# The Invention of Printing/Chapter 19

XIX
The Downfall of the Legend.
The Vague Inscription on the Last Monument … Relics in the Costerian Museum … Fac-simile of Janszoon's Autograph … The Coster Pedigree … Made by Gerrit Thomaszoon … Legend began with the Pedigree … Pedigree has been Falsified, and is of No Authority … Search by Van der Linde for Records concerning Coster … Archives of the Town and Church of Haarlem represent Coster as a Tallow-Chandler and Innkeeper … Coster living at Haarlem in 1483 … The Record of the Chair-Book … No Evidence that Coster was a Printer … Lourens Coster has been Confounded with Laurens Janszoon … Illustration of the House of Coster … Other Fac-similes of Portraits of Coster … Their Curious Dissimilarity … Absurdity of the Legend.
Helbig
In the year 1856, on the sixteenth day of July, the day accepted as the anniversary of the invention, a statue of Coster was put up in Haarlem. The tablets of the pedestal bear inscriptions which are thus translated by Hessels:
The date of the invention and the profession or position of the inventor are omitted. We cannot ascertain from the monument whether Coster was a sheriff or a sexton, whether he invented printing in 1423 or 1440. It may be inferred that there had been disagreements among the eminent men who erected this work of patriotism, and that they could not ​heartily accept the date of any version of the legend. On this great occasion the Costerian Museum of Haarlem was enriched with a pedigree of the Thomaszoon family, an old document frequently referred to by some defenders of the legend as an incontestable evidence of its truth. The pedigree was, without doubt, a genuine relic. Autograph of Laurens Janszoon. [From Koning.]Its dingy vellum surface, written over in many handwritings, was surrounded by an embroidered border blackened with age. Its history could be traced through three centuries. Gerrit Thomaszoon, the aged descendant of Coster mentioned by Junius with such marked respect, was the person by or for whom this pedigree was made in or about the year 1550. This Gerrit Thomaszoon had kept an inn in the house once occupied by Coster, and it is supposed that the pedigree was one of the decorations of a wall in his house. There is a special significance in this date of 1550.
This pedigree, which describes Coster as the inventor of printing, was written at least one hundred years after the discovery of the invention and the death of the inventor. It was written when Cornelis, the only eye-witness known to ​history, had been dead nearly thirty years. It is, however, and too much stress cannot be laid on this fact, the oldest document in which mention is made of Coster as a printer. There are valid reasons for the belief that Coster's merit as an inventor had never been recognized in any way before the record was made on this pedigree. When we consider the order of the dates, it is obvious that it was from this much suspected document that Coornhert derived the information he published in 1561. "The old, dignified and grey heads" described by Van Zuren in 1561, "the aged and respectable citizens" of Guicciardini (1566) and Junius (1568), were Gerrit Thomaszoon and his friends, among whom we may properly include Gallius and Talesius. And it may be added that the more circumstantial story of Junius was first published when Gallius and Talesius were dead, and when there was no man living who could controvert or modify any part of his story.
There can be no doubt that the legend began with this pedigree. It is not at all probable that the vain old man Gerrit Thomaszoon, who was proud of the ancestor in whose house he lived, kept his friends in ignorance of it. It was not unknown to Junius. There is a similarity of uncertainty between an ambiguous date (1440 or 1446) on this pedigree and the mysterious circumlocution of Junius in his use of the words "about one hundred and twenty-eight years ago," or 1440, which is enough to show that Junius had not only seen the pedigree, but that he took it as an authority for this date. Whether Scriverius saw it cannot be confidently maintained; he does not mention it. Gerard Meerman knew of its existence, but he did not reprint it. He made use of it, however, in the construction of a new genealogy of the Coster family, in which he added and altered items in the most unwarrantable manner. Koning studied it with diligence: he frequently alluded to it as a document of the highest importance, but he did not reprint it, nor even describe it in general terms.
