ONE OF JUST TWO EARLY MAINZ DONATI RECORDED IN PRIVATE HANDS

PROBABLY THE EARLIEST OFFERED IN ALMOST A CENTURY

POSSIBLY PUBLISHED BEFORE THE GUTENBERG BIBLE

Quadragesimale Roberti de peccatis [Sermones quadragesimales de peccatis] by Robertus Caracciolus

Strassburg: Johann Prüss, 3 December 1490

bound using fragments of

Ars Minor by Aelius Donatus

Mainz: Owner of the Type of the 42-Line Bible, ca. 1454-1457

CCCXX, [8] leaves | 8vo | a-z^8 [us]^8 [con]^8 [rum]^8 A-P^8 | 175 x 113 mm

A fantastically rare example of the Ars Minor of Aelius Donatus from the earliest years of Mainz printing, being fragments of the ninth leaf of a 33-line edition printed on parchment with the type of the Gutenberg Bible. Sewn as a guard into the middle of the first gathering, between a4 and a5, is a single strip roughly two lines in height; and a second guard sewn in between P4 and P5—the first and last gatherings were commonly so guarded, as they bore the most stress during operation—this one bearing perhaps a little more than a single line of Donatus. Visible between sewing stations at the edges of the spine are eight trapezoidal pieces, representing two discrete halves of the spine's comb lining—one running up the left side, another up the right, each extending roughly 1.25" onto the inside board (currently covered by paste-downs). Between these elements, we estimate a combined surface area of roughly 170 square cm. ¶ Note that we have not disturbed any Donatus elements and we make no guarantees as to what lies beneath the binding remnants and paste-downs. (Schrödinger’s Donatus?) Still, we can see enough to reasonably map our fragments to the Paris leaf reproduced in Gottfried Zedler's 1929 monograph: the right comb lining, which extends onto the inside front board, runs from the blank upper margin of the Donatus leaf down through line 5; the front guard runs from 5-7 (registration between recto and verso not quite perfect); the left comb lining from there through line 13, just barely touching line 14; then the rear guard through most of line 15. Together, these fragments come from nearly half the complete Donatus leaf. With portions trimmed to accommodate the comb linings, we have perhaps something approaching a third of the complete leaf. ¶ But whether it’s a single line, a full leaf, a bifolium, whatever, the size of the fragment is not what moves us. As a vessel for one of the earliest items to come off Europe’s presses, as the most compelling artifact of early print culture we’ve ever handled—and probably ever will handle—this package is complete.

There’s much to cover, but not before Eric White’s “lesson number one in Gutenberg studies: the conscientious scholar must have the endless capacity to tolerate ambiguity, either because of the lack of contemporary documents or because the documents that do survive are inconclusive.” With that in mind, let’s talk dating. (TL;DR: ca. 1454-1457, probably on the earlier side.) ¶ Our fragment uses the second state of Gutenberg and Fust’s B42 type, in which was set all but the first few pages of their Bible, providing a terminus post quem of ca. 1454. But our fragment does not use Fust and Schoeffer’s 1457 Psalter initials found in the vast majority of B42 Donati, which scholars have reasonably adopted as a terminus ante quem. This leaves a fairly narrow range of probable production, but one that witnessed two critical events in European printing: the dissolution of the Fust/Gutenberg partnership and the publication of their Bible. ¶ Which brings us to the question you’re dying to ask: On which side of the dissolution, and the Bible’s publication, might our Donatus fall? If it’s certainty you seek, look elsewhere. That could well remain elusive forever. Even without the Psalter initials, there’s no reason this edition couldn’t be an early product from the post-dissolution Fust and Schoeffer shop. Still, the B42 editions without the Psalter initials—and there are only two known—offer tantalizing ambiguity. This edition has relatively long lines, for example, like the earliest Donati, and rather uneven line justification, which became much cleaner in editions with initials. We know with near certainty that the Fust/Gutenberg shop produced at least one Donatus with B42 type before finishing the Bible, for it was printed in that type’s first state. Some scholars have suggested these initial-less second-state B42 Donati likewise came from the joint Fust/Gutenberg shop, further examples of jobbing work printed alongside the Bible to boost cash flow during the latter’s lengthy and expensive production, a balancing of large and small work that became standard practice throughout the handpress period. The ragged justification of these Donati may stand out among the crisp line endings of the Bible, but could simply be symptomatic of less fastidious production for a less fastidious audience. After all, compared to the immense financial risk riding on the Bible, a monumental book facing sophisticated tastes in an international market, the Donatus need simply be functional for young students, was quick to produce, and was practically guaranteed local sale. ¶ All to say, there’s a reasonable argument, if never provable, for placing our Donatus among the incredibly rare group of items published—that is, finished and sent into the world for practical use—before the Gutenberg Bible.

