evinced any appreciation of the uses of advertis.e.m.e.nt. In 1457 Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, of Mainz, set their names at the end of the liturgical Psalter which they were issuing from their press, and stated also the date of its completion, "In vigilia a.s.sumpcionis," on the vigil of the feast of the a.s.sumption, i.e. August 14th. Save in the case of a few unimportant books this preference for publicity remained the settled practice of the firm until Peter Schoeffer's death early in the sixteenth century, and later still when it was in the hands of his son Johann. With other printers at first the tendency was all the other way. Albrecht Pfister placed his name in one or two of the handful of popular ill.u.s.trated books which he printed at Bamberg about 1461. No other book before 1465 contains its printer's name, and both at Stra.s.sburg and at Basel the practice of publis.h.i.+ng anonymously continued in fas.h.i.+on throughout the 'seventies--in Stra.s.sburg, indeed, for the best part of another decade.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IV. EARLY DUTCH PRESS

ALEXANDER GALLES, DOCTRINALE (3^a)]

While printing continued mainly anonymous chroniclers took no note of it, but in the ten years which began in 1465 the progress of the art was rapid and triumphant. Printers, mostly Germans, invaded the chief cities of Europe, and boasted in their books of having been the first to practise it in this place or that. Curiosity as to the beginnings of the invention was thus aroused, and from 1470 onwards we meet with numerous attempts, not always accurate, to satisfy it. The earliest of these attempts is in a letter from Guillaume Fichet, a Professor at the Sorbonne, who was mainly responsible for bringing the first printers to Paris, to his friend Robert Gaguin. This is contained in one copy of the second Paris book, the _Orthographia_ of Gasparinus Barzizius, printed in 1470, Fichet having a fondness for giving individuality to special copies by additions of this kind. In this letter he speaks of the great light which he thinks learning will receive from the new kind of bookmen whom Germany, like another Trojan Horse, has poured forth.

Ferunt enim illic, haut procul a ciuitate Maguncia, Ioannem quendam fuisse cui cognomen bonemontano, qui primus omnium impressoriam artem excogitauerit, qua non calamo (ut prisci quidem illi) neque penna (ut nos fingimus) sed aereis litteris libri finguntur, et quidem expedite, polite et pulchre. Dignus sane hic uir fuit quem omnes musae, omnes artes, omnesque eorum linguae qui libris delectantur, diuinis laudibus ornent, eoque magis dis deabusque anteponant, quo propius ac presentius litteris ipsis ac studiosis hominibus suffragium tulit. Si quidem deificantur Liber et alma Ceres, ille quippe dona Liei inuenit poculaque inuentis acheloia miscuit uuis, haec chaoniam pingui glandem mutauit arista. Atque (ut poeta utamur altero) prima Ceres unco glebam dimouit aratro, prima dedit fruges alimenta mitia terris. At bonemonta.n.u.s ille, longe gratiora diuinioraque inuenit, quippe qui litteras eiusmodi exculpsit, quibus quidquid dici, aut cogitari potest, propediem scribi ac transcribi & posteritatis mandari memoriae possit.

The good Fichet is absurdly rhetorical, but here in 1470 is a quite clear statement that, according to report, there (i.e. in Germany), not far from[12] the city of Mainz, a certain John, surnamed Gutenberg, first of all men thought out the printing art, by which books are fas.h.i.+oned not with a reed or pen, but with letters of bra.s.s, and thus deserved better of mankind than either Bacchus or Ceres, since by his invention whatever can be said or thought can forthwith be written and transcribed and handed down to posterity.

Four years later in his continuation of the _Chronica Summorum Pontific.u.m_, begun by Riccobaldus, Joannes Philippi de Lignamine, the physician of Pope Sixtus IV, who had set up a press of his own at Rome, wrote as one of the events of the pontificate of Pius II (1458-64), how "Jakob Gutenberg, a native of Stra.s.sburg, and a certain other whose name was Fust, being skilled in printing letters on parchment with metal forms, are known each of them to be turning out three hundred sheets a day at Mainz, a city of Germany, and Johann Mentelin also, at Stra.s.sburg, a city of the same province, being skilled in the same craft, is known to be printing daily the same number of sheets."[13] A little later De Lignamine records the arrival at Rome of Sweynheym and Pannartz, and also of Ulrich Han, and credits them also with printing three hundred sheets a day. Other references follow in later books without adding to our knowledge, save by proving the widespread recognition in the fifteenth century that printing was invented at Mainz; but there is nothing specially to detain us until the publication by Johann Koelhoff in 1499 of the Cologne Chronicle--_Die Cronica van der hilliger Stat Coellen_--in which occurs a famous pa.s.sage about printing, which may be translated or paraphrased as follows:--

