Johann Fust
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
printer
Printer (publisher)
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses. With the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printing—and printers—proliferated throughout Europe.Today, printers are found...
.
Family background
Fust belonged to a rich and respectable burgherBourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
family of Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
, traceable back to the early thirteenth-century; members of the family held many civil and religious offices.
The name was always written Fust, but in 1506 Peter Schöffer
Peter Schöffer
Peter Schöffer or Petrus Schoeffer was an early German printer, who studied in Paris and worked as a manuscript copyist in 1451 before apprenticing with Johannes Gutenberg and joining Johann Fust, a goldsmith, lawyer, and money lender.-Life and works:Working for Fust, Schöffer was the principal...
, in dedicating the German translation of Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian I , the son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor and Eleanor of Portugal, was King of the Romans from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1493 until his death, though he was never in fact crowned by the Pope, the journey to Rome always being too risky...
, called his grandfather Faust, and thenceforward the family assumed this name, and the Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
s of Aschaffenburg
Aschaffenburg
Aschaffenburg is a city in northwest Bavaria, Germany. The town of Aschaffenburg is not considered part of the district of Aschaffenburg, but is the administrative seat.Aschaffenburg is known as the Tor zum Spessart or "gate to the Spessart"...
, an old and quite distinct family, placed Johann Fust in their pedigree. Johann's brother Jacob, a goldsmith, was one of the burgomaster
Burgomaster
Burgomaster is the English form of various terms in or derived from Germanic languages for the chief magistrate or chairman of the executive council of a sub-national level of administration...
s in 1462, when Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
was stormed and sacked by the troops of Count Adolf II of Nassau
Adolph II of Nassau
Adolph II of Nassau-Wiesbaden-Idstein was Archbishop of Mainz from 1461 until 1475.Adolph was a son of Count Adolph II of Nassau-Wiesbaden-Idstein....
, in the course of which he seems to have been killed (suggested by a document dated May 8, 1678).
Printing
There is no evidence for the theory that Johann Fust was a goldsmith, but he appears to have been a money-lender or banker. On account of his connection with Johann Gutenberg, he has been called the inventor of printing, and the instructor as well as the partner of Gutenberg. Some see him as a patron and benefactor, who saw the value of Gutenberg's discovery and supplied him with means to carry it out, whereas others portray him as a speculator who took advantage of Gutenberg's necessity and robbed him of the profits of his invention. Whatever the truth, the Helmasperger document of November 6, 1455, shows that Fust advanced money to Gutenberg (apparently 800 guilderGuilder
Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch gulden — from Old Dutch for 'golden'. The guilder originated as a gold coin but has been a common name for a silver or base metal coin for some centuries...
s in 1450, and another 800 in 1452) to carry on his work, and that Fust, in 1455, brought a suit against Gutenberg to recover the money he had lent, claiming 2026 guilders for principal and interest. It appears that he had not paid in the 300 guilders a year which he had undertaken to furnish for expenses, wages, etc., and, according to Gutenberg, had said that he had no intention of claiming interest.
The suit was apparently decided in Fust's favour, November 6, 1455, in the refectory of the Barefooted Friars of Mainz, when Fust swore that he himself had borrowed 1550 guilders and given them to Gutenberg. There is no evidence that Fust, as is usually supposed, removed the portion of the printing materials covered by his mortgage to his own house, and carried on printing there with the aid of Peter Schöffer
Peter Schöffer
Peter Schöffer or Petrus Schoeffer was an early German printer, who studied in Paris and worked as a manuscript copyist in 1451 before apprenticing with Johannes Gutenberg and joining Johann Fust, a goldsmith, lawyer, and money lender.-Life and works:Working for Fust, Schöffer was the principal...
of Gernsheim (who is known to have been a scriptor at Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1449), who in about 1455 married Fust's only daughter Christina. Their first publication was the Psalter, August 14, 1457, a folio of 350 pages, the first printed book with a complete date, and remarkable for the beauty of the large initials printed each in two colours, red and blue, from types made in two pieces. The Psalter was reprinted with the same types, 1459 (August 29), 1490, 1502 (Schöffer's last publication) and 1516.
Fust and Schöffer's other works are:
- Guillaume DurandGuillaume DurandGuillaume Durand, or William Durand, , also known as Durandus, Duranti or Durantis, from the Italian form of Durandi filius, as he sometimes signed himself, was a French canonist and liturgical writer, and Bishop of Mende.-Life:He was born at Puimisson, near Béziers, of a noble family of Languedoc...
, Rationale divinorum officiorum (1459), folio, 160 leaves - the Clementine Constitutions, with the gloss of Johannes Andreae (1460), 51 leaves
- Biblia Sacra Latina (1462), folio 2 vols., 242 and 239 leaves, 48 lines to a full page
- the Sixth Book of Decretals, with Andreae's gloss, December 17, 1465, folio 1211 leaves
- CiceroCiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
. De officiis, 88 leaves.
Death
In 1464 Adolf II of NassauAdolph II of Nassau
Adolph II of Nassau-Wiesbaden-Idstein was Archbishop of Mainz from 1461 until 1475.Adolph was a son of Count Adolph II of Nassau-Wiesbaden-Idstein....
appointed for the parish of St Quintin three Baumeisters (master-builders) who were to choose twelve chief parishioners as assistants for life. One of the first of these "Vervaren," who were named on May 1, 1464, was Johannes Fust, and in 1467 Adam von Hochheim was chosen instead of the late (selig) Johannes Fust. Fust is said to have gone to Paris in 1466 and to have died of the plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
, which raged there in August and September. He certainly was in Paris on 4 July, when he gave Louis de Lavernade of the province of Forez, then chancellor of the duke of Bourbon
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
and first president of the parliament of Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
, a copy of his second edition of Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
, as appears from a note in Lavernade's own hand at the end of the book, which is now in the library of Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
.
Nothing further is known, other than that on October 30, probably in 1471, an annual mass was instituted for him by Peter Schöffer, Conrad Henlif (or Henekes, or Henckis, (supposedly Schöffer's partner) who married Fust's widow about 1468) and Johann Fust (the son), in the abbey-church of St Victor of Paris, where he was buried; and that Peter Schöffer founded a similar memorial service for Fust in 1473 in the church of the Dominican Order
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...
at Mainz (Bockenheimer, Gesch. der Stadt Mainz, iv. 15).
According to some sources, the speed and precise duplication abilities of the press caused French officials to claim that Fust was a magician, leading some historians to connect Fust with the legendary character of Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
. Friedrich Maximilian Klinger
Friedrich Maximilian Klinger
Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger was a German dramatist and novelist.-Biography:Klinger was born of humble parentage in Frankfurt. His father died when he was a child, and his early years were a hard struggle. He was enabled, however, in 1774 to enter the university of Gießen, where he studied law...
's Faust, a printer, may borrow more from Fust than other versions of the Faust legend.