The withholding of this pedigree from public examination, and the evasion of its description by the authors who had ​examined it, are suspicious circumstances. We see that men who wrote hundreds of pages of speculations to support the claims of Coster—men who translated and reprinted many columns of irrelevant chaff for the sake of one little kernel of grain—willfully suppressed what they maintained was a most convincing evidence of the truth of the legend. It was not suppressed because it was too long: the entire pedigree can be printed in two pages.
The reasons for withholding the pedigree were apparent when it was put in the Museum. The reading of the words in the first row at once produced the impression that its importance had been vastly overrated; that its information was of little value; that it was almost worthless as evidence of the priority of Dutch typography. Dr. Van der Linde, who made a critical examination of the writing soon after it was placed in the Museum, revealed the astonishing fact that the most important entry had been falsified. This entry, which contains the only portion of any interest in an inquiry concerning the invention of printing by Coster, consists of the following lines:
The date first written was 1446, but in this column, and in others, objectionable entries have been effaced and falsifications have been attempted. The figure 6 has been partially rubbed out; it has been replaced by a 0, so that the careless reader will construe the date as 1440. There can be no hesitation whatever on this point; the figures first written surely were 1446. "We see here a fable arise before our very eyes. A Haarlem citizen has a pedigree made for him, probably to put it up in his inn. … But the frame wants lustre, and so the pedigree is linked by the probably totally fictitious Lucye, the second wife, to a Haarlemer—to a Haarlemer who (the awkwardness and naïveté of the expression may not surprise ​us at all in such a product of family vanity) brought the first print in the world."
We may waive all criticism of the faulty grammar of the pedigree and proceed to more important matters. It may be conceded that the pedigree was written by an ignorant man who intended to say that it was Coster, and not his daughter, who brought the first print in the world. By the word print Thomaszoon may have meant a playing card, the engraved figure of a saint, a block-book, or a book made from movable types. If he meant any product of xylographic printing, the statement is totally false, and deserves no consideration. If he meant typography, his failure to express that meaning is unfortunate. But his intention is really of but little importance. A bald statement on a pedigree, written by an ignorant and conceited man, about one hundred years after the great event he professed to record, of the details of which he obviously knew nothing, cannot be used to overthrow established facts in the history of typography.
It is unsatisfactory in other points. The alteration of the date, and the unexplained erasures have destroyed whatever validity the document may have had. It may be put aside; as an authority it is worthless. Its obscure notice of the invention of printing is but a frail foundation for the colossal superstructure which Junius erected. It is plain that Junius must have been conscious of its weakness as a basis for the legend; he had doubts of its accuracy, and dared not refer to it. He preferred the oral testimony of the dead Cornelis.
The discovery of this falsification induced Dr. Van der Linde to make, "with a zeal and patience worthy of a better cause and of a better reward," a laborious investigation in the archives of the town and church of Haarlem for authentic ​information concerning Coster. He had cause to think that history had been falsified by other historians of the legend. Through the study of the archives, Van der Linde ascertained that there lived in Haarlem, in the fifteenth century, a citizen whose name was Lourens Janszoon Coster, the son of one Jan Coster who died in 1436. The results of the search were as curious as they were unexpected, as will be fully understood after an examination of this translation of the originals:
| 1441 | .. | On the evening of the 13th, settled with lou koster for 15 pounds and 12 pounds of oil, each pound an ancient butdrager, and 34 pence for soap and tallow candles, together 22 guilders 3 pence. |
| 1441 | .. | Louwerijs Janssoen, for 72 pounds of candles, which have been burnt by the guards in the town hall during the year—for each pound an ancient butdrager. |
| 1441 | .. | Louwerijs Jans, aforesaid, for the candles burnt in the tower in honor of Our Lady, during this year, as was agreed with him. |
| 1442 | .. | Lourijs Coster, paid for having repaired the lantern of Our Lady in the tower. |
| 1442 | .. | Lourijs Coster, for 40 pounds of tallow candles which the guards in the town hall burnt; cost each pound an ancient butdrager. |
| 1442 | .. | Paid to lou coster 8 guilders for oil and soap. |
| 1442 | .. | To lou coster for soap, candles and other things, 15 pence. |
| 1447 | .. | On the 14th day of March, paid to Louwerijs Coster for 5 pounds of candles burnt in the tower in honor of Our Lady. |
There can be no mistake about the business of this man. The Lourens Janszoon Coster described on the old pedigree as the famous man who brought the first print in the world, and in Batavia as a wealthy citizen, a man of leisure and of enlarged mind, and the inventor of engraving on wood and typography, was certainly an obscure tallow-chandler, who sold oil and candles. The anti-climax is sufficiently absurd, but worse remains. The archives give us more than a clue to the origin of Coster's wine-flagons. It seems that, some time ​after 1447, this Lourens Janszoon Coster gave up the business of chandler in favor of his sister Ghertruit Jan Costersdochter, and that he chose for his new occupation the duties of a tavern-keeper. Van der Linde found this fact clearly stated in the treasury accounts of the town of Haarlem.
