Gutenberg completed his Bible around 1455 in Mainz. Printing reached the Czech lands in Pilsen, where the Trojan Chronicle was produced. It is traditionally dated to 1468, but more recent research places it as late as after 1476. Prague, the capital of the kingdom, got printed books later. Why so late, we do not know for certain. A strong scribes' guild is often mentioned, but that is only a hypothesis.
The mystery of the anonymous printer: who printed the first Prague book?
The year 1487. A printed book appears in Prague for the first time - the Psalter. But there is no printer's name on the title page. Historians simply call him the Printer of the Prague Bible, and his identity has not been proven with certainty to this day.
Why he did not sign his work, we do not know. The hypothesis of pressure from the scribes' guild is interesting but undocumented, and the reason for the anonymity has not survived.
Pavel Severín: the printer who became mayor
A generation later, printing was an established craft in Prague. The story of Pavel Severín of Kapí Hora illustrates this well.
Severín began printing in 1520 in the Old Town, and his first signed print dates from May 1522. He was a respected burgher and between 1534 and 1537 held the office of mayor of the Old Town. He printed until 1541 and died in 1553 or 1554.
His workshop was taken over by Severín's son-in-law Jan Kosořský of Kosoř. His prints are documented from 1547 to 1557 and again before 1575.
Bartoloměj Netolický and the rise of Melantrich
At the same time, Bartoloměj Netolický operated in the Lesser Town - the court printer of King Ferdinand I and a man with a reliable monopoly. He was a Catholic, which pleased the monarch, and he printed everything the court needed.
Jiří Melantrich ran his own workshop in Prague, and his path crossed with Netolický's after 1547.
On October 10, 1547, Ferdinand I banned printing in Bohemia after the defeat of the estates' uprising. Melantrich then merged his workshop with Netolický's printing house, and together they published about twenty prints. In 1552 he bought the printing house from him, Netolický being in debt, and the transfer of privileges was confirmed a year later.
Melantrich's Bible and the house At the Two Camels
Melantrich's best-known work is the Czech Bible, published in five editions between 1549 and 1577. In 1557 he received a coat of arms with the predicate of Aventinum, and after 1563 he had the house At the Two Camels rebuilt, where he opened a printing house in 1567. The street where his workshop stood bears his name to this day: Melantrichova.
What happened to the scribes
The scribes' craft did not vanish overnight with printing.
Some scribes probably retrained for work in printing houses, for example as typesetters or proofreaders. The craft thus merely changed its tool.
Daniel Adam of Veleslavín: from printing house to publishing house
After Melantrich, who died on November 19, 1580, his son-in-law Daniel Adam took over the printing house. He had married into the family in 1576 and had co-signed the imprint since 1578. Whether it was a marriage of love or strategic calculation, the sources remain silent.
Daniel Adam, later ennobled as of Veleslavín, ran the printing house as a publisher of Czech learning. He published dictionaries, historical writings, and translations.
Thus, in a hundred years, Prague traveled the path from an anonymous printer in 1487 to the Veleslavín publishing house, which shaped Czech culture. The city of ink and lead.
You can experience what the workshop where this history began looked like in our game Scriptorium. And if you are interested in how a similar story of betrayal and ambition took place a century earlier in Mainz, read the article Gutenberg, Fust and Schöffer's betrayal.