FUST, JOHANN ( ?-1466)

This article appears in Volume V11, Page 374 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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FUST, JOHANN ( ?-1466) , early German printer, belonged to a rich and respectable burgher family of Mainz, which is known to have flourished from 1423, and to have held many civil and religious offices. The name was always written Fust, but in 1506 Johann Schoffer, in dedicating the German translation of Livy to the emperor Maximilian, called his grandfather Faust, and thenceforward the family assumed this name, and the Fausts of Aschaffenburg, an old and quite distinct family, placed Johann Fust in their pedigree. Johann's brother Jacob, a goldsmith, was one of the burgomasters in 1462, when Mainz was stormed and sacked by the troops of Count Adolf of Nassau, on which occasion he seems to have perished (see a document, dated May 8,"1463, published by Wyss in Quartalbl. des hist. Vereins Pr Hessen, 1879, p. 24). There is no evidence that, as is commonly asserted, Johann Fust was a goldsmith, but he appears to have been a money-lender or banker. On account of his connexion with Gutenberg (q.v.), he has been represented by some as the inventor of printing, and the instructor as well as the partner of Gutenberg, by others as his patron and benefactor, who saw the value of his discovery and supplied him with means to carry it out, whereas others paint him as a greedy and crafty speculator, who took advantage of Gutenberg's necessity and robbed him of the fruits of his invention. However this may be, the Helmasperger document of November 6, 1455, shows that Fust advanced money to Gutenberg (apparently 800 guilders in 1450, and another 800 in 1452) for carrying on his work, and that Fust, in 1455, brought a suit against Gutenberg to recover the money he had lent, claiming 2020 (more correctly 2026) guilders for principal and

interest

INTEREST

. It appears that he had not paid in the 300 guilders a year which he had undertaken to furnish for expenses, wages, &c., and, according to Gutenberg, had said that he had no intention of claiming

interest

INTEREST

. The suit was apparently decided in Fust's favour, November 6, 1455, in the

refectory

REFECTORY (med. Lat. refectorium, from reficere, to refresh)

of the Barefooted Friars of Mainz, when Fust made oath 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 Schoffer, of Gernsheim (who is known to have been a scriptor at Paris in 1449), to whom, probably about 1455,1 he gave his only daughter Dyna or Christina in marriage. 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 (Schoffer's last publication) and 1516. Fust and Schoffer's other works are given below .3 In 1464 Adolf
' This date is uncertain; some place the marriage in 1453 or soon after, others about 1464. It is probable that Fust alluded to this relationship when he spoke of Schafer as pueri mei in the colophons of Cicero's De officiis of 1465 and 1466.
2 This method was patented in England by Solomon Henry in 1783, and by Sir William Congreve in 1819.
2 (3) Durandus, Rationale divinorum officiorum (1459), folio, 16o leaves; (4) the Clementine Constitutions, with the gloss of Johannes Andreae (1460), 51 leaves; (5) Biblia Sacra

Latina

LATINA, VIA

(1462), folio, 2 vols., 242 and 239 leaves, 48 lines to a full page; (6) the

Sixth

SIXTH

Book of Decretals, with Andreae's gloss, 17th December 1465, folio, 141 leaves; (7) Cicero, De officiis (1465), 4t0, 88 leaves, the first
of Nassau appointed for the parish of St Quintin three Baumeisters (master-builders) who were to choose twelve

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

parishioners as assistants for life. One of the first of these " Vervaren," who were named on May-day 1464, was Johannes Fust, and in 1467

Adam

von Hochheim was chosen instead of " the

late

LATE

" (selig) Johannes Fust. Fust is said to have gone to Paris in 1466 and to have died of the plague, which raged there in August and September. He certainly was in Paris on the 4th of July, when he gave Louis de Lavernade of the province of Forez, then chancellor of the duke of Bourbon and first president of the parliament of Toulouse, a copy of his second edition of Cicero, as appears from a note in Lavernade's own hand at the end of the book, which is now in the library of Geneva. But nothing further is known than that on the 3oth of October, probably in 1471, an annual mass was instituted for him by Peter Schoffer,

Conrad

Henlif (for Henekes, or Henckis, Schoffer's partner ? who married Fust's widow about 14681) and Johann Fust (the son), in the abbey-church of St

Victor

of Paris, where he was buried; and that Peter Schoffer founded a similar memorial service for Fust in 1473 in the church of the Dominicans at Mainz (Bockenheimer, Gesch. der Stadt Mainz, iv. 15).
Fust was formerly often confused with the famous magician Dr Johann Faust, who, though an historical figure, had nothing to do with him (see FAUST).
See further the articles GUTENBERG and TYPOGRAPHY. (J. H. H.)

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