One of these works is The Letter of Indulgence of 1461, an indulgence granted by Pope Pius II to all who should contribute to the restoration of a church at Neuhausen. It is printed in a new face of type, which should have been made before 1460. The types of this indulgence resemble those of the Letters of Indulgence of 30 lines and of 31 lines, but they were cast from different matrices and in a different p434 mould. They seem to be the production of an incompetent punch-cutter; the letters were rudely cut, the matrices were not properly fitted up, and the types do not line. The presswork, upon new types, is good.

In the same face of type, but upon a body a little larger, Gutenberg printed the Catholicon269 of 1460, a great folio of 748 pages of double columns, with 66 lines to each column. In some copies of the Catholicon, the summary of contents is printed in red ink, and ornamented with an engraving which fills one side of the first page. The composition is as rude as that of the Bibles; the right side of each column is always ragged from careless spacing. The colophon annexed states that the book was printed at Mentz in 1460, but it does not give the name270 of the printer. The silence of Gutenberg concerning his services is remarkable, all the more so, when this silence is contrasted with the silly chatterings of several printers during the last quarter of the fifteenth century,—of whom Peter Schoeffer may be considered as the first, and Trechsel of Lyons the last,—each insisting that he, whatever others might have done before him, was the true perfecter of printing. There is no other instance in modern history, excepting possibly that of Shakespere, of a man who did so much and who said so little about it. This colophon is the only passage in this book, and, indeed, in any of his works, which can be attributed to Gutenberg: p435

By the assistance of the most High, at whose will the tongues of children become eloquent, and who often reveals to babes what He hides from the wise, this renowned book, the Catholicon, was printed and perfected in the year of Incarnation 1460, in the beloved city of Mentz (which belongs to the illustrious German nation, and which God has consented to prefer and to raise with such an exalted light of the mind and of free grace, above the other nations of the earth), not by means of pen, or pencil, or stencil plate, but by the admirable proportion, harmony and connection of the punches and matrices.271 Wherefore to thee, Divine Father, Son and Holy Ghost, triune and only God, let praise and honor be given, and let those who never forget to praise [the Virgin] Mary, join also through this book in the universal anthem of the Church.God be praised. p436

The dignified and reverential language of this colophon, so unlike the vainglorious imprints of Fust and Schoeffer and the common­place subs­crip­tions of Pfister, is almost enough of itself to show that the printer of the Catholicon was John Gutenberg. That he should attribute the invention to the assis­tance and favor of the Almighty, might be expected from a man thoroughly imbued with religious sentiment, but why Gutenberg should, in this and in all other books, neglect to mention himself as the man through whom the invention was accomplished is an irregularity which cannot be explained. This neglect is strange, for Fust and Schoeffer had boasted, in an imprint to the Psalter of 1457, of their skill as printers.

Five little pamphlets with texts in a new face of Round Gothic on English body, and with chapter headings in types resembling the text types of the Bible of 42 lines, have been attributed to Gutenberg. They are: A Treatise on the Celebration of the Mass,272 a book of 30 leaves; A Calendar, or An Almanac for 1460, in Latin, a quarto of 6 leaves; The Mirror of the Clergy, by Hermann of Saldis, “happily perfected and printed at Mentz,” a quarto of 16 leaves; A Treatise on the Necessity of Councils, etc., a quarto of 24 leaves; A Dialogue between Cato, Hugo and Oliver about Ecclesiastical Liberty, p437 a quarto of 20 leaves.273 It is possible, but not certain, that Gutenberg printed these books. A Treatise on Reason and Conscience,274 by Matthew of Cracow, a small quarto of 22 leaves, and A Summary of the Articles of Faith, by Thomas Aquinas, a quarto of 12 leaves, printed in the types of the Catholicon, may be confidently accepted as the work of Gutenberg. But one copy or fragment of some of these works is known. Gutenberg may have printed many other works which have been destroyed and forgotten.275

The existing copies or fragments of pamphlets and books printed before 1462 are enough to prove that printing met p438 with a qualified degree of appreciation. Gutenberg and Fust must have given employment to many presses and workmen: there was a demand for printed work of all kinds from almanacs to dictionaries, and the printers had reason to believe that they would be amply rewarded for their labor. Their hopes were destroyed by the sack of Mentz in 1462.

