The Catholicon Press

Gutenberg’s Second Invention

After the breakup of his partnership with Johann Fust in the Bible project, Gutenberg continued to print small items using his first, DK type, including broadside calendars and the 1456 Bulla Thurcorum. He then conceived a second ambitious process for book printing, by which typesettings could be preserved and reprinted, without the necessity of recomposition. Using a new typefont, a small and simplified rotunda, Gutenberg’s shop set type-pages, and then, after proofing, separated them into line-pairs, which were impressed into a medium such as clay or fine sand to create a second matrix. Over these matrixes hot typemetal was poured, creating a permanent, thin two-line strip.

Thus, the Catholicon Press books were printed not directly from the types, but from the secondary two-line strips, assembled by pages in correct text order. After printing, the strips were stored, page by page, and could be quickly reassembled for reprints. This process would have been slower and more expensive than conventional movable-type printing. The chief investor was a wealthy Mainz citizen and canon lawyer, Dr. Konrad Humery. After Gutenberg’s death in early 1468, Humery claimed ownership of all of Gutenberg’s typographic equipment, a major part of which would have been the thousands of two-line strips comprising the full texts of two brief religious tractates by St Thomas Aquinas and Matthew of Cracow, and the massive Catholicon dictionary of Johannes Balbus. No other books were printed by this process, but it was not entirely forgotten, for in the sixteenth century some map printers used cast line strips in just the same way, to insert place names into woodblocks of maps.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS, DE ARTICULIS FIDEI. [Mainz: Johann Gutenberg, First Impression, 36 Lines, ca. 1459]

In the early 1450s Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, papal legate to Germany, travelled through many dioceses encouraging clerical reforms. Among his reforms, he enjoined upon all clergy an obligation to read and understand Aquinas’s brief tract against heresies, De articulis fidei. The first edition thus had a direct, prepared clerical audience. Type-pages were assembled in 36 lines, that is 18 two-line strips; the entire text was contained on 12 leaves. The paper stock of the Aquinas tract is found in dated documents of 1457-1460. Seven copies survive, none in America. When De articulis fidei was reprinted, a year after Gutenberg’s death, the two-line strips were assembled into type-pages of 34 lines, that is 17 two-line strips per page. This extended the length of the pamphlet to 13 leaves. The paper stocks of this edition are found in documents dated 1468-1470. Many more copies survive of the second impression than of the first. A significant number of these are bound with Cologne quarto editions of the late 1460s, suggesting that they were on the market at the same time. The Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth

ST THOMAS AQUINAS, DE ARTICULIS FIDEI. [Mainz: Konrad Humery & Peter Schoeffer, Second Impression, 34 Lines, ca. 1469]

MATTHAEUS DE CRACOVIA, DIALOGUS RATIONIS ET CONSCIENTIAE. [Mainz: Johann Gutenberg, First Impression, ca. 1459-1460]

In the late 14th century, the theologian Matthew of Cracow composed a treatise, as a dialogue between Reason and Conscience, arguing that the laity could take communion whenever, according to their own consciences, they would benefit from it. The treatise became very widely copied and read in the following century; several hundred manuscript copies survive. Gutenberg’s first edition was printed from type-pages of 30 lines, that is 15 two-line strips per page. To make the dialogue conspicuous, spaces were left for the rubricator to add, in red, the names of the speakers, Ratio and Consciencia. Only five copies of the first impression survive, printed on the same paper stock of ca. 1459-1460 as the 36-line Aquinas. The second impression was printed concurrently with the second impressions of the Aquinas tract and of the giant Catholicon, roughly a year after Gutenberg’s death. Its paper stocks are the same as those of the 34-line Aquinas. A press accident on one page of the second impression highlights the difference between type-pages made of single types and those made of two-line strips. A piece of wire fell over the type-page and the press’s platen forced it strongly into the metal, leaving a sinuous “river” of white, outlining the curve of the wire. If the type-page had been single types, they would have been displaced by the force, but here, rather, the wire deformed only the raised letters it touched, with no lateral displacement of the other letter images.

JOHANNES BALBUS. CATHOLICON. Mainz: [Johann Gutenberg, first impression], 1460

The Catholicon is a Latin dictionary with grammar compiled by a Genoese Dominican, Johannes Balbus, who dated the completion of his work 7 March 1286. Almost one-third longer than the Latin Bible, it remained the standard Latin dictionary until the 16th century. The first edition has, like the Gutenberg Bible, separate issues on paper and, more expensively, on vellum. Its distinguishing feature is that the first line-pair on the first page, giving the work’s title, is printed in red. The anonymous colophon praises God, “who often reveals to the lowly what he conceals from the wise.” This and other pious elements in the colophon have been taken to express the modest mind of Johann Gutenberg, who treats the discovery of typography as a divine gift. This contrasts with the pride of Fust and Schoeffer, who in the colophon of the 1457 Psalter put forth their names prominently. Bridwell Library Special Collections, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University.

JOHANNES BALBUS. CATHOLICON. Mainz: [Konrad Humery & Peter Schoeffer, third impression], “1460” [ca. 1473]

The first impression of the Catholicon in 1460 was printed on a paper stock known to have been in use that year; it was used also in printing Johann Mentelin’s Latin Bible of not after 1460. Not long after Gutenberg’s death, about 1469, a second impression was printed by reassembling the stored two-line strips into type-pages. The work must have been done in the shop of Peter Schoeffer, who included the Catholicon in his broadside publisher’s list datable to about 1470. The paper for this second impression was supplied from a Basel paper mill, whose paper with the same watermark appears in other printing of 1469. This third and last impression was printed on two paper stocks found in heavy use by German printers in various editions of ca. 1472-1473. By this time the two-line strips show distinct signs of wear by comparison with the first impression of thirteen years earlier. Again, the printing is likely to have been done in the shop of Peter Schoeffer, at that time the only printing shop in Mainz.