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Title: The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation
Author: Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
Release Date: November 17, 2003 [EBook #10103]
Language: English
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BINDING Vol. VIII
The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original in the British Museum, and is considered the most artistic mosaic binding design in existence.
It was executed about 1710, by Antoine Michel Padeloup, Royal Binder of both France and Portugal.
He presented it to Francoise Marie de Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, on the anniversary of her marriage to Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who afterward became Regent of France.
During the Reign of Terror this volume found its way to England, where it was sold at a handsome price. It was bequeathed to the British Museum by Felix Slade, Esq.
THE GREAT EVENTS
BY
FAMOUS HISTORIANS
A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS
NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL
ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D.
_With a staff of specialists
VOLUME VIII
The National Alumni_
1905
CONTENTS
VOLUME VIII
An Outline Narrative of the Great Events CHARLES F. HORNE
Origin and Progress of Printing (A.D. 1438) HENRY GEORGE BOHN
John Hunyady Repulses the Turks (A.D. 1440-1456) ARMINIUS VAMBERY
Rebuilding of Rome by Nicholas V, the "Builder-pope" (A.D. 1447-1455) MRS. MARGARET OLIPHANT
Mahomet II Takes Constantinople (A.D. 1453) End of the Eastern Empire GEORGE FINLAY
Wars of the Roses (A.D. 1455-1485) Death of Richard III at Bosworth DAVID HUME
Ivan the Great Unites Russia and Breaks the Tartar Yoke (A.D. 1462-1505) ROBERT BELL
Culmination of the Power of Burgundy Treaty of Péronne (A.D. 1468) P.F. WILLERT
Lorenzo de'Medici Rules in Florence Zenith of Florentine Glory (A.D. 1469) OLIPHANT SMEATON
Death of Charles the Bold (A.D. 1477) Louis XI Unites Burgundy with the Crown of France PHILIPPE DE COMINES
Inquisition Established in Spain (A.D.1480), WILLIAM H. RULE JAMES BALMES
Murder of the Princes in the Tower (A.D.1483) JAMES GAIRDNER
Conquest of Granada (A.D.1490) WASHINGTON IRVING
Columbus Discovers America (A.D.1492) CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS FERDINAND COLUMBUS
Conspiracy, Rebellion, and Execution of Perkin Warbeck (A.D.1492) FRANCIS BACON
Savonarola's Reforms and Death The French Invade Italy_ (A.D.1494) PASQUALE VILLARI JEAN C. L. SISMONDI
Discovery of the Mainland of North America by the Cabots (A.D.1497) SAMUEL EDWARD DAWSO
The Sea Route to India Vasco da Gama Sails around Africa (A.D.1498) GASPAR CORREA
Columbus Discovers South America (A.D.1498) CLEMENTS ROBERT MARKHAM
Establishment of Swiss Independence (A.D.1499) HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE
Amerigo Vespucci in America (A.D.1499) AMERIGO VESPUCCI
Rise and Fall of the Borgias (A.D.1502) NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
Painting of the Sistine Chapel (A.D.1508) The Splendor of Renaissance Art under Michelangelo CHARLES CLEMENT
Balboa Discovers the Pacific (A.D.1513) MANUEL JOSE QUINTANA
Universal Chronology (A.D.1438-1516) JOHN RUDD
ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VIII
_Murder of the princes, sons of King Edward IV, in the Tower of London (page 194)1 Painting by Otto Seitz.
Facsimile of a page from Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye—the first book printed in the English language
Louis XI at his devotions in the castle of Péronne while held a prisoner by Charles the Bold Painting by Hermann Kaulbach.
Pope Sixties V and the Grand Inquisitor Painting by Jean Paul Laurens.
AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE
TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF
THE GREAT EVENTS
(THE LATER RENAISSANCE: FROM GUTENBERG TO THE REFORMATION)
CHARLES F. HORNE
The Renaissance marks the separation of the mediaeval from the modern world. The wide difference between the two epochs of Teutonic history arises, we are apt somewhat glibly to say, from the fact that our ancestors worshipped and were ruled by brute force, whereas we follow the broad light of intellect. Perhaps both statements require modification; yet in a general way they do suggest the change which by a thousand different agencies has, in the course of the last four centuries, been forced upon the world. Mediaeval Europe was a land not of equals, but of lords and slaves. The powerful nobles regarded themselves as of wholly different clay from the hapless peasants whom they trampled under foot, serfs so ignorant, so brutalized by want, that they were often little better than the beasts with which they herded. Gradually the tradesmen, the middle classes, forced their way to practical equality with the nobles. Then came the turn of the masses to do the same. The beginnings of the merchants' movement we have already traced in the preceding volumes; the end of the peasants' effort is perhaps even to-day scarce yet accomplished.
In dealing with modern history, therefore, every writer is apt to begin with a different date. Some go back as far as Petrarch, who reintroduced the study of ancient art and learning; that is, they regard our world as a direct continuation of the Roman, with the thousand years of the Middle Ages gaping between like an earthquake gulf of barbarism, that was bridged at last. Some take the invention of printing as a starting-point, feeling that the chief element of our progress has been the
All of these epochs fall within the limits of the Renaissance, and all, except that of Petrarch, within the later Renaissance which we are now considering. The period is therefore worth careful study.
INTELLECTUAL SUPREMACY OF ITALY
Gutenberg's invention had no immediate effect upon his world.[1] Indeed, so little enthusiasm did it arouse that while the inventor's plans were probably evolved as early as 1438, it was not until 1454 or thereabouts that the first completed book was issued from his press. His business partner, Faust, sold his wares in wealthy Paris without explaining that these were different from earlier hand-written books; and when their cheapness, as well as their exact similarity, was discovered, the merchant was suspected of having sold himself to the devil. Hence probably originated the Faust legend. Superstition, it is evident, had still an extended course to run.
It is worth noting that to sell his books Faust left Germany for Paris, and that while printing-presses multiplied but slowly in the land of their origin, the new art was instantly seized upon in Italy, was there made widest use of and pushed to its perfection. In fact, through all the Middle Ages the Romance or semi-Teutonic peoples of Italy, France, and Spain were intellectually in advance of the more wholly Teutonic races of the North. Many of their descendants believe half contemptuously that the difference has not even yet been overcome.
