This highly valuable art was discovered first of all in Germany, at Mentz on the Rhine. And it is a great honor to the German nation that such ingenious men are found among them. And it took place about the year of our Lord 1440, and from this time until the year 1450, the art, and what is connected with it, was being investigated. And in the year of our Lord 1450 it was a golden year [jubilee], and they began to print, and the first book they printed was the Bible in Latin; it was printed in a large letter, resembling the letter with which at present missals are printed. Although the art [as has been said] was discovered at Mentz, in the manner as it is now generally used, yet the first prefiguration [_die erste vurbyldung_] was found in Holland [the Netherlands], in the _Donatuses_, which were printed there before that time. And from these _Donatuses_ the beginning of the said art was taken, and it was invented in a manner much more masterly and subtile than this, and became more and more ingenious. One named Omnibonus, wrote in a preface to the book called Quinctilianus, and in some other books too, that a Walloon from France, named Nicol. Jenson, discovered first of all this masterly art; but that is untrue, for [p316] there are those still alive who testify that books were printed at Venice before Nicol. Jenson came there and began to cut and make letters. But the first inventor of printing was a citizen of Mentz, born at Strasburg, and named Junker Johan Gutenberg. From Mentz the art was introduced first of all into Cologne, then into Strasburg, and afterward into Venice. The origin and progress of the art was told me verbally by the honorable master Ulrich Zell, of Hanau, still printer at Cologne, anno 1499, and by whom the said art came to Cologne.[175] Ulrich Zell is a candid and a competent witness, yet he narrates not what he had seen, but what he had heard. He was but a mere child, possibly unborn, when Gutenberg began to experiment with types at Strasburg about the year 1436, or sixty-three years before this chronicle was printed. Zell’s statement is the earliest acknowledgment of the priority of book-printing in Holland, but it is an incomplete and unsatisfactory acknowledgment. He names Gutenberg, but he does not name the printer of the _Donatus_. He specifies the period between 1440 and 1450 as the time, and Mentz as the place, and the great _Latin Bible_ as the first product, of the German invention; but he does not specify the year nor the city in which the _Donatus_ was first printed. The only specifications are—in Holland,[176] before Gutenberg, and by an inferior method. It is apparent that Zell did not have exact knowledge of the details of early Dutch printing, and that he could not describe its origin nor its peculiarities with accuracy.