The city of Mentz then held the first place in the league of the free cities of the Rhine, but her prosperity276 was declining. Unceasing civil strifes had driven away the more feeble part of her population. In 1461, it was the wreck of its earlier greatness: it had but 50,000 inhabitants and was burdened with debt. Diether, Count of Isenburg, was then archbishop and elector of the city, by the consent of the majority of the inhabitants; but the rival archbishop, Adolph II, Count of Nassau, supported by Pope Pius II, claimed the archbishopric, and made war upon Diether. The consequences of the war, which nearly ruined the city, are forcibly stated by Schaab. p439

This enmity between two archbishops was the cause of one of the most terrible days to the town of Mentz. It was the 28th of October, 1462, the day on which Christianity celebrated the anniversary of the apostles Simon and Judas. Mentz had remained faithful to the archbishop Diether. Adolph therefore tried to conquer it by stratagem and treason. Traitors were gained over in the town, who entailed upon a half thousand of their fellow-citizens death, and endless misery on many more. By the treachery of some wicked persons the town was assaulted during the night between the 27th and 28th of October, 1462, by the followers of Adolph; its noblest citizens were murdered, the most of them robbed of their possessions, and driven from the town. All kinds of mischief were committed toward those who remained behind. Neither age, rank, nor sex was exempted. The booty was sold publicly in the cattle-market, and the money divided between the soldiers.277 Of the expelled citizens only a few gradually returned in secret to their relations. But the town, so populous before, remained empty, and all industry was destroyed. The elector Adolph II found it necessary, on the Saturday after St. Thomas’s day of the same year, to issue a proclamation whereby he promised to all who wished to trade or to exercise a profession in Mentz, protection for their persons and possessions, to induce a few to return. A town, a short time before flourishing with commerce and industry, had been robbed in a few days of its privileges and utterly destroyed.278

In the general sack of the city, the house of Fust was burned, and his printing materials were destroyed. During the three years that followed no books of value were printed in Mentz. We do not know how Gutenberg was affected: we find no authoritative statement that his printing office was destroyed; it is not even certain that his office was then in the city of Mentz. In the year 1466, the printing office which contained his types was in active operation at Eltvill, a village not far from the city. As this was the place where Gutenberg’s mother was born, and where she had an estate, it is probable that Gutenberg found some advantage in making it his residence, soon after his separation from Fust. Eltvill was also p440 the place which Adolph II had selected for his residence before he made his attack on Diether. It may be presumed that Eltvill was the place where Adolph first knew of Gutenberg and his works.

In 1465, Adolph II made Gutenberg one of the gentlemen of his court for “agreeable and voluntary service rendered to us and our bishopric.” The nature of the service is not defined. Gutenberg was certainly not a soldier. His German biographers do not believe that, as diplomatist or politician, he had favored the cause of the destroyer of the liberties of his native city. Helbig thinks the words used are purely conventional, and that this distinction was conferred on Gutenberg because he was connected with the old nobility of the city. It is a more common and a more reasonable belief that Adolph recognized, to some extent, the utility of Gutenberg’s invention, and took this method to honor the inventor.

WE, Adolph, elected and confirmed archbishop of Mentz, acknowledge that we have considered the agreeable and voluntary service which our dear and faithful Johan Gutenberg has rendered to us and our bishopric, and have appointed and accepted him as our servant and courtier. Nor shall we remove him from our service as long as he lives; and in order that he may enjoy it the more, we will clothe him every year, when we clothe our ordinary suite (unsern gemeinen hoffgesind), always like our noblemen, and give him our court dress; also every year twenty mout of corn and two voer of wine for the use of his house, free of duty, as long as he lives, but on condition that he shall not sell it or give it away. Which has been promised us in good faith by Johan Gutenberg. Eltvill, Thursday after St. Antony, 1465.279 p441

The man who had invented an art which promised to renew the literature of the world, who had printed two great Bibles, a Latin Dictionary, and many minor works relating to religion, had surely rendered service to the first ecclesiastical dignitary of Germany.

Here Gutenberg’s work ends. If not disqualified by the infirmities of age from the management of his printing office, his position as courtier must have compelled his attendance at the court of the archbishop. Possibly, the rules of the court required Gutenberg to withdraw from business. Whatever the reason, we see that the printing office at Eltvill passed into the hands of his relatives by marriage, the brothers Henry and Nicholas BechtermÜntz. It does not appear that these men had been formally instructed as printers in Mentz. As they acquired no rights of proprietorship in this office, as they were men of middle age, rich, of noble birth and of high civic position, it may be supposed that they took charge of the office to oblige Gutenberg and the archbishop, and, perhaps, from a pure love of the new art.

