 A copy of the Gutenberg Bible in the collection of the New York Public Library Show
While the Gutenberg Bible helped introduce printing to the West, the process was already well established in other parts of the world. Chinese artisans were pressing ink onto paper as early as the second century A.D., and by the 800s, they had produced full-length books using wooden block printing. Movable type also first surfaced in the Far East. Sometime around the mid-11th century, a Chinese alchemist named Pi Sheng developed a system of individual character types made from a mixture of baked clay and glue. Metal movable type was later used in Korea to create the “Jikji,” a collection of Zen Buddhist teachings. The Jikji was first published in 1377, some 75 years before Johannes Gutenberg began churning out his Bibles in Mainz, Germany. 2. Johannes Gutenberg didn’t make any money off the Bibles.Johannes Gutenberg has been called the most influential figure of the last millennium, yet he stands as one of the great question marks of history. Scholars don’t know when he was born, whether he married or had children, where he is buried or even what he looked like. Almost all the information about Gutenberg comes from legal and financial papers, and these indicate that the printing of his Bibles was a particularly tumultuous affair. According to one 1455 document, Gutenberg’s business partner Johann Fust sued him for the return of a large sum of money loaned to help in the production of his Bibles. Gutenberg lost the lawsuit, and the final ruling stipulated that he had to turn his printing equipment and half the completed Bibles over to Fust, who went on to peddle them along with one of Gutenberg’s former assistants, Peter Schoeffer. Gutenberg was driven into financial ruin. He later started a second print shop, but it’s unlikely that he ever turned a profit off his most famous work. 3. The print run was surprisingly small.Credit: Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images By studying the size of Gutenberg’s paper supply, historians have estimated that he produced around 180 copies of his Bible during the early 1450s. That may seem miniscule, but at the time there were probably only around 30,000 books in all of Europe. The splash that Gutenberg’s Bibles made is evident in a letter the future Pope Pius II wrote to Cardinal Carvajal in Rome. In it, he raves that the Bibles are “exceedingly clean and correct in their script, and without error, such as Your Excellency could read effortlessly without glasses.” Thanks to their obvious quality, the Bibles all sold before Gutenberg and Fust had even finished printing them. Some copies supposedly went for around 30 Florins—an enormous sum at the time. 4. There are several different variations of the Gutenberg Bible.Most Gutenberg Bibles contained 1,286 pages bound in two volumes, yet almost no two are exactly alike. Of the 180 copies, some 135 were printed on paper, while the rest were made using vellum, a parchment made from calfskin. Due to the volumes’ considerable heft, it has been estimated that some 170 calfskins were needed to produce just one Gutenberg Bible from vellum. The books also vary in their typography and degree of decoration. Gutenberg originally used red ink to print title headings, or rubrics, before each of the books of the Bible. When this process proved too time consuming, he abandoned it in favor of simply leaving a blank space in the margins. Professional scribes later added unique title and chapter headings by hand, and many owners also hired artists to add lavish illustrations and written characters into their copies. 5. The Soviet Red Army looted two copies from Germany During WWII.Drawing of what Johannes Gutenberg may have looked like During the Soviet occupation of Germany at the end of World War II, the Red Army organized “Trophy Brigades” to seize priceless cultural artifacts from museums and libraries. The Russians considered the plunder an act of revenge for Germany’s own looting and war crimes, and they eventually confiscated millions of book and works of art. Chief among the booty were two copies of the Gutenberg Bible, which were taken from the German Book and Script Museum and the University of Leipzig. The Soviets denied any knowledge of the missing Bibles’ whereabouts until the 1980s, when it was revealed that they were being held in libraries in Moscow. Since then, the German government has made several unsuccessful attempts to secure their return. In 2009, a Russian government agent stole one of the looted Bibles and tried to unload it on the black market for $1.5 million. The man was later captured, however, and Russian authorities recovered both volumes. 6. A thief once tried to steal a Gutenberg Bible from Harvard University’s library.Conjectural model of Gutenberg’s press (Credit: SSPL/Getty Images) In 1969, a man named Vido Aras hid in a bathroom in Harvard’s Widener Library until after the building had closed. He then slinked to the roof and used a rope to climb into the window of the room where the University kept its copy of the Gutenberg Bible. Aras succeeded in prying the two volumes from their case and stashing them in his knapsack, but when he tried to climb back up the rope, he found that the 70-pound tome weighed him down. After struggling for a time, the would-be thief lost his grip and tumbled six stories to the ground below, where he was found the next morning. The Gutenberg Bible was recovered with only minor damage. Aras, on the other hand, suffered a fractured skull. 7. Only 49 copies have survived to today.Out of some 180 original printed copies of the Gutenberg Bible, 49 still exist in library, university and museum collections. Less than half are complete, and some only consist of a single volume or even a few scattered pages. Germany stakes the claim to the most Gutenberg Bibles with 14, while the United States has 10, three of which are owned by the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan. The last sale of a complete Gutenberg Bible took place in 1978, when a copy went for a cool $2.2 million. A lone volume later sold for $5.4 million in 1987, and experts now estimate a complete copy could fetch upwards of $35 million at auction. The Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42) was the earliest major book printed using mass-produced movable metal type in Europe. It marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of printed books in the West. The book is valued and revered for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities[1] as well as its historical significance. It is an edition of the Latin Vulgate printed in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, in present-day Germany. Forty-nine copies (or substantial portions of copies) have survived. They are thought to be among the world's most valuable books, although no complete copy has been sold since 1978.[2][3] In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible displayed in Frankfurt to promote the edition, and that either 158 or 180 copies had been printed (he cited sources for both numbers).
