# The Invention of Printing/Chapter 17

XVII
The Legend of Lourens Janszoon Coster.
Coornhert's Notice of Printing in Haarlem … Notice by Van Zuren … By Guicciardini … The Statement of Junius … Fac-simile of Scriverius's Portrait of Coster … Sketch of Junius's life and Works. Examination of his Statement … Vagueness of the Date … Junius's Story is Incredible … Wood Types could not be Used … Metal Types made too soon … This story an Imitation of a Spurious German Story … Fust was not the Thief … Absurdity of the Accusation … Evidence of Cornelis. Our knowledge of Cornelis from other Sources … Cornelis not an Eye-Witness … Talesius not a Satisfactory Witness … Disappearance of the Art more Wonderful than its Invention … Legend Cherished for Patriotic Reasons … Its Growth and its Exaggerations.
Van der Linde.
In the year 1561, Jan Van Zuren and Dierick Coornhert, with other partners, set up a printing office in Haarlem. Van Zuren was a native and burgomaster of the town of Amsterdam; Coornhert, who was a notary and an engraver, is said to have been the instructor of the famous engraver Goltzius. Their first book was an edition of Cicero de Officiis, to which they prefixed the following quaint dedication:
The claim of Haarlem to the invention of printing is confidently stated, but Coornhert has neglected to give the name or describe the process of the inventor, to fix the date of the invention, or to specify any of its products. He and his venerable informants, the "honorable, wise and prudent gentlemen," knew all these matters, but Coornhert prudently kept silence. It is worthy of notice that Coornhert admits that, in 1561, "the fame of Mentz" had taken so deep a root in the minds of many people that no proof could remove it.
A full notice of the details of early printing might have been considered out of place in the preface to a classic text book, but it would have been pertinent in a "Dialogue on the First Invention of the Typographic Art," which was the title of a book said to have been written by Jan Van Zuren. Of ​this dialogue nothing is known but the introduction. Whether the author grew weary of his task, and abandoned it before completion, or whether the manuscript was destroyed, as is alleged, during the siege of Haarlem in 1573, cannot now be ascertained. All we know of this manuscript is through Peter Scriverius, who, diligently gleaning every scrap of history that favors the Haarlem invention, has preserved the preface. It is too long and rambling for a literal translation; this is the substance, which Van Zuren approached with great delicacy:
He does not wish to deprive Mentz of its rightful honors, but he will see that the honors of Haarlem are not altogether lost. The town of Mentz, so justly lauded, first introduced this art, received from us, in public life. The first crude foundations of this excellent art were laid in our town of Haarlem. Here the art of printing was born. No doubt it was here carefully cultivated and improved; here it remained during many years, until at last it accompanied a foreigner and made, at last, its public appearance at Mentz.
Here again is a noticeable absence of names, dates, books, evidences and authorities. From beginning to end there is nothing in this statement but naked assertion.
One fact of real value may be gleaned from the preface of Van Zuren and the dedication of Coornhert. There was even then in Haarlem a strong prejudice against Mentz; there was a wavering belief among some of the townsfolk that printing had been invented in Haarlem, and that the pretension of ​Mentz was unfounded. Whether this prejudice had been fostered by the obscure language of Zell, or whether it took its rise in the conceit of the simple people of the town, who may have thought that Ballaert, the first printer at Haarlem, was also the first printer in the world, cannot now be ascertained. There was a prejudice, and Van Zuren and Coornhert thought that it would be to their interest as printers to propitiate it.
The publication of these mysterious allusions to an early printer in Haarlem strengthened the belief of Hollanders in the legend. It was imposed as veritable history on intelligent foreigners who were unable to disprove it. Luigi Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman, for many years resident of Antwerp, and who there wrote and published, in 1567, a Description of the Low Countries, was the first author of distinction who gave a world-wide publicity to the legend. In his book he says:
According to the common tradition of the inhabitants and the assertion of other natives of Holland, as well as the testimony of certain authors and records, it appears that the art of printing and stamping letters and characters on paper in the manner now used, was first invented in this place [Haarlem]. But the author of the invention happening to die before the art was brought to perfection and had acquired repute, his servant, they say, went to reside at Mentz, where, giving proofs of his knowledge in that science, he was joyfully received, and where, having applied himself to the business with unremitting diligence, it became at length generally known, and was brought to entire perfection, in consequence of which the fame afterward spread abroad and became general that the art and science of printing originated in that city. What is really the truth I am not able, nor will I take upon me to decide, it sufficing me to have said these few words that I might not be guilty of injustice toward this town and this country.
