# The Invention of Printing/Chapter 24

XXIV
Alleged Inventors of Printing.
Discovery of the Book of Four Stories, with Imprint of Albert Pfister … Its Types the same as those of the Bible of 36 lines … Pfister regarded as an Inventor of Printing … Description of Book of Four Stories … Its Colophon … Book of Fables … Colophon and Fac-simile … Other Books by Pfister … Pfister not a Type-founder … Probably an Engraver on Wood … Could not have Printed the Bible of 36 lines … Pfister probably got his Knowledge of Printing from Gutenberg … Paul of Prague's Notice of Printing at Bamberg … Sebastian Pfister … Pamphilo Castaldi … Absurdity of the Legend … John Mentel and his Epitaph … Gebwiler's Statement … Fac-simile of the Arms of the Typothetæ … Specklin's Statement … Plain Falsifications of History … Known Facts about Mentel and his partner Henry Eggestein.
Lessing.
Schelhorn's opinion that the Bible of 36 lines was the Bible described by Zell—the book printed by Gutenberg in 1450—did not meet with the approval of those who had copies of the Bible of 42 lines. Men who had paid very large prices for the copies of an edition supposed to be the first, were loth to have it degraded to the inferior place of a second edition. The testimony of Zell was unceremoniously set aside; the written date of 1460 in one copy of the Bible of 36 lines was regarded as indicating the date of printing, and the book was declared the work of Gutenberg between 1455 and 1460. Another hypothesis was soon presented. In 1792, Steiner, a clergyman at Augsburg, announced the discovery of the Book of Four Stories with the imprint of Albert ​Pfister, Bamberg, 1462. Soon after, Camus read before the National Institute at Paris, a critical description of the book, in which he proved the identity of its types with those of the Bible of 36 lines. Thereupon, incautious readers rushed to the hasty inference that, as Pfister had made use of the types of the Bible of 36 lines, the Bible must have been printed by Pfister. Critics of authority did not hesitate to say that Albert Pfister, a printer unknown for three centuries, and of whom there is no tradition, might have been an inventor of printing, the rival, and perhaps the predecessor and teacher, of John Gutenberg. As we know Pfister only through his books, it will be proper to examine their workmanship before this hypothesis can be considered. They are not numerous: sixteen books and pamphlets have been attributed to. him, but his claim to eight has been disproved.
The Book of Four Stories, a thin folio of 60 leaves—a version made for childish readers of the biblical descriptions of Joseph, Daniel, Esther and Judith—may be offered as the most characteristic specimen of Pfister's style. The types of this book are those of the Bible of 36 lines, but they are much worn. If they were not the identical characters, they were cast in the mould and matrices that had been used for the types of the Bible, for the types of both books agree in face and in body. The Book of Four Stories has fifty-five engravings on wood, six of which are repeated, each occupying the space of about eleven lines, or 2¾ inches, of the text. The engravings are coarse; they have no artistic merit, and are in every way inferior to those of the Bible of the Poor or the Speculum Salutis; they abound in puerile absurdities, and seem to be the work of a maker of cards or images. The text of the book is in German rhyme, but the lines follow each other, without break, as in a text of prose. A capital ​letter indicates the beginning of each line of poetry, and a lozenge-shaped period denotes its ending. The presswork is decidedly inferior: the deeply indented paper shows that the printer could not regulate the pressure on the types; the muddiness of the letters comes from the use of a thin ink, and the faulty register from a shackly press. The colophon or subscription of this book, a translation of which is submitted, specifies the date, the place of printing and the printer:
Every man, in his heart, desires to be learned and well read. Without books and without teacher, this cannot be. If it were otherwise, all of us would know Latin. These reflections have engaged me for a long time. To good purpose have I sought out and gathered the four stories of Joseph, Daniel, Judith, and also of Esther. God granted protection to these four personages, as He always does to the good. This little book, which is intended to teach us how to amend our lives, was completed in Bamberg, in which city Albert Pfister printed it, in the year which is numbered one thousand four hundred and sixty-two,—which is the truth,—soon after the day of Saint Walpurgis, who is able to obtain for us grace abundant, peace, and everlasting life. May God give them to all of us. Amen.
The Book of Fables, a folio of 88 leaves, printed with the types of the Bible of 36 lines, is another work which fairly exhibits the style of Pfister. It contains eighty-five fables, each illustrated with a coarse engraving on wood, in which monkeys represent men. The text is in rhyme, but the lines follow each other without break. The colophon says:
At Bamberg this little book was finished, after the Nativity of Jesus Christ, as one counts, one thousand four hundred years and sixty and one,—such is the truth,—on the day of Saint Valentine. God save us from His sufferings.
