The Printed Book: Its History, Illustration and Adornment: From the Days of Gutenberg to the Present TimeBouchot, Henri
History
The Printed Book: Its History, Illustration and Adornment: From the Days of Gutenberg to the Present Time
Bouchot, Henri
Bookbinding -- History; Books; Books -- History; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
becoming aware of the imposition, cried out furiously and declared it a
diabolical invention. We may now take this tale of Walchius as a fable,
as the registers of Parliament, on being consulted, rest silent on the
proceedings instituted against the "magician" of Mayence. Only we must
not lose sight of the fact that the booksellers had their masters, their
syndicate, if we may use the modern word, charged to prohibit fraudulent
publications. They were too much interested in the suppression of
printed books to judge the matter coldly. The Parliament had nothing to
see to in this.
The revolution of Mayence had otherwise great results, which were not
affected by these minor reverses. The printing workshops, or at least
the successors of Gutenberg, began to be dispersed, and Fust and
Schoeffer having established a school of printers in the city, their
trade was no longer secret. Deprived of their liberties by the new
Archbishop, many of them expatriated themselves. We shall take occasion
later to name some of these exiles, through whom the art of printing
spread itself almost simultaneously throughout the world: to Cologne and
Strasbourg, to Italy and Spain, without reckoning Holland, France,
Switzerland, and the country around Mayence. We have before named the
episcopal city of Bamberg; it had the singular fortune to be the second
city to possess a printing office, but it disappeared as quickly as it
was established, with Albert Pfister, without leaving the least trace;
we do not find printing there again before 1480, more than twenty years
later.
Gutenberg was dead before 1468. He was interred in the Church of the
Récollets of Mayence, by the pious care of a friend, who attributed the
invention of printing to him on his tomb.
We may begin to comprehend the influence of this man upon the discovery
of which all the world was then talking, but the troubles of the
archiepiscopal city hampered the respective merit of the inventors.
Peter Schoeffer and John Fust were not much affected by the political
crisis. After two years' suspension, they reappeared with a Cicero, _De
Officiis_, 1465, quarto, always at work and always surpassing
themselves. This time they freely gave up religious publications, and,
still more extraordinary, they employed Greek types.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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