Cicero, De officiis. Paradoxa stoicorum (Mainz: Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, 1465)

A.2.4

The oldest printed book in St John’s College looks like a medieval manuscript

The transition from medieval manuscript to printed book was a gradual process rather than an instant transformation. This volume strikingly illustrates how much the earliest printed books resembled manuscripts. The fonts are in the shape of letters from the Gothic script complete with
ligatures and abbreviations commonly used in handwriting. Rubrication (red ink) is used for running titles. Spaces are left blank to be filled in by hand with decorative initials. The similarity was further emphasised by using parchment instead of paper. Had the book been decorated after the printing, the illusion would have been near perfect.

Johann Fust (c. 1400-1466) and Peter Schoeffer (c. 1425-c. 1503) were the first to print Cicero’s De officiis and Paradoxa stoicorum. They issued a second edition in February 1466. It was their last project together before Fust died of the plague in October 1466. Both men had previously worked with Johannes Gutenberg (d. 1468), Fust as his financier and Schoeffer as his apprentice. Having sued Gutenberg successfully for unpaid debts, Fust took over the printing business with his future son-in-law Schoeffer. Usually only Gutenberg is credited with the invention of printing with movable type in Europe, while Schoeffer’s input has long been underrated. Years after Gutenberg had lost his business,
Schoeffer achieved a decisive breakthrough when he produced the first metal type that was both durable enough to be used over a long time despite intensive use and versatile enough to be used for a variety of texts. It was first used in Fust and Schoeffer’s edition of Duranti’s Rationale divinorum officiorum in 1459 (Hellinga, pp. 73-5). Six years later, it was also utilised for the main text in this publication of Cicero’s De officiis (Hellinga, p. 77). Interestingly, Schoeffer may have collaborated in this with the Frenchman Nicholas Jenson, who later ran an exceedingly successful printing shop in Venice between 1470 and 1480 (Hellinga, pp. 74-5). The international nature of early printing will be picked up again at the end of this exhibition