CHAPTER IVThe Invention
The study of the question of the invention of printing, like that of any other historical question, must deal with the examination of three classes of evidence or so many of them as may be available. These three classes of evidence, in order of their importance, are first, remains, second, contemporary documents, and third, documents or evidence of a later period. For example, there may be tradition widely current and running backward in literary form to within a hundred years of the death of the person referred to, that a certain king ruled in a certain country and did certain things. That is evidence of the third class. There may be extant contemporary works of travelers, histories of other countries, or even the published recollections of old men, which said that at a certain period that king lived and did certain things. That is evidence of the second class. There may be coins, official inscriptions, public documents, emanating directly from this king or even bearing his signature. This is evidence of the first class. This class of evidence is conclusive. The second class is strong, but not conclusive, the third class is very uncertain.
Now it happens that with regard to the invention of printing we have evidence of all three classes. All of it is conflicting, but the conflicts, it is to be noted, are mainly in the evidence of the third class. The evidence of the second class exists mainly in Mainz, but is not nearly as conclusive as has been supposed. Evidence of the first class comes entirely from Haarlem, and is there supported by one or two important pieces of evidence of the second class. With this briefintroduction perhaps it will be easier to understand the argument which follows.
Of course, the material of the first class, namely, remains, would be the earliest known pieces of printing. If these pieces of printing were dated as books are today, they could not be questioned, but as they are not so dated, but must be placed by other evidence, they have been questioned. There exist, in whole or in part, forty-seven distinct pieces of printing each bearing evidence of being among the first pieces of printing produced. These forty-seven works in their present condition run all the way from an entire book to a fragment of a single page. A group of three or four of them may be identified by reference to officials whose official dates were known as being either in 1474 or immediately preceding it. This, however, does not date the whole group. These few specimens are much more advanced in their appearance and workmanship than the rest of the forty-seven. Several other editions of some at least of these better books appear in this interesting lot of remains. The other editions are of a much more primitive appearance, showing that the period covered by the forty-seven works ended not later than 1474.
Of these forty-seven works, forty-five are in Latin, which, as we know, was the language of schools, courts, and churches at this period in all nations. One, an edition of a book of which there are several editions in Latin, was in Dutch. One was in French. That these forty-seven books all came from Haarlem is pretty clearly shown by certain internal evidence. One of them is clearly placed in Holland by the fact that it was printed in Dutch. Nobody at the very outset of printing would print books in Dutch except a Dutchman. All the rest of the forty-seven are closely related to these, as is shown by the similarity but not identity of their types.
The earliest printers were imitators of the copyists. They made their pages look as much like a manuscript page as they could, not perhaps with intent todeceive, but because nothing else occurred to them. You will find that all the earliest types are modeled upon the handwriting current among the copyists of the place where the printing was done. Certainly these books did not come from Mainz. Nobody has ever claimed that they did. Almost equally certainly they did come from Holland and from Haarlem. The handwriting is the handwriting of the Haarlem copyists of the period. An attempt was made at one time to assign these books to Utrecht, but it is not only true that each country had its prevailing copyist’s hand, but that each important center had its own system variously developed in the local schools in which copying was taught. The Utrecht hand is not the Haarlem hand. The books resemble the Haarlem hand and not the Utrecht.
While the forty-seven books show a considerable number of varieties of type, the editions being identified by these type differences, all the type faces show a strong family resemblance. They are designed from a common model, but not at the same time, and consequently they show marked resemblances and marked differences. The question may be asked why the same printer should use eight or nine different fonts of type for only forty-seven books. The answer is found in the fact that type-making was as yet in an experimental stage and that durable material had not yet been found for that purpose. When we come to the discussion of evidence of another class we shall find confirmation of this. There is no evidence of the second or third class connecting early printing with any Dutch town except Haarlem. There is, however, important evidence of the other classes which does connect printing with Haarlem. There are not, however, forty-seven different works. Twenty of the forty-seven books are different editions of the Donatus, that is to say they are Donatuses showing such typographic differences as to show that no two of them could have been printed from the same type form. Four of them are editions of the Speculumand eight are different editions of the Doctrinale. The Doctrinale was a brief compend to Christian doctrine approved by the church and widely circulated among the faithful.
Nearly all of the fragments of these forty-seven books have been found in Haarlem or in the neighborhood. It is evident that the publications of this press, whatever its date, were locally sold and that neither its fame nor its product went far from the place of production.
Having thus shown the reasons for believing that these forty-seven pieces of early printing came from Haarlem, let us see what they have to say for themselves as to the time of their production. It has already been pointed out that a small group of the best of them dated themselves no later than 1474, as is shown by their contents. So far as the contents themselves are concerned we have nothing to date the others. There are certain things about the books themselves, however, which show that their production must have begun long before 1474.