A brief sketch of the earliest Mainz printing may help put the knowns and unknowns in perspective. Gutenberg used his very first type, called DK after the Donatus grammars and calendars he printed with it, to produce Europe’s first typographic work. Scholars tend to think these small items served as a kind of proof of concept through which Gutenberg secured the financial backing of Johann Fust. Flush with Fust's cash, the talented young scribe Peter Schoeffer was brought into the fold, and his lettering skills may well have aided design of the new type for this joint Werck der Bucher. This partnership, and the type they created, famously culminated in the 42-line Gutenberg Bible. But questions continue to swirl around the corpus of undated ephemera that appeared in both DK and B42 type. Some think Gutenberg simultaneously managed both his own solo press using DK type, and the joint endeavor with Fust and Schoeffer using the new Bible type—that there were already two presses operating in Mainz when Gutenberg and Fust parted ways. Whatever the case, part ways they did. Around the time of the Bible’s completion, Fust sued Gutenberg for repayment of money lent, marking the end of their partnership. ¶ For much of the last century, Gutenberg has been portrayed as the pitiable loser in this litigation. More recent legal analysis has suggested both sides came away with a fair deal. It’s still widely agreed that Gutenberg kept control of and continued printing with his original DK type, at least until the type (or its matrices) went to Bamberg for use in the 36-line Bible. And many scholars still believe Fust took control of the B42 type, though some have questioned this, pointing to Dr. Konrad Humery’s inheritance of poorly specified printing equipment after Gutenberg’s death in 1468. Some suggest, for example, that Schoeffer only gained control of the B42 type when Humery sold it to him shortly after inheriting it. One might even argue that the lack of Psalter initials does not necessarily indicate they weren’t yet available, but that our Donatus was printed after such use of initials went out of style in the early 1460s. Any scenario leaves questions unanswered, with some scenarios perhaps more plausible than others. In the end, we circle back to Eric White’s lesson on tolerating ambiguity. Facts are scarce and experts’ interpretation is varied. All we can say with certainty is that here’s a Donatus in B42 type, unrecorded until now, still in its host binding, with contemporary Frankfurt provenance. And that’s an incredible thing.

We won’t blame anyone for being unfamiliar with Aelius Donatus—maybe Wheelock was your go-to text in school—but his fourth-century Ars minor was arguably the West’s most popular and influential Latin grammar, a schoolbook that was standard fare for centuries and remained in print well into the early modern period. It was also among the handful of small works produced by the first European presses—work since eclipsed by the magisterial splendor of Bibles and Psalters, but today much rarer witnesses to the more popular, workaday products of Europe’s first printers. These early Mainz editions were slight indeed, perhaps a dozen leaves in length. And while you may balk at our scraps, keep in mind that Donati from Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer survive exclusively as fragments recovered from bindings. Of the 60 holdings in ISTC, possibly representing as many as 49 editions—27 in Gutenberg’s DK type and 22 in B42 type—not one survives complete. (We’ve disregarded two B42 editions: ISTC id00317800, which reports no holdings, and id00316650, reported lost.) Most editions—such as they can reliably be compared, given their fragmentary nature—survive in just a single copy. So while the Bibles and Psalters may dominate our imaginations, it was these small publications—grammars and calendars and indulgences—that were the bread and butter of the first European presses. Their reliable market and ready sale made possible the great typographic monuments, and they survive in precious few numbers. ¶ In the unlikely event that you’re here for Caracciolo’s sermons, fine: This is probably the fifth edition of this particular collection of the Franciscan preacher’s 59 Lenten sermons on sin, which first appeared under this title in 1488. He was a tremendously popular preacher and his sermons saw dozens of editions in the 15th century. Our edition was still published during the author’s lifetime, which is nice. Conveniently arranged according to the seven deadly sins, the author covers all the worst vices—like coveting your neighbor’s Donatus.