| 1451 | .. | Lou coster paid, for two menghelen of wine which were sent to the burgomaster a year ago. |
| 1454 | .. | A dinner was offered to the count of Oostervant on the 8th day of October, 1453, at lou coster's; indebted to him for it xvii guilders. |
| 1468 | .. | Louris Coster and other citizens are summoned to the Hague. |
| 1474 | .. | Louris Janszoon Coster pays war taxes. |
| 1475 | .. | Louris Janszoon Coster pays a fine for "buyten drincken " (to drink beyond the premises). |
| 1483 | .. | Received of Louris Janszoon Coster for ferry toll for his goods when he left the town, 8 rex guilders. |
We here see that the name of Louris Janszoon Coster was recorded in the town-book for the last time under the date of 1483, when he paid ferry toll for his goods, and was allowed to leave the town. It is not known where he went or where he died, but it is plain that the story of his death in 1439, as related by Meerman and Koning, must be untrue.
There might have been a doubt as to the identity of the chandler with the innkeeper, if Van der Linde had not investigated in another direction, and made gleanings from the books of an old association, whose records are as trustworthy as those of the archives of the town and the church. This association, which still exists, under the name of the Holy Christmas Corporation, is thus described by Van der Linde:
It is one of those fraternities which had the lofty aim of eating and drinking. This corporation is already very old, for it celebrated its third jubilee in 1606. Its fifty-four brethren and sisters preserved each a chair for their meetings. According to these statutes, these chairs, if they were not disposed of by a last will, were inherited by ​the eldest and nearest blood relation in the branch from which they came The corporation remaining in existence, the right of property in the chairs continued, by uninterrupted transmission, until our time.
In the register of the names of the occupants of the chairs are found the following entries under the heading of chair 29:
| 1421 | .. | Jan Coster, by … |
| 1436 | .. | Lourijs Coster, by inheritance. |
| 1484 | .. | Frans Thomas Thomasz, by … |
| 1497 | .. | Gerret Thomas Pieterz, by inheritance from his father. |
| 1564 | .. | Cornelis Gerritz, by inheritance from his father. |
| 1589 | .. | Anna Gerritsdr., by purchase from her cousin. |
The names of the successive owners of chair 29 are continued in the book, but they are of no interest in this inquiry.
The archives of the church and town of Haarlem contain the names of other Costers, but there is no other Coster who will answer the description of Junius and Thomaszoon. The Lourens Janszoon Coster of the pedigree, the Louwerijs Janssoen (so called only after the year 1441) or Lourijs Coster of the archives, and the Lourijs Coster of the chair-book are, without doubt, the different names of the same man. This is the man who, according to Thomaszoon and Junius, brought the first print in the world. But he appears as a printer only in the pedigree. The archives and the chair-book do not so describe him; they tell us nothing of his invention, nor of the alleged stealing of his types, nor of his death in 1439. The town-book says that he was living in 1483. In none of these documents does he appear as sheriff, sexton, or treasurer.
It is obvious that the legend of Coster the printer rests entirely upon the pedigree and its amplifications by Junius. ​But the pedigree is of no authority. Its information is not confirmed by the records; its falsifications and its suspected history compel every candid reader to reject its evidence altogether. We have to accept in preference the testimony of the archives, and have to admit that there is no credible evidence that Coster printed anything at any time. The Lourens Janszoon Coster of typographical history is as fictitious a personage as the Cadmus of Greek mythology. He is really more fictitious, for he is the representative of two men.