Italy at this time held clearly the intellectual supremacy of the western world, and Florence under the Medici, Cosmo and then Lorenzo, held the supremacy of Italy.[2] Not only in thought, but in art, was there an outburst brilliant beyond all earlier times. A friend and pupil of Cosmo de' Medici was made pope at Rome, and under the name of Nicholas V originated vast schemes for the rebuilding and beautifying of his city of ruins.[3] Modern Rome with all its beautiful churches and wonders of art rose from the hands of Nicholas and his immediate successors. It was their idea that the city should no longer be remembered by its heathen greatness, but by its Christian splendor; that the sight of it should impress upon pilgrims not the decay of the world, but the glory and majesty of the Church. Nicholas also continued the work of Petrarch, gathering vast stores of ancient manuscripts, refounding and practically beginning the enormous Vatican Library. He established that alliance of the Church with the new culture of the age which for a century continued to be an honor and distinguishment to both.
In his pontificate occurred the fall of Constantinople, bringing with it the definite establishment of the Turks in Europe and the final extinction of that Roman Empire of the East which had originated with Constantine. For this reason the date of its fall (1453) is also employed as marking the beginning of modern Europe. It was at least the closing of the older volume, the final not undramatic exit of the last remnant of the ancient world, with its long decaying arts and arrogance, its wealth, its literature, and its law.[4]
Greek scholars fleeing from the sack of their city brought many marvellous old manuscripts to Western Europe and were eagerly welcomed by Pope Nicholas and all of Italy. Nicholas even preached a crusade against the terrible Turks, and tried once more to rouse Europe to ancient enthusiasms. But he failed, and died, they say, heartbroken at his helplessness.
THE CLASH OF RACES IN THE EAST
The Turks had recovered from their defeat by the Tartars of Timur, and became once more an active menace. With Constantinople in their power, they attacked the Venetians and compelled those wealthy traders to pay them tribute. Venice by sea and Hungary on land remained for a century the bulwarks of Christendom, and were forced, almost unaided, to withstand all the assaults of the East. They wellnigh perished in the effort. In Hungary this was the period of the great hero, Hunyady, a man of unknown birth and no official rank, who roused his countrymen to repeated effort and led them to repeated victories and defeats against the vastly more numerous invaders.[5]
Hunyady died, worn out with ceaseless warfare, and his son, Matthias, was elected by acclamation to be monarch of the land the father had preserved. This was the proudest era in the history of the Hunnish race. Under Matthias they even resumed their German warfare of five centuries before, and won from a Hapsburg emperor his city of Vienna, ancient capital of Austria, the eastmark or borderland which had been erected by Otto the Great to hold the Huns in check. For a few years Matthias placed his kingdom amid the foremost states of Europe; but with his death came renewed disunion and disorder to his lawless people, and the fierce, fanatic Turks returned again to their assaults.
Further north the yellow races were less successful. Along the shifting borderlands of Asia which mark the line of demarcation between the two mightier families of man, the tide turned ever more steadily in the Aryans' favor. The Russians, under their chief, Ivan III, threw off the galling Tartar yoke which they had borne for over two hundred years. Ivan concentrated in his own hands the power of all the little Russian duchies, overthrew the celebrated Russian republic of Novgorod the Great, and defied the Tartars. Equally noteworthy to modern eyes was his wedding with Sophia, heiress of the last of the emperors of the East. When that outworn empire perished with the fall of Constantinople, Ivan succeeded nominally at least to its heirship. Hence it is that his successors have assumed the title of caesar or kaiser or czar and have grown to look upon themselves as inheritors of the ancient supremacy of Rome.[6]
The fifteenth century was thus a time of many changes in Eastern Europe. Not only did the Eastern Empire disappear at last, not only did Hungary rise to the brief zenith of her glory, there was a sort of general movement, sometimes spoken of as the "Slavonic reaction," against the hitherto successful Teutons. The Slavic Bohemians in their "Hussite" wars repelled all the religious fighting strength of Europe. The Poles began to win back territory from the German empire, and especially from their hereditary foes the "Teutonic Knights" of Prussia. And Russia, greatest of all the Slav countries, grew into a strong kingdom. She and Turkey, rising as twin menaces to the West, assumed at almost the same period that threatening aspect which Turkey has only lately lost, and Russia, to some statesmen's eyes, still holds.
POLITICAL CHANGES IN WESTERN EUROPE
Turn now to the affairs of Western Europe. The feebleness of the German empire continued. For over half a century it was nominally ruled by Frederick III (1440-1493), the lazy and feeble emperor who let Matthias of Hungary expel him from Vienna, and never made any vigorous effort to recover his capital. He was succeeded by his son Maximilian, a man of far other temper, full of courage, energy, and hardihood. Maximilian has been called "the last of the knights," and indeed his whole career may well exemplify the changing times. The one achievement of his life was the recovery of Vienna from the Hungarians, and in that he was successful only because the heirs of Matthias were being overwhelmed
The remainder of his career was spent in learning bitterly how little real power he had as emperor. He attempted to bring the Swiss once more under the imperial dominion, but the little armies he could scrape together against them were repeatedly defeated.[7] He was always declaring war against this kingdom or that, and summoning his great lords to aid him in upholding the glory of the empire. They persistently declined; and he was helpless. At one time having pledged his alliance to the English king, Henry VII, against France, he preserved his knightly word by going alone and serving as a volunteer in Henry's army, whither his people would not follow him. Instead they stayed at home and demanded from him constitutions and courts of law and other internal reforms, uninteresting matters about which the gallant soul of Maximilian cared not a straw and which he gave his subjects under protest.
To the westward of him a far subtler monarch, by far subtler means, was strengthening the power of France and making smooth her way toward that supremacy over European affairs which she was later to assert. Louis XI (1461-1483) is called the first modern king, though it is little flattery to modern statecraft to compare its methods with his, and perhaps our recent governments have truly outgrown them. Louis was no warrior, although under compulsion he showed possibilities of becoming an able general. He preferred to send others who should do his fighting for him, to embroil his opponents one with another, and then reap the fruit of their mutual exhaustion. He was passed master of all falsity and craft; and by his shrewdness he brought to his country peace and prosperity. Typically does he represent his age in which intellectual ability, though sometimes wholly divorced from nobleness of soul, began to dominate brute force.
Charles the Bold stands as the representative of this brute force. He was the mightiest of the French nobles. His ancestors, a younger branch of the royal family, had been made dukes of Burgundy, and by skilful alliances and rapid changes of side through the long Hundred Years' War, they had steadily added to their possessions and their powers. The father of Charles found himself stronger than his king, possessor not only of Burgundy, but of many other fiefs from Germany as well as France, and lord of the Netherlands as well.[8]
Charles was thus the last of those great, overgrown vassals so characteristic of feudal times. Like Hugh Capet in France, like William the Conqueror in England, he hoped to establish himself as an independent king. He opened negotiations for this purpose with the Emperor Frederick, Maximilian's father. He made himself practically independent of France. He wielded a military power greater than that of any other prince of the moment, and he knew it and charged like a mad bull at whoever seemed to interpose in his designs.