“Discoveries of these fragments began to be made, and their significance for printing history realized, around the year 1800, within Mainz itself” (Needham). Examples surfaced through the 19th and early 20th centuries at a fairly regular pace, frequently within institutions and sometimes without, but such discoveries have slowed to a trickle in the last half century. In 2017, Eric White discovered a late 1460s B42 Donatus lining the spine of an incunable offered for sale (now at Princeton). Prior to that, the last Gutenbergian Donatus discovery was in 1973. ¶ Beyond the endless churn of Gutenberg Bible leaves, examples of 1450s European typography, from those years before the technology ventured beyond Mainz, are extremely rare in the trade. At auction, we find single leaves of the 1459 Durandus sold in 1988 and 1957, and a five-line fragment of the 1459 Psalter in 2017 (previously offered in 2009). The obvious standout, and the only ephemeral piece from the Gutenberg/Fust/Schoeffer period we find at auction in recent decades, was an exceptionally well preserved leaf of a ca. 1457 DK Donatus sold at Sotheby’s in 2011. (For the sake of comparison, the Sotheby’s sale price—$302,500—was more than five times the average auction price of a Gutenberg Bible leaf at the time.) As best we can tell, and keeping in mind that all printing dates are estimates, 1933 was the last time a Donatus as early as ours exchanged hands, when Princeton purchased from Maggs the only surviving Donatus in the first state of B42 type, now dated ca. 1453-1454. Today, opportunities for acquisition depend largely on the glacial pace of new discoveries, then on the hope that any such discovery might be made outside institutional walls. ISTC reports only a single example in private hands, a 27-line DK edition in a British collection. ¶ Between surviving DK and B42 examples, ISTC reports only seven early Mainz Donati in North America: Two B42 at Princeton (ISTC id00314600; id00318000) and one at the Newberry (ISTC id00317000); and one DK fragment at Johns Hopkins (id00315000), another of the same at Princeton, one at Columbia (id00316000), and yet another at Princeton (id00316200). Of these, only the Princeton example in first-state B42 type is certain to be earlier than ours.

CONTEMPORARY FRANKFURT PROVENANCE

Contemporary ownership inscription of the Frankfurt Dominicans at the foot of a2r: Con[ven]tus Frangf[ordensis] ordinis predicato[rum]. “The Dominican monastery was in many ways the intellectual centre of the city, which was fitting since the Dominicans were the most intellectual order of the late Middle Ages” (Moger). This was certainly reflected in their library, which numbered some 4,000 volumes by 1502. Many Dominican convents operated schools for aspiring friars, and the Frankfurt Dominikanerkloster was no exception. Founded in the thirteenth century, the convent “flourished chiefly in the fifteenth century during the years when printing was invented and developed in nearby Mainz. It is therefore not surprising that the library of the Dominicans was particularly rich in incunabula,” and Mainz imprints especially (Hellinga and Nickson). So it would hardly be surprising if our fragments were the remnants of a Donatus used in this Dominican school, eventually recycled, perhaps even by the house’s own bindery, after years of study rendered the thing too tattered to use. To be sure, these “printed Donatuses almost certainly were intended to be sold in quantities to monastic or cathedral schools, that is, generally not to individuals. Given that the usefulness of a Donatus to an individual schoolboy was brief, copies presumably were retained by the schoolmasters and passed on to upcoming students over as many semesters as they could withstand the wear and tear” (White, “Binding Waste”). White’s analysis has shown that, on average, a Donatus might last about forty years before meeting a fate like ours. And quite a few have turned up in Frankfurt bindings.