The revelations of Dr. Van der Linde show that Lourens Janszoon Coster has been confounded with Laurens Janszoon or Louwerijs Janszoon, who was a man of some distinction, a wine merchant, innkeeper, councilor, sheriff, treasurer and governor of the hospital. He is the man of civic offices, of wealth and high social position, who has been described by Koning. He is the man whom Meerman represented as ​unrecognized member of the noble family of Brederodes. But he is, certainly, not the man, described on the pedigree as the Coster who brought the first print in the world. He is not the man described by Junius who lived "about one hundred and twenty-eight years ago," or in 1440, for the records of the church of St. Bavo prove that Laurens Janszoon died and was buried in 1439. It is not at all probable that Thomaszoon or Junius made any mistake in the name, and that it was this Louwerijs Janszoon who brought the first print in the world. There is no more evidence in favor of Janszoon as an inventor of printing than there is in favor of Coster. The most careful searching of the records fails to bring to light any evidence that he was engaged in the practice of printing.
The House of Coster. [From Selz.]
​Junius points so triumphantly, were a proper portion of the furnishings of an inn. To the modern reader, who has been informed that a part of this house has always been a drinking tavern for the refreshment of the men Laurens Janszoon Coster. [From Maittaire.]of Haarlem, these pewter mugs, or flagons, as Junius names them, are not, as he would have us believe, indisputable evidence that their first owner must have been a printer.
The falsity of the legend is abundantly established by the dissimilarity of the many engraved likenesses, which from time to time have been presented as portraits of Coster. The earliest representation of the alleged inventor was published by Scriverius, not quite two centuries after Coster is said to have died. The only attest to the accuracy of the portrait is Scriverius himself, and it need not be said that he is not a trustworthy witness. There have been many variations of this well-known engraving. Van der Linde suggests that this engraving by Scriverius may be a portrait of Gerrit Thomaszoon, appropriated for the exigency. There is a peculiarity in the engraving which plainly proves that the portrait could not have been painted during the lifetime of Coster. The "true effigies of Laurenz" carries iii his right hand a matrix of the letter A of the Roman form, but letters of Roman form were not used at Haarlem in 1440. Books attributed to Coster have letters in the Gothic style.
​In 1630, a new portrait of Coster was published by Adrien Rooman, with Latin and Dutch verses attached. Boxhorn mentioned this engraving in such a manner that strangers were led to believe it was a statue that had been erected to Coster. A Spurious Portrait by Van den Berg. [From Koning.] A Portrait attributed to Van Oudewater [From Koning.]
Jacob Van Campen was induced to make another painting of the grim features in a more truly artistic style. His idealized head of Coster was engraved by Cornelis Koning, whose reproduction of the painter's fancy has ever since been accepted as an authentic portrait. The round cap, the furred ​robe, and the matrix in the extended hand, are the features of the Scriverius portrait; but the head is that of another man. The stony face which Scriverius presented as the image of Coster was somewhat softened by the pencil of Van Campen, but after he had exhausted upon it all the resources of his art, it still remained a grim and unsatisfactory head, a head without any expression of genius or even of culture—the head of a hard innkeeper, but not of an inventor. It was a biting satire upon the story of Junius, all the more offensive because the portrait had as strong claim to authenticity as the legend. The Laurens Janszoon of Meerman. [From Meerman.]