"This right worthy art was invented first of all in Germany, at Mainz, on the Rhine. And that is a great honour to the German nation that such ingenious men are found there. This happened in the year of our Lord 1440, and from that time until 1450 the art and all that pertains to it was investigated, and in 1450, which was a Golden Year, men began to print, and the first book that was printed was the Bible in Latin, and this was printed with a letter as large as that now used in missals.

"Although this art was invented at Mainz, as far as regards the manner in which it is now commonly used, yet the first prefiguration (Vurbyldung) was invented in Holland from the Donatuses which were printed there before that time. And from and out of these the aforesaid art took its beginning, and was invented in a manner much more masterly and subtler than this, and the longer it lasted the more full of art it became.

"A certain Omnibonus wrote in the preface to a Quintilian, and also in other books, that a Walloon from France, called Nicolaus Jenson, was the first inventor of this masterly art--a notorious lie, for there are men still alive who bear witness that books were printed at Venice before the aforesaid Nicolaus Jenson came there, and began to cut and make ready his letter. But the first inventor of printing was a Burgher at Mainz, and was born at Stra.s.sburg, and called Yunker Johann Gutenberg.

"From Mainz the art came first of all to Cologne, after that to Stra.s.sburg, and after that to Venice. The beginning and progress of the art were told me by word of mouth by the Wors.h.i.+pful Master Ulrich Zell of Hanau, printer at Cologne in this present year 1499, through whom the art came to Cologne."[14]

Zell, or his interviewer, ignores the books printed anonymously at Stra.s.sburg by Mentelin and Eggestein, and also the handful printed by Albrecht Pfister at Bamberg; he also is misled by Gutenberg's long residence at Stra.s.sburg into calling him a native of that city; in other respects, so far as we are able to check this account, it is quite accurate. It tells us emphatically that "this right worthy art was invented first of all in Germany, at Mainz, on the Rhine"; and again, that "the first inventor of printing was a Burgher at Mainz named Junker Johann 'Gudenburch'"; but between these two unqualified statements is sandwiched a reference to a prefiguration which took shape in Holland in _Donatuses_, printed there before the Mainz presses were at work, and much less masterly and subtle than the books which they produced. He connects no name with this "Vorbildung," and, unhappily, he gives no clue as to how it foreshadowed, and was yet distinct from, the real invention.

Sixty-nine years[15] after the appearance of this carefully balanced statement, the facts as to Dutch "prefigurations" which had inspired it moved a Dutch chronicler, Hadria.n.u.s Junius, in compiling his _Batavia_ (not published till 1588), to write the well-known pa.s.sage as to the invention of printing, which has been summarized as follows:--

There lived, about 1440, at Haarlem, in the market-place opposite the Town Hall, in a respectable house still in existence, a man named Lourens Janszoon Coster, i.e. Laurence, son of John Coster. The family name was derived from the hereditary office of Sacristan, or Coster of the Church--a post both honourable and lucrative. The town archives give evidence of this, his name appearing therein many times, and in the Town Hall are preserved his seal and signature to various doc.u.ments. To this man belongs the honour of inventing Printing, an honour of which he was unjustly robbed, and which afterwards was ascribed to another. The said Laurence Coster, one day after dinner, took a walk in the wood near Haarlem. While there, to amuse himself, he began to cut letters out of some beech-bark. The idea struck him to ink some of these letters and use them as stamps. This he did to amuse his grandchildren, cutting them in reverse. He thus formed two or three sentences on paper. The idea germinated, and soon with the help of his son-in-law, and by using a thick ink, he began to print whole pages, and to add lines of print to the block-books, the text of which was the most difficult part to engrave. Junius had seen such a book, called _Spieghel onzer Behoudenisse_. It should have been said that Coster was descended from the n.o.ble house of Brederode, and that his son-in-law was also of n.o.ble descent. Coster's first efforts were of course very rude, and to hide the impression of the letters on the back, they pasted the leaves, which had one side not printed, together. His letters at first were made of lead, which he afterwards changed for tin. Upon his death these letters were melted down and made into wine-pots, which at the time that Junius wrote were still preserved in the house of Gerrit Thomaszoon, the grandson of Coster.

