alleged inventors of printing.
491
have no evidence that he experimented with types, or that he printed anything in Strasburg between 1439 and 1457. It is not even established that Mentel was the first practical printer in Strasburg, for there is evidence that he began to print there in partnership with one Henry Eggestein, who was a man of superior ability and of greater distinction, a master of arts and philosophy.[1]
Mentel did not affix his name to any of his books before 1473, but he had then printed many large theological works.[2] Schœpflin says that he soon made himself rich by his industry and his sagacity in the selection of salable books. He was a shrewd publisher, the first who issued a descriptive catalogue, and employed agents for the sale of his works.
- ↑ The first book printed at Strasburg with a date was a copy of the Decretals of Gratianus, a folio in two volumes, which bears this imprint: "By the venerable Henry Eggestein, master of liberal arts, and citizen of the renowned city of Strasburg, in the year 1471." This was not his first book, for in another book printed in the same year, he tells the reader that he has printed "innumerable volumes of law, philosophy and divinity." He printed two or three editions of the Bible in Latin, and one in German, and many other books in folio. The types of these books are unlike those used by Mentel. Eggestein was recorded in the tax list among the city officers, and was afterward bishop's chancellor in the court of Strasburg. The partnership between Mentel and Eggestein was of short duration. The date of Eggestein's death is not known: his name is not found in any books printed with his types after 1472.
- ↑ It is supposed that he printed the Bible in German and in Latin, Questions of Conscience, A Concordance of the Bible, The Epistles of Saint Jerome, The City of God, The Specula of Vincent of Beauvais. All these books are thick folios—many of them in types on English body. Some are in two, and the last named in eight, volumes. Other works have been attributed to him, but Madden says that some of them (books with a curious form of the letter R—which others say were the work of Zell) were printed at the Monastery of Weidenbach.