Meerman refused to accept this head as a faithful portrait He produced a new likeness of the inventor, and claimed for it a superior truthfulness. In the same year, 1765, Van Osten de Bruyn published an engraving of the same head, with this explanation: " Laurens Janszoon, sheriff, of the town of Haarlem, inventor of the noble art of printing … after an old picture bought from William Corneliszoon Croon, the last descendant of Laurens Janszoon, who died, unmarried, at Haarlem in 1724." We find no vouchers for the authenticity of this portrait Croon was the man by ​or for whom the vellum pedigree was continued. He was equally interested with the originator of the pedigree, Gerrit Thomaszoon, in upholding the legend. Whether Croon was ignorant of the fact that Laurens Janszoon, the sheriff, was not Lourens Janszoon Coster, is not so clear; but it is clear that the portrait submitted by Croon does not resemble the portrait furnished by Scriverius. Gockinga asserts that the engraving made by Meerman (after Croon's portrait) is like the engraved head of Sir Thomas More of England. Van der Linde says that the Coster of Meerman closely resembles the engraved portrait of a once celebrated inquisitor, one Ruard Tapper of Enkhuizen. The Coster of Scriverius and the Coster of Meerman are certainly different men.
Everywhere but in Holland and Belgium, Dr. Van der Linde's exposure of the spuriousness of the legend has been accepted as the end of all debate. Coster must hereafter be regarded as one of the heroes of fiction and not of history. With the downfall of Coster, fall also all the speculations concerning an early invention of printing in the Netherlands by an unknown or unnamed printer.
* ↑ This Museum then contained, among other relics, copies of the Apocalypse, the Ars Moriendi, the Canticles, the Donatus, the Speculum, the Temptations of Demons, and other printed works that have here been noticed in the chapter on The Works and Workmanship of an Unknown Printer, most of which were claimed as the work of Coster's office. The wood block of the Horarium (see page 260), some official documents, some autographs of the sheriff Louwerijs Janszoon, a picture said to be a likeness of Coster, several engravings of Coster (curiously dissimilar, and one of which is an undeniable forgery), are also contained in this Museum. Van der Linde denounced the Museum as a municipal show-booth. The Haarlem Legend, p. 164.
* ↑ Gerrit Thomaszoon died about 1563 or 1564. In the year 1611, the pedigree belonged to Adrien Rooman, the town printer at Haarlem. At his death it fell into the hands of Dr. John Vlasveld. For nearly two centuries it was unknown to the public. In 1809, it was sold at auction, Jacobus Koning paying for it, and for an old wood-cut, supposed to be the work of Coster, four hundred guilders.
* ↑ Van der Linde, The Haarlem Legend of the Invention of Printing, p. 42. In the singular words "who brought the first print in the world " we may find the cause of that mysterious indefiniteness of description which may be observed in all the authorities. It is more than an indication that the story of Junius is based on the pedigree and on information derived from Thomaszoon and his friends.
* ↑ There is, of course, no reason why a chandler could not have invented typography, but we have no evidence that this chandler invented anything. Our knowledge of the tastes of the man, as shown in his selection of a new business, is enough to prove that he was not at all like the later chandler, Benjamin Franklin, with a leaning to types and letters.
* ↑ The variable orthography of the name of Coster, which is here copied literally from the records, is a sufficient explanation of the irregularities spelling of his name which are to be found in all the authorities. I have adopted the orthography as I find it in in the the book of Van der Linde.
* ↑ The exact nature of the relationship between Laurens Janszoon Coster and Gerrit Thomaszoon is not clearly defined, but the archives of the town and the vellum pedigree corroborate each other in establishing the existence—of Lourens Janszoon Coster (son of Jan Coster), tallow chandler and innkeeper, who left Haarlem in 1483—of Thomas Pieterszoon (probably the son-in-law of Coster), sheriff, who died in 1492—of Gerrit Thomaszoon (according to the pedigree, a great-great-grandson of Lourens Janszoon Coster), a sheriff and an innkeeper. He was, also, a sacristan or church-warden.
