Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/496

The libripagus^[1] is an artisan who skillfully engraves oh plates of copper, iron, hard wood, or other substances, images, writing, or anything he fancies, and afterward quickly prints them on paper, or on a wall, or on a smooth board. He cuts whatever he pleases, and is a man who can apply his art to pictures. When I was at Bamberg, a man engraved the whole Bible upon plates, and in four weeks skillfully preserved this engraving of the whole Bible on thin parchment.

Pfister's name is not mentioned, but he was, probably, the libripagus here noticed. The story is not credible. The whole Bible was not printed in four weeks, neither at Bamberg nor elsewhere; nor was it ever engraved upon plates. The only book of Pfister's to which this statement could be applied, is his edition of the Bible of the Poor.

We do not know when Pfister died; his last dated work is of the year 1462. Sebastian Pfister, who is supposed to be Albert's son, was at the head of a printing office at Bamberg in the year 1470, and then printed a little book which seems to have been his first and last venture in printing.

Pamphilo Castaldi of Feltre, Italy, to whom a statue was erected in 1868, has also received the undeserved honor of an inventor of printing. This commemoration of the man by the people of a great nation seems to require in this book at least a statement of the legend on which his claims are based. This is the legend, abridged from a long panegyric on Castaldi's services by one of his countrymen:

Pamphilo Castaldi was born in Feltre, of noble parents, at the end of the fourteenth century. He was highly educated and intelligent. Although a poet and a lawyer of good reputation, his love for literature induced him to open a school for polite learning, which soon became famous, and attracted students from foreign countries. None of his pupils acquired greater fame than John Fust, who is called by the historians of Feltre, Fausto Comesburgo. This Faust resided with

1. There is no English equivalent for libripagus, which means a workman who is an engraver, a printer, and a stenciler. Like other writers of his day, Paul of Prague had to coin a word to define printers, who for many years after were called typographi, typothetæ, chalcographi, excusores and protocharagmatici. Most writers called printers impressores, or impressors, from the process of impressing types. This word, which was finally accepted in all European languages, has served to foster the error that the vital principle of printing is impression.