For one thing, there are twenty editions of the Donatus. We have no way of knowing how near together the editions were, but when we compare them with the editions of the Donatus later published we shall see that it is not unreasonable to suppose that they run back some thirty years. There were also four editions of the Speculum and eight editions of the Doctrinale. In each case the evidence of other printers shows that even one of the small editions usually published at that time lasted for a considerable period. The appearance of the books themselves bears out this conclusion. Good as the later ones are, they are inferior to Mainz workmanship of their period and the earlier ones are far inferior to Mainz workmanship of any period. They are not only without signatures, initial directors, hyphens, and catch words, all of which had come into use before 1474, but they show certain other remarkable peculiarities.
Many of these editions were printed on vellum, which is not in itself remarkable, as vellum continued to be used for a good many years for some books and for special copies of certain editions. Some of them show a further peculiarity of having vellum and paper combined together, some of the pages being printed on sheets of vellum and some being printed on sheets of paper. A considerable number of these books are printed only on one side of the page. None of the early Mainz books show this peculiarity. Some of these books not only show the curious combination of paper and vellum just noted, but curious combinations of the use of block and type. In some cases the upper part of the page shows a picture printed from a block while the lower part is printed from type.
The blocks thus used are the old familiar blocks of the Speculum but with no text carved on the block. Some of the books show the peculiarity of certain pages of text printed from blocks and other pages of text printed from type.
The accompanying illustrations show a reproduction of a page of a Donatus printed from blocks, and a reproduction of a Donatus printed from type by Coster. They are taken from Holtrop’s Monuments Typographiques des Pays-Bas. Two pages, not consecutive, of the printed Donatus, were found in the binding of a book published in Delft in 1484. The leaves are of vellum, printed on one side only. The ink is pale and is soluble in water. There is no punctuation and there are no hyphens at the ends of lines where words are divided, showing that the font contained only letters. The lines are fairly regular in length and end with either a complete word or a syllable. The form is well locked up and the presswork is fair. The letters are of slightly varying size and are not in perfect alignment. Apparently each letter was cut independently on the end of the type body and the cutter was not sufficiently skillful to center them perfectly.
Compare this page with the reproductions of the Mazarin, or forty-two line Bible, shown on pages48and49. We know that the Mazarin Bible was printed not later than 1456. By some it has been attributed to Gutenberg, or at least to his types, but it is now considered the work of Schoeffer. The Mazarin Bible is one of the most perfect and splendid pieces of typography that has ever been produced. Other work attributed to Gutenberg shows a high degree of excellence. It has always been one of the wonders of invention that so difficult and complicated an art as typography should have sprung into being fully perfected, without trace of imperfect experiment. In the rough page of Coster’s Donatus we clearly see the imperfect beginning—the missing link.
These peculiarities are exactly what we should expect to find in the missing links between the printing of block books and the printing of books from type. The printer is experimenting. He cuts the lettering off his blocks and combines them with type. He uses type and blocks for the same edition. He experiments with paper. He is very primitive in his methods. A block book could be printed only on one side. He is not yet sure that the type-set book can be printed on both sides. Not improbably he began by using for his type page the same method of printing that he used with his wooden block. It seems pretty clear that in this mass of material, known collectively as the Costeriana, we have the records of the course of experimentation which led from the printing of the image print, with its legend cut on the same block, by placing a sheet of paper or vellum on the inked surface of the block and pressing it down with a frotten, to the production of the book from type-set pages impressed upon both sides of the paper by means of a press.
We have thus gone through the evidence of the first class which exists for the invention of printing. We have seen that there exists indisputable evidence that forty-seven editions were printed at Haarlembefore 1474 by an experimenter who seems to have gone over the road from the block book to the type-set book.
Reduced Facsimile of Type Page by Coster.
Reduced Facsimile of Type Page by Coster.
Reduced Facsimile of Type Page by Coster.
Reduced Facsimile of Block Printing
Reduced Facsimile of Block Printing
Reduced Facsimile of Block Printing
We have a few bits of evidence of the second and third class which bear upon this subject and confirm our conclusions. Jean Le Robert, Abbot of Cambray, says in his diary that he bought in 1446 and1451 copies of the Doctrinale of Alexander Gallus printed from type. Certainly no Doctrinales were printed from type in Mainz as early as 1446, although we know that the Costeriana include Doctrinales in eight editions which may well have gone back to 1451. The opponents of the Haarlem theory claim that the Abbot refers to Doctrinales printed from blocks but we have no knowledge of the existence of any Doctrinales so made, and the term by which he describes them is a term which from the beginning has been specifically applied to the making of type and could not be applied to the making of blocks. Presumably the Abbot knew what he was talking about and told the truth.