In the year 1467, this printing office at Eltvill produced a book now known as the Vocabularium ex quo, called so because these first words of the work serve to distinguish it from other vocabularies. It is an abbreviation of the Catholicon, and for that reason is described in the colophon as an opusculum, or a little work; but it is a heavy quarto of 330 pages. It is printed with the types of the Catholicon, and shows the same peculiarities of composition. The colophon says that “this little book was made, not by reed, nor pen, nor stencil plate, but by a certain new and subtile invention ... by Henry BechtermÜntz, of blessed memory.280 ... Nicholas BechtermÜntz, and Wygand Spyess of Orthenburg.”281

Gutenberg could not have abandoned his printing office with much regret. He had abundantly demonstrated the p442 utility of his invention and his own ability as a printer by the publication of two great books and many pamphlets. His art had been adopted in five German cities: it was then making its entry in Rome; it was eagerly sought for by the king of France. A future of unbounded popularity and usefulness was before it. The young men to whom Gutenberg had taught the practice of printing had so improved that they were his equals and superiors, and the old man of quite seventy years could not cope with these competitors. His ambition for pre-eminence in his own art, or for the wealth that should have been derived from its practice, if he ever had such aspirations, had to be given up. It was time that he should quit the stage.

Gutenberg did not long enjoy the leisure or the honors of a courtier. In February, 1468, he was dead. Nothing is known of the cause or the circumstances of his death, nor is there any mention of a surviving family. We have to conclude that John Gutenberg, the inventor of the greatest of modern arts, died, weighed down by debts, and unattended by wife or child. The disposition of his printing office is stated in the following document:282

I, THE undersigned, Conrad Humery, doctor, acknowledge by this writing, that his eminence the prince, my gracious and dear lord Adolphus, archbishop of Mentz, has generously delivered to me certain formen [matrices or moulds], characters [types], instruments, utensils, and other implements connected with printing, which John Gutenberg left after his death, which materials belonged and still belong to me:283 but, for the honor and the satisfaction of his eminence I am bound, and I pledge myself, by this document, never to put them to use but in the city of Mentz, and further, to sell them, at a fair price, to a citizen of Mentz in preference to any other. In testimony whereof, I have put my seal to these presents, which have been made in the year of our Lord 1468, on the Friday after Saint Matthew’s day [26th of February]. p443

In this strange document we again find the word formen, and the formen are specified first, as if they were the most valuable tools. As types are specifically described, it is plain that these formen must have been matrices or moulds.

Humery kept his word. The types and tools of Gutenberg remained with Nicholas BechtermÜntz until his death. They were then transferred to the custody or the possession of the Brothers of the Life-in-Common, who had a printing office at Marienthal, near Eltvill, as early as 1468. That this place was regarded as a part of Mentz may be inferred from the imprint they put on their first book, which is to this effect: Dated in our city of Mentz on the last day of August, 1468. Eltvill was the chosen residence of the archbishop, and under his jurisdiction, and might properly be considered as a dependency or a part of the city of Mentz.

For some unknown reason these Brothers of the Life-in-Common made no use of the types of Gutenberg. In the year 1508, they were sold to Frederic Hauman of Nuremberg, who established a printing office in Mentz, and who used these types in many of his books.284 The house that had been occupied by Hauman as a printing office was subsequently used for the same purpose by Albinus, a printer of p444 the seventeenth century. The types of Gutenberg were in this house at the end of the sixteenth century, for Serarius, in his History of Mentz, says that he had seen them there.285

Humery’s promise that, in the sale of the printing materials then contemplated, he would give preference to a citizen of Mentz, was obviously made at the request of the archbishop. It follows that the types of the dead printer were then regarded as relics of value of which the city should be proud. This request, which would not have been made without occasion, seems to confirm the conjecture that Gutenberg had previously sold the types, or at least the matrices, of the Bible of 36 lines to Albert Pfister, of the monastic town of Bamberg. It is not probable that the deed of gift would have been clogged with this stipulation, if there had been no sale.

This request of the archbishop is the only evidence we have that Gutenberg’s work was appreciated, but the appreciation came when he was dead. No contemporary writer noticed the Bible of 42 lines, and no one during his lifetime suitably honored Gutenberg as a great inventor. The archbishop, who knew the merit of the man, and pitied his misfortunes, had not a word to say in the document that made him a courtier of his services as an inventor or printer.

This indifference or want of perception seems inexcusable, but it was not altogether without cause. The readers of that time were somewhat familiar with printed impressions in the form of block-books, and the Bible of 42 lines may have seemed to them but a block-book of larger size and of higher order. Knowing that engraving, ink, paper, and impression upon surfaces in relief, were used in both processes, the ordinary book-buyer could have inferred that type-printing was the natural outgrowth of the older and well-known art of block-printing. According to this view, Gutenberg invented little or nothing; he did but little more than combine some old and well-known processes; he distinguished himself more by the great size of his books than by the novelty or merit p445 of his process. It is but proper to expose this sophistry, for it is perpetuated to this day in several books on typography.

