[The Haarlem Legend of the Invention of Printing by Lourens Janszoon Coster, critically examined by Dr. A. Van Der Linde. Translated from the Dutch by J. H. Hessels, with an Introduction and a Classified List of the Costerian Incunabula. London, Blades, East, and Blades. 1871. Roy. 8vo. pp. xxvi. and 170.]

A copy of the above work having reached me while the preceding sheet was being prepared for press, I am singularly gratified to find, that by means of a wholly independent process of investigation, I have arrived at a conclusion, almost identical, on the main point, with that to which other and more direct sources of information have led Dr. Van Der Linde. Writing for English readers, and dealing chiefly with the statements and arguments of the leading English Costerians, the confirmation thus given to my views is as great as it was unexpected.

Dr. Van Der Linde shews, most conclusively, that the whole story of the Origin of Printing in Haarlem arose from the fabrication of a pedigree by an innkeeper named Gerrit Thomaszoon, who was sheriff of Haarlem in the year 1545, and who died about the year 1563 or 1564. This pedigree, made a few years before his death, traces his descent from one Thomas Pieterssoen, by Lucye “his second wife, who was the daughter of Louris Janssoens Coster, who brought the first print into the world Anno 1446.” Authority for this statement there is absolutely none; and no proof whatever exists that Lucye the daughter of Louris Janssoens, ever existed otherwise than by her creation in the fertile fancy of the pedigree maker. But proof there is in abundance, that one Lourens Janszoon Coster kept a tallow-chandler’s shop in Haarlem between the years 1440 and 1450; that about the latter year he transferred that business to his sister, Ghertruit Jan Costersdochter, who died in 1454; he himself starting as an innkeeper in 1451, in which occupation he continued until 1483, when he left Haarlem with all his goods, and is heard of no more. This Lourens Coster was a member of a festive body, called the “Holy Christmas Corporation.” It consisted of 54 brethren and sisters, each one of whom possessed a chair specially set apart for him or her at their regular meetings. These chairs passed by inheritance or purchase from one to another; the corporation apparently having had its origin in a family gathering. Its transactions were minutely recorded, and particular care was taken to note the transmission of the chairs from one holder to another. Lourens Coster’s chair passed in 1484, (the record does not state how), into the possession of Frans Thomas Thomaszoon, and in 1497 Gerrit Thomaszoon Pieterszoon inherited it from his father. This is the individual who kept the inn on the market place, and was made sheriff in 1545. Now Jan Van Zuyren and Coornhert were partners in business, and “sworn book-printers” to the town in 1561, in which year Van Zuyren also became Burgomaster. They could not but have been intimate with the sheriff and innkeeper Gerrit Thomaszoon, who lived to the year 1563 or 1564. He would also be well known to Junius, living as he did in Haarlem from 1560 to 1572. In one of the rooms of his inn Gerrit Thomaszoon hung up the pedigree he had had made, and in which was set forth his descent from “Lucye, second wife of Thomas Pieterszoon, daughter of Louris Janssoens Coster, who brought the first print into the world Anno 1446.” Here then, as in a nutshell, lie the whole of the circumstances which Junius, in 1568, worked up in his Batavia into an account of the Origin of Printing in Haarlem, by Laurens Janszoon Coster; but with the date of the pedigree altered from 1446 to 1440. The cogent reasons for this alteration are fully shewn by Dr. Van Der Linde.

The statements of Van Zuyren and Coornhert; the story of the family mansion, and the wine-pot relics; the cursings of the old book-binder Cornelis; the confirmations of the tale to Junius by Nicholas Galius and Quiryn Dirksz Talesius, are all now easily understood,—they were tavern gossip, suggested by the pedigree, which passing through the alembic of Junius’s brain, issued thence in the shape of a circumstantial history, which national vanity has been induced to accept as a record of indubitable facts.