The 36-line Bible, said to be the second printed Bible, is also referred to sometimes as a Gutenberg Bible, but may be the work of another printer. Gutenberg Bible in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. The Gutenberg Bible, an edition of the Vulgate, contains the Latin version of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. It is mainly the work of St Jerome who began his work on the translation in 380 AD, with emendations from the Parisian Bible tradition, and further divergences[4] While it is unlikely that any of his early publications would bear his name, the initial expense of press equipment and materials and of the work to be done before the Bible was ready for sale suggests that he may have started with more lucrative texts, including several religious documents, a German poem, and some editions of Aelius Donatus's Ars Minor, a popular Latin grammar school book.[5][6][7] Preparation of the Bible probably began soon after 1450, and the first finished copies were available in 1454 or 1455.[8] It is not known exactly how long the Bible took to print. The first precisely datable printing is Gutenberg's 31-line Indulgence which is known to already exist on 22 October 1454.[9] Gutenberg made three significant changes during the printing process.[10] Spine of the Lenox copy Some time later, after more sheets had been printed, the number of lines per page was increased from 40 to 42, presumably to save paper. Therefore, pages 1 to 9 and pages 256 to 265, presumably the first ones printed, have 40 lines each. Page 10 has 41, and from there on the 42 lines appear. The increase in line number was achieved by decreasing the interline spacing, rather than increasing the printed area of the page. Finally, the print run was increased, necessitating resetting those pages which had already been printed. The new sheets were all reset to 42 lines per page. Consequently, there are two distinct settings in folios 1–32 and 129–158 of volume I and folios 1–16 and 162 of volume II.[10][11] The most reliable information about the Bible's date comes from a letter. In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible, being displayed to promote the edition, in Frankfurt.[12] It is not known how many copies were printed, with the 1455 letter citing sources for both 158 and 180 copies. Scholars today think that examination of surviving copies suggests that somewhere between 160 and 185 copies were printed, with about three-quarters on paper and the others on vellum.[13][14] A vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible owned by the U.S. Library of Congress In a legal paper, written after completion of the Bible, Johannes Gutenberg refers to the process as Das Werk der Bücher ("the work of the books"). He had introduced the printing press to Europe and created the technology to make printing with movable types finally efficient enough for the mass production of entire books to be feasible.[15] Many book-lovers have commented on the high standards achieved in the production of the Gutenberg Bible, some describing it as one of the most beautiful books ever printed. The quality of both the ink and other materials and the printing itself have been noted.[1] PagesFirst page of the first volume: the epistle of St Jerome to Paulinus from the University of Texas copy. The page has 40 lines. The paper size is 'double folio', with two pages printed on each side (four pages per sheet). After printing the paper was folded once to the size of a single page. Typically, five of these folded sheets (10 leaves, or 20 printed pages) were combined to a single physical section, called a quinternion, that could then be bound into a book. Some sections, however, had as few as four leaves or as many as 12 leaves.[16] The 42-line Bible was printed on the size of paper known as 'Royal'.[17] A full sheet of Royal paper measures 42 x 60 centimetres and a single untrimmed folio leaf measures 42 x 30 cm.[18] There have been attempts to claim that the book was printed on larger paper measuring 44.5 x 30.7 cm,[19] but this assertion is contradicted by the dimensions of existing copies. For example, the leaves of the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, measure 40 × 28.6 cm.[20] This is typical of other folio Bibles printed on Royal paper in the fifteenth century.[21] Most fifteenth-century printing papers have a width-to-height ratio of 1:1.4 (e.g. 30:42 cm) which is mathematically a ratio of 1 to the square root of 2. Man suggests that this ratio was chosen to match the so-called Golden Ratio of 1:1.6; in fact the ratios are not at all similar (a difference of about 12 per cent). The ratio of 1:1.4 was a long established one for medieval paper sizes.[22] A single complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible has 1,288 pages(4 X 322 = 1288) (usually bound in two volumes); with four pages per folio-sheet, 322 sheets of paper are required per copy.[23] The Bible's paper consists of linen fibers and is thought to have been imported from Caselle in Piedmont, Italy based on the watermarks present throughout the volume.