29. Purbach died young, in 1461, when, by the advice of Cardinal Bessarion, he was on the point of setting out for Italy, in order to learn Greek. His mantle descended on Regiomontanus, a disciple, who went beyond his master, though he has sometimes borne away his due credit. A mathematician rather earlier than Purbach, was Nicolas Cusanus, raised to the dignity of cardinal in 1448. He was by birth a German, and obtained a considerable reputation for several kinds of knowledge.[344] But he was chiefly distinguished for the tenet of the earth’s motion, which, however, according to Montucla, he proposed only as an ingenious hypothesis. Fioravanti, of Bologna, is said, on contemporary authority, to have removed, in 1455, a tower with its foundation, to a distance of several feet, and to have restored to the perpendicular one at Cento seventy-five feet high, which had swerved five feet.[345] [344] A work upon statics, or rather upon the weight of bodies in water, by Cusanus, seems chiefly remarkable, as it shows both a disposition to ascertain physical truths by experiment, and an extraordinary misapprehension of the results. See Kästner, ii. 122. It is published in an edition of Vitruvius, Strasburg, 1550. [345] Tiraboschi. Montucla. Biogr. Univ. SECT. III. 1460-1470. _Progress of Art of Printing--Learning in Italy and rest of Europe._ |Progress of printing in Germany.| 30. The progress of that most important invention, which illustrated the preceding ten years, is the chief subject of our consideration in the present. Many books, it is to be observed, even of the superior class, were printed, especially in the first thirty years after the invention of the art, without date of time or place; and this was, of course, more frequently the case with smaller or fugitive pieces. A catalogue, therefore, of books that can be certainly referred to any particular period must always be very defective. A collection of fables in German was printed at Bamberg in 1461, and another book in 1462, by Pfister, at the same place.[346] The Bible which bears his name has been already mentioned. In 1462 Fust published a Bible, commonly called the Mentz Bible, and which passed for the earliest till that in the Mazarin library came to light. But in the same year, the city having been taken by Adolphus count of Nassau, the press of Fust was broken up, and his workmen, whom he had bound by an oath to secrecy, dispersed themselves into different quarters. Released thus, as they seem to have thought, from their obligation, they exercised their skill in other places. It is certain, that the art of printing, soon after this, spread into the towns near the Rhine; not only Bamberg, as before mentioned, but Cologne, Strasburg, Augsburg, and one or two more places, sent forth books before the conclusion of these ten years. Nor was Mentz altogether idle, after the confusion occasioned by political events had abated. Yet