The story is told as it had been heard, without comment, and without hearty belief. It will be noticed that no really important fact has been added to supplement the previous story. We are still in the dark as to the name of the printer, the date of the invention, and the titles of his books. The authors mentioned by Guicciardini were probably Coornhert ​and Van Zuren; the inhabitants who gave him information were probably the same men who had previously given it to these printers. Guicciardini's story diners from theirs in one point only. His description of the translation of typography from Haarlem to Mentz does not impute dishonesty to the workman who carried it thither. The insinuated accusation of theft was not repeated by the scrupulous Italian.
Guicciardini's book, which was of marked merit, was published in an age of credulity. It was translated and reprinted in many languages. This legend of an unnamed inventor at Haarlem was taken up by other writers. It was published as valid history by George Braunius of Cologne, in his geography, dated 1570–88; by Michael Eytzinger of Cologne, in a book on the Netherlands, dated 1584; by Matthew Quade of Cologne, in a compend of history and geography dated 1600; by Noel Conti of Venice, in a universal history, dated 1572. These authors have been frequently quoted as men who had examined and confirmed the legend; but it is obvious that they copied the statements of Guicciardini without investigation. Their approval of the legend must be considered as an exhibition of credulity rather than of knowledge.
The specification of the name of the alleged proto-typographer of Haarlem was made for the first time in a book now known as Batavia, which was published in 1588, and of which Hadrianus Junius or Adrien de Jonghe was the author. The story of the invention, as here related, is far from complete, but it is positive and definite: it gives the time, the place, the book and the man. It can be fairly presented only in an unabridged translation of the author's words:
When strolling in the woods near the city, as citizens who enjoyed ease were accustomed to do after dinner and on holidays, it happened that he undertook as an experiment to fashion the bark of a beech tree in the form of letters. The letters so made he impressed the reverse way, consecutively, upon a leaf of paper, in little lines of one kind and another, and the kindness of his nature induced him to give them, as a keepsake, to the grandchildren of his son-in-law [Thomas Pieterzoon]. He had succeeded so happily in this that he aspired to greater things, as became a man of cultivated and enlarged capacities. By the aid of his son-in-law, Thomas Pieterzoon, to whom were left four children, most of whom attained the dignity of burgomaster (I say this that all the world may know that this art was invented in a reputable and honorable family, and not among plebeians), he invented, first of all, an ink thicker and more viscid than that of the scribes, for he found that the common ink spread or blotted. Thereupon he made, by the addition of letters, explanations for pictures engraved on wood.
Of this kind of printing I myself have seen some stamped block-books, the first essays of the art, printed on one side only, with the printed pages facing each other, and not upon both sides of the leaf. Among them was a book in the vernacular, written by an unknown author, bearing the title of Spieghel onzer behoudenis [the edition in Dutch of the Speculum Salutis], This book was among the a b c s of the art—for an art is never perfected at its inception—and the blank sides of the leaf were united by paste, to hide the uncouthness of the unprinted pages. He subsequently changed the beech-wood letters for those of lead, and these again for letters of tin, because tin was a less flexible material, harder, and more durable. To this day may be seen in the very house itself, looking over on the market-place as I have said (inhabited afterward by his great-grandchild, Gerrit Thomaszoon, who departed this life but a few years since, and whom I mention only to honor), some very old wine flagons, which were made from the melting down of the remnants of these very types.
The new invention met with favor from the public, as it deserved, and the new merchandise, never before seen, attracted purchasers from every direction, and produced abundant profit. As the admiration of the art increased, the work increased. He added assistants to his band of workmen; and here may be found the cause of his troubles. Among these workmen was a certain John. Whether or not, as suspicion alleges, he was Faust—inauspicious name for one who was ​equally unfortunate and unfaithful to his master—or whether he was another of the same name, I shall not trouble myself to ascertain—for I am unwilling to disturb the shades of the dead, inasmuch as they must have suffered from the reproaches of conscience as long as they lived. This man, although bound by oath to [preserving the secrets of] the typographic art, when he knew himself to be perfectly skilled in the operations of type-setting, in the knowledge of type-founding, and in every other detail appertaining to the work, seized the first favorable opportunity—and he could not have found a time more favorable, for it was on the night of the anniversary of the nativity of Christ, when all, without distinction, are accustomed to assist at divine service—and flew into the closet of the types, and packed up the instruments used in making them that belonged to his master, and which had been made with his own hands, and immediately after slunk away from the house with the thief. He went first to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and finally regained Mentz, as it were to an altar of safety so it is said, and as if beyond all possibility of a recapture, where, having opened his office, he reaped an abundant reward from the fruits of his theft. That is to say, within the space of a year, or about 1442, it is well known that he published by the aid of the same types which Laurentius had used in Haarlem, the Doctrinal of Alexander Gallus, the most popular grammar then in use, and also the Treatises of Peter of Spain, which were his first publications.
