Ferunt enim illic, haut procul a ciuitate Maguncia, Ioannem quendam fuisse cui cognomen bonemontano, qui primus omnium impressoriam artem excogitauerit, qua non calamo (ut prisci quidem illi) neque penna (ut nos fingimus) sed aereis litteris libri finguntur, et quidem expedite, polite et pulchre. Dignus sane hic uir fuit quem omnes musae, omnes artes, omnesque eorum linguae qui libris delectantur, diuinis laudibus ornent, eoque magis dis deabusque anteponant, quo propius ac presentius litteris ipsis ac studiosis hominibus suffragium tulit. Si quidem deificantur Liber et alma Ceres, ille quippe dona Liei inuenit poculaque inuentis acheloia miscuit uuis, haec chaoniam pingui glandem mutauit arista. Atque (ut poeta utamur altero) prima Ceres unco glebam dimouit aratro, prima dedit fruges alimenta mitia terris. At bonemontanus ille, longe gratiora diuinioraque inuenit, quippe qui litteras eiusmodi exculpsit, quibus quidquid dici, aut cogitari potest, propediem scribi ac transcribi & posteritatis mandari memoriae possit. The good Fichet is absurdly rhetorical, but here in 1470 is a quite clear statement that, according to report, there (i.e. in Germany), not far from[12] the city of Mainz, a certain John, surnamed Gutenberg, first of all men thought out the printing art, by which books are fashioned not with a reed or pen, but with letters of brass, and thus deserved better of mankind than either Bacchus or Ceres, since by his invention whatever can be said or thought can forthwith be written and transcribed and handed down to posterity. Four years later in his continuation of the _Chronica Summorum Pontificum_, begun by Riccobaldus, Joannes Philippi de Lignamine, the physician of Pope Sixtus IV, who had set up a press of his own at Rome, wrote as one of the events of the pontificate of Pius II (1458-64), how "Jakob Gutenberg, a native of Strassburg, and a certain other whose name was Fust, being skilled in printing letters on parchment with metal forms, are known each of them to be turning out three hundred sheets a day at Mainz, a city of Germany, and Johann Mentelin also, at Strassburg, a city of the same province, being skilled in the same craft, is known to be printing daily the same number of sheets."[13] A little later De Lignamine records the arrival at Rome of Sweynheym and Pannartz, and also of Ulrich Han, and credits them also with printing three hundred sheets a day. Other references follow in later books without adding to our knowledge, save by proving the widespread recognition in the fifteenth century that printing was invented at Mainz; but there is nothing specially to detain us until the publication by Johann Koelhoff in 1499 of the Cologne Chronicle--_Die Cronica van der hilliger Stat Coellen_--in which occurs a famous passage about printing, which may be translated or paraphrased as follows:--