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 GUTENBERG

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GUTENBERG

■which were in existence as early as the fourth decade of the century. Long before tliis Bible was printed the type had been used in an edition of the " W'elt- gerichtsgedicht ", in the "Calendar for 1448", in edi- tions of Donatus, and various other printed works. Most of tliis type fell into the possession of Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg. Gutenberg next manvifactured a new printer's outfit with the assistance he received from Conrad Humery, a distinguished antl wealthy doctor of law, leader of the popular party, and chancellor of the council. This outfit comprised a set of small types fashioned after the round cursive handwriting used in books at that time and ornamented with an extraordinary number of ligatures. The type was used in the so-called "Catholicon" (Grammar and alpha- betic lexicon) in the year 1460, and also in several small books printeif in Eltville down to the year 1472 by the brothers Bechtermiinze, rela- tives of Gutenberg. Little more is known of Gutenberg. We are aware that his declining years were spent in the court of Archbishop Adolf of Nassau, to whose suite he was ap- pointed on 18 January, 1465. The distinction thus conferred on him carried with it allowances of cloth- ing and other necessities which saved him from actual want. In all likeli- hood he died at Mainz towards the end of 1467 or the beginning of 1468, and was buried probably as a tertiary in the Franciscan church, no longer in existence. Gutenberg

A cloud of deep obscurity thus Frankfort-

conceals for the most part the life of the inventor, his personality, the time and place of his invention, and particularly the part he personally took in the production of the printed work,s that have come down to us from this period. On the other hand, expert research has thrown much liglit on the printed works connected with the name of Guten- berg, and has established more definitely the nature of his invention. Mainly from the technical examination of the impressions of the earliest Gutenberg produc- tions, the "Poem of the Last Judgment" and the "Calendar for 144S", it has been shown that he ef- fected substantial improvements in methods of print- ing and in its technical auxiliaries, especially in the printer's ink and in the building of printing presses. Of course he had to invent neither letter-cutting, nor the die, nor the mode of obtaining impressions from

vention had nothing to do; Gutenberg was a gold- smith, a worker in metals, and a lapidary, and his invention both in conception and execution shows the worker in metals. Gutenberg multiplied the separate types in metal moulds. The types thus produced he built in such a way that they might be alined like the manuscript he was copying.

His aim, technically and Eesthetically so extremely dif- ficult, was the mechanical reproduction of the characters used in the manuscripts, i. e. the books of the time. The works printed by Gutenberg plainly prove that the types used in them were made by a casting process fundamentally the same as the method of casting by hand in vogue to-day. The letter- patterns were cut on small steel rods termed patrices, and the dies thus made were impressed on some soft metal, such as copper, producing the matrices, which were cast in the mould in such a manner as to form the " face " and " body " of the type at one operation. The printing type represents therefore a multiplicity of cast reproductions of the original die, or patrix. In addition to this technical process of type-founding, Gutenljerg found himself confronted with a problem hardly less difficult, namely, the copying of the beautiful caligrai)hy found in the books of the fifteenth century, constantly bear- ing in mind that it must be pos- sible to engrave and to cast the individual forms, since the types, Monument when set, must be substantially

on-the-Main replicas of the model. The genius

of Gutenberg found a brilliant solution to this prob- lem in all its complicated details. Even in the earliest types he made (e. g. in the Calendar for 1448), we can recognize not only the splendid repro- duction of the actual forms of the original handwrit- ing, but also the extremely artistic remodelling of individual letters necessitated by technical require- ments. In other words, we see the work of a cali- graphic artist of the highest order. He applied the well-tested rules of the caligraphist's art to the casting of types, observing in particular the rudimentary principle of always leaving the same space between the vertical columns of the text. C!onsequently Gutenberg prepared two markedly different forms of each letter, the normal separate form, and the com- pound or linked form which, being joineil closely to the type next to it, avoids gaps. It is significant that

nidimi Regis Cypn r« E'< &xJuie\nbnS Cu SSctillim? i^po pf isfi* nf.>n« rticoU? Siufa iJuiJctia.|upa">o'. alnictiSi R« < afixCyyii miliJicoairer JpahclxcnlM BfiSidlotcJune xpi offc».ClK"«'» ■< 6aucoii» grari* w«l1itoiiiilsxpifi8{|ibpobitiIJtt srniutis ipSt gijfEfioncm ffguTs !>m nirihuxiJi pic ortwJWSoqm "jfrj iricniu j vrtmaSicOJaii lUmximCOccaUi inajnenium X> ^o/cnfwc ctithiJIw fl^tl iRjgiii v5i5i.Vbir3r:icn«i5.pii\unh">oclnucii»£mb» ftltun«pil■cr«sallC!llllVlConff^^IcsrSollcifcnllaKs\lcl£fe5J4I«lopcJlp^oicllg^II5i^fc^iJmbKo^auiias.p^^'■Ji6^^ Part of an Indulgence Brief of 1455 Printed by Gutenberg

the die. All these had been long known, and were in common use in Gutenberg's time, as is shown by the steel dies of the goldsmiths and bookbinders, as well as the punches used for stamping letters and orna- mental designs in the striking of coins and seals. The mechanical manifolding of handwriting also had been known for a long time. The prints of the so-called Formschneider (that is, engravers on wood), espe- cially the playing-cards, pictures of the saints, and block books, prove beyond question that writing had been reproduced in manifold by means of woodcuts as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century. But with woodcutting and its technic Gutenberg's in-

this unique kind of letter is to be found in only four types, and these four are associated with Gutenberg. No typographer in the fifteenth century was alile to follow the ideal of the inventor, and consequently re- search attributes to Gutenlierg types of this character, namely, the two Bible and the two P.salter types. Especially in the magnificent design and in the tech- nical preparation of the Psalter of 1457 do we recog- nize the pure, ever-soaring inventive genius of Gutenberg which achieved so marked a technical improvement in the two-coloured Psalter initials. The precision and richness that had now become possible in colour-printing effected a substantial