[From Moxon.]
The story of Junius is the real foundation of the modern legend of Haarlem. All that had been written before is of little value; all that has been written since is but in explanation of its obscurer features. Before any criticism is given ​to this important document, the capability and credibility of the learned author of Batavia should be considered.
The learning of Junius cannot be questioned; but Junius must be judged not by his dead reputation, but by his living performance. Batavia, although written in unexceptionable classical Latin, is not a valuable, nor even a mediocre book. The author was not above the pedantry and the bad taste of his age. His book is full of classical allusions, lugged in, not to illustrate the subject, but to display the author's omnivorous reading; his style is rhetorical, and his arrangement of facts is bewildering. These faults would be overlooked, if we could be sure of his so-called facts; but one cannot read many pages of Batavia without being convinced of the credulity of the author, and of the thorough untrustworthiness of many of his ​descriptions. His defenders must confess that the book would have been of higher authority, if he had been more chary of rhetoric and more exact in description.
The fixing of the period in which the inventor lived seems to have been made with a studied carelessness and intended obscurity. If we deduct the 128 years from the year 1568, the year in which the manuscript of Batavia was completed, we have the date 1440. In this year Coster lived. When he was born, when he died, and how long he had been occupied with the practice of printing, is not related. If we infer that Junius intended that this year 1440 should be considered as the year of Coster's death, the inference is purely conjectural. He does not say so. It may be supposed, but it is not said, that Coster printed with types before 1440. Whatever may have been the intention of Junius, the year 1440 was at first accepted by the authorities of Haarlem as the true date of the ​invention of typography. It was thought that the fixing of the invention within this year would sufficiently establish the priority of Coster, for the year 1442 was the date then assigned to the rival invention in Germany. The authority of Junius for the year 1440 was, no doubt, a pedigree of the Coster family, of which he makes no mention.
There are troublesome entanglements connected with this date of 1440. Subsequent defenders of the legend, who tried to supply the deficiencies and correct the errors of Junius, made discoveries which compelled them to acknowledge that Lourens Janszoon (supposed by them to be Lourens Janszoon Coster) died in the year 1439. If he died in 1439, and if we believe that the invention was made in 1440, then he did his typographic work in the year after his death. The absurdity of this date was clearly perceived when it was afterward discovered that Gutenberg had been engaged as early as 1436 in experiments with printing. To preserve the appearance of probability, the date of the invention was removed to 1423, so as to allow Coster time for experiment and for the perfection of his invention.
The name of the inventor is as uncertain as the date of the invention. Junius names him Laurentius Johannes, surnamed Ædituus, or Custos. In the pedigree, the name was ​written Lourens Janssoens Coster. Surnames were not then in common use; the son was identified through a name which described him in words as the son of his father. Lourens Janssoen Coster is literally, Lourens, son of John, the keeper, or the sexton. He is most widely known in typographical literature by the name of Coster.
By the record, it appears that Coster was both a printer and a publisher. He cut blocks and made types, he mixed printing inks, he printed books, he employed many workmen, he had an honorable reputation as a printer, he reaped abundant profit from the sale of his merchandise. These statements are inconsistent with the eulogy which represents him as an idle man who experimented with types for amusement.
That Coster knew nothing whatever about printing when he took his walk in the wood may be properly inferred from a careful reading of the story. His experiments with bark seem to have surprised and amused him as much as they did his ​grandchildren. There is nothing unreasonable in this part of the legend, but faith fails us when Junius says that Coster printed his book with types of wood. The statement must be put aside as entirely unworthy of belief, for it has been shown that types of wood are impracticable, and that the types of every known edition of the Speculum were made of founded metal.
No part of Junius's statement is more incredible than his description of the ease with which Coster solved the problem of typography. Coster knew nothing of printing; but having carved a few letters on bark, and having cherished the idea that books could be printed from single types, he undertook to make—not types, but wood-cuts. Eager to realize his idea of typography, he began work with a formidable task of engraving. Here is an absurdity. To design, engrave, and print the illustrations of the Speculum was a task almost as great as that of making the types. If the engravings were not in the possession of Coster before he made this experiment (and Junius does not authorize this hypothesis), it is not possible that he could have added to his task by attempting so many large wood-cuts. What follows is equally incredible. He passed from the work of cutting letters and pictures to that of making types without hesitation or experimentation; ​he struck out the correct method of making the types at the outset. His only mistake with types was in the selection of materials; wood was laid aside for lead, and tin supplanted lead; his greatest difficulty was encountered in the manufacture of the ink. If this story is true, then typography was invented through inspiration, for its origin was unlike that of all great mechanical inventions.
