De civitate dei

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De civitate dei

Printer Peter Schöffer, German

Author Aurelius Augustinus

Place of OriginGermany (Mainz)

Date1473

Dimensions14 3/4 x 10 5/8 in.

Mediumprinted book with hand rubrication

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1926.47

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Label TextSchöffer had been one of Gutenberg's most valued employees. When the wealthy financier Johann Fust foreclosed Gutenberg's workshop in 1455, he arranged a partnership with Schöffer, who later married Fust's daughter. Fust and Schöffer quickly became the leading printer/publisher of their day. Schöffer was the master book maker; Fust the successful book salesman. Their partnership yielded many important firsts: the first book with printed two-color initials (red and black); The first book to bear a printed date of publication (1462); the first book to carry a printer's imprint and device (their's was two shields hanging on a branch); and the first to include a colophhon (the information, placed at the end of a book, about the book's production). Johann Fust died in 1466, but Schöffer continued to be most enterprising in book production, whereby making Mainz an influential printing center. St. Augustine was considered the Christian thinker of antiquity. THE CITY OF GOD, which espoused a religious philosophy of predestination, was his greatest work.