Of all the places an early Mainz Donatus might turn up, Frankfurt is no surprise. It was among the Holy Roman Empire’s largest cities, had long hosted one of Europe’s major trade fairs, and was only some twenty miles up the Rhine. The Fust family originally came from Frankfurt (Johann’s grandfather left Frankfurt for Mainz), the earliest reference to the Gutenberg Bible came from the city’s autumn fair in 1454, and an even earlier Gutenberg indulgence was printed for the city. Peter Schoeffer had a house there, too. “He probably kept a permanent stock of books there and lived and entertained there when the fair was on” (Lehmann-Haupt). All to say, the first Mainz printers had strong connections to Frankfurt.

Our title page bears the 18th-century cataloging note of Frankfurt Dominican librarian Franz Jacquin—No 2870 C. Fr. O. P.—who compiled an undated multi-volume catalog of the monastery’s collection by 1738. Also with a duplicate deaccession stamp of the Frankfurt Stadtbibliothek on the title page; this was probably part of the library's duplicate sale carried out at the end of the 19th century (and the library still has two copies of this Caracciolus). Surely the most arresting evidence of the book’s long history is its condition. At some point, this book encountered a serious adversary. A severe water incident might account for such catastrophic damage to the leather while leaving the structure largely unharmed. It’s worth noting that the Frankfurt Stadtbibliothek suffered some serious losses during WWII, though Ohly and Sack note that most of the valuable books were safely relocated. This book had probably left the library by then anyway. Still, the thing looks like it survived a war. ¶ Scattered manicules and brief contemporary marginalia, some in red ink that would seem to match the rubrication. One of these calls attention to evil women on fol. 63v (De mulierib[us] malis). Recent printed sticker on rear paste-down (213396).

ONE OF JUST TWO EXAMPLES WITH THEIR HOST BINDINGS INTACT

When these Donati survive only as fragments from bindings, the greater tragedy is that nearly every single one has been removed from its host binding, depriving posterity of those vital witnesses to the movement of Europe’s first typographic matter. Many of those binding contexts were not even recorded. Of the sixty Donati reported to ISTC, just one retains its host binding: that which Eric White discovered in 2017. So here’s only the second example of that rare surviving context. ¶ As it happens, it was the binding that first attracted us to the book: the sewing and cords intact, but the leather covering completely perished, leaving an exceptional view of a late medieval structure. Without tooling, attempts to identify the binder, already a fraught endeavor, is probably futile. That said: “Many bindings from the late 15th and early 16th centuries were made in a workshop that at least had very close ties to the monastery” (Ohly and Sack). Many Frankfurt bindings have been attributed to one Johannes Fabri, thought to have been active about 1471-1485 (though Heinrich Koch records a schoolmaster of the same name died in 1472).

In contemporary beveled wooden boards, the leather straps lost, but retaining brass clasp fittings. With packed sewing on three double vegetable cord supports, each tricolor endband with nine tie-downs and laced to the boards. Rubricated throughout, including three- and four-line initials, some with decorative penwork; the title heightened in silver and fol. 187r decorated in silver. The Donatus fragments on the spine show that it, too, was rubricated. Loosely laid into a folder are some fragments from the binding, plus two tiny Donatus fragments, one bearing a few printed letters, the other a single character, both probably from the wormed portion of the lining under the rear paste-down. Housed in a custom clamshell box of quarter leather and beige cloth. ¶ This book has been through it, and feels delicate, even with all cords and endbands intact. The leather covering the boards has disappeared entirely, save for tiny pieces under the clasp fittings and a handful of fragments loosely laid into the aforementioned envelope; adhesive and leather residue on the spine, obscuring much of the Donatus pieces; the paste-downs and boards somewhat wormed, affecting the Donatus under the rear paste-down, representing perhaps a square inch of loss; score marks across the board surfaces; the Donatus comb linings largely split along the hinges. Some worming to the first and last few leaves; the text block a bit darkened, especially at the edges of the leaves; large tear in the final leaf, affecting some text. Else a mighty fine thing.