* ↑ For this unwarrantable confusion of the names and deeds of the two men Junius and Scriverius are responsible. Junius, who wrote in Latin, caught at the word Coster, which he found in the pedigree, as a subject for the display of his critical ability. He explains and expounds it: "Lourens Janszoon, surnamed Coster, by reason of the office which belonged to the family by hereditary right." There was no need for this absurd expansion of the meaning of the word custos. This attribution of an honorable office to an insignificant man was purposely made to give him a dignified position. Gerrit Thomaszoon, who knew that Coster was a man of no note, gave him only the distinction of the first printer. This was not enough for Junius, who thought that he would be deficient in patriotism if he did not make Coster as reputable as his rival Gutenberg, who was represented as of noble blood. The word Coster was an his opportunity, and he made the most of it. It is not probable that Junius studied the archives of Haarlem for the purpose of getting exact information about Coster, but it is possible that he had read or heard of Lourens Janszoon, the wealthy man, and that he confounded him with Coster, the chandler. Whether he made this confusion with intent or in ignorance cannot now be ascertained, but we can see that the wealth and respectability of Janszoon were attributed to Coster. Scriverius perpetuated the blunder. He found a document signed by Louwerijs Janszoon, as sheriff, in 1431. Without further research, he leaped to the conclusion that this man who died in 1439, who had nothing in common with Coster but similarity of name and similarity of occupation as innkeeper, was the very Lourens Janszoon Coster who, according to Junius, invented types and practised printing in 1440.
* ↑ Moxon's copy of this engraving is shown on page 333 of this book.
* ↑ Van der Linde tells a curious story about Hollandish credulity:The most amusing imitation was that of an amateur artist of the last century, C. Van den Berg, who wished to play the collector J. Marcus a trick. He engraved a small wood-cut after the portrait of Van Campen, with the name Laur' Jassoe, in old-fashioned style, underneath. With a little soot and dirt, he gave the copies an antique appearance, and made Marcus happy for a few weeks. The poet Langendijk, the type-founder Enschedé, and other amateurs, each got a copy. Van den Berg was too honest to mean anything more than fun; he told afterward to Marcus himself the value of that antique wood-cut. Although every investigator could and ought to have known these things, yet Jacobus Koning was bold enough, in the second nomenclature of his collection of rare books and manuscripts, to describe a copy of this portrait as "printed by, or at the time of, Lourens Janszoon Koster." …… The Haarlem painter L. Van der Vinne, in his youth, painted, in the beginning of the former century, a study, after a drawing of Van Campen. But lo! in 1762, this picture is offered for sale by Van Damme at Amsterdam (the same who produced the false inscriptions respecting the imaginary Corsellis of Oxford), provided at the back with a very old inscription, Lours Jans to Harlem mccccxxxiii, and the monogram A O, which was explained to mean Albert Van Oudewater. Excellent discovery! Here was a genuine contemporaneous portrait by a painter of the fifteenth century! A trifle, however, was wanted to make the joy perfect. Albert Van Oudewater, who had painted the celebrated inventor of printing in 1433, w as born in 1444! This history is full of despairing irony from beginning to end. Just as the sheriff Lourens Janszoon invents the art of printing after his death; just as Cornelis works at Donatuses before his birth; just as the chandler Lourens Janszoon Koster entirely forgets his invention during his lifetime; so the painter Albert Van Oudewater becomes a zealous Costerian long before he was born." Van der Linde, The Haarlem Legend, p. 145.
* ↑ The striking dissimilarity between the calm philosophic face of the Coster of Meerman and the sour look and misanthropic features of the Coster of Scriverius is neatly explained by Dr. Abr. De Vries:The portrait given by Scriverius was painted from a sketch or study made after Coster's death, and was, necessarily, gloomy and cadaverous; but no portrait, however beautiful, unless it was a true and genuine likeness, could satisfy the truth-loving Scriverius. The truth was to be well founded if he endorsed it. The cadaverous hue and the marks of death in Van Campen's picture are strong evidences for the genuineness and faithfulness both of the original representation and of Van Campen's copy!
* ↑ In Holland, Dr. Van der Linde's book has been denounced as impolitic and unpatriotic, but it has not, as yet, met with a suitable answer. The indignation manifested toward the author has been so violent that he, a native Hollander, has found it expedient to remove to Germany.
* ↑ The only positive evidence which seems to give a color of probability to the assertion that typography was first practised in the Netherlands is the fact that an unknown printer had printed there some little books before the arrival of Ketelaer and De Leempt, in 1473. Whoever this printer may have been, it still remains to be proved that he did any typographic work before 1463.