Public curiosity was greatly excited by Coster's discovery, and he gained much profit from his new process. His trade, indeed, so increased that he was obliged to employ several workmen, one of whom was named John. Some say this was John Faust, afterwards a partner with Gutenberg, and others say he was Gutenberg's brother. This man when he had learnt the art in all its branches, took the opportunity one Christmas eve, when all good people are accustomed to attend Church, to break into the rooms used for printing, and to pack up and steal all the tools and appliances which his master, with so much care and ingenuity, had made. He went off by Amsterdam and Cologne to Mainz, where he at once opened a workshop and reaped rich fruit from this theft, producing several printed books. The accuracy of this story was attested by a respectable bookbinder, of great age but clear memory, named Cornelis who had been a fellow-servant with the culprit in the house of Coster, and indeed had occupied the same bed for several months, and who could never talk of such baseness without shedding tears and cursing the thief.

Written nearly a hundred and thirty years after the supposed events which it narrates, this story is d.a.m.ned by its circ.u.mstantiality. It is thus that legends grow, and it is not difficult to imagine Haarlem bookmen picking up ideas out of colophons in old books and asking the "respectable bookbinder of great age" whether it was not thus and thus that things happened. Many of the details of the story are demonstrably false; its one strong point is the bookbinder, Cornelis, for a binder of this name is said to have been employed as early as 1474 and as late as 1514 to bind the account-books of Haarlem Cathedral, and in the two years named, and also in 1476, to have strengthened his bindings by pasting inside them fragments of _Donatuses_ printed on vellum in the type of the _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_. The fragment in the account-book for 1474 is rubricated, and must thus either have been sold or prepared for selling, i.e. it is not "printer's waste," but may have been bought by Cornelis for lining his covers in the ordinary way of trade. But we have here a possible link between Zell's story of early Dutch _Donatuses_ and the story of Junius about Coster and his servant Cornelis, since we find fragments of a _Donatus_ in the possession of this particular man.

There were plenty of such _Donatuses_ in existence in the Netherlands about 1470. In 1887 Dr. Hessels, in his _Haarlem the Birthplace of Printing, not Mentz_, enumerated fragments of twenty different editions, printed in eight types, of which the type used in the _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_ (see p. 26) is one, while the other seven are linked to it, or to each other, in such a way that we may either suppose them to have all belonged to the same printer, or distribute them among two or more anonymous firms. Besides these twenty editions of _Donatus_ on the Eight Parts of Speech, Dr. Hessels enumerated eight editions of the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander Gallus[16] (another school book popular in the fifteenth century), three of the Distichs of Dionysius Cato (the work from which Dame Pertelote quoted to convince Chantecleer of the futility of dreams), and one or two editions each of a few other works, the _Facetiae Morales_ of Laurentius Valla (twenty-four leaves), the _Singularia Juris_ of Ludovicus Ponta.n.u.s, with a treatise of Pope Pius II (sixty leaves), and the _De Salute Corporis_ of Gulielmus de Saliceto with other small works (twenty-four leaves). These latter books offer no very noticeable features; some of the _Donatus_ fragments, on the other hand, have printing only on one side of the leaf (whence they are called by the barbarous term "anopisthographic," "not printed on the back") and have a very rude and primitive appearance. This may have been caused in part at least by their having been pasted down, and possibly sc.r.a.ped, by binders, for almost all of them have been found in bindings; but it counts for something.

Not one of the books or fragments of which we have been speaking makes any mention of its printer, or of the place or date at which it was produced. A copy of one of the later books, the _De Salute Corporis_ of Gulielmus de Saliceto, was purchased by Conrad du Moulin while abbot of the Convent of S. James at Lille, a dignity which he held from 1471 to 1474. The earliest Haarlem account-book which contained _Donatus_ fragments was for the year 1474. It is entirely a matter of opinion as to how much earlier than this any of the extant fragments can be dated.

There is no reason why some of them should not be later.