Junius describes this pretended invention of typography, not as he knew it was done, but as he thought it should have been done. Ignorant of the necessity for that strict accuracy of body, which is the vital principle of typography, and which can be secured only by the most ingenious mechanism, he thought, as thousands have thought, that the merit of the invention consisted in the conception of the idea. The construction of the mechanism he has skipped over as a little matter of mechanical detail entirely unworthy of notice. He tells us nothing about it He shows the extent of his reading and the weakness of his judgment, by treading in the footsteps of German authors who attempted to describe the German invention of typography, not from positive knowledge, but through the exercise of a lively imagination. He makes Coster follow the road which they say was taken by Gutenberg: first, the types of wood; then, engraved letters on blocks of wood; next, types of lead; lastly, types of tin.
The artful insinuation that John Fust was the false workman is discreditable. Junius does not unequivocally say that Fust was the thief, but his language authorizes the calumny. That John Fust of Mentz could not have stolen the implements of Coster will be positively established by records of ​the highest authority. The Dutch historians of typography who defend the story of Junius, say that Junius did not know the name of the real thief, but that the name of Fust is properly inserted, because Fust was honored as the inventor of typography in Mentz; that there was, probably, a complicity between Fust and the false workman, and that Fust was, for that reason, properly mentioned as the real offender.
The determination of Junius to fasten this theft on Fust is shown in his statement that the thief regained or returned to Mentz, as to "the altar of safety." At that time Paris, Rome and Venice had more schools and scholars, more book-readers and buyers than Mentz, and offered greater inducements for the founding of a printing office. These were the cities to which printers from Mentz subsequently went, and to which a thievish printer from Haarlem should have gone. But Junius finds it necessary to send him to Mentz to explain the introduction of typography in Germany.
The charge of theft is not corroborated by the discoveries of bibliographers. The two books which Junius says were printed in Mentz in 1442, with the types of Coster, cannot be traced to Mentz. Fragments of a copy of the Doctrinal of Alexander Gallus, the work of some unknown printer, have been found, not in Mentz, but in the Netherlands. The types ​of this book resemble those of the Speculum, but they are sufficiently unlike to establish the fact that they could not have been cast from the matrices used for the Speculum. This edition of the Doctrinal could not have been printed at Mentz.
The zealous indignation of Cornelis does not compensate us for his mysterious concealment of the name of the thief. His evidence is extremely unsatisfactory. Cornelis, who was in the employ of Coster when the theft was made, who knew the process, who bound the printed work, who was an old resident of Haarlem, who had business relations with every printer that succeeded Coster, of all men, should have been the one most ​competent to describe the work of Coster. But the information that he has furnished through Junius is ridiculously trivial, scanty as to facts and dates, inconsistent, and, in some points, entirely untrue.
Before we accept all that Junius has said about Cornelis, it will be well to learn what we can about him from other sources. The first entry in an account book of the cathedral of Haarlem for the year 1474 is to this effect: "Item. … I have paid to Cornelis, the binder, six Rhine florins for binding books." Similar items, describing Cornelis as a bookbinder, are found in similar account books between the years 1485 and 1515. Payments were also recorded to Cornelis for coloring the initial letters of the "bulls of the indulgences." After the year 1515 his name appears no longer as a bookbinder; in 1517 another binder did the work of the church. Seiz mentions an old book, printed by Jacob Bellaert of Haarlem in 1485, on the last leaf of which was written: "Bought at Haarlem in the Cruysstraet, of Cornelis the bookbinder, in May, 1492." The register for the year 1522 contains this entry: "Cornelis the bookbinder was buried in the church. For the making of his grave, twenty pence." There can be no doubt that there was a bookbinder Cornelis at Haarlem, and that the Cornelis of Junius is the Cornelis of the church record. The dates in these records will enable us to test the accuracy of one portion of the chronology of the legend.
