As preparation for the work of printing his famous 42-line Bible, Johann Gutenberg produced two large printing-types. The larger of these two seems to have been designed and made first, but the smaller was in the end preferred for the Bible. When the printing business set up by Gutenberg was dissolved shortly after the Bible was completed, his typographic materials were divided with his former partners, and he seems to have ended up with the larger, earlier of these types. By 1461 the type was in the hands of Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg, who used it to print the Bible that no doubt Gutenberg had originally conceived. In the meantime, a number of broadsides and small pamphlets were produced using the type, and it seems likely that it was then still in Gutenberg’s hands.

These short texts only survive today in single copies or in fragments, leading us to conclude that more of these brief texts may have originally been produced than are now known. What we can guess from the survivors is that many were concerned with the passage and meaning of time, such as almanacs and prognostications. They are among the earliest pieces of printing in the German language known to exist.

One of the odder-looking of these (to modern eyes) is the Cisioianus, a mnemonic poem in twelve verses – one for each month – designed to help the user remember saints’ days and the dates of other church feasts, important in an age when many official documents were dated in this fashion rather than by calendar dates. The name derives from the first two words of the Latin versions, ‘Cisio’, short for Circumcision, and ‘Janus’ short for St Januarius, the two first feast days in January.

This German example, of which no other copy is known, consists of nonsense verses where the number of words in each verse corresponds to the number of days in the month, with a saint’s day appearing at the appropriate place. So the fourth word in the first line for April is Ambrosius, indicating that St Ambrose’s day is 4 April, and we can also easily see the feast of St Remigius (or Remy) on 1 October – here curiously named Herbstmonat, more commonly used in German for September.

Essay by John Goldfinch