GUTENBERG, JOHANN (c. 1398-1468), German printer, is supposed to have been born c. at Mainz of well-to do parents, his father being Friele zum Gensfleisch and his mother Elsgen Wyrich (or, from her birthplace, zu Gutenberg, the name he adopted) . The family appears to have been expelled from Mainz and to have settled in Strasbourg. Gutenberg is said to have been living there in 1434, and to have seized and imprisoned the town clerk of Mainz for a debt due to him by the corpora tion of that city, releasing him, however, at the representations of the mayor and councillors of Strasbourg, and relinquishing at the same time all claims to the money.
In 1438 a partnership arrangement was made between Guten berg, Andreas Dritzehn, and Andreas and Anton Heilmann, and that this had in view the art of printing has been inferred from the word "drucken" used by one of the witnesses in the law proceed ings which soon after followed. An action was brought, after the death of Dritzehn, by his two brothers to force Gutenberg to accept them as partners in their brother's place, but the decision was in favour of the latter. Documents of 1441 and 1442 show him to have been still in Strasbourg, but there is no trace of him be tween March and Oct. 1448. About 1450 Johann Fust (q.v.) advanced him 800 guilders to promote his work, on no security except that of "tools" still to be made. Fust seems also to have undertaken to advance him 30o guilders a year for ex penses, but he does not appear to have ever done so. If at any time they disagreed, Gutenberg was to return the 800 guilders. and the "tools" were to cease to be security. In the minutes of the law-suit of 1455 Gutenberg says that he had to make his "tools" with the money advanced. But he is presumed to have begun a large folio Latin Bible, and to have printed during its progress some smaller books' and likewise the Letter of In dulgence (of April 12, 1451, by Pope Nicholas V. in aid of John II., king of Cyprus, against the Turks) , of 31 lines, having the earliest printed date 1454, of which several copies are pre served in various European libraries.
It is not known whether any books were printed while this partnership between Gutenberg and Fust lasted. Trithemius (Ann. Hirsaug. ii. 421) says they first printed, from wooden blocks, a vocabulary called Catholicon, which cannot have been the Catholicon of Johannes de Janua, a folio of 748 pages in two columns of 66 lines each, printed in 1460, but was perhaps a small glossary now lost'.
The Latin Bible of 42 lines, a folio of 1282 printed pages, in two columns with spaces left for illuminated initials (so called because each column contains 42 lines, and also known as the Mazarin Bible, because the first copy described was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin), was finished before Aug. German bibliographers now claim this Bible for Gutenberg, but, according to bibliographical rules, it must be ascribed to Peter Schaffer, perhaps in partnership with Fust. It is in smaller type than the Bible of 36 lines, which latter is called either (a) the Bamberg Bible, because nearly all the known copies were found in the neighbourhood of Bamberg, or (b) Schelliorn's Bible, because J. G. Schelhorn was the first who described it in 1760, or (c) Pfister's Bible, because its printing is ascribed to Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg, who used the same type for several small German books, the chief of which is Boner's Edelstein (1461, 4to) , 88 leaves, with 85 woodcuts, a book of fables in German rhyme. Some bibliographers believe this 36-line Bible to have been begun, if not entirely printed, by Gutenberg during his partnership with Fust, as its type occurs in the 31-line Letters of Indulgence of was used for the 27-line Donatus (of 1451?), and, finally, when found in Pfister's possession in 1461, apparently was old and worn, except the additional letters k, w, z required for German, which are clear and sharp like the types used in the Bible. Again, others profess to prove (Dziatsko, Gutenberg's f ruheste Drucker praxis) that was a reprint of Gutenberg's work, whatever it may have been, was not a commercial success, and in 1452 Fust had to come forward with another 800 guilders to prevent a collapse. But some time before November 1455 the latter demanded repayment of his advances (see the Helmasperger Notarial Document of Nov. 6, 1455, in Dziatzko's Beitrage zur Gutenbergfrage, Berlin, 1889), and took legal proceedings against Gutenberg. We do not know the end 'Among these were perhaps (1) one or two editions of the work of Donatus, De octo partibus orationis, 27 lines to a page, of one of which two leaves, now in the Paris National Library, were discovered at Mainz in the original binding of an account book, one of them having, but in a later hand, the year 1451 ( ?) ; (2) the Turk-Kalendar for (preserved in the Hof-Bibliothek at Munich) ; (3) the Cisianus (preserved in the Cambridge Univ. Libr.) , and perhaps others now lost. Zell states, in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499, that Gutenberg and Fust printed a Bible in large type like that used in missals. It has been said that this description applies to the 42-line Bible, as its type is as large as that of most missals printed before 1500, and that the size now called missal type (double pica) was not used in missals until late in the 16th century. This is no doubt true of the smaller missals printed before 1500, some of which are in even smaller type than the 42-line Bible. But many of the large folio missals, as that printed at Mainz by Peter Schaffer in 1483, the Carthusian missal printed at Spires by Peter Drach about 149o, and the Dominican missal printed by Andrea de Torresanis at Venice in 1496, are in as large type as the 36-line Bible. Peter Schaffer (1425-1502) of Gernsheim, between Mainz and Mannheim, who was a copyist in Paris in 1449, and whom Fust called his servant (f amulus) , is said by Trithemius to have discov ered an easier way of founding characters, whence Lambinet and others concluded that Schaffer invented the punch. Schaffer himself, in the colophon of the Psalter of 1457, a work which some suppose to have been planned and partly printed by Gutenberg, claims only the mode of printing rubrics and coloured capitals.
