COSTER, LAURENS. - A Dutchman from Haarlem (his real name was Janszoon), who lived in the middle of the 15th century, whom a nationalist tradition holds to have been the true inventor of printing.

A Chronicle of Cologne, by G. Koelkoff and published in 1499, reports the testimony of Ulrich Zell, a pupil of Gutenberg, according to whom the master would have profited, for his invention, from the technique used in Holland for the printing of certain Grammars of Donatus. This circumstance, connected with other clues contained in various Dutch chronicles, and supported by the publication of the Batavia of Adrianus Junius (1588), in which a fantastic tale of a servant of C. is related, gave rise to a legend according to which the Dutchman, having carved some beech characters for his own amusement, had the idea of replacing them with others of lead, and with these printed various books, among them a Speculum. But Gutenberg, having learned of his process at Aix in 1440, would have stolen the press and the type and would have carried them first to Cologne, then to Mainz.

The incredibility of certain elements, the absence of any reliable biographical datum, the doubt that the same Speculum, of which only the memory survives and which is known to have had its sheets printed on one side only (anopisthographic), could have been a xylographic book, lead one to regard the Costerian tradition as purely fantastic. Nor can it even be asserted that he was the first Dutch printer, and there has not even been lacking those who have gone so far as to call the existence of C. into doubt. Unfortunately the editions attributed to him lack a colophon, and therefore nothing can be said about the place and date of their publication.

Bibliography10 works

BIBL.: G. Meermann, Origines typographicae, 2 vols., The Hague 1765; D. Carutti, L. C.: notizia intorno alla sua vita ed alla invenzione della tipografia in Olanda, Turin 1868; A. van der Linde, The Haarlem Legend, London 1871; J. H. Hessels, Gutenberg: was he the inventor of printing?, ibid. 1882; id., Haarlem the birth-place of printing, not Menz, ibid. 1887; id., The so-called Gutenberg documents, ibid. 1911; G. Zedler, Von C. zu Gutenberg, Leipzig 1921; id., Die neuere Gutenbergforschung und die Lösung der Costerfrage, Frankfurt am Main 1923; id., Der holländ. Frühdruck und die ersten Versuche Gutenbergs in Strassburg, in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 1930, pp. 53-66; G. Fumagalli, Bibliografia, 4th ed., Milan 1935, pp. 57-59. See also the observations on the matter by C. Mortet, Les origines et les débuts de l'imprimerie, d'après les recherches les plus récentes, Paris 1922, p. 54 ff.

Alessandro Pratesi

@incollection{ec4_coster_laurens, author = {Pratesi, Alessandro}, title = {Coster, laurens}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IV}, pages = {777--779}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/coster-laurens} }

One of some 20,000 entries brought back from the twelve printed volumes (1948–54). Spotted something? Help us improve it.

Coster, Laurens

About this entry