by Gertrude Burford Rawlings
New York D.Appleton and Company 1901
purpose there is less to be said of him than of Gutenberg, we will briefly recapitulate what is known about
him, and the foundations on which his fame as a typographer rests, before dealing more at length with
Gutenberg and the Mentz press.
It does not seem easy to account for the existence of what the partisans of Gutenberg contemptuously
term the Coster legend. It has been conjectured, somewhat plausibly, that HaarIem's jealousy of the
superiority and fame of Mentz and its printers began very early, and arose from the narrow vanity of
those Haarlemers who imagined that the first printing press in Haarlem must necessarily be the first
printing press in the world. However this may be, the legend arose, and waxed strong, and many
believed in it.
Laurenz Janssoen, or Coster, was born in Haarlem about 1370. He is said to have held various high
offices, such as sheriff, treasurer, officer of the city guard, and especially that of Coster to the great
church of Haarlem. Coster means sacristan or sexton, but the position was one of far greater honour
than is now associated with it. But another account, which is supported by all the available records,
represents him as a tallow-chandler, and subsequently as an innkeeper, and if he had anything at all to
do with the great church, it was only that he supplied it with candles.
But whether chandler or coster, nothing is heard of him as a printer until 1568, more than a hundred
years after his alleged success in printing from types-in itself a strange fact, since if Coster were the
inventor, why were the Mentz printers allowed to appropriate all the credit to themselves, unchallenged
by Coster's kinsfolk or countrymen, and supported by the opinions of sixty-two writers, including
Caxton, the chronicler Fabian, Trithemius, and the compilers of the Cologne and Nuremberg chronicles? It
is true that" few sometimes may know when thousands err," but silence is no proof of truth, and if
Coster's representatives possessed the truth, how came they to withhold it from a deluded world?
Although Coster is not named till 1568, the claims of Haarlem to be the birthplace of printing had been
put forward (for the first time) some years earlier by Jan Van Zuyren in a work on the Invention of
Typography, of which only a fragment remains. The claims of Haarlem, he says, "are at this day fresh in
the remembrance of our fathers, to whom, so to express myself, they have been transmitted from hand
to hand from their ancestors." Thus, though probably writing in all good faith, Van Zuyren bases his
statements on nothing better than tradition. "The city of Mentz," he goes on to say, "without doubt
merits great praise for having been the first to publish to the world, in a becoming garb, an invention
which she received from us, for having perfected and embellished an art as yet rude and imperfect. . . . It
is certain that the foundations of this splendid art were laid in our city of HaarIem, rudely, indeed, but still
the first.
Coornhert, an engraver, and a partner of Van Zuyren repeats the same statements, and on the same
basis, in the preface to a translation of Cicero which he published in 1561, but is acute enough to see
that the case for Haarlem is nearly hopeless. "I am aware," he says, "that in consequence of the
blameable neglect of our ancestors, the common opinion that this art was invented at Mentz is now firmly
established, that it is in vain to hope to change it. even by the best evidence and the most irrefragable
proof" He proceeds to declare his conviction of the justice of Haarlem's claim, because of "the faithful
testimonies of men alike respectable from their age and authority, who not only have often told me of the
family of the inventor, and of his name and surname, but have even described to me the rude manner of
printing first used, and pointed out to me with their fingers the abode of the first printer.
And therefore, not because I am jealous of the glory of others, but because I love truth, and desire to
pay all tribute to the honour of our city which is justly her due, I have thought it incumbent upon me to
mention these things. “Yet it is strange that he did not think it incumbent upon him to mention the name
and surname of the inventor, since he had been told them so often.
Hadrian Junius, said to have been the most learned man in Holland after Erasmus, is the first to give to
the world the fully-developed legend of Coster. This he does in his Batavia, which was finished in 1568
and published posthumously twenty years later. It is he who first mentions Coster by name, and gives
the story of the walk in the woods. He relates how Coster devised block-printing, and calling in the help
of his son-in-law, Thomas Peter, produced the block book Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, and then
advanced to types of wood, then to types of lead, and finally to types of lead and tin combined.
Prospering in his new art, he engaged numerous workmen, one of whom, probably named Johann Faust,
as soon as he had mastered the process of printing and of casting type, stole his master's types and
other apparatus one Christmas Eve, and fled to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and finally to Mentz. For
all this Junius also adduces no better authority than hearsay, but nevertheless it is his statements which
have brought Coster to the front and given him such reputation as he now enjoys.
No books bearing Coster's name are known, though this in itself is no argument against him, for the
name of Gutenberg himself is not found in any of his own productions. It is not only highly improbable
that Coster was the first printer, but also doubtful whether he printed anything at all. But those who
think otherwise consider that the idea of printing occurred to him about 1428 or 1430, and that he
executed, among other books, the Biblia Pauperum, the Speculum, the Ars Moriendi, and Donatus.
The people of Holland still retain their faith in Coster. Statues have been erected, medals struck, tablets
put up, and holidays observed in his honour.