Junius said that Cornelis told his story before he was an octogenarian. Eighty years might properly be considered as the limit of his life, which, according to the record, ended in 1522. If, to ascertain the date of the birth of Cornelis, we deduct eighty years from 1522, the result would show that he must have been born in 1442. But this was at least one year, perhaps two years, after the alleged theft. If Cornelis lived to the age of ninety years, the allowance of ten years more would not reconcile the discrepancy. Cornelis would have ​been a child of eight years of age; but the story of Junius requires, not a child, nor even a boy, but a man, an underworkman, the associate and room-mate of the false workman. To call it by the mildest name, here is a grievous blunder. The blunder is not in the record of the church, in which the chronology is consistent, for it represents Cornelis as beginning to work for the church when he was about thirty-two years of age. It would be a waste of time to show that the chronology of Junius is impossible: it is enough to say that the first link in the attempted chain is broken, and that Cornelis could not have been an eye-witness of the facts.
It is a suspicious circumstance that the testimony of Cornelis should be recorded for the first time nearly half a century after his death. Hasback, Andrieszoon and Bellaert, the early printers of Haarlem, should have heard from Cornelis this story about Coster and his invention. The people of Haarlem, we are told, were proud of Coster, and envious of the honors conceded to Gutenberg. Why the printers and the people of Haarlem allowed the important testimony of Cornelis to remain unpublished for so long a time is a question that cannot be answered.
At this late day, it is impossible to discover the kernel of truth that may be concealed in the heart of so great a husk of fiction. It may be that Cornelis, who seems to have been a simple-minded man, and who appears as a binder in the church record about nine years before Bellaert opened his printing office, imagined that this first printing office in Haarlem was the first printing office on the globe. There may have been a theft of types and of secrets from the office of Jacob Bellaert at or about 1485. Cornelis blundered about dates, and his inaccuracies have been exaggerated by the gossip of the next generation. These are possible conjectures. ​But we must remember that this story of Cornells is not told by himself, but by Junius.
One of the authorities referred to by Junius is Talesius, burgomaster of Haarlem when Junius was writing Batavia. In referring to him, Junius is careful in his choice of words. "My account does not disagree with that of Talesius. … I recollect that I have heard from him nearly the same story." This is a timid assertion—one that Talesius could have modified in some of its features. Talesius himself has not spoken. Talesius was, in his youth, the secretary, and, in mature age, the intimate friend of Erasmus, to whom he must have spoken about the legend, but he did not make Erasmus believe it.
The mysterious disappearance of the practice of the art from Haarlem is even more wonderful than its introduction. The tools may have been stolen, but the knowledge of the art must have remained. Coster may have died immediately after the theft, but his son-in-law Thomas Pieterzoon, and the workmen, who knew all about the details of typography, were living, and able to go on with the work. The making of books may have been temporarily suspended, but the curious ​public who clamored for them should have persuaded Coster's successors to fill their wants. The new art of printing which found so many admirers should not have been completely forgotten fifty years afterward. There is nothing in the story of Junius to satisfy these doubts. If we accept his account of the invention, we must rest contented with the belief that typography in Haarlem died as suddenly as it was born, leaving behind as its only relics one edition of the Speculum and the old wine-flagons of Thomaszoon. The same strange fatality followed the alleged thief John who fled to Mentz and printed two books in 1442. Immediately after, his types, his peculiar process and his printed books disappear forever.
The improbable features of this legend were not seen in the uncritical age in which Batavia was written. Patriotic Dutchmen did not wish to see them. Holland, at the close of the sixteenth century, was flushed with pride at her successful resistance to the power of Spain. Grateful to the men who had made her famous, she exaggerated the services of all her eminent sons. Coster was not forgotten. The name of Junius gave authority to the Haarlem legend, and the story of Coster was read and believed throughout the Netherlands. There were dramatic features connected with it which pleased the imagination and fastened themselves to the memory. To people who had no opportunity to examine the evidences, the legend of Haarlem soon became an article of national faith, to disbelieve which was to be disloyal and unpatriotic. But this enthusiasm would have subsided if it had not been nourished. If subsequent writers had added nothing to this legend of Junius, it would not be necessary to write more about it. Long ago it would have been put aside as untrue. But the legend has grown: it has been almost hidden under the additions that have been made to it. The snow-ball has become a snow-heap. It is necessary to expose the falsity of the additions as well as of the legend, and to show how recklessly this chapter of the history of typography has been written.
* ↑ Hessel's translation as given in the Haarlem Legend, p. 50.