Fac-simile of an Illustration in the Book of Fables by Albert Pfister. [From Heineken.]
​That Pfister was not a type-founder seems clearly enough established through the fact that he did all his typographic work with only one size and face of type. In all his books, the letters of the Latin alphabet appear old and worn, but the w, k, and z, characters of the German alphabet, are new and sharp. The types had evidently been used before for books in Latin, but not by Pfister, for the Bible of the Poor seems to have been the only book he printed in that language.
The Book of Fables bearing the date of 1461 seems the earliest of Pfister's books, but it was published without any explanation stating that it was made by a new art. It may therefore be presumed that he began to print with types before 1461. The profusion of wood-cuts in his books is an indication that he was an engraver on wood—probably a maker of playing cards, images, and block-books, who had profited by an early opportunity to perceive the advantages of types. As a seller and maker of chap-books, he would prefer the types because they explained his pictures more cheaply than the slower process of engraving letter by letter; but his persistent use of types which other printers would have condemned as worn out, shows that he did not make and could not renew them. It is not probable that a man who seems to have rated his wretched wood-cuts as the most meritorious feature of his books could have invented types. It is possible, however, that an image printer of low aims and slender ability could have perceived the economical advantages of types, and may have purchased a discarded font for the sole purpose of printing explanations to his engravings. And this seems the only conjecture that will explain Pfister's ownership of the types of the Bible of 36 lines.
The conjecture that Pfister printed the Bible of 36 lines will not bear a critical examination. It is not enough to show that our first positive knowledge of the types and the copies of this book begins with Pfister and Bamberg. It still remains to be proved that Pfister made the types and printed the copies. The proof is wanting and the probabilities are ​strongly adverse. The Bible of 36 lines is unlike any book of Pfister's in size, character, and workmanship. It is not possible that the man who began his career as a printer with an admirable edition of the Latin Bible in three volumes folio, could have ended it with the publication of shabby little books in German, intended for children. A declension like this is without a parallel in typographical history.
It has been supposed that Pfister got his types and his imperfect knowledge of typography from Gutenberg after the dissolution of the partnership between Fust and Gutenberg, but Pfister could have gotten them before. There is a blank in Gutenberg's history between the years 1442 and 1448, about which we know nothing. That he was then at work on his problem; that he must have communicated more or less of his secrets to the many unknown workmen and associates who succeeded Dritzehen, Saspach, Heilmann and Dunne; that he may have been induced to try his fortunes at Bamberg before he went to Mentz; that Albert Pfister may have been one of his workmen who followed him to Mentz and acquired some skill in the art,—these are conjectures that, deserve consideration. But they are conjectures only: we have no exact knowledge concerning the introduction of typography in Bamberg. It is plain, however, that the appearance at Bamberg, in 1461,—a year before the sack of Mentz, the date usually fixed on as that of the dispersion of the printers, and the general divulgement of the secret,—of a book printed in the worn types of the Bible of 36 lines, and the subsequent discovery near this city of many copies of this book, which could not have been printed by Pfister, are indications that Gutenberg must have had business relations with Bamberg which are of importance in the history of printing.
The only documentary evidence which seems to favor the hypothesis that Pfister might have printed the Bible of 36 lines is the following curious notice of early printing, which was written about 1463, by Paul of Prague, for a contemplated but unfinished encyclopedia of arts and sciences:
The libripagus is an artisan who skillfully engraves oh plates of copper, iron, hard wood, or other substances, images, writing, or anything he fancies, and afterward quickly prints them on paper, or on a wall, or on a smooth board. He cuts whatever he pleases, and is a man who can apply his art to pictures. When I was at Bamberg, a man engraved the whole Bible upon plates, and in four weeks skillfully preserved this engraving of the whole Bible on thin parchment.
Pfister's name is not mentioned, but he was, probably, the libripagus here noticed. The story is not credible. The whole Bible was not printed in four weeks, neither at Bamberg nor elsewhere; nor was it ever engraved upon plates. The only book of Pfister's to which this statement could be applied, is his edition of the Bible of the Poor.
We do not know when Pfister died; his last dated work is of the year 1462. Sebastian Pfister, who is supposed to be Albert's son, was at the head of a printing office at Bamberg in the year 1470, and then printed a little book which seems to have been his first and last venture in printing.