Over such a man Louis XI's cunning had full play. He involved Charles in fights with every neighbor. Finally he lured him into conflict with the Swiss, and those hardy mountaineers won the repute of being the best soldiers of Europe by defeating Charles again and again till they left him slain on the field of Nancy (1477).[9] Louis promptly seized most of his dead vassal's domains. Maximilian, having wedded Charles' daughter, inherited the remainder; and the old Burgundian kingdom, so nearly revived to stretch as a permanent dividing land between France and Germany, disappeared forever.
What Louis had done with Burgundy he attempted with his other semi-independent duchies. The Hundred Years' War had almost destroyed central government in France. Louis, by means as secret and varied as his cunning could suggest, gradually reestablished an undisputed leadership above his lords. Fortunately for France, perhaps, England was prevented by a long series of civil wars from interfering in her neighbor's affairs. These wars, though they originated before Louis' time, were constantly fomented and kept alive by him, and England thus paid dearly for having become a source of danger to France.
The Wars of the Roses,[10] as they are called, caused deep-seated changes in England's life and society. They mark for her the transition from the mediaeval to the modern era which was everywhere taking place. Beginning as a contest between two rival branches of the Plantagenets for the kingship, these wars remained aristocratic throughout. That is to say, the common people took little interest in them, while the nobles, espousing sides, fought savagely and murderously, giving one another no quarter, sparing the lesser folk, but executing as traitors their prisoners of rank. When one side seemed hopelessly overcome, Louis would lend them arms and money wherewith to seek revenge once more. Thus almost all the old nobility of England perished; and both lines of kings became extinct, Richard III, their last representative, being accused of murdering all his relatives or possible rivals.[11] At last, Richard too was slain, and a new family of rulers, only remotely connected with the old, was inaugurated by Henry Tudor, grandson of a private gentleman of Wales. This new king, Henry VII (1485-1509), found no powerful lords to oppose his will. One or two impostors were raised against him,[12] France making anxious efforts to prolong the troubles of her dangerous neighbor; but the attempts failed through the utter completeness of the aristocracy's exhaustion.
Thus in England as in France, though by widely differing chances, the kingly power had triumphed over feudalism. Monarchs began to come into direct contact, not always pleasant, with the entire mass of their subjects, the "third estate," the common people.
RISE OF SPANISH POWER
Spain also was to pass through a similar experience. Indeed, one of the most striking facts of this age of the Renaissance is the swift and spectacular rise of Spain from a land of feebleness and internal strife into the most powerful kingdom of Europe. We have seen the Spanish peninsula in previous ages the seat of endless strife between Saracens and Christians. Gradually the Moors had been driven back, and the little independent Christian states had been united by the fortunes of war and marriage into three—Portugal on the Atlantic coast, Castile occupying the larger part of the mainland, and Aragon, a maritime kingdom, less extensive in Spain, but extending its sovereignty over many of the Mediterranean isles, over Sicily and southern Italy. In 1469 Isabella, heiress of Castile, and Ferdinand, heir of Aragon, were wedded; and soon afterward their countries were united under their joint rule. The combined strength of both was then devoted to a long religious war against the Moors. Granada, the last and most famous of the Moorish capitals and strongholds, was finally captured in 1492.[13] The followers of Mahomet were driven out of Western Europe during the same period that, under Turkish leadership, they had at last won Constantinople in the East.
The whole Spanish peninsula with the exception of Portugal was thus united under Ferdinand and Isabella, greatest of the sovereigns of Spain. The ages of battle with the Moors had bred a nation of cavaliers, intensely loyal, passionately religious. They were splendid fighters, but stern, hard-hearted, merciless men. Isabella, "the Saint," most holy and pure-souled of women, herself introduced into her country the terrible Inquisition.[14] Jews and Moors were given little peace in life unless they turned Christian. Heretics and relapsed converts from the other faiths were burned to death. The Queen declared she would approve all possible torture to men's bodies, when necessary in order to save their souls.
If such were the women of Spain, what was to be expected of the men? How could even Ferdinand, "the Wise," keep them employed now that there were no longer Moors to fight against?
THE ERA OF DISCOVERY
The Portuguese from their Atlantic seaboard had already begun to explore southward along the African coast. In 1402 they had settled the Canary Isles. In 1443 they reached southward beyond the sands of the Sahara and saw Cape Verd, discovered that Africa was not all burning desert, that heat would not forever increase as they went southward. In 1487 Bartholomew Diaz, after almost a year of sailing, reached the Cape of Good Hope, the southern point of the vast African continent; and in 1497 Vasco da Gama rounded the cape and sailed on to India[16]. He had found a way of bringing Indian spices, silks, and jewels to Europe, bringing them in quantities and without paying tribute to the Turks, without crossing the deadly deserts of Arabia. He had made his little country wealthy.
Meanwhile, stimulated by Portuguese success, the mariners of other nations began to brave the giant storms of the Atlantic. The Turks had made trade with the far East wellnigh impossible. Portugal was not the only land to seek a sea-route to India. Venice and Genoa saw before them the threat of ruin to their most profitable commerce. So we may even say that it was the Turks who set the Genoese captain Columbus to planning his great voyage; it was the conquest of the Moors that set Isabella free to listen to him, and offer her crown jewels for the expedition which should convert other heathen, establish other inquisitions; and it was the downfall of the Moors which left the Spanish warriors so eager to throng to adventure and warfare in the West, once Columbus had shown the way.
For a time the theatre of great events shifts to the new continent. The Portuguese explorers had doubled the size of the known world. The Spaniards doubled it again. But the credit must not be given wholly to Spain. Though it was the liberality of her monarchs which had made discovery possible, and though it was the daring of her warriors that laughed at danger and made conquest sure, yet the Spaniards were not sailors. It was to Italy, the home of commerce, that they turned for their captains and their pilots. Columbus, the Genoese, had discovered the islands along the coast. England, wishing to have a share in this world of wonders, sent a Venetian mariner, John Cabot; and he and his son sailed along our northern mainland in English ships.[17] Columbus touched the coast of South America in 1498.[18] A Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, was the first to cruise far along this southern coast, probably in 1499, and it was his name which Europe gave to the new lands.[19]
Following the discovery came settlement, warfare with the unhappy Indians, a fierce and frantic search for gold. It was while engaged in this work that Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama, saw the vast waters of the Pacific, and riding out into them upon his warhorse took possession, in the name of Spain, of the largest ocean of the globe.[20] Men recognized at last that these were not the Asiatic shores, but a wholly new continent which they had found.