As to the place or places at which these books were printed, there is no evidence of any weight. But, as has been already said, the whole series can be closely or loosely connected with the types used in editions of the _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_, and in 1481 Jan Veldener, a wandering printer, while working at Utrecht, introduced into an edition of the Epistles and Gospels in Dutch two woodcuts, each of which was a half of one of the double pictures in the _Speculum_. Two years later, when at Kuilenburg, he printed a quarto edition of the _Speculum_ itself (Dutch version), in which he used a large number of the original _Speculum_ blocks, all cut up into halves, so as to fit a small page. As Veldener (as far as we know) used the _Speculum_ blocks first at Utrecht, it is supposed that it was at Utrecht that he obtained them. If the blocks were for sale at Utrecht, this may have been the place at which the earlier editions of the _Speculum_ were issued, and thus, in the absence of any evidence which they were willing to recognize in favour of any other place, Henry Bradshaw and his disciples attributed the whole series of editions of the _Speculum_, _Donatus_, _Doctrinale_, etc., to Utrecht, about, or "not after," 1471-1474. Bradshaw himself clearly indicated that this attribution was purely provisional. He felt "compelled to leave" the books at Utrecht, so he phrased it, i.e. the presumption that Veldener found the blocks of the _Speculum_ there const.i.tuted a grain of evidence in favour of Utrecht; and if a balance is sufficiently sensitive and both scales are empty, a grain thrown into one will suffice to weigh it down. It would have been better, in the present writer's opinion, if the grain had been disregarded, and no attempt made to a.s.sign these books and fragments to any particular place. As it is, Bradshaw's attribution of them to Utrecht has been repeated without any emphasis on its entirely provisional character, even without any mention of this at all, and perhaps with a certain humorous enjoyment of the chance of prejudicing the claims of Haarlem by an unusually rigorous application of the rules as to bibliographical evidence.

In the eyes of Dr. Hessels, on the other hand, the legend narrated by Junius offers a sufficient reason for a.s.signing all these books to Haarlem, and to Lourens Janszoon Coster as their printer. Dr. Hessels was even ill-advised enough to point out that, as there are twenty editions of _Donatus_ in this group of types, we have only to allow an interval of a year and a half between each to take back the earliest very close to 1440, the traditional date of the invention of printing.

This is perfectly true, but as no reason can be a.s.signed for fixing on this particular interval the value of such a calculation is very slight.

One result of all this controversy is that the whole series of books and fragments have been dubbed "Costeriana," and the convenience of having a general name for them is so great that it has been generally adopted, even by those who have no belief in the theory which it implies. All that is known of Lourens Janszoon Coster is that he resided at Haarlem from 1436 to 1483, and that contemporary references show him to have been a chandler and innkeeper, without making any mention of his having added printing to his other occupations.

It is difficult to claim more for the story told by Junius than that it represents an unknown quant.i.ty of fact with various legendary additions.

It is difficult to dismiss it as less than a legend which must have had some element of fact as its basis. In so far as it goes beyond the statements of the Cologne Chronicle, it is supported only by the evidence that Coster and the venerable bookbinder Cornelis existed, and that the latter bound the account-books of Haarlem Cathedral. But no indiscretion of Hadria.n.u.s Junius writing in 1568 can affect the credit of the statements made in the Cologne Chronicle in 1499 on the authority of Ulrich Zell, and we have now to mention an important piece of evidence in favour of Zell's accuracy. This is the entry in the diaries of Jean de Robert, Abbot of Saint Aubert, Cambrai, of the purchase in 1446 and again in 1451 of a copy of the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander Gallus, _jete en moule_, a phrase which, while far from satisfactory as a description of a book printed from movable type, cannot possibly refer to editions printed from woodblocks, even if these existed. The _Doctrinale_, which was in verse, was a less popular school-book than the _Donatus_. It is significant that among the so-called "Costeriana" there are eight editions of the one against twenty of the other. Where the _Doctrinale_ was used we may be sure that the _Donatus_ would be used also, and in greater numbers, so that this mention of a "mould-casted" _Doctrinale_ as purchased as early as 1446 is a real confirmation of Zell's a.s.sertion. We have no sufficient ground for believing that any of the fragments, either of the one book or the other, now in existence were produced as early as this. It is of the nature of school-books to be destroyed, and every improvement in the process of production would help to drive the earlier experiments out of existence. But taking Zell's statement and the entries in the Abbot's diaries together, it seems impossible to deny that there is evidence of some kind of printing being practised in Holland not long after 1440.

