! Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from Boston Public Library http://archive.org/details/haarlembirthplacOOhess HAARLEM THE WRTH-PLACE OF TR/NT/NG, NOT MENTZ: 2)12'^ BY J. H. HESSELS, AT. A. CANTAB. Conbott: ELLIOT STOCK & Co., 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. Dec, 1887. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, // ' / T TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. Dr. Van der Likde as an Author on Printing ... 1 II. Dr. Van der Linde has " Mastered" the Subject ... 5 III. Dr. Van der Linde makes "Researches" .... 9 IV. Manuscripts. Block-Books, and the First Appearance op Printing 13 V. The Earliest Printers always Manufactured their own Type 18 VI. The Habits op the Earliest Printers 21 VII. The "Costeriana" 24 VIII. Were the "Costeriana" printed at Utrecht? 33 IX. Uncertainty as regards "Dating" the Costeriana - - 37 X. Anopisthographic Printing; Printer's Waste; Binder's Waste 39 XL The "Speculum" 41 XII. The "Date" op the Costeriana 44 XIII. Zell and Junius corroborate each other 46 XIV. The Printer op the Costeriana did not begin after 1471 --- - 48 XV. Zell's Statement in the "Cologne Chronicle" of 1499 - 52 XVI. The Haarlem Tradition 56 XVII. Gutenberg was not the Inventor of Printing 59 XVIII. Summary 69 PREFACE The following chapters are reprinted, with slight modifications, from the "Academy," where they appeared from April 80th to August 13th, 1887. The ivhole is the outcome of researches which I have made since the appearance of my worJc on Gutenberg in 1882, but more especially since last year. For the last four or five years, all those ivho take an interest in the history ofprinting had been hoping that Mr. Henry Bradshaiv, the late Librarian of the Cambridge University, would write the article Typo- graphy/or the " Encyclopedia Britannica," and no one hoped this more earnestly than I did. I 7cnew that the question of the invention tvas sure to be treated by him with impartiality, and that his opinion would be worth having, while I had found the subject attractive, indeed, but so expensive, and absorbing so much time, that I tvas not sorry to see it in he hands of such a consummate bibliographer as Mr. Bradshaiv. But by his sudden death, in February of last year, his task devolved on me. Before I could attempt to write anything, some very important points required to be cleared up. For instance : I tvas not prepared to state whom I regarded as the inventor of printing, or where the invention had been made. I certainly did not think that the honour of the invention coidd be ascribed to Gutenberg, or to Mentz. But the Haarlem tradition had been so ridimled, and its advocates so mercilessly abused, since 1870, by Dr, Van der Linde, that it required some nerve even to examine it. While I was reading once more his "Haarlem Legend" (1870) and his " Gutenberg " (1878), a new and elaborate ivork on the Invention of Printing, by the same author, was announced as about to appear in the course of 1886. According to the prospectus, which Messrs. A, Asher & Co., of " VI. Berlin, issued, this new booh would have unprecedentedly great attractions. The author was declared to "hare proved by three epoch-making publications: the " Costerlegend (1S70); " G-utenberg" (1878); "Breviarium Moguntinum" (1 884), that he is quali- fied to treat of this great subject in a conclusive manner. The aim of the ?icw booh teas to prove, by meaiis of original (!) documents (Quellen), and by a historical- critical method, that the invention is «/" German origin; that Gutenberg, a citizen of Mentz, produced the art of printing—facts \_so says the prospeetus] on which the most confused notions have been disseminated, even in very pretentious German works, and which, especially in foreign countries, are opposed again and again, even (!) lately* after the appearance of Dr. Van der Linde 1 s Gutenberg. The author, a Hollander by birth, was forced (!) to fight against the claims of his own countrymen with destructive (!) weapons, not from ivant, but on account of, patriotism, and in the full sense of his duty (!) to purge (!) the arms of [Holland] from a dark sp>ot, i.e., the usurpation of the glory belonging to the [German'] nation, and blind self-glorification. In the new book, plenty (!) of new (!) material will appear ; the decisive (!) documents are, for the first (!) time, correctly (!) explained and applied ; entirely new ones (!) have been added, and the ivork has been made accessible to every one by a translation of all the quotations. The publication of this really German-national (! !) work has been made possible by the munificence of the Prussian Ministry of the spiritual, educational, and