'The Leipzig copy of this Bible (which formerly belonged to Herr Klemm of Dresden) has at the end the ms. year 1453 in old Arabic numerals. But certain circumstances connected with this date make it look very suspicious.
of these proceedings, but if Gutenberg had prepared any printing materials it would seem that he was compelled to yield up the whole of them to Fust ; that the latter removed them to his own house at Mainz, and there, with the assistance of Peter Schoffer, issued various books until the sack of the city in 1462 by Adolphus II. caused a suspension of printing for three years, to be resumed again in 1465.
We have no information as to Gutenberg's activity, and very little of his whereabouts, after his separation from Fust. A docu ment dated June 21, shows that he was then still at Mainz. Entries in the registers of the St. Thomas Church at Strasbourg make it clear that the annual interest on the money which Guten berg on the I 7th of November, 1442, had borrowed from the chapter of that church was regularly paid till Nov. 11, either by himself or by his surety, Martin Brechter. But the pay ment due on the latter date appears to have been delayed, as an entry in the register of that year shows that the chapter had incurred expenses in taking steps to have both Gutenberg and Brechter arrested. This time the difficulties seem to have been removed, but on and after Nov. II, 1458, Gutenberg and Brechter remained in default. The chapter made various efforts, all re corded in their registers, to get their money, but in vain. Every year they recorded the arrears with the expenses to which they were put in their efforts to arrest the defaulters, till at last in (six years after Gutenberg's death) their names are no longer mentioned.
Meantime Gutenberg appears to have been printing, as we learn from a document dated February 26, 1468, that a syndic of Mainz, Dr. Conrad Homery (who had formerly been in the service of the elector Count Diether of Ysenburg), had at one time supplied him, not with money, but with some formes, types, tools, implements and other things belonging to printing, which Gutenberg had left after his death, and which had, and still, be longed to him (Homery) ; this material had come into the hands of Adolf, the archbishop of Mainz, who handed or sent it back to Homery, the latter undertaking to use it in no other town but Mainz, nor to sell it to any person except a citizen of Mainz, even if a stranger should offer him a higher price for the things. This material has never yet been identified, so that we do not know what types Gutenberg may have had at his disposal; they could hardly have included the types of the Catholicon of 146o, as is sug gested, this work being probably executed by Heinrich Bechter munze (d. 1467), who afterwards removed to Eltville, or perhaps by Peter Schoffer, who, about 147o, advertises the book as his property. (See K. Burger, Buchhdndler-Anzeigen.) It is uncertain whether Gutenberg remained in Mainz or re moved to the neighbouring town of Eltville, where he may have been engaged for a while with the brothers Bechtermiinze, who printed there for some time with the types of the 146o Catholicon. On Jan. 17, 1465, he accepted the post of salaried courtier from the archbishop Adolf, and in this capacity received annually a suit of livery together with a fixed allowance of corn and wine. Gutenberg seems to have died at Mainz at the beginning of 1468, and was, according to tradition, buried in the Franciscan church in that city. No books bearing the name of Gutenberg as printer are known, nor is any genuine portrait of him known, those appearing upon medals, statues or engraved plates being all fictitious.
In 1898 the firm of L. Rosenthal, at Munich, acquired a Missale speciale on paper, which Otto Hupp, in two treatises published in 1898 and 1902, asserts to have been printed by Gutenberg about 145o, seven years before the 1457 Psalter. Various German bibliographers, however, think that it could not have been printed before 148o, and, judging from the facsimiles published by Hupp, this date seems to be approximately correct.
In 1902 a vellum fragment of an Astronomical Kalendar was discovered by the librarian of Wiesbaden, Dr. G. Zedler (Die alteste Gutenbergtype, Mainz, 1902), apparently printed in the 36 line Bible type, and as the position of the sun, moon and other planets described in this document suits the years 1429, 1448 and 1467, he ascribes the printing of this Kalendar to the year 1447. A paper fragment of a poem in German, entitled Weltgericht, said to be printed in the 36-line Bible type, appears to have come into the possession of Herr Eduard Beck at Mainz in 1892, and was presented by him in 1903 to the Gutenberg Museum in that city. Zedler published a facsimile of it in 1904 (for the Gutenberg Gesellscha f t), with a description, in which he places it before the 1447 Kalendar, c. Moreover, fragments of two edi tions of Donatus different from that of 1451 (?) have recently been found; see Schwenke in Centralbl. fur Bibliotliekwesen (1908).