Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1Hallam, Henry
History
Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1
Hallam, Henry
Literature, Modern -- History and criticism
Psalmorum codex venustate capitalium decoratus, rubricationibusque
sufficienter distinctus, adinventione artificiosa imprimendi ac
caracterizandi, absque calami ulla exaratione sic effigiatus, et ad
eusebiam Dei industrie est summatus. Per Johannem Fust, civem
Moguntinum, et Petrum Schæffer de Gernsheim, anno Domini millesimo
cccclvii. In vigilia Assumptionis.[338]
A colophon, substantially similar, is subjoined to several of the
Fustine editions. And this seems hard to reconcile with the story that
Fust sold his impressions at Paris, as late as 1463, for manuscripts.
[337] Brunet, Supplément au Manuel du Libraire. It was not known till
lately that more than one edition out of these four was in
existence, Santander thinks their publication was after 1460. Dict.
Bibliographique du 15me Siècle, i. 92. But this seems improbable,
from the transitory character of the subject. He argues from a
resemblance in the letters to those used by Fust and Schæffer in
the Durandi Rationale of 1459.
[338] Dibdin’s Bibliotheca Spenceriana. Biogr. Univ., Gutenberg, &c.
In the Donatus above mentioned, the method of printing is also
mentioned: Explicit Donatus arte nova imprimendi seu caracterizandi
per Petrum de Gernsheim in urbe Moguntina effigiatus. Lambinet
considers this and the Bible to be the first specimens of
typography, for he doubts the Literæ Indulgentiarum, though
probably with no cause.
|Psalter of 1459. Other early books.|
24. Another psalter was printed by Fust and Schæffer with similar
characters in 1459; and in the same year, Durandi Rationale, a treatise
on the liturgical offices of the church; of which Van Praet says, that
it is perhaps the earliest with cast types to which Fust and Schæffer
have given their name and a date.[339] The two psalters he conceives to
have been printed from wood. But this would be disputed by other eminent
judges.[340] In 1460, a work of considerable size, the Catholicon of
Balbi, came out from an opposition press, established at Mentz by
Gutenberg. The Clementine Constitutions, part of the canon law, were
also printed by him in the same year.
[339] Lambinet, i. 154.
[340] Lambinet, Dibdin. The former thinks the inequality of letters
observed in the psalter of 1457 may proceed from their being cast
in a matrix of plaster or clay, instead of metal.
|Bible of Pfister.|
25. These are the only monuments of early typography acknowledged to
come within the present decennium. A Bible without a date, supposed by
some to have been printed by Pfister at Bamberg, though ascribed by
others to Gutenberg himself, is reckoned by good judges certainly prior
to 1462, and perhaps as early as 1460. Daunou and others refer it to
1461. The antiquities of typography, after all the pains bestowed upon
them, are not unlikely to receive still further elucidation in the
course of time.
|Greek first taught at Paris.|
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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