RELIGIOUS CHANGES
Let us pause to recapitulate the wonders which this age of the Renaissance had seen—a new world of Africa discovered in the South, a new world of America in the West, the rise of Spain, the conquest of the last of the western Saracens at Granada and the rise of the Turks in the East, the rise of Russia, the downfall of the last vestige of the ancient empire of Rome, the last expiring effort of feudalism in Charles the Bold, and of errant knighthood in Maximilian; the beginning of modern statecraft in Louis XI of France, Henry VII of England, and Ferdinand the Wise of Spain; the spread of printing and with it the spread of thought and knowledge among the masses; and, sometimes accounted greatest of all, came the wonderful awakening of art in Italy. We have traced the early part of this under the Medici and Pope Nicholas. Lorenzo de'Medici was the centre of its later development.[21] From his court went forth that galaxy of artists which the world of art unites in calling the unequalled masters of all ages—Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and a host of others.[22]
Unfortunately in Italy at least the great movement in art and literature took an antireligious, sometimes an antipatriotic, tone. Lorenzo was openly defiant and scornful of the teachings of the Church, and after his death a French king, Charles VIII, was able to enter Italy and march from end to end of it without opposition. Religion seemed dying there, and love of country dead.
Florence underwent an extravagant though brief religious revival. The monk Savonarola preached against wickedness in high places, and thundered at the Florentines for their presumption and vanity. The impressionable people wept, they appointed a "day of vanities" and laid all their rich robes and jewels at Savonarola's feet. They made him ruler of the city. But, alas! they soon tired of his severities, sighed for their vanities back again, and at last burned the reformer at the stake.[23]
In Rome itself there arose popes, Lorenzo's followers, who preferred art to Christianity, or others like the terrible Alexander Borgia, who adopted the maxims of the new statecraft. Alexander, a worthy disciple of Louis XI, admired falsehood before truth, and sought to win his aims by poisoning his enemies. The career of his nephew Caesar Borgia has supplied history with its most awful picture of successful crime, and the book written in his praise by Macchiavelli has given us a new word for Satanic subtlety and treachery. We call it Macchiavellian. The rest of Europe shrank from Italy in fear, and named it "poisoning Italy."[24]
Against the spiritual dominance of such a land the world was surely ready for revolt. The mind of man, so long and slowly awakening, and at last so intensely roused, seeing great discoveries on every hand, was no longer to be controlled by authority. The time was ripe for the Reformation.
[FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME IX]
[Footnote 1: See Origin and Progress of Printing, page 5.]
[Footnote 2: See Beginning and Progress of the Renaissance, vol. ix, p. 110.]
[Footnote 3: See Rebuilding of Rome by Nicholas V, page 46.]
[Footnote 4: See Mahomet II Takes Constantinople, page 55.]
[Footnote 5: See John Hunyady Repulses the Turks, page 30.]
[Footnote 6: See Ivan the Great Unites Russia, page 109.]
[Footnote 7: See Establishment of Swiss Independence, page 336.]
[Footnote 8: See Culmination of the Power of Burgundy, page 125.]
[Footnote 9: See Death of Charles the Bold, page 155.]
[Footnote 10: See Wars of the Roses, page 72.]
[Footnote 11: See Murder of the Princes in the Tower, page 192,]
[Footnote 12: See Conspiracy, Rebellion, and Execution of Perkin
Warbeck, page 250.]
[Footnote 13: See Conquest of Granada, page 202.]
[Footnote 14: See Inquisition Established in Spain, page 166.]
[Footnote 15: See Columbus Discovers America, page 224.]
[Footnote 16: See The Sea Route to India, page 299.]
[Footnote 17: See Discovery of the Mainland of North America by the
Cabots, page 282.]
[Footnote 18: See Columbus Discovers South America, page 323.]
[Footnote 19: See Amerigo Vespucci in America,
[Footnote 20: See Balboa Discovers the Pacific, page 381.]
[Footnote 21: See Lorenzo de'Medici Rules in Florence, page 134.]
[Footnote 22: See Painting of the Sistine Chapel, page 369.]
[Footnote 23: See Savonarola's Reforms and Death, page 265.]
[Footnote 24: See Rise and Fall of the Borgias, page 360.]
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING
A.D. 1438
HENRY GEORGE BOHN
It was perhaps not altogether fortuitous that the invention of printing came concurrently with the Revival of Learning. Men's minds were turned toward practical experiment in that art by the very influences made active through the labors of those scholars who ushered in the Renaissance. "The art preservative of all other arts" has also preserved the records of its own beginnings and development, although of its earlier sources our knowledge is very obscure, and even the modern achievement, which antiquity in various ways foreshadowed, is itself a subject of uncertainty and dispute.
Bohn, in his admirable survey of the origin and progress of modern printing, gives us a full and accurate account, from the earliest evidences and conjectures relating to antiquity to the latter part of the nineteenth century, confining himself, however, to European developments. But before the middle of the sixteenth century printing was introduced into Spanish America. Existing books show that in Mexico there was a press as early as 1540; but it is impossible to name positively the first book printed on this continent. North of Mexico the first press was used, 1639, by an English Non-conformist clergyman named Glover. In 1660 a printer with press and types was sent from England by the corporation for propagating the gospel among the Indians of New England in the Indian language. This press was taken to a printing-house already established at Cambridge, Mass. It was not until several years later that the use of a press in Boston was permitted by the colonial government, and until near the end of the seventeenth century no presses were set up in the colonies outside of Massachusetts.
In 1685 printing began in Pennsylvania, a few years later in New York, and in Connecticut in 1709. From 1685 to 1693 William Bradford, an English Quaker, conducted a press in Philadelphia, and in the latter year he removed his plant to New York. He was the first notable American printer, and became official printer for Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Maryland. His first book was an almanac for 1686. In 1725 he founded the New York Gazette, the first newspaper in New York. But the first newspaper published in the English colonies was the Boston News-Letter, founded in 1704 by John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster in Boston. Only four American periodicals had been established when, in 1729, Benjamin Franklin, who was already printer to the Pennsylvania Assembly, became proprietor and editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette.
Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century the progress of printing in America was slow. But in 1784 the first daily newspaper, the American Daily Advertiser, was issued in Philadelphia, and from this time periodical publications multiplied and the printing of books increased, until the agency and influence of the press became as marked in the United States as in the leading countries of Europe.
Even since the time when Bohn wrote, the progress made in various branches of the printer's art has been such as might have astonished that famous publisher of so many standard works. Recent improvements for increasing the capacity of the press, and often the quality of its productions, are quite comparable to those which our own time has seen in other departments of industry, as in the applications of electricity and the like. In addition to the further development of stereotyping, there has been marvellous improvement in nearly all the machinery and processes of printing. This is especially marked in rapid color-printing, and in the successors of inadequate typesetting-machines—in the linotype, the monotype, the typograph, etc.
