The year 1462 was memorable for the siege and sack of Mentz by the Elector Archbishop, Count Adolphus of Nassau. After the capture of the city, Faust proceeded to Paris with a supply of Bibles, amongst which were no doubt a goodly number of the edition only just then completed. Tradition has it, that he sold one of these Bibles to the King for 750 crowns, and another to the Archbishop for 300; and that gradually lowering his prices he at last disposed of copies for 50 and 40 crowns a-piece.[137] The King and the Archbishop, comparing their purchases, which they had bargained for as manuscripts, found so exact a conformity between them, as to be convinced that they were produced by some other method than that of transcribing; besides which, it was impossible that two such Bibles could be executed by the same hand in a lifetime. Upon inquiry, it was found that a considerable number of similar copies had been sold in the city. Hereupon orders were given to apprehend Faust, who was accordingly seized, tried for witchcraft, and condemned to be executed as a wizard in league with the Devil. So runs the tale; in which fact and fiction have been strangely blended, the latter greatly predominating,--John Faust the banker, and one of the three first printers of Mentz, being confounded with Jean Frederic Faust, a charlatan and almanac maker of the sixteenth century, who to ensure his almanacs a large sale, advertized them as actually dictated to him by Beelzebub. It was thus that the legend obtained currency, that Faust of Mentz invented printing in consequence of a compact entered into between himself and the Evil One. The diabolical stigma once attached to the profession, the monks and scribes, the ‘brief-men’ of the day, took care that it should remain. Hence the origin of the term “Printer’s Devil,” the by no means complimentary honorific bestowed upon youngsters on their first initiation into the mysteries of the Divine and Noble Art.