This grave error did not originate with the first printers, who knew the full difference between type and block-printing. They knew that Gutenberg was indebted to the earlier block-printers for a great deal of his knowledge, but they knew as well that his system of printing was a great and an original invention, for they clearly understood, what the ordinary book-reader did not, the value of its characteristic feature. And here it may be repeated, for the error is common and it is necessary to be emphatic, that the merit of Gutenberg as an inventor is not based upon his supposed discovery of the advantages of movable types, but upon the system by which he made the movable types. All the printers of that period recognized the fact that Gutenberg’s method of making the types, or the type-mould, with its connections, was the proper basis or starting-point of the invention. Schoeffer, who first printed a notice of the new art, speaks of it as the “masterly invention of printing and also of type-making,” implying that the art of printing was inseparably connected with that of type-making. John Gutenberg, in the Catholicon, has not a word to say about isolated types, nor about a combination of types: the admiration which he invokes for the masterly invention should, in his view of the matter, be bestowed on its system of making the types, or on the “admirable proportion, connection and harmony of the punches and matrices.”

Gutenberg made no effort to secure for himself his rightful honors as the inventor of printing, but his friends who knew the nature and value of his services were not neglectful. We have abundant evidence that Gutenberg was the man, and Mentz the place, where printing was invented.

Trithemius, from information furnished by Peter Schoeffer, said, in a book written before 1490, “About this time (1450), the admirable and then unheard-of art of composing and printing books, by means of types, was conceived and invented at Mentz, by a citizen of Mentz, named John Gutenberg.” p446

Matthias Palmer, in 1474, said that John Gutenberg, a knight of Mentz, had invented the art of printing books.

Ulric Zell’s testimony, given in 1499, is equally explicit.286

Polydore Virgil, in his treatise on Inventions, says, in the first edition, that printing was invented by one Peter [probably Peter Schoeffer], but in the second edition of 1517, he corrected the error, and attributed the invention to Gutenberg.

Wimpheling, in 1499, wrote and published at Heidelberg some verses praising Gutenberg, in which he said, “Blessed Gensfleisch! through you Germany is famous everywhere. Assisted by Omniscience, you John, first of all, printed with letters in metal. Religion, the wisdom of Greece, and the language of the Latins, are forever indebted to you.” Two professors at Heidelberg, at an earlier date (1494), had written panegyrics on Gutenberg as the inventor of typography, in which he is honored above all the great men of antiquity.287

Two friends of Gutenberg who, no doubt, knew all about his invention, put up tablets to his memory, in which his merit as an inventor is distinctly acknowledged. The inscriptions on these tablets have not received the attention which they merit. The tablet first placed was put up not long after his death by his relative, Adam Gelthus, near his tomb in the church of St. Francis. This is a translation of the inscription:

To John Genszfleisch, inventor of the art of printing, and deserver of the highest honors from every nation and tongue, Adam Gelthus places this tablet, in perpetual commemoration of his name. His remains peacefully repose in the church of St. Francis of Mentz.288 p447

Gelthus properly describes Gutenberg’s invention as the art of printing. In a practical view, there was no other.

Equally instructive is the pithy inscription on the second tablet, which was put up by Ivo Wittig,289 in the court of the house of the Gensfleisch family, where Gutenberg is supposed to have died,290 and which was then used as a law school.

To John Gutenberg, of Mentz, who, first of all, invented printing letters in brass [matrices and moulds], and by this art has deserved honor from the whole world, Ivo Wittig places this stone in commemoration, 1508.291

Ivo Wittig, who had probably known Gutenberg, and who clearly understood his process, is not content with a paraphrase of the Gelthus inscription. In plain words, he specifies the key of the invention: Gutenberg, first of all, made types in brass moulds and matrices. In other words, it was only through the invention of the type-mould and matrices in brass that printing became a great art. This inscription shows that p448 Wittig, then professor of history in the University, and probably the most learned man in Mentz, regarded John Gutenberg as the true inventor of printing.

Considered from a mechanical point of view, the merit of Gutenberg’s invention may be inferred from its permanency. His type-mould was not merely the first; it is the only practical mechanism for making types. For more than four hundred years this mould has been under critical examination, and many attempts have been made to supplant it. Contrivances have been invented for casting fifty or more types at one operation; for swaging types, like nails, out of cold metal; for stamping types from cylindrical steel dies upon the ends of thin copper rods—but experience has shown that these and like inventions in the department of type-making machinery are impracticable. There is no better method than Gutenberg’s. Modern type-casting machines have moulds attached to them which are more exact and more carefully finished, and which have many little attachments of which Gutenberg never dreamed, but in principle and in all the more important features, the modern moulds may be regarded as the moulds of Gutenberg.

Gutenberg’s merit as an original inventor, although never properly recognized during his life, was never denied. But this merit was disallowed and set aside after his death by the sons and friends of Peter Schoeffer. They said that printing was only half invented by Gutenberg, and that the complete invention is really due to Gutenberg’s assistant and successor. As this claim has been repeated by many authors, it is necessary, for the vindication of Gutenberg, to review the work and workmanship of Peter Schoeffer and John Fust.