* ↑ The comments of a modern critic on the strange omissions of this positive statement are to the point:"This forgetfulness of Coornhert has always seemed to me one of the most striking peculiarities of the Haarlem legend. How can it be! Here is a man, very learned, very patriotic, who appreciates the importance of the discovery, who contends with zeal to establish for his country the honor of being some souvenir, by giving his name to the cradle of the greatest of modern inventions. He knows the name, the family name and the family of the inventor, and he does not divulge them to his fellow-citizens! This surpasses belief. And what shall we say of the burgomaster Van Zuren? He writes a special treatise to retrieve the glory of the invention to the honor of the city of which he is a magistrate, but it never occurs to him that he should honor the memory of the inventor—I will not say by a monument of some kind, for that might be demanding altogether too much—but at least by a mention, by some street, or still less, by a simple record in a book. It is not possible to find another example of a forgetfulness so incredible." C. Ruelens, Bibliophile Belge, vol. iii, 1868.
* ↑ Ottley's translation as quoted in Johnson's Typographia, vol. i, p. 12.
* ↑ An attempted play or pun on the Latin faustus, happy. But the German printer's name was not Faust, but Fust. This pun was the origin of the error.
* ↑ In Junius's description of the thief, there is a strange confusion of singular and plural. Beginning with the specification of one John as the thief, the story ends with an intimation that there were two thieves. This substitution of they for he is not a typographical error, nor is it a slip of the pen. It seems to have been intended to sustain the insinuation of the complicity of Fust in this theft.
* ↑ The full title of the book from which this translation was made is Hadriani Ivnii Hornani, Medici Batavia. In qua præter gentis & insulæ antiquitatem, originem, decora, mores, aliaque, ad earn historiam pertinantia, declaratur quæ fuerit vetus Batavia. Ex. offic. Plantiniana, 1588, 4to. Hadrianus Junius was born at Hoorn, in the year 1511. His education, as a boy, was received at a grammar school in Haarlem; as a young man at the university of Louvain. In 1537, with one Martin Costerus, he made a tour in foreign countries. In 1540 he obtained from the university of Bologna the degree of doctor of medicine. Two years afterward he was living in Paris. In 1543 he went to England, and for six years succeeding, he was employed as physician to the duke of Norfolk. Soon after the death of the duke, he published in London a Greek lexicon, which enhanced his reputation as a scholar, but did not mend his fortunes. In 1559 he returned to Haarlem, where he married a lady of wealth. Three years after his marriage he accepted the appointment of tutor to the crown prince of Denmark, but finding that the position or the climate was disagreeable, he resigned the office. In 1563 he was appointed town physician, and rector of the Latin grammar school at Haarlem, which appointments he held until 1569. About this period he wrote Nomenclator, a lexicon in eight languages, and Batavia, a description of Holland. At various times he was formally invited to enter the service of the kings of Hungary, Poland and Denmark. William of Orange sent from Delft for his services as a physician: at a meeting of the deputies from the States, he nominated Junius as the historian of Holland. In 1574 he was made town physician at Middleburg, with a liberal salary and a free living. When Haarlem was captured in 1573 by the Spaniards, the library of Junius was plundered, and many of his manuscripts were destroyed. He took this calamity greatly to heart, and died at Arnemuiden in 1575. Justus Lipsius said he was the most learned Netherlander after Erasmus.
* ↑ The publication of Batavia, the work upon which the fame of Junius rests, seems to have been suggested to William of Orange by Junius himself, who expected to receive from the States a salary for his services as historian. In 1565, the question of salary, first named at 200 pounds of 40 groots, was put to vote. The prudence of the Dutch character is shown in the deliberations of the deputies. Haarlem, Delft, Leyden, and Gouda assented; Dordrecht and Amsterdam requested time for its consideration. Dordrecht afterward consented, but on condition that the money should be paid out of the taxes; that Junius should publish a volume every year; and that he should publish nothing without the approval of the States. In the meantime other States receded from their action, saying that the publication was ill-timed during a period of general distress. After some influences had been used, the States gave a grudging and qualified assent. In 1570, Junius petitioned for the payment of 200 guilders, as he had then finished the first book of the history. The petition was not favorably received, and its consideration was postponed for one year, at which time it was finally decided by the deputies to pay Junius 300 guilders, to prohibit him from publishing the first volume of the book with a dedication to the States, and to release him from all obligation to continue the work. This disparaging treatment of the author prevented the publication of the book with the completeness and at the time Junius had proposed. After his death the manuscripts of Batavia were collected and transcribed by his son Peter, who, with Peter Douza, undertook the publication. The book was published during 1588, from the office of Christopher Plantin, at Antwerp. The selection of a printer in a neighboring city shows that there was then no competent printer at Haarlem. It is another evidence of the indifference of the people of Haarlem toward typography.