An ingenious theory as to the form which these "prefigurements" may have taken has lately been suggested, viz. that the earliest types may have consisted simply of flat pieces of metal, without any shanks to them, and that they were "set up" by being glued upon wood or stiff paper in the order required. They would thus be movable, but with a very low degree of movability, so that we can easily understand why short books like the _Donatus_ and _Doctrinale_ were continually reprinted without any attempt being made to produce a large work such as the Bible. It is curious, however, that in the description of a "ciripagus" by Paulus Paulirinus, of Prag,[17] "we have a reference" to a Bible having been printed at Bamberg "super lamellas," a phrase which might very well refer to types of this kind, though the sentence is usually explained as referring to either the Latin or German edition of the _Biblia Pauperum_ issued by Albrecht Pfister. I think it just possible myself that the reference is really to the Latin Bible known as the Thirty-six Line Bible, which seems certainly to have been sold, if not printed, at Bamberg a little before 1460, and that Paulirinus, having seen books printed "super lamellas," supposed (wrongly) that this was printed in that way. But the statement that it was printed in four weeks is against this.

Whether the Dutch "Vorbildung" of the Art of Printing subsequently invented at Mainz took the form of experiments with shankless types, or fell short of the fully developed art in some other way, does not greatly concern the collector. It is in the highest degree improbable that the claim put forward on behalf of the so-called "Costeriana" will ever be decisively proved or disproved. They are likely to remain as perpetual pretenders, and as such will always retain a certain interest, and a specimen of them always be a desirable addition to any collection which aims at ill.u.s.trating the history of the invention of printing.

Such a specimen will not be easy to procure, because many of the extant fragments have been found in public libraries, more especially the Royal Library at the Hague, and have never left their first homes. On the other hand, the number of fragments known has been considerably increased by new finds. Thus there is no reason to regard a specimen as unattainable.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Dr. Hessels supposes that this phrase indicates the Monastery of Saint Victor, outside Mainz, with which Gutenberg was connected, and that the "report," therefore, can be traced to Gutenberg himself. If so, we have the very important fact that Gutenberg himself claimed to be the inventor.

[13] Iacobus cognomento Gutenbergo: patria Argentinus, & quidam alter cui nomen Fustus, imprimendarum litterarum in membranis c.u.m metallicis formis periti, trecentas cartas quisque eorum per diem facere innotesc.u.n.t apud Maguntiam Germanie ciuitatem. Iohannes quoque Mentelinus nuncupatus apud Argentinam eiusdem prouincie ciuitatem: ac in eodem artificio peritus totidem cartas per diem imprimere agnoscitur.... Conradus Suueynem: ac Arnoldus pannarcz Vdalricus Gallus parte ex alia Teuthones librarii insignes Romam uenientes primi imprimendorum librorum artem in Italiam introduxere trecentas cartas per diem imprimentes.

[14] Item dese hoichwyrdige kunst vursz is vonden aller eyrst in Duytschlant tzo Mentz am Rijne. Ind dat is der duytschscher nacion eyn groisse eirlicheit dat sulche synrijche mynschen syn dae tzo vynden. Ind dat is geschiet by den iairen vns heren, anno domini.

MCCCCxl. ind van der zijt an bis men schreue. l. wart vndersoicht die kunst ind wat dair zo gehoirt. Ind in den iairen vns heren do men schreyff. MCCCCl. do was eyn gulden iair, do began men tzo drucken ind was dat eyrste boich dat men druckde die Bybel zo latijn, ind wart gedruckt mit eynre grouer schrifft. as is die schrifft dae men nu Mysseboicher mit druckt.

Item wiewail die kunst is vonden tzo Mentz, als vursz vp die wijse, als dan nu gemeynlich gebruicht wirt, so is doch die eyrste vurbyldung vonden in Hollant vyss den Donaten, die dae selffst vur der tzijt gedruckt syn. Ind van ind vyss den is genommen dat begynne der vursz kunst. ind is vill meysterlicher ind subtilicher vonden dan die selue manier was, vnd ye langer ye mere kunstlicher wurden.

Item eynre genant Omnebonum der schrijfft in eynre vurrede vp dat boich Quintilia.n.u.s genoempt. vnd ouch in anderen meir boicher, dat eyn Wale vyss Vranckrijch, genant Nicolaus genson haue alre eyrst dese meysterliche kunst vonden, mer dat is offenbairlich gelogen.