medicinal affairs, which has contributed a considerable (!) part towards the expenses of its printing.'''' So says the prospectus. As I had realized that Dr. Van der Lindis " three epoch-mahing publications " on the invention of printing could not be trusted in any ivay, and certainly did not show that Quten berg was the inventor, I was curious to see ivhether in his fourth booh he would make his case so clear that his verdict could be accepted. Iwas especially curious to hnoiv the decisive (!) documents which Dr. Van der Linde ivoidd,for the first time, correctly (!) explain and apply. And I was still more curious to see the " entirely new documents " to be added by him. Alas ! when the booh appeared, it was but too clear that it ivas nothing but a rechauffee f of his two previous publications, with such modifications as my own booh on Gutenberg had suggested to him. Dr. Van der Linde indeed, declares that he never read my booh. But his present treatment (1) of the Strassburg Laicsuit of 1439 ; (2) of the Letters of Indulgence of 1454 ; (S) of the 42-line, or Mazarine, Bible ; (4) of the Marienthal * Here Ilessrs. Asher <§• Co. specially pointed me out by name, as one toho had had the audacity to oppose Gutetiberg , s claim, though I had, as yet, not done anything of the kind, and merely asked : Was he the inventor of printing ? " f The entirely new documents'''' amount to nothing more than one item from a Strassburg register, which was supplied to him by the Strassburg Archivist, and which merely shows that Guteniberg resided in that city in 1444, Vll. Press; (5) of the Mentz printer Friedriech Heumann ; (6) of the Eltville Press ; (7) of the eight books attributed to Gutenberg on the strength of the falsified date in the Darmstadt Prognostication ; (8) of his so-called Gutenberg school which he stretched till far into the 16th century, etc., is so curiously in accordance with my treatment of these points in my booh on Gutenberg published in 1882, and so utterly at variance with his own in his Gutenberg of 1878, that it is plain that he must have read my booh or at least carefully watched all that has been said about it in various publi- cations. That this is really the case, he incidentally admits himself on two or three occasions, but, with that love for second or third hand information which is so strongly developed in him, he refers to those publications which quote from me rather than to my own booh. It would, indeed, have been very strange if Br. Van der Linde had been able to produce some original work in his new booh, ivhereas, in his two previous publications, he had done nothing but copying from others. Of course, I do not complain of Dr. Van der Linde having so faithfully copied me in every important point which regards Gutenberg, as my booh was published on purpose to correct the errors which he had published on the above eight points. But it is a very curious thing that, although he is under such great obligations to me, he yet abuses me more than anybody else, and notfor anything Ihave written or done, but merely on the strength of little pieces of gossip and some fabrications of his own, which have no connection whatever with my booh or with Gutenberg. However, the fact that he has considered it necessary not to differfrom me in any of the eight points mentioned above, which are the chief subjects of which I treat in my booh, leads me to think that he will, eventually, also adopt the conclusions of my present booh and, in spite of his enormous pub- lications in favour of Gutenberg, repeat, before long, tvhat he publicly uttered in 1866, namely: "that it requires a particular exegetic dexterity to extract from the statement of the " Cologne Chronicle " anything but the confession that the art of printing was invented in Holland before Mentz." (See the " Dutch Spectator," 10th Feb., 1866.) 1 Dr. Van der Linde s new booh consists of eleven hundred large 4to pages, but it contains, so far as I can see, not more than one new piece of information, printed in three lines only, and merely telling us that the tradition of Gutenberg being the inventor ofprinting is a tradition of the St. Victor Monastery, near Mentz, of which Gutenberg himself had been a lay- member (see his "G-eschichte," pp. 895, 897). But, however insignificant Vlll. this information may looJc at first sight, it is of the utmost importance, and Dr. Van der Linde may justly claim the credit of having been the first to draw attention to it. Strange to say, he does not do more than mention it, and evidently has not seen that this information, combined with ivhat we may gather from other items, knocks the whole Gutenberg tradition on the head (see my pp.