WĆ¼rzburg: Georg Reyser and Prince-Bishop Rudolf von Scherenberg
The first example of ecclesiastical sponsorship of liturgical printing is a contract for a territorial monopoly of the new technology of printing. The privilege awarded to the first printers in WĆ¼rzburg by Prince-Bishop Rudolf von Scherenberg, the governing prince of his territory, just east of Mainz, is clearly described in a letter in the first book off the press, the Breviarium Herbipolense (after 20 September, 1479):
The liturgical books of our WĆ¼rzburg choir should be circumspectly examined, corrected, and improved with the utmost care by selected men whom we considered suitable for this task ā which we have indeed found to have been carried out with utmost attentiveness ā so, in order that the prelates and other priests and office holders of our city and diocese might in all future times benefit and prosper from this due correction and integral renewal of the books, we have therefore decided that nothing could be more proper and even opportune than that in accordance with the correction and improvement of the liturgical books their impression should be carried out and adapted by some outstanding masters in the art of printing. For which purpose we have come to an agreement with the following far-sighted men who are devoted to us in Christ and whom we sincerely esteem: Stephan Dold, Georg Reiser and Johannes Beckenhub, alias Mentzer ā these being most experienced masters in this art ā and we have brought them to our city of WĆ¼rzburg on the basis of contracts and equal terms. To them alone and to no one else have we given the opportunity to print accurately and in the best possible way these liturgical books (as indicated above, including those for the choir). We have taken them and their families, their goods and chattels, under our dutiful and paternal protection and defense. Therefore, so that fuller faith might reveal itself to all thanks to such a printing of the books, we have ordered and allowed the master printers to decorate the canonical books which are to be printed in the manner mentioned above with the insignia of our Pontificate and Chapter.6
Bishop Rudolf invited Strasbourg residents Georg Reyser, Stephan Dold, and Mainz cleric Johannes Beckenhub to establish a printing shop in WĆ¼rzburg, the central city within his duchy. Though Reyser had a thriving printing business in Strasbourg with his relative Michael and had acquired citizenship there in 1471, he left the town of 40,000 to move to WĆ¼rzburg, a town of a few thousand, to accept a monopoly on printing with the primary goal of the production of reformed liturgical texts. There is no evidence that Reyser purchased property in WĆ¼rzburg, and the terms of the contract ā protection of goods and chattels ā suggest that his home and printing shop were in the bishopās residence.7 The first book to be issued in WĆ¼rzburg was a folio breviary for the diocese, and Dold, Reyser and Beckenhub are listed in the colophon. The edition is dated after 20 September 1479, the date of the contract, but it is likely that it came off the press the following year.
Reyser printed thirteen editions of service books for WĆ¼rzburg with two sizes of gothic plainchant type: nine missals, an agenda, a Vigiliae mortuorum, a gradual, and an antiphonal (see Table 1.1 in the Appendix). In addition he printed in 1482 the first missal for the diocese of Mainz. His Very Large Antiphonal type was created for the WĆ¼rzburg choirbooks of the 1490s, spaciously laid out on nine staves per page (see Plate 1). The strong verticality and regularity of the neumes are proof that the bishop had made a good investment in the Strasbourg printers. Note the tightly abutting staff segments that make up the staves and the regularity of the double lines at the margins. Each of the punches for plainchant in an extant fifteenth-century set at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp is six inches long, a size thought necessary for the large designs of a choirbook.8 The engraver had to carve lines that extended to the very ends of the steel punch so that printed segments would abut, unlike most type characters such as the clef signs that were carved in the centre of a punch, to be surrounded by space on a piece of type.
Georg Reyser was the Hofbuchdrucker and as such probably wore the livery of the bishop on fine occasions, as did Gutenberg in Mainz. About one-half of his printed editions were devoted to government printing, broadsides or short pamphlets about laws and official news. His press and types would have been the property of the bishop and his work would have been done only upon the order of the bishop. Rudolph subsidised and controlled the press, and paid for the creation of two sets of music punches as well as alphabetic types of extremely fine design. Only after Rudolphās death was Georg awarded the right of citizenship by his successor, after which he printed a few songs and other works in German before his death in 1504.9
EichstƤtt: Michael Reyser and Prince-Bishop Wilhelm von Reichenau
Our next example is Michael Reyser, the relative of Georg who is described as the owner of the house in Strasbourg in which their printing shop was located. By 1479 Georg Reyser had moved to WĆ¼rzburg to serve Rudolph. In that same year he was awarded citizenship in the duchy of EichstƤtt, southeast of WĆ¼rzburg. The bishop of EichstƤtt commissioned Georg to print in WĆ¼rzburg two breviaries for EichstƤtt in 1483 and 1484.10 But the bishopās plans for Georg seem to have changed, and Michael would move to EichstƤtt instead of Georg.
Michael is not mentioned in Georgās contract with the WĆ¼rzburg bishop, but we know that he was an important part of the printing operation there because of a letter written by Bishop Rudolph in 1480 (April 25) to the magistrate and city council of Strasbou...
