A Brill Calendar: August 14

Few technological inventions have proved to be more fundamental than printing with movable type.

That may be the reason that the life-work of Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden Gutenberg (end 14th century – 1468) continues to be a historical tangle of controversy amongst scholars, entrepreneurs and lawyers.

But the true magic of the ‘Black Art’, which has changed the face of the earth since then, is still resting on the sheer perfection of the very first productions as they came off the press at Mainz. It takes a trained eye to distinguish the Forty-two-Line Bible or the Mainz Psalter from an exquisitely penned and illuminated manuscript. It has been said, that Gutenberg didn’t want to invent typography (printing with loose letters and an oil-based ink), but that he wanted to devise a method to multiply medieval manuscripts as faithfully and precisely as possible; including in the case of the superb Mainz Psalter the exact date of completion; as medieval scribes were wont to do: August 14 1457.

The hundreds of polychrome initial letters and the elaborate and delicate scrolling gracing the pages (realized by multiple inking on one single metal block) combined with an elegant, magnificently readable lettering of the main text, may be interpreted as a grandiose tribute to the reading eye and to effortless decryption. It is seldom in the history of the visible word that the value of continuity was expressed with so much artful conviction and with such superior results.

A ‘dictum’ to the effect that each and every beginning is difficult – proverbial in the Dutch language – is gloriously gainsaid in the Mainz Psalter. Until the end of the 18th century – for longer than four centuries last – Gutenberg’s revolutionary innovation didn’t necessitate significant technical adjustment.