amount to about 2,020 guilders, of which he demands reimbursement. Thereupon, Johan Gutenberg answered that Johan Fust had agreed to lend him 800 guilders, with which money he was to arrange and make his tools, and that these tools should remain as security for Fust. But Fust had moreover agreed to give him every year 300 guilders for expenses, and to advance also wages, house-rent, vellum, paper, ink, etc. If, afterward, they did not agree, Gutenberg should then pay the 800 guilders back, and the tools should be free from mortgage; it should be understood, that with the 800 guilders he had to make the machine, which was to be a pledge. He hopes not [that any one shall pretend] that he was obliged to spend these 800 guilders on the work of the books [i. e., on vellum, paper, etc.] And, although it is said in the contract that Gutenberg was to pay six per cent, interest, Fust had told him that he had no intention of accepting this interest from him. Moreover, he had not received the 800 guilders in full and at once according to agreement, as Fust had pretended in the first article of his claim; and as for the second 800 guilders, he is ready to give an account of them, but declines to give him interest or usury for them, and hopes that he is not bound by law to pay them. We pass, therefore, sentence according to pretension and response: When Johan Gutenberg has submitted an account of all receipts and disbursements spent on the work to their common profit [i. e., printing], this work shall be added to the 800 guilders; if he has spent more than the 800 guilders, which did not belong to their common profit, he should pay it back; if Fust is able to prove, on oath or by witnesses, that he has borrowed the money on interest, and did not lend it out of his own resources, then Gutenberg is bound by contract to pay it.
Now, after this sentence had been read in presence of the aforesaid witnesses, Johan Fust has, with raised fingers, in the hands of me, public notary, taken the oath by all the saints, that everything was comprised according to truth and sentence, in an act which he placed in my hands. He confirmed it on oath, as truly as God and the saints may help him; and the contents of this document were as follows:
I, Johan Fust, have borrowed 1,550 guilders, which have been received by Johan Gutenberg, and spent on our common work, for which I have paid an annual interest, and still owe a part of it. Therefore, I count for every hundred guilders which I have borrowed in this way, six guilders per annum; and for the money spent on our common work, I demand the interest according to judgment passed.
The said Johan Fust demands from me, public notary, one or more public acts of this matter, as many and as often as he should want them; and all these matters recorded here, happened in the year, indiction, day, hour, papacy, month, and town aforesaid, in the pres-