Hadrianus Junius, in 1568, tells the story of Coster and the birch bark letters as we have previously told it. It is not necessary to repeat the story, but it is interesting to note certain features of it. Junius says that Coster printed his leaves on one side, pasting two together to avoid the recurrence of alternate blank pages. He further says that he saw one or two of Coster’s books thus made. He claims that he got the story in his youth from his tutor, Nicholas Gaal, a very aged man, but of good memory, who said that in his boyhood he had heard a certain Cornelis, a book binder, then eighty years old, tell the story of Coster’s invention and his struggles to perfect it, including the use of one side of the paper and of several different materials for type. The Burgomaster of Haarlem, Quirinius Talesius, admitted to Junius that in his youth Cornelis had told him the same story, and it is interesting to note in this connection that some of the Costeriana fragments are found in bindings made by this same Cornelis.
One more evidence which, like that of Junius, falls into the third class remains to be cited. In 1499 Koelhoff published the Cologne Chronicle in which he speaks of the invention of printing, using as his authority Ulrich Zell, a printer of the Mainz school, who settled in Cologne. He says that Zell told himthat “the art of printing was first found at Mainz, but in the manner as it was then (1499) practiced; the first prefiguration, however, the beginning of that at Mainz, was found in Holland from the Donatuses which had been printed in that country before.” Certainly this is not an attribution of the invention of printing either to Mainz or to Gutenberg. It is a distinct confession that it is only the sort of work then being done which was invented at Mainz and that it was suggested by work brought from Holland. It entirely agrees with the Junius account above quoted.
In the Haarlem Town Library there is a pedigree of the Coster family. In its present form it dates from 1559, but the earlier part was evidently copied from an old document. This pedigree says that Lourens Janssoen Coster invented printing in 1446.
While we have not here an exact agreement of dates we have one near enough for all practical purposes. The Costeriana run back for a period which may be conservatively stated at thirty years from 1474, that is to say, to 1444 or thereabouts. Zell says that printed Donatuses came from Holland, but that the art of printing as practiced in 1499 was invented at Mainz, and this invention, as we shall presently show, is fixed as subsequently to 1450. Junius, writing in 1568, says that Coster discovered printing 128 years previously, that is to say, 1440.
If we now turn to the examination of the evidence in support of the claim for Gutenberg, we find that it is lacking in material of the first or even of the second class. It is not absolutely certain that we have any book printed by Gutenberg. If, however, for the sake of the argument we admit that he printed nearly or quite all of the works that are attributed to him we find that they are all much better in workmanship and appearance than the Haarlem books. None of them are printed on one side of the page only, excepting, of course, small matters which would not cover more than one page, and there are no signs whateverof transition from any previous type of printing to typography. Those who have accepted the theory of Gutenberg’s invention have marveled at the perfection of his work, as well they might.
There are only two pieces of evidence of the first class. One is the Helmasperger document, a notary’s document concerning the law suit which Fust brought against Gutenberg in 1455. A close examination of this document would appear to show that it tells rather against than in favor of Gutenberg. It appears to show conclusively that Gutenberg had not done any printing before 1450, and had not at that time even made the tools with which to print. In this document Fust speaks of “the work” and “our common work.” Gutenberg speaks of “tools” in preparation. Clearly he is borrowing money in order to make tools. He speaks further of “servants’ wages, house rent, vellum, paper, ink, etc.” and of “the work of the books.” The judges speak of “the work to the profit of both of them,” “their common use,” and the like. There is not a word which speaks distinctly of an invention. It is true that the argument from silence is always dangerous and that those who believe that Gutenberg invented printing could easily read between the lines of this document references to the invention. To one who approaches the subject with an open mind, however, the language is rather that of one who enters into partnership for the carrying on of a business enterprise which is understood by both parties and from which both expect to receive profit rather than that of the man who undertakes to finance an inventor for a share in the invention.
The other piece of evidence of the first class is the letters patent by which Adolph II appointed Gutenberg one of the officers of his court. The document states that the appointment is made for “agreeable and voluntary service rendered to us and our bishopric.” It has been argued that as Gutenberg was not a soldier this agreeable and voluntary service must have been the invention of printing. Surely this is aviolent assumption. If we believe that Gutenberg invented printing, we may perhaps see in these words a reference to the invention, although we then marvel why so epoch-making an accomplishment was not specifically mentioned. It is difficult, however, to see why an unconvinced person should be expected to see in such a statement as this any evidence that Gutenberg had invented printing. Certainly there are many other kinds of service which might well have been rendered by one of whom we know so little as we do of Gutenberg.
