Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheim

Arnold Pannartz and Conrad Sweynheym^[1] were two printers of the 15th century, associated with Johannes Gutenberg and the use of his invention, the mechanical movable-type printing press.

Backgrounds

Arnold Pannartz was, perhaps, a native of Prague, and Conrad Sweynheym of Eltville near Mainz. Gottfried Zedler believed (Gutenberg-Forschungen, 1901) that Sweynheym worked at Eltville with Johannes Gutenberg in 1461–1464. Whether Pannartz had been connected with Sweynheym in Germany is not known. It is certain that the two brought Gutenberg's invention, the mechanical movable-type printing press, to Italy. Pannartz died about 1476, Sweynheym in 1477.

Printing work

The Benedictine Abbey of Saint Scholastica in Subiaco (in present-day Lazio) was the cradle of Italian printing. Probably Cardinal Giovanni Turrecremata, who was Abbot in commendam of Subiaco, summoned the two printers there; they came in 1464. The first book that the Subiaco Press produced was a Donatus; it has not, however, been preserved. The first book printed in Italy that is extant is a Cicero, De oratore, which Pannartz and Sweynheim completed before 30 September 1465.^[2] There followed Lactantius, De divinis institutionibus, in October, 1465, and Augustine's De civitate Dei (1467). These four impressions from Subiaco are of particular importance, because they abandon the blackletter of the early German books: Italian readers demanded Roman characters. Pannartz and Sweynheym, however, did not produce a pure but only a "half Roman" type with blackletter-like characteristics.

In 1467, the two printers left Subiaco and settled at Rome, where the brothers Pietro and Francesco Massimo placed a house at their disposal. That same year they published an edition of Cicero's letters that gave its name to the typographic unit of measurement named cicero, Continental Europe's equivalent of the pica typographic unit.^[4] Their editorial director was Giovanni Andrea Bussi, at that time Bishop of Aleria in Corsica.

The works they printed are given in two lists of their publications, issued in 1470 and 1472. Up to 1472, they had published twenty-eight theological and classical volumes, namely, the Bible, Lactantius, Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome, Leo the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Cicero, Apuleius, Gellius, Virgil, Livy, Strabo, Pliny, Quintilian, Suetonius, Ovid, etc., in editions varying from 275 to 300 copies each – in all, 12,475 volumes.

Church backing

The pair shared the fate of their master, Gutenberg; they could not sell their books, and fell into want. The Catholic Church took an interest in the expansion of printing during that time. In 1472, Pannartz and Sweynheim applied to Pope Sixtus IV for Church benefices. This application establishes that were ecclesiastics: Pannartz of Cologne and Sweynheym of Mainz. Sixtus had a reversion drawn up for them, a proof of his great interest in printing. In 1474, Sweynheym was made a canon at St. Victor at Mainz. It is not known whether Pannartz also obtained benefice. Perhaps the pope also aided them; at any rate, they printed eighteen more works in 1472 and 1473.

After this they separated. Pannartz printed by himself thirteen further volumes. Sweynheym took up engraving on metal and executed the fine maps for the Cosmography of Ptolemy, the first work of this kind, but died before he had finished his task.

References

^ Sweynheim.
^ From an inscription in a copy now in Moscow, Russian State Library.
^ Updike, Daniel Berkeley (1922). Printing Types, Their History, Forms, and Use: A Study in Survivals. Vol. 1 (2 ed.). Harvard University Press. p. 63. Retrieved 4 December 2023. Mentelin, the first Strassburg printer, used a gothic type which pointed towards roman in his Biblia Latina, finished in 1460. [...] But the font of the 'R Bizarre,' as it is often called, was the first roman letter used in Germany. [...] This ungainly roman type was used by Adolph Rusch of Ingweiden ('the R Printer'), who printed in it an edition of the Rationale of Durandus, at Strassburg, as early as 1464.
^ Elsevier's Dictionary of the Printing and Allied Industries, 2nd ed., "2827 cicero". ISBN 0-444-42249-8.

Burger, The Printers and Publishers of the XV Century (London, 1902), 523, 524, 605, 606
Fumagalli, Dictionnaire géogr. d'Italie pour servir à l'histoire de l'imprimerie dans ce pays (Florence, 1905), 331–37, 405-09
Löffler, Sweinheim und Pannartz in Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde, IX (Bielefeld, 1905), 311-17
Idem, Die ersten deutschen Drucker in Italien in Historisch-politische Blätter, CXLIII (Munich, 1909), 13–27.

Attribution

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Löffler, Klemens (1911). "Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweinheim". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

External links

Arnold Pannartz at Library of Congress, with 0 library catalogue records
Konrad Sweynheim at LC Authorities, no records
Claudio Vincoletto. "Metamorfosi dei tipi sublacensi" (PDF).

[1] Sweynheim.

[2] From an inscription in a copy now in Moscow, Russian State Library.

[3] Updike, Daniel Berkeley (1922). Printing Types, Their History, Forms, and Use: A Study in Survivals. Vol. 1 (2 ed.). Harvard University Press. p. 63. Retrieved 4 December 2023. Mentelin, the first Strassburg printer, used a gothic type which pointed towards roman in his Biblia Latina, finished in 1460. [...] But the font of the 'R Bizarre,' as it is often called, was the first roman letter used in Germany. [...] This ungainly roman type was used by Adolph Rusch of Ingweiden ('the R Printer'), who printed in it an edition of the Rationale of Durandus, at Strassburg, as early as 1464.

[4] Elsevier's Dictionary of the Printing and Allied Industries, 2nd ed., "2827 cicero". ISBN 0-444-42249-8.

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