Pamphilo Castaldi of Feltre, Italy, to whom a statue was erected in 1868, has also received the undeserved honor of an inventor of printing. This commemoration of the man by the people of a great nation seems to require in this book at least a statement of the legend on which his claims are based. This is the legend, abridged from a long panegyric on Castaldi's services by one of his countrymen:
The only portion of this absurd story which has any claim to respect is that about the early use in Italy by copyists of engraved or moulded initial letters. That they were, or could have been, made by the glass-blowers of Murano, and that Castaldi may have amused himself with experiments in stamping consecutive letters or lines, is possible. All else is pure fiction. It does not appear that Castaldi printed anything of value: we have no relics of his experiments in the form of a book, or even of a leaf, a line, or a letter. Nor did his dreams or teachings about the possible value of types ever incite any of his Italian pupils to make and use types.
To those who think that the merit of the invention of printing is in the conception of the idea of movable types, this legend about Castaldi is instructive. It reveals to us a man who is represented as having a very clear idea of the ​importance of types, who did nothing with his great discovery. His discovery, if it can be so called, was useless. He cannot be rated as an inventor of printing, for he printed nothing.
John Mentel, of Strasburg, who died in December, 1478, and was buried in the great cathedral of that city, has there a tablet to his memory, which contains the following inscription:
Here I rest: I, John Mentel, who, by the grace of God, was the first to invent, in Strasburg, the characters of typography, and to develop this art of printing, which should be perpetuated to the end of the world, to such a degree of perfection that a man can now write as much in a day as another could have done in a year. It is but just that thanks should be rendered to God, and without vanity, to me myself; but as this homage could not otherwise be rendered in a proper manner, God has ordained, as the reward for my invention, that the stones of this cathedral should serve for my mausoleum.
The claim that Mentel was the inventor of typography was first made in 1520 by John Schott, son of Martin Schott, who had married Mentel's daughter and inherited his business. ​In the year 1521, Jerome Gebwiler, misled by the assertions of Schott, undertook to controvert the pretensions of Fust and Schœffer as the first printers. He writes that printing was practised in Strasburg by John Mentel, who had obtained the new art of chalcography, or of making books with tin pens (types) about the year 1447; that Mentel, and Eggestein, his partner, made an agreement that they should keep secret the new art; that John Schott, whom he praises, showed him a manuscript book, without date, written by Mentel, in which The Arms of the Typothetæ. [From Hansard.]were drawings of typographic instruments, and observations on the manufacture of printing ink. It was by similar methods that John Schott induced James Spiegel to declare, in a book printed in 1531, that John Mentel invented printing in Strasburg in the year 1444. John Schott is also the authority for the following version of the invention which was found in an old manuscript chronicle attributed to Daniel Specklin.
In the year 1440, the admirable art of printing was discovered in Strasburg by John Mentel. His son-in-law, Peter Schœffer, and Martin Flach at once made use of the discovery; but a servant of Mentel, called John Gensfleisch, after stealing the secret, fled to Mentz, where he soon established the new art, through the help of Gutenberg, a very rich man. Mentel was so affected with grief by this perfidy that it caused his death. In honor of the art, he was buried in the monastery or cathedral church, and a representation of his press was cut on his tombstone. God swiftly punished the servant Gensfleisch, by striking him with blindness for the remnant of his life. I have seen the first press (of Mentel) and the types cut on wood, which were of syllables and words. They were pierced through the sides, that they could be conjoined by a wire and kept in line. It is to be regretted that these types, the first of the kind, should have been lost.
​These impudent falsifications of history would have been soon forgotten if they had not been renewed in the seventeenth century, by one James Mentel, a physician of Paris, the supposed descendant of John Mentel, who published two little books on the history of printing, in which he enlarged and distorted the versions of Gebwiler, Spiegel and Specklin. To support his claim, he did not scruple to alter the text and pervert the meaning of the authors from whom he pretended to quote It was a useless work, for no impartial critic can accept the statements of Mentel or of his predecessors. For these statements, like those in behalf of Coster, Castaldi and Schœffer, were made, for the first time, long after the invention had been perfected, by men who had the desire and the temptation to misrepresent the facts. All of them are tainted with the same calumny—the accusation that Gutenberg stole his knowledge of the invention—and all of them are contradicted by public records of undoubted authority.
Neither Mentel's books nor the records of Strasburg give any warrant to the hypothesis that Mentel was an inventor of printing. His name appears for the first time on the tax list of the city of Strasburg, in the year 1447. He is called a goltschriber, and is enrolled with the goldsmiths. In another record of the city, for the same year, his name appears in a list of artists and painters, but he is not described as a printer. The earliest notice of him as a printer was made by Philip de Lignamine of Rome, who said, in 1474, that John Mentel of Strasburg, since 1458, had there a printing office, in which he printed three hundred sheets a day, "after the manner of Fust and Gutenberg." By this statement we may suppose that Mentel practised printing soon after the dissolution of the partnership between Fust and Gutenberg. It was, no doubt, from Mentz that he got a knowledge of typography, for it cannot be shown that he was taught the art by any of Gutenberg's early associates in Strasburg, nor is there any reason to believe that he was an independent inventor. We ​have no evidence that he experimented with types, or that he printed anything in Strasburg between 1439 and 1457. It is not even established that Mentel was the first practical printer in Strasburg, for there is evidence that he began to print there in partnership with one Henry Eggestein, who was a man of superior ability and of greater distinction, a master of arts and philosophy.