* ↑ He relates not as a legend, but as veritable history, that the virgin Soter, who possessed but three pennies, gave them for the building of a church in Dordrecht. Other three pennies were miraculously and regularly found in her purse, and were as regularly bestowed, until the church was built. He repeats, with simplicity, the story of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne, who came from England to the now unknown port of Verona in Holland. He says that a certain stone in a church in Leyden was once a loaf of bread, and that the transubstantiation was made by a curse. He formally records the delivery by one Margaret, countess of Hennenberg, of 365 babies—a miracle, writes Van der Linde, "that makes you think of an upset pot of shrimps." Junius adds that this would be a miracle beyond belief, if it had not been attested by the authority of public monuments . . . . but he accepts the common belief. These examples of the credulousness of the author of Batavia warn us not to accept his criticisms on other traditions. Junius begins his description of printing at Haarlem with a solemn declaration of his intention to tell the truth. The declaration of candor is not needed: what the reader of Batavia does need is, not the protestation of the intention of the author to tell the truth, but some convincing evidence of his ability to distinguish the true from the false. His preface is long, pedantic, and in every way irrelevant, as may be inferred from a glance at the following classical names which he has sprinkled in the first paragraph: Carneades, the Daughter of Time, Democritus, Phœnicians and Egyptians, Cadmus, Athenians, Greeks and Thebans, Cecrops, Philostratus, Linus, Tacitus, Palamedes, Hyginus, Carmenta, Evander, Crassus, Scævola and Plutarch!
* ↑ In the year 1630, Adrien Rooman, of Haarlem, published a print which contained the engraved representation of a printing office, to which he put the words—"Invented at Haarlem about 1430;"—but "The magistrates and citizens of Haarlem, in everlasting remembrance of the event and the man," erected a monument in front of the Coster house, with an inscription on it, which fixed the date at 1440.
* ↑ Lambinet caustically observes that the romance of Junius obeys the dramatic law of unity, in time, place, and hero: the typographic art is invented complete in one day. The vague language of Junius has been used as a proper warrant for a very liberal construction of the date. When Van Lennep objected, in 1823, to the chimerical year of the invention, 1423, fixed upon by a Haarlem committee, the synod enjoined him: "If he will again carefully read the account of Junius, and not forsake, out of his prejudice, all common sense, he will plainly see himself, and be obliged to acknowledge, that Junius said not a single word about the time of the invention." Van der Linde, The Haarlem Legend, p. 68.
* ↑ There has been much dispute concerning the functions of this keeper. Junius says that this Lourens Janszoon was the keeper of a church; that this keepership was an honorary office which belonged to Coster's family by hereditary right. The duties of the office seem to have been those of a church trustee. Some writers say that this custos was nothing more than a sexton, but it is of no moment whether custos means sexton or trustee. The care with which Junius introduces evidences of the respectability of Coster's house and the dignity of his family implies his fear that there might be, on the part of a heedless reader, some doubt concerning the social position of a custos. Nothing is said of the ancestors of Coster. Probably, there was reason for this omission. Coster's distinction in Haarlem was not that of patrician blood. His wealth was not, so far as we can learn, derived from any inheritance, nor could it have been acquired through the emoluments of a custos, which was an honorary but not a lucrative office. He had been engaged in some occupation which Junius considered derogatory to his dignity. Of this occupation we shall hear more hereafter.
* ↑ The assurances of his wealth, leisure and respectability seem to have been provoked by the published statements, with which Junius was familiar, that Gutenberg, the rival German inventor, was of noble birth. It is not the only instance in which the Dutch legend is the echo of the German history. The first coincidence is that Coster, like Fust, was indebted to his son-in-law for valuable assistance in perfecting typography. And both sons-in-law were named Peter.
* ↑ If Junius had not said that Coster changed the characters of wood for letters of lead and of tin, and that the false workman was expert in composing letters and in founding types, there might be some doubt whether these characters of wood were made disconnected or conjoined. His language is obscure, for he has used the words form and character as the equivalent of type, where these words could be applied with equal propriety to a letter engraved on a block. This obscurity was not caused by the poverty of the Latin language, for he afterward described types with clearness. There was obviously some confusion in the mind of Junius. It is not certain that he clearly understood the broad difference between typography and xylography; it is certain that he intended to convey the idea that Coster was the inventor of printing in its broadest sense—the inventor of printing from blocks as well as from movable types. The absurdity of this broad claim must be obvious to all who have read about early image prints and playing cards and the printed fabrics of Italy and Sicily.
* ↑ The wine-flagons of Thomaszoon may have had some features which carried conviction to the observer of the seventeenth century, but the modern reader of the story will fail to see that they should have been made of worn-out types. But the tin wine-flagons and the noticeable house on the market-place are not to be despised. Useless as proofs of the credibility of the legend of Junius, they illustrate to some extent the pedigree of the Coster family, a pedigree with which Junius was well acquainted, but for which he could find no place in his legend. These wine-flagons were the pewter pots of a tavern about a century old.