With special thanks to Dr. Oliver Duntze of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, who confirmed we weren't dreaming and quickly identified the likely Donatus edition; to Dr. Eric white at Princeton, who generously shared his thoughts on its probable date range; to Dr. Bernhard Tönnies of the Frankfurt Universitätsbibliothek, for sharing his knowledge of Frankfurt's incunable collections and the book's likely point of deaccession; and to Bexx Caswell-Olson, Director of Book Conservation at the Northeast Document Conservation Center, for her structure analysis and photography assistance.

REFERENCES

Donatus: ISTC id00317600; GW 8710; Seymour de Ricci, Catalogue raisonné des premières impressions de Mayence (1445-1467) (Mainz, 1911), p. 37, #37 (calls the Paris fragment 250 x 187 mm, but possibly referring to its binding); Gottfried Zedler, Die Sogenannte Gutenbergbibel: Sowie die mit der 42zeiligen Bibeltype ausgeführten kleineren Drucke (Mainz, 1929), plates 11-12 (a complete leaf reproduced; compare especially lines 5-7 to our front guard strips, and lines 12-13 to our lower left spine fragment; see also plate 25 for a different Donatus used as comb linings) ¶ Caracciolus: ic00163000; USTC 743812; Kurt Ohly and Vera Sack, Inkunabelkatalog der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek und anderer öffentlicher Sammlungen in Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, 1966-1967), #795, #796 ¶ Cited above: Eric White, Editio Princeps (Harvey Miller, 2017), p. 48; Paul Needham, “Fragments in Books: Dutch Prototypography in the Van Ess Library,” So Precious a Foundation (New York, 1996), p. 95; Jourden Travis Moger, Priestly Resistance to the Early Reformation in Germany (Routledge, 2014), p. 17; Lotte Hellinga and Margaret Nickson, “An Early Eighteenth-Century Sale of Mainz Incunabula by the Frankfurt Dominicans,” Incunabula in Transit (Brill, 2018), p. 353; Eric White, “Binding Waste as Book History: Patterns of Survival among the Early Mainz Donatus Editions,” Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500 (2020), p. 262; Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim and Mainz with a List of His Surviving Books and Broadsides (Leo Hart, 1950), p. 102; Kurt Ohly and Vera Sack, Inkunabelkatalog der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek und anderer öffentlicher Sammlungen in Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, 1966-1967), p. XVIII