Most wonderful of all, perhaps, is the improved printing-press itself, in various classes, each adapted to its special purpose. The sum of all improvements in this department of mechanical invention is seen in the great cylinder-presses now in general use, especially the one known as the web perfecting press. This is a machine of great size and intricate construction, which yet does its complex work with an accuracy that almost seems to denote conscious intelligence. It prints from an immense roll of paper, making the impression from curved stereotype plates, runs at high speed, prints both sides of the paper at one run, and folds, pastes, and performs other processes as provided for. By doubling and quadrupling the parts, the ordinary speed of about twenty-four thousand impressions an hour may be increased to one hundred thousand an hour. The multicolor web perfecting press prints four or more colors at one revolution of the impression cylinder.
To meet the demands of such an enormous consumption of paper as the modern press requires, it was necessary to invent other processes and to utilize more abundant and cheaper material for paper-making than those formerly employed. This requirement has been supplied in recent years mainly through the extensive manufacture of paper from wood-pulp. This method, together with improved processes in the use of other materials, has removed all fear of a paper famine such as has sometimes threatened the printing industry in the past.
"Nature does not advance by leaps," says an old proverb; neither does her offspring, Art. All the great boons vouchsafed to man by a munificent providence are of gradual development; and though some may appear to have come upon us suddenly, reflection and inquiry will always show that they have had their previous stages.
Indeed, nothing in this great world which concerns the well-being of man takes place by accident, but is brought forward by divine will, precisely at the moment most suitable to our condition. So it was with astronomy, the mariner's compass, the steam-engine, gas, the electric telegraph, and many other of those blessings which have progressed with civilization. The elements were there and known, but the time had not arrived for their fructification.
And so it is with printing: although its invention is placed in the middle of the fifteenth century, and almost the very year fixed, this can only be regarded as a matured stage of it. To illustrate this, I propose to begin with a cursory view of its primitive elements, of which the very first were no doubt initiative marks and numerals.
The use of numerals has been denominated "the foundation of all the arts of life"; and we know with certainty that several nations, and among them the Mexicans, had numerals before they were acquainted with letters. The first method of reckoning was with the fingers, but small stones were also used—hence the words "calculate" and "calculation," which are derived from calculus, the Latin for a pebble-stone.
The Chinese counted for many years with notched sticks; and even in England, in comparatively modern times, accounts were kept by tallies, in which notches were cut alike in two parallel pieces of wood. Shakespeare alludes to "the score and the tally" in his Henry VI; and this mode of keeping accounts is still adopted by some of the bakers and dyers in Warwickshire and Cheshire. And tallies are occasionally produced in the small-debt courts, where they are admitted as authentic proofs of debt. Hence the origin and name of the "tally court of
After numerals, came picture-writing, hieroglyphics, and symbolic characters, such are were used by the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Mexicans; which, however unconnected they may be with each other, are of the same general character. Indeed, the Chinese have never advanced beyond symbolic characters, of which it is said they have more than one hundred thousand combinations or varieties.
Rude as these conditions of humanity may seem, they are matched in modern England, even at a very recent date, if we may credit a well-known story: A rustic shopkeeper in a remote district, being unable to read or write, contrived to keep his accounts by picture-writing, and charged his customer, the miller, with a cheese instead of a grindstone, from having omitted to mark a hole in the centre.
After picture and symbolic writings would follow phonetic characters, or marks for sounds; that is, the alphabet. Even the alphabet, which in civilized countries has now existed for more than three thousand years, was perfected by degrees; for it has been clearly ascertained that the earliest known did not comprise more than one-half or, at most, two-thirds of the letters which eventually formed its complement. Thus, the Pelasgian alphabet, which is derived from the Phoenician, and is the parent of the Greek and Roman, consisted originally of only twelve or thirteen letters.
The invention of the alphabet, which, in a small number of elementary characters, is capable of six hundred and twenty sextillions of combinations, and of exhibiting to the sight the countless conceptions of the mind which have no corporeal forms, is so wonderful that great men of all ages have shrunk from accounting for it otherwise than as a boon of divine origin. This feeling is strengthened by the singular circumstance that so many alphabets bear a strong similarity to each other, however widely separated the countries in which they arose.
In Egypt the invention of the alphabet is by some ascribed to Syphoas, nearly two thousand years before the Christian era, but more commonly to Athotes, Thoth, or Toth, a deity always figured with the head of the ibis, and very familiar in Egyptian antiquities. Cadmus is accredited with having introduced it from Egypt into Greece about five centuries later.
From the alphabet the gradation is natural to compounds of letters and written language, and, though speech is one of the greatest gifts to man, it is writing which distinguishes him from the uncivilized savage. The practice of writing is of such remote antiquity that neither sacred nor profane authors can satisfactorily trace its origin. The philosopher may exclaim with the poet:
"Whence did the wondrous mystic art arise. Of painting speech and speaking to the eyes? That we, by tracing magic lines, are taught How both to color and embody thought?"
The earliest writing would probably have been with chalk, charcoal, slate, or perhaps sand, as children from time immemorial have been taught to read and write in India. The Romans used white walls for writing inscriptions on, in red chalk—answering the purpose of our posting-bills—of which several instances were found on the walls of Pompeii. Plutarch informs us that tradesmen wrote in some such manner over their doors, and that auction bills ran thus:
"Julius Proculus will this day have an auction of his superfluous goods, to pay his debts."
Next seems to have followed writing or engraving on stone, wood, ivory, and metals, of which we have many early evidences. The Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, was originally, we are told in the Bible, written upon two tables of stone; the pillars of Seth were of brick and stone; the laws of the Greeks were graven on tables of brass, which were called cyrbes. Herodotus mentions a letter written with a style on stone slabs, which Themistocles, the Athenian general, sent to the Romans about B.C. 500; and we have another evidence of the same period still existing—the so-called Borgian inscription, which is a passport graven in bronze, entitling the holder to hospitable reception wherever he demanded it. Upward of three thousand of such engraved tablets, including the famous Roman laws of the Twelve Tables, were consumed in the great fire which destroyed the Capitol in the time of Vespasian.
I could cite a great many other evidences of early writing on stone or brass, but will merely recommend you to see the Rosetta[25] inscription, which is conspicuously placed in the British Museum. It is this very interesting stone which, being partly Greek and partly Egyptian, has enabled us to decipher so many Egyptian monuments.
