Fust and Schoeffer in Mainz

1457-1466

Johann Fust, citizen of Mainz, was Gutenberg’s financial partner for the 42-line Bible project. In late 1455 Fust sued Gutenberg in a dispute over the costs of their joint “Work of the Books,” claiming that Gutenberg owed substantial amounts for misuse of loans involving paper, vellum, ink, an unnamed apparatus, and workers’ wages. Gutenberg countered that most of Fust’s funding was an investment toward their mutual profit, and not subject to repayment with interest.

Fust then joined with Peter Schoeffer, a young scribe who had practiced in Paris, to form a second and very successful printing enterprise. Between 1457 and Fust’s death in 1466, they printed liturgical books of remarkable beauty and technical mastery; the first lengthy book by a post-biblical author; the first law book; the first texts printed with surrounding commentary; and the first classical text published north of the Alps.

Their first publication was a Royal folio Psalter, presenting the Latin psalms and traditional canticles for church worship. Completed 14 August 1457, it was the first book to announce the names of its makers and the date of production. It introduced two sizes of a square gothic typeface showing significant advances on the Gutenberg Bible type. Ornamental red and blue initials were printed simultaneously with the black text in perfect register. Spaces were left for musical notation to be added by hand. The Scheide Library copy, one of ten surviving, is the only one in America.

PSALTERIUM. [Mainz]: Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, 14 August 1457

Fust and Schoeffer’s first publication, presenting the psalms in liturgical order plus traditional canticles, was the first European book to provide the names of its printers and date of production. It introduced two impressive square gothic typefaces – the larger for the psalms, the smaller for hymns – and ornamental red and blue initials, all printed simultaneously in perfect register. Spaces were left for musical notation to be added by hand. Fust and Schoeffer’s typographic innovations were a technical triumph. The edition was sold in two forms: a 175-leaf issue for use in the archdiocese of Mainz and a 143-leaf issue for general monastic use. Ten copies survive, all printed on vellum. Discovered at the Church of St. Victor in Mainz in 1789, this is the only copy in America.

PSALTERIUM, BENEDICTINE USE. [Mainz]: Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, 29 August 1459

The first typographic book issued in Imperial folio format is not a reprint of the 1457 Psalter, but an independent edition commissioned by the Benedictines of St. James in Mainz, following the liturgical reforms of the Bursfeld Congregation, of which St. James was a leading member. Introduced by red and blue printed initials, the psalms appear in biblical order, followed by canticles and hymns for Nocturns, Lauds, and Vespers, items not included in the 1457 Psalter. Thirteen copies survive, all printed on vellum. The Scheide Library’s incomplete copy consists of leaves taken from five fragmentary specimens. It lies open to the beginning of the Canticle of Isaiah (9:2), traditionally recited at Christmas midnight mass. The words written below the final printed line make good a passage mistakenly omitted by the compositor.

GUILLELMUS DURANDUS, RATIONALE DIVINORUM OFFICIORUM. [Mainz]: Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, 6 October 1459

Durandus’s widely read 13th century treatise on the Divine Offices of the church was the first printing of a major work by a post-biblical author. Like the Psalters of 1457 and 1459, it features large two-color initials, but its lengthy text was printed with a much smaller rotunda type. At least 50 copies survive, all on vellum except for one in Munich that was collected from paper proof sheets. Copies were sold not only north of the Alps, but also in Italy. This copy, evidently bound in Mainz, emerged from obscurity in 1800, when Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha purchased it from Jean-Baptiste Maugerard, a Benedictine monk who doubled as an agent for book collectors.

PIUS II, [BRIEF NAMING ADOLF VON NASSAU AS ARCHBISHOP OF MAINZ]. [Mainz: Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, after 21 August 1461]

Two German nobles, both canons of the cathedral, competed for election as Archbishop of Mainz in 1459. The chosen candidate, Diether von Isenburg, displeased Pius II by defaulting on payments he had promised to the Roman curia. In August 1461 Pius excommunicated him, and urged election of the second competitor, Adolf von Nassau. Diether, supported by the citizens of Mainz, refused to surrender the chair, and both parties raised troops. Fust and Schoeffer printed official broadsides supporting both sides in the controversy, for distribution to the city councils, courts, cathedrals and major convents within the archdiocese. In October 1462, just weeks after Fust and Schoeffer completed their ambitious Latin Bible, Adolf’s troops besieged and captured the city of Mainz, resulting in hundreds of deaths. The Mainz citizens were sent into exile, putting a temporary end to printing in Mainz.

BIBLE, LATIN. Mainz: Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, 14 August 1462

The fourth printed Bible was the first to state the names of its printers and its date. Besides the text proper, there are printed rubrics, chapter initials and numerals, and the printers’ armorial device. The text source was a copy of the Gutenberg Bible with dozens of hand corrections. Like the Gutenberg Bible, copies were printed both on paper and on vellum. At least 80 copies survive, evidencing the edition’s wide distribution in Germany, France, Italy, Bohemia, and England. The exhibited vellum copy was illuminated by the anonymous “Fust Master,” whose brilliant workmanship enhances numerous early Mainz publications. First recorded in the Duke of Cassano-Serra’s library in Naples in 1807, the Bible passed through three English collections before John Scheide purchased it in 1926.

CICERO, DE OFFICIIS; PARADOXA STOICORUM. SECOND EDITION: [Mainz]: Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, 4 February 1466

The 1465 Cicero is the first Latin classical text to be printed north of the Alps, closely contemporary with Cicero’s De Oratore printed in Subiaco the same year. There were issues both on paper and on vellum, the paper having been cut down to produce pages a little smaller than standard Chancery folio. On the last page is printed Horace’s Ode “Diffugere nives”, the first appearance in print of classical poetry. The Morgan Library’s vellum copy, like the exhibited Bible of 1462, was illuminated in Mainz by the “Fust Master”. The 1465 Cicero must have sold quickly, for the printers soon reprinted it page-for-page, in a second edition of early 1466, again in both paper and vellum issues. This second edition overlapped with the first edition, for some 1466 copies include a number of 1465 sheets. The Scheide Library’s vellum copy was illuminated in Franco-Flemish style. It is opened to the beginning of the Paradoxa. Where Cicero quotes from the Greek the words θετικῶς (in the manner of a thesis) and Ὅτι μόνον τὸ καλὸν ἀγαθόν (Only that which is moral is good), the printers substituted ad hoc characters that only remotely resemble the Greek alphabet.