More on early Mainz printing, its ephemera especially: White, Editio Princeps, p. 41 (“Accordingly, most specialists now believe that Europe’s first typefaces were perfected over several years and were used for numerous small scale ephemeral printing projects before the great Bible was completed.”), 57-58 (“It is assumed by most recent scholars that at the outset Gutenberg had developed and owned the DK types, and that these caught the attention of the venture capitalist Fust. Seeing both the potential and the limitations of Gutenberg’s DK types (they were bulky and wasteful of paper and parchment), Fust recognized in them the ‘beta version’ that proved the feasibility of producing an improved typeface that he could own and use, with the help of Gutenberg and Peter Schoeffer, to print a large format Bible. The simultaneous availability in different Mainz workshops of Gutenberg’s DK typeface and Fust’s (certainly Gutenbergian) B42 typeface throughout the production of the first Bible would have suited both men’s need to keep turning a profit, and would have required precisely the kind of contractual distinction between Gutenberg’s ephemeral printing projects and the joint ‘werck der bücher’ that is reflected in the Helmasperger Instrument of 1455. In the absence of documentation and superior alternative explanations, it is accepted here that Gutenberg developed the DK types about 1450 to become the first European printer, and that all of the works printed with the DK types before c. 1458 were produced by him in Mainz, independent of Fust and Schoeffer. It is also assumed that Gutenberg imparted his unique knowledge of the new typographic art to Fust and young Schoeffer, whose collaboration in the early 1450s made the creation of the improved B42 types and the immense undertaking of a printed Bible possible. After he had acquired all that he needed from Gutenberg, Fust partnered with Schoeffer in late 1455 to establish the first truly sustainable printing firm.”); Sabina Wagner, “A Well-Known Stranger—Johannes Gutenberg,” Gutenberg: Man of the Millennium (Mainz, 2000), p. 74 (“In about 1450, Gutenberg’s first printing workshop either had to be enlarged for the joint werck der bucher, or a new, larger workshop set up. More recent Gutenberg literature favours the theory that Gutenberg continued to operate the original press autonomously and—in parallel with the large Bible project—printed there the ephemera that appears in the Donatus-Calendar typeface”); Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz, “Gutenberg’s Inventions: The Technical Aspects of Printing with Multiple Letters on the Letterpress Printing Machine,” Gutenberg: Man of the Millennium, p. 122 (“few details are actually known to us and that, despite extensive research, many of our ideas remain based on assumption rather than fact”); Cornelia Schneider, “The First Printer: Johannes Gutenberg,” Gutenberg: Man of the Millennium, p. 126 (“As Fust and Schöffer marked a large part of their production with their names, it is easy to ascribe unidentified works in their fonts to them. For the rest—by process of elimination and until proof of the contrary—one assumes that Gutenberg was printer”), 141 (“From an economic aspect, it would probably have hardly been profitable to run an additional printing shop for a few small prints in addition to the cost-intensive, well-staffed Bible project, the quick transaction of which must have been important for him. The profitability of such a division is in doubt, as the Bible printing shop quite certainly allowed such small jobs to be slipped in which brought in money quickly.”); Cornelia Schneider, “GM 131” exhibit label, Man of the Millennium, p. 190 (“Schöffer can only be definitely identified as the owner of the B42 typeface after Gutenberg’s death, so other possibilities cannot be ruled out. The two letters of indulgence are less of an indication of a definite division between Fust and Gutenberg, but rather of our scarcity of information regarding very early prints, and thus of Gutenberg’s work.”), “GM 146-148” exhibit label, p. 196 (on some items printed with B42 type, Donati included: “None of them includes the name of its printer, only a few can be dated precisely and many survive only as fragments. In addition, there is the question of who owned the B42 type after the break up of the partnership of Gutenberg and Fust. Thus it is completely undecided who printed the following items while dating them is also scarcely possible.”); Lotte Hellinga, “The Mainz Catholicon 1460-1470: An Experiment in Book Production and the Book Trade,” Incunabula in Transit, p. 145 (“If we may now assume that two printing houses were active in Mainz by the end of 1454, it is very interesting to note that they both found an alternative to the speculation and necessarily slow return on investment when undertaking the production of a large book. Jobbing printing was soon discovered to offer advantages to all concerned.”); Frédéric Barbier, Gutenberg’s Europe (Polity, 2017), p. 118 (on early Mainz calendars and Donati: “these were all slight works, which could be produced quickly, demanded little in the way of investment in material or money (typographic characters or supplies of paper) and were cheap, hence relatively easy to distribute. For Gutenberg, as for his financial backers, this type of product made it possible to keep the business ticking over while in the process of perfecting their technology.”)

On possibly attributing some B42 Donati to the pre-dissolution Gutenberg/Fust shop: Sabina Wagner, “A Well-Known Stranger,” p. 77 (“the verdict also shows that Gutenberg used a part of the funds of the joint undertaking for his own advantage, perhaps to print for his own profit in the joint workshop or using the association’s materials for other purposes”); Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz, “Gutenberg’s Inventions,” p. 122 (“If the four printers producing the Bible were indeed occasionally idle, their task being quicker to perform than that of the typesetters, there is nothing to suggest that they did not work on other commissions while waiting for the next typeset pages of the Bible. And if there had been punch cutters and typecasters in the Bible workshop, what did they do after completing the characters for the 42-line Bible? Were not other printing jobs perhaps prepared or even carried out in parallel to the Bible?”); Lotte Hellinga, “Nicolas Jenson, Peter Schoeffer and the Development of Printing Types,” Incunabula in Transit, p. 42-43 (“The [B42] type was mainly used for what was to become one of the world’s most famous books and probably some small Donatus editions. Later it came to be owned by Peter Schoeffer, who also used it to print an undeterminable number of Donatus editions”; we take her oppositional use of Schoeffer, “who also used it,” to indicate a belief that some Donati were printed with B42 type before it passed to him); Paul Schwenke, “Neue Donatfunde,” Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 22 (1905), p. 529 (“Only the 33 line fragments in Oxford and Paris are without initials, and so it is at least possible that they fall before the Psalter and are still of the Gutenberg period”); De Ricci, Mayence, p. 38 (he largely follows Schwenke’s chronology: “This edition seems a little later than that of Oxford; but it is also possible that Gutenberg printed it”)

