The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08 - The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation by Unknown
page 45 of 511 (08%)
page 45 of 511 (08%)
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bears a complete imprint--that is, the name of the printer, place, and
date. This magnificent volume, of which the whole edition was printed on vellum, is now even rarer than the Mazarin Bible, and of extraordinary value; the letters are very large and bold, cast in metal type, and the ornamental initials are beautifully cut in wood. Two years later, that is, in 1459, Faust and Schoeffer produced an almost fac-simile reprint of the Psalter, and in the same year _Durandi Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, the latter with an entirely new font of metal type--the first cast from Schoeffer's punches--which some, in the erroneous belief that the Psalter was printed from wooden types, have asserted to be the first dated book printed with metal type. Then followed, in 1460, the _Constitutiones Clementis V_, a handsome folio, and in 1462 their famous Latin Bible, the first one with a date. In the mean time, Gutenberg, undaunted by the loss of all that had cost him so many years of unremitted application and his whole fortune, began afresh; and this time, it should seem, with better success, as we find him, in 1459, undertaking to present, for certain considerations, all the books he had then printed, or might thereafter print, to a convent where his sister was a nun. No book, however, has yet been discovered bearing the name of Gutenberg; and we can only guess what came from his press by a peculiarity of type, of which, after the first Bible, the most marked is the famous _Catholicon_, dated 1460--a kind of universal dictionary, the germ of all future cyclopaedias, and which became so popular that more than forty editions were printed of it in as many years. In 1465 Gutenberg retired from printing, being appointed to a lucrative office at the court of the Archbishop of Mainz, and in 1467 he died. And here we take leave of Gutenberg, with admiration for his patience, |
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