From first to last, the Coster-legend forms a very singular chapter in the history of national credulity. Scriverius, writing in 1628, and not knowing the source of Junius’s information, makes one Lourens Janszoon, sheriff of Haarlem, who died in 1439, the Laurens Janszoon Coster,—(these names being as common in Haarlem as those of Brown, Jones and Smith in London,)—to whom was attributed the origin of printing; and to whose memory a stone statue was erected in 1722. In 1823 and 1824 bronze and silver jubilee medals were struck in honor of the same supposed first typographer, and two memorial stones put up; and in 1851, a third tablet was placed in front of the rebuilt Coster-house. But meanwhile, the pedigree is discovered, and Koning and others strive hard to identify the Lourens Janssoens Coster it mentions, with the Lourens Janszoon of Scriverius. Junius’s account is unscrupulously amended and altered and corrected, in order to make room for the views of subsequent writers; and another statue in bronze is resolved upon, which is erected in 1856; but this one, in the secret knowledge of the Committee engaged in its erection,[147] is to the memory of the tallow-chandler and innkeeper, and not to that of the alleged sheriff. Finally, the pedigree is published, all other documents connected with the persons named in it, and in the history by Junius, are critically examined; and in 1870 the fallacy of the whole affair is thoroughly exposed.

The conclusion to which Dr. Van Der Linde arrives in his chapter on “The Spread of Typography in the Netherlands,” is as follows:—

“The harvest of history on the field of typography concerning Haarlem may be scanty; it does not yield anything, as far as xylography goes. There existed there already very early a Lucasguild, like that at Antwerp, and like the Johannesgild at Bruges; but, however rich in painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths, the Haarlem Corporation may have been, it produces, notwithstanding the most patient researches, not a single prenter (briefprenter) or xylographer. The manufacture, therefore, of a whole series of blockbooks of the 15th century, ascribed, two, three, and four centuries afterwards, without any shadow of evidence, to a Haarlem innkeeper, has to be referred to the empire of fiction.”

Mr. Hessels (a native of Haarlem, as is also Dr. Van Der Linde) says, in his very able Introduction: (p. vii.)

“Whatever may be said about the discrepancies and absurdities of the Coster-legend, now that we possess a full knowledge of it, there is one circumstance which has given, and will give, an air of probability to the story, even now that it is deprived of its hero, so long as this circumstance cannot be sufficiently accounted for. I mean the existence of a comparatively large number of works—blockbooks and incunabula—which are of an incontestably early, and Dutch origin, and which cannot, even at present, be ascribed to any known printer, but of which it is certain that they belong to the printer who produced the four editions of the Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis, the book referred to by Junius.”

He then gives, on pages xi. to xvi., a classified list of the Costeriana as far as known, amounting in all to 43 separate works and editions, distinguishing seven different types used in their production.

“The earliest date (he says) we can assign for the present to the Costeriana is 1471–74. Mr. Holtrop tells us on p. 31 of his Monuments, that the Hague copy of the Saliceto (No. 25 of his list) contains two MS. annotations: 1st, ‘Hunc librum emit dominus Conrardus abbas hujus loci XXXIII., qui obiit anno MCCCCLXXIIII, in profesto exaltationis sanctae crucis, postquam profuisset annis fere tribus.’ Another inscription indicates that this copy had belonged to the convent of St. James, at Lille. Now, the abbat Conrad, who bought this book for his convent, was Conrad du Moulin, who was abbat only from 1471 to 1474.

“This is the only date we can use at present. It is, as Mr. Bradshaw observes in his ‘List,’ mentioned above, ‘a singular circumstance that this one fact should compel us to place the printer of the Speculum at the head of the Dutch printers, though it only just allows him to take precedence of Ketelaer and De Leempt,’ from whom we have the date 1473, found in Peter Comestor, Scholastica hystoria.”—pp. xvii.-xviii.

The above considerations go far towards supporting the suggestions I have thrown out (see pages 323–348) in regard to the dates when, and the parties by whom, the Speculum, Donatuses, &c., were printed. And these suggestions are further confirmed by the extracts cited by Dr. Van Der Linde from the archives of Utrecht, in a note on p. 85 of Hessels’ Translation, where it is stated that in the year 1466, the name of Peter Dircxsz, described as a “beeldedrucker”—a prenter,—appears. “Perhaps,” adds Dr. Van Der Linde, “the printer of the plates of the Speculum.”

[147] The name of Lourens Janszoon, the sheriff of Haarlem who died in 1439, is mentioned seventy-six times in the archives of the city, but never with the name of Coster. The name of the tallow-chandler Lourens Janszoon Coster, appears much later, (as late as 1483); but his name was never brought before the public, in connection with the origin of printing, until the year 1867.—See Haarlem Legend, pp. 124, 125.