Pliny informs us that table-books of wood—generally made of box or citron wood—were in use before the time of Homer, that is, nearly three thousand years ago; and in the Bible we read of table-books in the time of Solomon. These table-books were called by the Romans pugillares, which may be translated "hand-books"; the wood was cut into thin slices, finely planed and polished, and written upon with an iron instrument called a stylus. At a later period, tables, or slices of wood, were usually covered with a thin layer of hard wax, so that any matter written upon them might be effaced at pleasure, and the tables used again. Such practice continued as late as A.D. 1395. In an account roll of Winchester College of that year we find that a table covered with green wax was kept in the chapel for noting down with a style the daily or weekly duties assigned to the officers of the choir. Ivory also was used in the same way.
Wooden table-books, as we learn from Chaucer, were used in England as late as the fifteenth century. When epistles were written upon tables of wood they were usually tied together with cord, the seal being put upon the knot. Some of the table-books must have been large and heavy, for in Plautus a schoolboy seven years old is represented as breaking his master's head with his table-book.
Writing seems also to have been common, at a very early period, on palm and olive leaves, and especially on the bark of trees—a material used even in the present time in some parts of Asia. The bark is generally cut into thin flat pieces, from nine to fifteen inches long and two to four inches wide, and written on with a sharp instrument. Indeed, the tree, whether in planks, bark, or leaves, seems in ancient times to have afforded the principal materials for writing on. Hence the word codex, originally signifying the "trunk or stem of a tree," now means a manuscript volume. Tabula, which properly means a "plank" or "board," now also signifies the plate of a book, and was so used by Addison, who calls his plates "tables." Folium ("a leaf") has given us the word "folio"; and the word liber, originally meaning the "inner bark of a tree," was afterward used by the Romans to signify a book; whence we derive our words, "library," "librarian," etc. One more such etymology, the most interesting of all, is the Greek name for the bark of a tree, biblos, whence is derived the name of our sacred volume.
Before I leave this stage of the subject, I will mention the way in which the Roman youth were taught writing. Quintilian tells us that they were made to write through perforated tablets, so as to draw the stylus through a kind of furrow; and we learn from Procopius that a similar contrivance was used by the emperor Justinian for signing his name. Such a tablet would now be called a stencil-plate, and is what to the present day is found the most rapid and convenient mode of marking goods, only that a brush is used instead of an iron pen or style.
Writing and materials have so much to
Papyrus is a very durable substance, made of the innermost pellicles of the stalk, glued together transversely, with the glutinous water of the Nile. It was for many centuries the great staple of Egypt, and was exported in large quantities to almost every part of Europe and Asia, but never, it would appear, to England or Germany. After the seventh century its use was gradually superseded by the introduction of parchment; and before the end of the twelfth century it had gone generally out of use. From "papyrus" the name of "paper," which, with slight variations, is common to many languages, is no doubt derived.
Parchment and vellum—which are made from the skin of animals, the former from sheep or goat, the latter from calf, both prepared with lime—were in use at a very early period, long before their accredited introduction. It has been by some supposed that Eumenes, King of Pergamus, who lived about B.C. 190, was the inventor of parchment; but it was known much earlier, as may be seen by several references to it in the Bible (Isaiah, viii. i; Jeremiah, xxxvi. 2; Ezekiel, xi. 9). It is, however, very probable that it may have been brought to perfection at Pergamus, as it was one of the principal articles of commerce of that kingdom.
Parchment, in early times, was not only expensive, but often very difficult to procure; whence arose the practice of erasing old writing from it, and engrossing it a second time. Such manuscripts are called "palimpsests." Modern art has found the means of discharging the more recent ink, and thus restoring the original writing, by which means we have recovered many valuable pieces, particularly Cicero's lost book, de Republica and some fragments of his Orations.
The most ancient manuscripts, both on papyrus and parchment, were kept in rolls, called in Latin volumina, whence our English word "volume." Chinese paper, made from the bark of the bamboo, the mulberry, or the khu-ku tree, and so extremely thin that it can only be used on one side, is supposed to have been invented fifty years before the Christian era or earlier. Chinese rice-paper is made from the stems of the bread-fruit tree, cut into slices and pressed. The skins of all kinds of animals are used—among them the African skin, of a brown color, upon which the Hebrew Pentateuch and service-books used in the Jewish synagogues were formerly written. Silk-paper was prepared for the most part in Spain and its colonies, but was never brought to much perfection. Asbestos, a fibrous mineral, was made into paper, tolerably light and pliant, which, being incombustible, was denominated "eternal paper." Herodotus tells us that cloth was made of asbestos by the Egyptians; and Pliny mentions napkins made of it in A.D. 74. We know by tradition that the intestines of a serpent served for Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; and that the Koran was written in part on shoulder-bones of mutton, kept in a domestic chest by one of Mahomet's wives.
We now come to the great period of writing-papers made from cotton and linen rags, as used at the present day, and which from the first were so perfect that they have since undergone no material improvement. Cotton-paper was an Eastern invention, probably introduced in the ninth century, although not generally used in Europe till about the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Greek manuscripts are found upon it of the earlier period, and Italian manuscripts of the later. It seems to have prevailed at particular periods, in particular countries, according to the facilities for procuring it, as it now does almost exclusively in America. Linen paper, the most valuable and important of all the bases available for writing or printing, is likewise supposed to have been introduced into Europe from the East, early in the thirteenth century, although not in general use till the fourteenth.
Before the end of the fourteenth century, paper-mills had been established in many parts of Europe, first in Spain, and then successively in Italy, Germany, Holland, and France. They seem to have come late into England, for Caxton printed all his books on paper imported from the Low Countries; and it was not till Winkin de Worde succeeded him, in 1495, that paper was manufactured in England. The Chinese are supposed to have used it for centuries before, and appear to have the best title to be considered the inventors of both cotton and linen paper.
Paper may be made of many other materials, such as hay, straw, nettles, flax, grasses, parsnips, turnips, colewort leaves, wood-shavings, indeed of anything fibrous; but as the invention of printing is not concerned in them, I see no occasion to consider their merits.
Before I pass from paper, it may not be irrelevant to say a word or two on the names by which we distinguish the sorts and sizes. The term "post-paper" is derived from the ancient water-mark, which was a post-horn, and not from its suitableness to transport by post, as many suppose. The original watermark of a fool's cap gave the name to that paper, which it still retains, although the fool's cap was afterward changed to a cap of liberty, and has since undergone other changes. The smaller size, called "pot-paper," took its name from having at first been marked with a flagon or pot. Demy-paper, on which octavo books are usually printed, is so called from being originally a "demi" or half-sized paper; the term is now, however, equally applied to hard or writing papers. Hand-cap, which is a coarse paper used for packing, bore the water-mark of an open hand.
