Nuremberg (Germany) -- Description and travel; Nuremberg (Germany) -- History
without breaking it, easily finished the drawing. Maximilian, somewhat
vexed, asked how this was, to which the artist replied, "I should not
like your Majesty to be able to draw as well as I. It is my province to
draw and yours to rule." _Aliud est plectrum, aliud sceptrum._ The hand
that wields the sceptre is too strong for the brush.
Maximilian was, in many aspects of his character, a typical product of
the Renaissance. Nuremberg had felt the full force of the revival of
learning, the new stimulus in art and literature which was being brought
to the West from Constantinople by the Jews and Greeks who had been
driven out by the Turks. Not a few of the knights and pilgrims, too,
must have passed through Nuremberg on their return from the Crusades,
and her growing commerce with the East and West and Italy would tend to
keep her in touch with the developments which were taking place in the
world of ideas, and which were tending inevitably towards the
Reformation. She had been among the first to welcome and to practise the
new "German art" of printing. Between 1470, when Johann Sensenschmidt
had brought Gutenberg's invention to Nuremberg, and the end of the
century, twenty-five printers received the rights of citizenship.
Johannes Regiomontanus printed here in 1472 his _Kalendarium Novum_.
But Anthoni Koberger was the most celebrated man in the trade. Over two
hundred different works, mostly in large folio, were issued from his
twenty-four printing presses before 1500. The "prince of booksellers,"
as one of his contemporaries calls him, he had agents in every country,
and sixteen depôts in the principal towns in Christendom. The first work
of art which left his presses was a magnificent illustrated Bible,
published in 1483, and printed from blocks he had obtained from Henry
Quentel of Cologne. But, besides the Bible and theology, the press
poured forth a stream of literature of every kind, spreading new ideas
with unexampled rapidity, and giving expression to thoughtful criticism
or popular satire of established abuses. Under such influences as these
it was felt that a new era of progress was at hand. Nuremberg,
stimulated by the education of self-government and of commercial
intercourse, did not fail to produce such independent humanists as
Conrad Celtes, Dr Scheurl, Lazarus Spengler, Albert Durer, Willibald
Pirkheimer, who could write as well as read, and preach as well as
applaud the doctrines of necessary reform. She was, in fact, one of the
first towns to express sympathy with Martin Luther, when he nailed his
ninety-five theses on the church door of Wittenberg, in protest against
what Erasmus had called "the crime of false pardons," the sale of
Indulgences, to which Leo X. had resorted in order to raise money for a
little war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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