* ↑ There were many Johns among the early printers of Mentz: John Fust, John Gutenberg, John Petersheim, John Meydenbach. When it was thought proper to acquit Fust of this accusation, John Gutenberg was selected as the man; but the discovery of records which proved that Gutenberg was making experiments in typography at Strasburg during the year 1436, compelled the withdrawal also of this accusation. Meerman, with a skill in casuistry equal to the occasion, then undertook to prove that there were two Gutenbergs—brothers, but with different surnames—Johan Gensfleisch, the elder, and Johan Gutenberg, the younger; and that it was the elder brother who betrayed Coster and revealed the secret to John Gutenberg. It was a weak artifice. German historians have fully proved that Gutenberg's brother Frielo had nothing to do with typography; that John Gensfleisch, the elder, was an uncle, not a brother,—old, rich and blind—of all men, most incapable of any attempt at the purloining or practising of an intricate art like printing. There is no evidence to inculpate Petersheim or Meydenbach.
* ↑ The story of theft is not only improbable, but it is unsupported by external evidence. Jacobus Koning, a diligent searcher in the archives of Haarlem, discovered that, on and after Christmas day, 1440, the constabulary of Haarlem were often sent to Amsterdam upon important business. The inference attempted is that the constables were in search of the workman who stole Coster's implements. The records do not say that they were sent for a thief. Their business was of another nature. There had been a great mortality in Haarlem, and the officers of the town had left it while the pestilence was raging. The journeys of the constables were made to the temporary residences of the magistrates who, from a more healthy city, sent directions for the government of the town. Koning knew this fact but suppressed it.The accusation of unfair practice, is frequently made by men who have been defeated in a fair contest. Whenever such an accusation is accompanied, as it was in this instance, with dramatic details, it effects a lodgment in the popular belief, from which it is not easily removed. Junius was not the first, nor the last, to use this discreditable but effective method of making-up a case. There is an old French record which narrates how Nicholas Jenson was sent from Paris to Mentz in the year 1458 to get a knowledge of the German invention. Jenson did acquire this knowledge, and became an eminent printer. His detractors say that he stole the secret; his eulogists say that he learned nothing, that he was the real inventor.—The story of Richard Atkyns about the English theft is too full of absurdities for criticism.—Sometime between 1520 and 1570, Daniel Specklin wrote a chronicle of Strasburg, in which he relates that printing was invented at that city in the year 1440, by John Mentel; that Mentel's unfaithful servant, one John Gensfleisch, stole the secret, not the punches, and took it to Mentz.—There is a popular legend in Italy that Pamphilo Castaldi invented printing types at Feltre in the year 1450; that John Fust, who happened to be in the town, abstracted the knowledge of the invention, carried it to Mentz, and arrogated all the honors of the rightful inventor.
* ↑ It was on the inner cover or binding of this account book that the fragment of a typographical Donatus was found. See page 259.
* ↑ Lambinet had reason to speak of the aged witnesses, Cornelis, Gallius and Talesius, as "walking and talking centuries." Van der Linde characteristically describes the story of Junius as "a story in which all the authorities hear the principal facts in their infancy, but only to communicate them to each other in their second childhood."
* ↑ Erasmus says: "All those who apply themselves to the sciences are under no small obligations toward the excellent town of Mentz, on account of the excellent and almost divine invention of printing books with tin letters, which, as they assure us, was born there."
* ↑ To satisfy these doubts, and to bridge the chasm between Coster of 1440 and Bellaert of 1483, Meerman undertook to show that Coster's three grandsons, Peter, Andrew and Thomas, continued the practice of typography and printed many small works. Dr. De Vries maintained that "there was after Coster's death, until about 1470, an uninterrupted, carefully concealed practice of printing. … That there existed in Holland for many years a seminary of the practicers of the art is confirmed by many and strong evidences." But De Vries offers conjectures for evidences. History is silent about the printing office that was conducted by the sons of Coster. This office and these printers were really created by Meerman to fill a disagreeable gap in the story of Junius—a gap not seen by any of his numerous commentators from Scriverius to Seiz. There is no book that bears their names; there is no record that mentions them as printers; there is not even a tradition that they had anything to do with printing. If their names had not appeared upon the pedigree of Gerrit Thomaszoon, we should know nothing of them. The typographical successors of Coster are as fictitious as their progenitor.