The Invention of Printing.: A Collection of Facts and Opinions, Descriptive of Early Prints and Playing Cards, the Block-Books of the Fifteenth Century, the Legend of Lourens Janszoon Coster, of Haarlem, and the Work of John Gutenberg and His AssociatesDe Vinne, Theodore Low
History
The Invention of Printing.: A Collection of Facts and Opinions, Descriptive of Early Prints and Playing Cards, the Block-Books of the Fifteenth Century, the Legend of Lourens Janszoon Coster, of Haarlem, and the Work of John Gutenberg and His Associates
De Vinne, Theodore Low
Incunabula -- Bibliography; Printing -- History -- Origin and antecedents
Pfister’s name is not mentioned, but he was, probably, the _libripagus_
here noticed. The story is not credible. The whole _Bible_ was not
printed in four weeks, neither at Bamberg nor elsewhere; nor was it
ever engraved upon plates. The only book of Pfister’s to which this
statement could be applied, is his edition of the _Bible of the Poor_.
We do not know when Pfister died; his last dated work is of the year
1462. Sebastian Pfister, who is supposed to be Albert’s son, was at the
head of a printing office at Bamberg in the year 1470, and then printed
a little book which seems to have been his first and last venture in
printing.
Pamphilo Castaldi of Feltre, Italy, to whom a statue was erected
in 1868, has also received the undeserved honor of an inventor of
printing. This commemoration of the man by the people of a great nation
seems to require in this book at least a statement of the legend on
which his claims are based. This is the legend, abridged from a long
panegyric on Castaldi’s services by one of his countrymen:
Pamphilo Castaldi was born in Feltre, of noble parents, at the end
of the fourteenth century. He was highly educated and intelligent.
Although a poet and a lawyer of good reputation, his love for
literature induced him to open a school for polite learning, which
soon became famous, and attracted students from foreign countries.
None of his pupils acquired greater fame than John Fust, who is called
by the historians of Feltre, Fausto Comesburgo. This Faust resided
with [p487] Castaldi in Feltre as early as 1454. In the year 1442,
Castaldi had seen a proof of Gutenberg’s attempts at the invention
of typography. Gutenberg at that time (1442) was supported by the
money of Faust and the skill of Schœffer, his partners. After ten
years of experiment, Gutenberg had done nothing more than print from
blocks of wood and with metallic characters. He had not yet invented
movable types, for the _Bible of 1456_ should be classified with the
block-books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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