Zell’s testimony, already referred to, is of the second class. Zell’s testimony also counts against Gutenberg. He distinctly does not claim that Gutenberg invented any more than the method of printing in use in 1499, admitting that he got his suggestion from the Donatuses brought out of Holland. It has been argued that these Donatuses were block books and that it was from them that Gutenberg got the idea of typography. This argument, however, breaks down at once when we remember that many block books were printed in Germany. There is no earthly reason why the suggestion of typography should have come from a Dutch block book when everybody was familiar with the German ones and had been so familiar for many years.
A careful examination of the documentary evidence which will be found set forth in chronological order in the article on Typography in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica shows several interesting things. While the earlier mentions of printing generally attribute the beginnings of the art to Mainz, few of them speak distinctly of its being invented there. They speak of its being practiced there and being given to Germany and the world from there, claims as we shall presently see quite consistent with the theory of invention elsewhere. Nearly, if not quite, all of the early statements that printing was invented by Gutenberg are traceable either directly to Gutenberg himself, to his family, or to people whowould be quoting him or his family. It is not until a comparatively late period that we find any agreement among writers in attributing the invention to Gutenberg.
We are now perhaps in position to form a pretty clear idea of just what happened and to award discriminating credit where it belongs. The present writer believes that it may be considered as settled that Coster invented printing in Haarlem about 1446. Coster did not, however, found a school of printing. He ceased to print not far from 1481, as about that time we find some of his material used elsewhere. The later years of the century see a few printers in Holland. How far they derived their inspiration from Coster is doubtful. It is certain that Haarlem was not a center from which spread to the rest of Europe and ultimately to the whole world the art preservative of all arts.
The honor of being this center clearly belongs to Mainz. How did the art get there? Probably not through the treachery of a dishonest apprentice. That is one of the legendary features of the Junius story, explained by the fact that in his time everybody knew that the center from which printing spread was Mainz and that the first two printers were John Gutenberg and John Fust. We may at this point accept Zell’s account as the true one. Some of Coster’s work found its way to Mainz, together, probably, with some general, unscientific statements as to how it was produced. Acting on this hint and with these models before him, Gutenberg reinvented the art, that is, he worked out from the finished product and a general idea of how it was made what was to all intents and purposes an original process superior to the one by which the work in his possession had been produced.
His association with Fust, the business man, and Schoeffer, the craftsman, was the means whereby the invention became profitable to the world, though not to Gutenberg. There is no reason to suppose thatFust was an unprincipled schemer who stole Gutenberg’s invention and profited by it. He was a business man who made a contract with another man for the carrying on of a certain manufacturing process, setting his capital against the other man’s labor for an equal share in the profit. There was not only no profit, but the working partner did not live up to his side of the contract. Fust sued, obtained a judgment, and under this judgment took over a great part at least of the equipment which his money had paid for. While the criminal procedure of this age was of a very harsh and primitive sort the judgments of the German courts in civil cases appear generally to have been fairly just. When we consider Gutenberg’s record of financial slipperiness there seems no reason to doubt that it was just in this case. On obtaining the business Fust associated with himself the young journeyman, Peter Schoeffer, who had learned the business in the Gutenberg and Fust establishment and had married Fust’s daughter. He was an excellent workman and his skill, backed by Fust’s capital, set the new invention on a practical basis and insured its future.
In deciding against the claims of Gutenberg to the invention we by no means deprive him of all share in the glory. The reinvention with improvements was nearly if not quite as creditable a task as the invention, especially when we remember how simple a step the actual inventor took in going from his block book to his type-set book. The invention of Coster was sterile. The reinvention of Gutenberg was fruitful. It was Mainz and not Haarlem which actually gave printing to the world.
In view of all this the early testimonies are not so conflicting as they seem. We have seen that the testimonies of Junius and of Zell supplement each other. We can see that the early authorities were right in their claim that printing was given to Germany and the world by Mainz, and at the same time that the claim is not, as has been hastily supposed,a claim that it was invented there. We can see that the reinvention of printing might well seem so important to Gutenberg himself and to his family that they should claim that he invented it. The statement in the letters patent may well refer to the service which Gutenberg rendered to the court and bishopric of Adolph II by the introduction of typography because he unquestionably did thus render them great service, and we are no longer surprised at the omission of a distinct statement that Gutenberg was rewarded for inventing typography. In a word, the Gutenberg monuments need not come down, but the inscriptions on them should be changed.