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There is no doubt whatever that the Catholicon type appears at Eltvil in the hands of the two brothers Bechtermuntze in 1467, for in the Vocabularius ex quo there is a clear colophon stating that the book was commenced by Henry Bechtermuntze and finished by Nicholas Bechtermuntze and Wygand Spyess of Orthenberg on the 4th of November 1467.

There has been a great deal of argument on the question how these types came into the hands of the Eltvil printers while Gutenberg was alive. We know that Gutenberg became a pensioner of Adolph II. in 1465, and would therefore presumably give up printing in that year. The types and printing materials which he had been using belonged to a certain Dr. Homery, and were reclaimed by him in 1468. The distance from Eltvil to Mainz is only some five or six miles, and the Rhine afforded easy means of communication between the two places, so that the difficulty of the transference of type backwards and forwards seems, as a rule, very much overstated. Although we have no evidence of printing at Eltvil before 1467, still it will be best to give an account of the press in this chapter, since it was so intimately connected with the early press at Mainz.