On Gutenberg’s post-dissolution activity, including Humery theories: White, Editio Princeps, p. 26 (“It is inferable that in November 1455, by which time the sale of the books made for Fust’s and Gutenberg’s common benefit presumably had begun to replenish their respective coffers, Gutenberg was able to pay Fust the money that the court decided he still owed, that he retained his share of the presses and typecasting equipment, and that he was able to continue printing in Mainz, regardless of whether Fust and Schoeffer retained possession of the printing types in which Fust had invested so heavily ca. 1450-52. In any case, there is absolutely no evidence that Gutenberg was left destitute as a result of Fust’s lawsuit.”); Lotte Hellinga, “The Mainz Catholicon 1460-1470: An Experiment in Book Production and the Book Trade,” Incunabula in Transit, p. 142 (“Empell concluded that through due process both parties were given a fair hearing, and that Gutenberg should not be seen as a victim of Fust’s greed. Nor was he a loser of the case or bankrupted. Both parties got a fair deal in the judgment produced by the court.”); Sabina Wagner, “A Well-Known Stranger,” p. 77 (“Certainly, the debt sum was high, but not so high as to allow Fust to seize both the workshop inventory and the printed Bibles in their entirety. It is not clear how the winding-up of the business was further settled.”), 78 (“It is doubtful whether he was also able to keep parts of the collateral—the B42 type. The fact is that this typeface was not used after 1455 by either Gutenberg or by the Fust-Schöffer printing shop, and was first used again after Gutenberg’s death. The valuable material may have been left unused because Gutenberg offered it as collateral, perhaps to Dr Humery.”), 80 (“Since Humery himself never operated a printing press, he evidently later sold the valuable material to Schöffer, in whose printed products the B42 typeface reappears after Gutenberg’s death”), 83 (“Humery certifies here that the Archbishop of Mainz had entrusted him with ‘many moulds, letters, instruments, devices and other printing materials, which Johan Gutemberg left after his death and were and still are mine’”); Barbier, Gutenberg’s Europe, p. 122 (“another financier, Konrad Humery, who, on the printer’s death, would receive his equipment (including the fonts for the Bible), later resold to Schoeffer”), 125 (“On 28 February [1468], Humery asked to be allowed to take possession of the equipment in the workshop, including some of the characters of the 42-line Bible; he was authorized to do this by the archbishop, on condition he used it exclusively in Mainz, but he seems to have sold it to Peter Schoeffer soon after”)

On more disruptive theories, including Gutenberg’s retention of B42 type: Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz, “Gutenberg’s Inventions,” p. 120 (suggesting there may not have been a first and second state of B42 type at all, but that the difference could have resulted from leading); Schneider, “First Printer,” p. 128-129 (“Where Fust and Schöffer continued to use the cut metal initials of the 30-line Indulgence, the type of the B 42 only turn up again long after Gutenberg’s death at Schöffer’s who used them several times between 1480 and 1493. If they had really passed to Fust after the separation, he and his partner would have left a complete, excellently equipped set of type unused on one side for 25 years—an extremely uneconomic behaviour, especially in an age in which there were only very few founts. Admittedly, scholars have been pleading for some time that one should no longer see Gutenberg as the great loser of the lawsuit…The letters of the B 42 then did not come into Schöffer’s possession until after Gutenberg’s death, perhaps by purchase through Dr. Humery.”), 143 (“Probably Gutenberg kept both types after the break with Fust and also continued printing with them. As all of Gutenberg’s type matter appear again after his death, at least the dies and casting moulds must have continued to be in Gutenberg’s possession. After his death, they passed to Dr. Humery who sold them—probably to Schöffer because the B 42 type now turns up in his works.”); Cornelia Schneider, “GM 146” exhibit label, Man of the Millennium, p. 196 (“there is a close link with Gutenberg which would support the thesis that Gutenberg was able to keep the B42 type after the Fust lawsuit”)