I will now say a few words about pens and ink, for without them we could neither have had printing nor books. Pens are of great antiquity, and are frequently alluded to in the Bible. Pens of iron, which may mean styles, are mentioned by Job and Jeremiah. Reed pens are known to have been in common use by the ancients, and some were discovered at Pompeii. Pens of gold and silver are alluded to by the classical writers, and there is evidence of the use of quills in the seventh century. Of whatever material the pen was made, it was called a calamus, whence our familiar saying, "currente calamo" ("with a flowing pen"). The use of styles, or iron pens, must have been very prevalent in ancient days, as Suetonius tells us that the emperor Caligula incited the people to massacre a Roman senator with their styles; and, previous to that, Caesar had wounded Cassius with his style.
The next, and not the least important, ingredient in writing and printing is ink. Staining and coloring matters were well known to the ancients at a very early period, witness the lustrous pigments on Etruscan vases more than two thousand years ago; and inks are often mentioned in the Bible. Gold, silver, red, blue, and green inks were thoroughly understood in the Middle Ages, and perhaps earlier; and the black writing-ink of the seventh down to the tenth century, as seen in our manuscripts, was in such perfection
Paper and ink being at their highest point, we will now consider the advances which had in the mean time been made in engraving and type or letter cutting. It will be seen that the material elements of printing were by degrees converging to a culminating point. The evidences of engraving, both in relief and intaglio, are of very ancient date. I need hardly remind you of the exquisite workmanship on coins, cameos, and seals, many centuries before the Christian era, to illustrate the high state of cultivation at which the arts must then have arrived. The art of casting and chasing in bronze was extensively practised in the twelfth century, and I have seen a specimen with letters so cut in relief that they might be separated to form movable type. The goldsmiths were certainly among the greatest artists of the early ages, and were competent to execute forms or moulds of any kind to perfection.
In the British Museum is a brass signet stamp, more than two thousand years old, on which two lines of letters are very neatly engraved in relief, in the reversed order necessary for printing; and as the interstices are cut away very deeply and roughly, there is little doubt but that this stamp was used with ink on papyrus, parchment, or linen, for paper was not then known. Indeed, the experiment of taking impressions from it in printing-ink has been tried, and found to answer perfectly. A large surface so engraved would at once have given to the world an equivalent to what is now regarded as the most advanced state of the art of printing; that is, a stereotype plate. Vergil mentions brands for marking cattle with their owner's name; probably this kind of brass stamp, but larger.
I could cite many more examples of ancient engraving which would yield impressions on paper, either by pressure or friction. But our business is with printing rather than engraving; I will, therefore, go back to the subject, and cite a very early and interesting example of stamping engraved letters on clay. I mean the Babylonian bricks, supposed to be four thousand years old, mostly sun-baked, but some apparently kiln-burnt almost to vitrification. Of these there are now many examples in England, added to our stores by the indefatigable researches of Layard, Rawlinson, and others. These bricks, which are about a foot square and three inches thick, are on one side covered with hieroglyphics, evidently impressed with a stamp, just as letters are now stamped on official papers.
Another evidence of the same kind, and of about the same age, is the famous Babylonian cylinder found in the ruins of Persepolis, and now preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is about seven inches high, barrel-shaped, and covered with inscriptions in the cuneiform character, disposed in vertical lines, and affording a positive example of an indented surface produced by mechanical impression. Such cylinders are supposed to have been memorials of matters of national or family importance, and were in early ages, as we know by tradition, very numerous. Stamped or printed blocks of lead, bearing the names of Roman authorities, are to be found in the British Museum.
Printing on leather was practised by the Egyptians, as we discover from their mummies, which have bandages of leather round their heads, with the name of the deceased printed on them. And in Pompeii a loaf was found on which the name of the baker and its quality were printed. Among ancient testimonies, one of the most interesting is that afforded by Cicero in his de Natura Deorum. He orders types to be made of metal, and calls them forma literarum—the very words used by our first printers; and in another place he gives a hint of separate cut letters when he speaks of the impossibility of the most ingenious man throwing the twenty-four letters of the alphabet together by chance, and thus producing the famous Annals of Ennius. He makes that observation in opposition to the atheistical argument of the creation of the world by chance.
We have besides, in what is generally classed as a manuscript, a reasonable although disputed evidence of an elementary stage of printing; I mean the Codex Argenteus (or Silver Book) of Upsala, which contains a portion of the gospels in Mesogothic, supposed to be of the fourth or fifth century, the work of Ulfilas. In this codex the first lines of each gospel and of the Lord's Prayer are in large gold letters, apparently printed by a stamp, in the manner of a bookbinder, as there are indentations on the back of the vellum. The small letters are written in silver. The whole is on a light purple or violet colored vellum.
Having said enough, I think, of the ancients' knowledge of type-forms and printing materials, I pass on to the recognized establishments of the art in the fifteenth century; for, whatever knowledge the ancients had of printing, it would appear to have yielded no immediate fruits to posterity.
But before I proceed to modern times, I am bound to note that the Chinese, who seem to have been many centuries in advance of Europe in most of the industral arts, are supposed to have practised block-printing, just as they do now, more than a thousand years ago. Nor does the complicated nature of their written language, which consists of more than one hundred thousand word-signs, admit of any readier mode. But they print, or rather rub off, impressions with such speed—seven hundred sheets per hour—that, until the introduction of steam, they far outstripped Europeans. Gibbon, it will be remembered, regrets that the emperor Justinian, who lived in the sixth century, did not introduce the art of printing from the Chinese, instead of their silk manufacture.
Block-printing ushered in the great epoch; and the first dawn of it in Europe seems to have been single prints of saints and scriptural subjects, with a line or two of description engraved on the same wooden plate. These are for the most part lost; but there is one in existence, large and exceedingly fine, of St. Christopher, with two lines of inscription, dated 1423, believed to have been printed with the ordinary printing-press. It was found in the library of a monastery near Augsburg, and is therefore presumed to be of German execution. Till lately this was the earliest-dated evidence of block-printing known; but there has since been discovered at Malines, and deposited at Brussels, a wood-cut of similar character, but assumed to be Dutch or Flemish, dated "MCCCCXVIII"; and though there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness of the cut, it is asserted that the date bears evidence of having been tampered with.
There is a vague tradition, depending entirely on the assertion of a writer named Papillon, not a very reliable authority, which would give the invention of wood-cut-printing to Venice, and at a very early period. He asserts that he once saw a set of eight prints, depicting the deeds of Alexander the Great, each described in verse, which were engraved in relief, and printed by a brother and sister named Cunio, at Ravenna, in 1285. But though the assertion is accredited by Mr. Ottley, it is generally disbelieved.