Mentel did not affix his name to any of his books before 1473, but he had then printed many large theological works. Schœpflin says that he soon made himself rich by his industry and his sagacity in the selection of salable books. He was a shrewd publisher, the first who issued a descriptive catalogue, and employed agents for the sale of his works.
* ↑ Five of the disputed works are the Donatus of 1451, the Bible of 36 lines, the Letters of Indulgence of 1455, the Calendar of 1457 and the Almanac of 1455. The chief reason for attributing these works to Pfister is that they exhibit the types of the Bible of 36 lines.
* ↑ There is no English equivalent for libripagus, which means a workman who is an engraver, a printer, and a stenciler. Like other writers of his day, Paul of Prague had to coin a word to define printers, who for many years after were called typographi, typothetæ, chalcographi, excusores and protocharagmatici. Most writers called printers impressores, or impressors, from the process of impressing types. This word, which was finally accepted in all European languages, has served to foster the error that the vital principle of printing is impression.
* ↑ Ticozzi, Stefano, Storia del letterati e degli artisti del dipartimento delta Piave, Belluno, 1813. See, also, L'imprimerie, No. 58, October, 1868.
* ↑ Bernard, De l'origine, vol. ii, p. 94. This vain and scandalous inscription was probably made by one of Mentel's descendants. It is not stated when this tablet was erected. Bernard supposes that it is a second tablet, which was put up in place of one made soon after his burial.
* ↑ It was probably provoked by the false assertion of John Schœffer, that Peter Schœffer, his father, and John Fust, his grandfather, were the proper inventors, to the exclusion of Gutenberg. Schott, knowing that Mentel's claims as an inventor were as valid as those of Fust or Schœffer, placed on his books, after 1520, an armorial shield containing a crowned lion, with this inscription: "Arms of the Schott family, granted by the Emperor Frederic iii to John Mentel, the first inventor of typography, and to his heirs, in the year 1466." There are doubts concerning this patent of nobility. When it was demanded many years afterward, it could not be produced [De l'origine, vol. ii, p. 69]. It may have been granted to Mentel, not as the first printer, but as the first printer in Strasburg. Schœpflin, who speaks of this document as if he had seen the original, denies that it gave to Mentel the title of inventor of printing [Vindiciae Typographicæ, p. 98, note]. There was a tradition that the Emperor Frederic iii had given to a corporation of master printers known as the Typothetæ, an heraldic shield, representing an eagle holding in one claw a composing-stick, and in the other claw a copy-guide, surmounted by a griffin distributing ink with two balls. But these are not the arms displayed by Schott, nor did Mentel, nor his successor Flach, make any display of them in their books.
* ↑ In another book Spiegel says 1442.
* ↑ Meerman, Origines Typographicæ, vol. ii, p. 199. It is not clearly proved that Specklin, who was a magistrate of Strasburg at the close of the sixteenth century, is the author of this statement, Bernard says that this version contains about as many errors as words.
* ↑ Lichtenberger, Initia Typographica, p. 56.
* ↑ The first book printed at Strasburg with a date was a copy of the Decretals of Gratianus, a folio in two volumes, which bears this imprint: "By the venerable Henry Eggestein, master of liberal arts, and citizen of the renowned city of Strasburg, in the year 1471." This was not his first book, for in another book printed in the same year, he tells the reader that he has printed "innumerable volumes of law, philosophy and divinity." He printed two or three editions of the Bible in Latin, and one in German, and many other books in folio. The types of these books are unlike those used by Mentel. Eggestein was recorded in the tax list among the city officers, and was afterward bishop's chancellor in the court of Strasburg. The partnership between Mentel and Eggestein was of short duration. The date of Eggestein's death is not known: his name is not found in any books printed with his types after 1472.
* ↑ It is supposed that he printed the Bible in German and in Latin, Questions of Conscience, A Concordance of the Bible, The Epistles of Saint Jerome, The City of God, The Specula of Vincent of Beauvais. All these books are thick folios—many of them in types on English body. Some are in two, and the last named in eight, volumes. Other works have been attributed to him, but Madden says that some of them (books with a curious form of the letter R—which others say were the work of Zell) were printed at the Monastery of Weidenbach.