On the Donatus grammar: Schneider, “First Printer,” p. 142 (“the Donatus editions promised a certain, considerable profit, for they belonged to the hard-won compulsory reading of every Latin scholar”); Lotte Hellinga, “Fragments Found in Bindings: The Complexity of Evidence for the Earliest Dutch Typography,” Incunabula in Transit, p. 226-227 (on the Dutch prototypographical Donati: “they must have remained in demand over a considerable period of time. The text belongs to a centuries-old tradition in education, and the form in which it was printed, without commentary, had stabilized by the fifteenth century. The style of their early appearance in print is the continuation of this tradition. It is a typographical expression of the textura style.”)

On binding waste and host bindings: White, “Binding Waste,” p. 262 (“It must be noted that not a single specimen has survived intact; everything we know about the early Mainz Donatus editions comes from binding waste…Too often, the fragment’s original binding context is compromised, ruined, or even, as with the Sibyllenbuch, left unrecorded. In fact, only one of the several dozens of specimens of a Donatus printed in Mainz has been preserved within its host binding.”); White, Editio Princeps, p. 41 (“These survivals come from widely scattered roosts, yet their greatest concentration was in the middle of the Rhineland, with Mainz marking the center”); Needham, “Fragments in Books,” p. 94 (compared to early Mainz folios, “A greater number of printers’ jobs were either for relatively small pamphlets or for broadsides; and the majority of these latter are known to us only through binder’s waste”)

On the provenance and binding: Heinrich Koch, Das Dominikanerkloster zu Frankfurt am Main (Freiburg, 1892), p. 46-47, 48 (lists of the Frankfurt Dominican schoolmasters in place when this edition would have been used), 50-53 (brief account of the library, recording some early Mainz imprints in its collection); Kurt Ohly and Vera Sack, Inkunabelkatalog der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek und anderer öffentlicher Sammlungen in Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, 1966-1967), p. XV (notes the Frankfurt monastery had its own bindery active at least from the mid 15th through the first third of the 16th century), XVI (on the two ownership inscriptions and Franz Jacquin’s catalog), XXI (on the 19th-century duplicate sale); Hellinga and Nickson, “An Early Eighteenth-Century Sale of Mainz Incunabula by the Frankfurt Dominicans,” p. 358 (on early Mainz printing: “There was no shortage of such items in the Dominicans’ library”); White, “Binding Waste,” p. 254 (“the recycling of early printed fragments as waste material for subsequent bindings can provide important chronological and geographical evidence for the history of books—provided that the contexts in which the fragments were discovered are recorded for posterity”); Needham, “Fragments in Books,” p. 89 (“For bookbindings have in fact played a significant role in accidentally preserving fragments of books that would otherwise have been entirely lost. In particular, bindings of the later fifteenth through sixteenth centuries, and a little beyond, have contributed substantially, but nearly invisibly, to the history of early printing.”), 95 (“The condition of survival of binder’s waste can hold considerable interest. Yet the practice both of librarians and of the rare book trade has focused so narrowly and destructively on the single discovery aspect of binding fragments, that one almost regrets that such fragments were ever noticed at all.”); J.A. Szirmai, The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding (Ashgate, 1999), p. 179 (dizzying variety of endsheet construction diagrams), 195 (a comb lining illustrated)

On Caracciolus: Farkas Gábor Kiss, “Lists of Capital Sins in Late Medieval Hungary: Medieval Traditions and Humanistic Principles,” The Charm of a List: From the Sumerians to Computerised Data Processing (Cambridge Scholars, 2009), p. 106 (“Roberto Caraccioli (1425-1495), an observant Franciscan living in Naples in the mid-fifteenth century, organized an entire sermon collection for Lent according to the seven deadly sins and their subordinate sins. The collection starts with 22 sermons on pride, followed by one on anger, three on lust (fornication, sodomy, incest)” and more on gluttony, avarice. “The preponderance of mental and spiritual vices is still obvious here.”)

Item #394