There is reason to suppose that playing-cards, from wooden blocks, were produced at Venice long before the block-books, even as early as 1250; but there is no positive evidence that they were printed; and some insist that they were produced either by friction or stencil-plates. It seems, however, by no means unlikely that cards, which were in most extensive use in the Middle Ages, should, for the sake of cheapness, have been printed quite as early, if not earlier, than even figures of saints; and the same artists are
From single prints, with letter-press inscriptions, the next stage, that of a series of prints accompanied by letter-press, was obvious. Such are our first recognized block-books, among which are the Apocalypse, and the Biblia Pauperum (or Poor Man's Bible), supposed to have been printed at Haarlem by Laurence Koster, between 1420 and 1430; I say supposed, because we have no positive evidence either of the person, place, or date; and Erasmus, who was born at Rotterdam in 1467, and always ready to advance the honor of his country, is silent on the subject. We rely chiefly upon the testimony of Ulric Zell, an eminent printer of Cologne, who is quoted in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499, and Hadrian Junius, a Dutch historian of repute, who wrote in the next century. Both agree in ascribing the invention of book-printing from wooden blocks, as well as the first germ of movable wood and metallic type printing, to Haarlem; and Junius adds the name of Laurence Koster. His surname of Koster is derived from his office, which was that of custodian, sexton, or warden of the Cathedral Church of Haarlem. The story told of the accident by which the discovery was made is as follows:
Koster, as he was one day walking in a wood adjoining the city, about the year 1420, cut some letters on the bark of a beech tree, from which he took impressions on paper for the amusement of his brother-in-law's children. The idea then struck him of enlarging their application; and, being a man of an ingenious turn, he invented a thicker and more tenacious ink than was in common use, which blotted, and began to print figures from wooden tablets or blocks, to which he added several lines of letters, first solid, and then separate or movable. These wooden types are said to have been fastened together with string.
One thing seems pretty clear, which is, that, whether or not Koster was the printer, the first block-books were produced somewhere in Holland, as several are in Dutch, a language seldom, if ever, printed out of its own country. They were generally printed in light-brown ink, like a sepia drawing, which, I think, was adopted with a view to their being colored—a condition in which we find the greater part of them. When these prints were colored they presented very much the appearance of the Low Country stained-glass windows.
Block-books continued to be printed and reprinted, first in Holland and afterward in Germany, with considerable activity, for twenty or thirty years, during which period we had several editions of the Biblia Pauperum, the Ars Moriendi (or Art of Dying), the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, and many others, chiefly devoted to the promulgation of scripture history. The earliest ones are printed, or rather transferred by friction—and therefore on one side only of the paper—entirely from solid blocks; later on, some portions were printed with movable types of wood; and at last the letter-press was entirely of movable metal types. Junius says that Koster by degrees exchanged his wooden types for leaden ones, and these for pewter; and I will add that it is not unlikely they may have been cast in lead or pewter plates from the wooden blocks, as metal-casting was well understood at the time.
The pretensions of Haarlem and Koster have for more than a century been a matter of fierce controversy; and there have been upward of one hundred and fifty volumes written for or against, without any approach to a satisfactory decision. This one thing is certain, that, whether or not we owe the first idea of movable type to Laurence Koster or to Haarlem, we do not owe to the period any very marked use of it; that was reserved for a later day.
There is a story current, dependent on the authority of Junius, that Koster's principal workman, assumed to be Hans or John Faust—and some, to reconcile improbabilities, even say John Gutenberg—who had been sworn to secrecy, decamped one Christmas Eve, after the death of Koster, while the family were at church, taking with him types and printing apparatus and, after short sojourns at Amsterdam and Cologne, got to Mainz or Mayence with them, and there introduced printing. He is said by Junius to have printed, about the year 1442—that is, two years after Koster's death—the Doctrinale of Alexander Gallus and the Tracts of Peter of Spain, with the very types which Koster made use of in Haarlem; but as no volume of this kind has ever been discovered, nor any trace of one, the entire story is generally regarded as apocryphal. Laurence Koster died in 1440, at the age of seventy; therefore any printing attributed to him must be within that period.
What has hitherto been advanced proves only that mankind had walked for many centuries on the borders of the two great inventions, chalcography and typography, without having fully and practically discovered either of them.
We now come to the great epoch of printing—I mean the complete introduction, if not actually the first invention, of movable metal or fusile types. This took place at Mainz, in or before 1450, and the general consent of Europe assigns the credit of it to Gutenberg. Of a man who has conferred such vast obligations on all succeeding ages, it may be desirable to say a few words.
John Gutenberg was born at Mainz in 1397, of a patrician and rather wealthy family. He left his native city, it is said, because implicated in an insurrection of the citizens against the nobility, and settled at Strasburg, where, in 1427, we find him an established merchant, and sustaining a suit of breach of promise brought against him by a lady named Ann of the Iron Door, whom he afterward married. While resident here, and before 1439, his attention appears to have been actively directed to the art of printing, as we learn by a legal document of the time, found of late years in the archives of Strasburg. He is there stated to have entered into an engagement with three persons, named Dreizehn, Riffe, and Heilmann, to reveal to them "a secret art of printing which he had lately discovered," and to take them into partnership for five years, upon the payment of certain sums.
The death of Dreizehn before he had paid up all his instalments led to a suit on the part of his relations, which ended in Gutenberg's favor. In the course of the evidence one of the witnesses, a goldsmith, deposed to having received from Gutenberg three or four years previously—that is, about 1435—upward of three hundred florins for materials used in printing. Other witnesses proved the anxiety that Gutenberg had shown to have four pages of type distributed which appear to have been screwed up in chase, and lying on a press on the deceased's premises.
This would be evidence that Gutenberg had arrived at a knowledge of movable types, either of wood or metal, and probably of both, before 1440; and, had it not been for the rupture of the partnership before anything had been printed by the new process, Strasburg might have claimed the honor which is now given to Mainz.
Soon after this—it is supposed in 1444—Gutenberg returned to his native city, by leave of the town council, which he was obliged to ask, bringing with him all his materials. In 1446 he entered into a partnership with John Faust—a wealthy and skilful goldsmith and engraver—who engaged, upon being taught the secrets of the art and admitted into a participation of the profits, to advance the necessary funds, which he did to the extent of two thousand two hundred florins. Goldsmiths, it should be borne in mind, were then the great artists in all kinds of metal work, and extremely skilful in modelling, engraving, and casting, which were exactly the arts required for type-founding.
The new partnership immediately commenced operations, hired a house called Zumjungen, and took into their employ