FUST, JOHANN (FAUST, ante), d. 1466; generally considered one of the inventors of modern printing, Gutenberg being another. (See GUTENBERG, ante.) Fust was a rich and respectable member of a burgher family in Mainz, but not related to the patrician family of Fuss. The name was written Fust until, in 1506, Johann Schafer, in dedi cating the German translation of Livy, called his grandfather Faust. The family accepted the spelling and claimed Johann as one of their most distinguished ancestors. Fust appearsto have been a money-lender, more renowned for prudence than for dis interestedness: His connection with Gutenberg, who is generally regarded as the real inventor of printing, has been variously yepresented, and during the present century F. has been pictured as a greedy speculator who took advantage tof Gutenberg's neces sity to rob him of the fruits of his invention. The first evidence of Gutenberg's obli gations to F. would fix Aug. 22, 1449, as the day on which he borrowed 800 gold florins; but the Mazarin Bible (as it is now called) was completed years earlier. In the agree ment mentioned, F. was to give Gutenberg 300 florins a year for expenses, wages, house rent, parchment, paper, ink, etc. They were to divide the profits equally, and, if they wished to separate, Gutenberg was to return the 800 florins, and the materials were no longer to be security. F., as partner in the firm and holder of the mortgage, was to have half the profits. Gutenberg's great work was the Bible of Forty-two Lines, so called because there were 42 lines of print on each page:rut now known as the Maz arin Bible, from the fact that a copy was found in the. great cardinal's library. (There is a copy of this Bible in the Lenox library, New York city.) This work, a folio of 1282 pages, was finished in 1455. Various other works were issued by their press, when F., quite unexpectedly, it seems, and before the profits of the undertaking could be realized, brought a suit against Gutenberg to recover the money he had lent, claim ing 2,026 florins for principal and interest. lie had made a second loan in 1452 of 800 florins, but had not paid the 300 florins a year. The suit was decided iu Fust's favor, Nov. 6, 1455. He took possession of the printing materials and went on with the work, having the aid of Peter Schafer, to whom lie gave his only daughter (Dyna) in mar riage. F. is said to have gone to Paris in 1466, and to have died there of the plague. Until lately he has been confounded with the mythical magician, known as Dr. Johann Faust, no doubt a real personage, in spite of the many mystical traditions asso ciated with his name. Even in the printing-houses of the present day these supersti tions survive in the common title of "printer's devil," conferred upon the youngest apprentice—for Dr. Faust. the great magician, was credited with the invention of print ing, and the art was popularly supposed to have been taught hi pa by the devil; at least, that was the interpretation of the priests and other churchmen of the time. This wide-spread story of magic is worth tracing. Trithemius speaks in 1507 of magister Georgius Sabellicus, who called himself Faustus Jimior. Conradns Metianus Rufus (Conrad Mudt) in 1513, calls him "quidam eltirontantieus Georgius Famine." But Melanchthon and the author of the oldest popular history of Faust, call the magician John, which name has been adopted in the popular books and generally accepted. This change of name, which has been variously explained, assisted in confusing the trhdi tional remembrance of the printer, and led to its being worked into the Faust saga, per haps the more readily as in his colophons Fust said that his books were not made with pen or pencil, "sed arte qucedam perpulehva." The confusitin has been much assisted
by the history of Fust's StippbSed magic, which, widely credited, and frequently repeated as an authentic anecdote, seems to have been first mentioned by Johann Walchius in 1610. He relates on the authority of Hendrik van Schore, or Schorus, a Flemish author, then an old man and provost of Surburg, that when Mist sold his Bibles in Paris. the purchasers, surprised to find all the copies agree exactly in every letter, complained of deception, and bringing back their books demanded their money, and pursued him even into Mainz, so that to escape he removed to Strasburg. • John Conrad Purr, professor of theology at Altdorf, wrote an "EpiStola de Johanne Fausto," dated July 18, 1676. Darr (after relating from Emmanuel van Meteren the tale of Koster's types being stolen on Christmas eve by John Fust, his workman, who fled to Amsterdam, then to Cologne, and lastly to Mainz), says that, on showing his books, F. was suspected of magic, as he could print in one day as much as several men could write in a year, and as the monks and nuns, who had long made great prbfits by copy ing, found their kitchens grow cold, and their bright fires extinguished, F. incurred their hatred and calumny, and was transformed into a magician; and this opinion was confirmed by his printing the Doctrinale Alarandri, a most popular mediteval Latin grammar, which gave rise to the story that Faust had caused Alexander the great to appear to Charles V. Lacaille repeats the account, with some additions. The whol story, as Bernard says, is so improbable as scarcely to deserve a serious refutation. There is no proof that the monks were hostile to printing, or that it interfered with the profits of the copyists. On the contrary, many books were printed by the monks; the early printers often set up their presses in monasteries, and Gutenberg, Fust, and SchOffer were on friendly terms with many conventual houses. Dun. himself quotes from the Chronicle of Arentinus a statement that, if printing had not been discovered, the old books would have been lost, as the inmates of the monasteries would no longer write. Printing did the mechanical work, and multiplied the material for caligraay and illumination, and therefore did not at first interfere with the profits of the scribes, or excite their hostility. The learned men who bought books in 1463 cannot have been ignorant of the invenaou of printing, which the colophon of the Bible of 1462 expressly mentions. No trace f a suit against F. has been found in the registers Of the parlia ment of Paris. Shortly before his death, F. was known in Paris to Louis Lavernade, a magistrate of the highest rank, who could have had no intercourse with a man accused of magic. The confusion is especially seen in the German puppet plays, even now placing Dr. Faust in Mainz, while the popular history makes him dwell in Wittenberg, the birthplace of Protestantism, where Marlowe's Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, founded on the prose history, places him. Many writers have accepted Durr's error; thus Chasles calls Fust "magician a barbe blande," and Victor Hugo's introduction to Marlowe's play is based on this error, which, says Heine, "is widely spread among the people. They identify the two Fausts because they perceived indistinctly that the mode of thought represented by the magicians found its most formidable means of dif fusion in the discovery of printing. This mode, however, is thought itself as opposed to the blind credo of the middle ages." [Mainly from Encyc. Brit., 9th ed.]