[24] InkIn Gutenberg's time, inks used by scribes to produce manuscripts were water-based. Gutenberg developed an oil-based ink that would better adhere to his metal type. His ink was primarily carbon, but also had a high metallic content, with copper, lead, and titanium predominating.[25] Head of collections at the British Library, Dr Kristian Jensen, described it thus: "if you look [at the pages of The Gutenberg Bible] closely you will see this is a very shiny surface. When you write you use a water-based ink, you put your pen into it and it runs off. Now if you print that's exactly what you don't want. One of Gutenberg's inventions was an ink which wasn't ink, it's a varnish. So what we call printer's ink is actually a varnish, and that means it sticks to its surface."[26][better source needed] TypeEach unique character requires a master piece of type in order to be replicated. Given that each letter has uppercase and lowercase forms, and the number of various punctuation marks and ligatures (e.g. the character "fi", commonly used in writing) the Gutenberg Bible needed a set of 290 master characters. It seems probable that six pages, containing 15,600 characters altogether, would be set at any one moment.[5] Type styleThe Gutenberg Bible is printed in the blackletter type styles that would become known as Textualis (Textura) and Schwabacher. The name Textura refers to the texture of the printed page: straight vertical strokes combined with horizontal lines, giving the impression of a woven structure. Gutenberg already used the technique of justification, that is, creating a vertical, not indented, alignment at the left and right-hand sides of the column. To do this, he used various methods, including using characters of narrower widths, adding extra spaces around punctuation, and varying the widths of spaces around words.[27][28] Rubrication, illumination and bindingDetail showing both rubrication and illumination. Initially the rubrics—the headings before each book of the Bible—were printed, but this practice was quickly abandoned at an unknown date, and gaps were left for rubrication to be added by hand. A guide of the text to be added to each page, printed for use by rubricators, survives.[29] The spacious margin allowed illuminated decoration to be added by hand. The amount of decoration presumably depended on how much each buyer could or would pay. Some copies were never decorated.[30] The place of decoration can be known or inferred for about 30 of the surviving copies. It is possible that 13 of these copies received their decoration in Mainz, but others were worked on as far away as London.[31] The vellum Bibles were more expensive, and perhaps for this reason tend to be more highly decorated, although the vellum copy in the British Library is completely undecorated.[32] There has been speculation that the "Master of the Playing Cards," an unidentified engraver who has been called "the first personality in the history of engraving,"[33] was partly responsible for the illumination of the copy held by the Princeton University library. However, all that can be said for certain is that the same model book was used for some of the illustrations in this copy and for some of the Master's illustrated playing cards.[34] Although many Gutenberg Bibles have been rebound over the years, nine copies retain fifteenth-century bindings. Most of these copies were bound in either Mainz or Erfurt.[31] Most copies were divided into two volumes, the first volume ending with The Book of Psalms. Copies on vellum were heavier and for this reason were sometimes bound in three or four volumes.[1] The Bible seems to have sold out immediately, with initial sales to owners as far away as England and possibly Sweden and Hungary.[1][35] At least some copies are known to have sold for 30 florins, about three years' wages for a clerk.[36][37] Although this made them significantly cheaper than manuscript Bibles, most students, priests or other people of ordinary income would not have been able to afford them. It is assumed that most were sold to monasteries, universities and particularly wealthy individuals.[29] At present only one copy is known to have been privately owned in the fifteenth century. Some are known to have been used for communal readings in monastery refectories; others may have been for display rather than use, and a few were certainly used for study.[1] Kristian Jensen suggests that many copies were bought by wealthy and pious laypeople for donation to religious institutions.[32] The Gutenberg Bible had a profound effect on the history of the printed book. Textually, it also had an influence on future editions of the Bible. It provided the model for several later editions, including the 36 Line Bible, Mentelin's Latin Bible, and the first and third Eggestein Bibles. The third Eggestein Bible was set from the copy of the Gutenberg Bible now in Cambridge University Library. The Gutenberg Bible also had an influence on the Clementine edition of the Vulgate commissioned by the Papacy in the late sixteenth century.[38][39] Joseph Martini, a New York book dealer, found that the Gutenberg Bible held by the library of the General Theological Seminary in New York had a forged leaf, carrying part of Chapter 14, all of Chapter 15, and part of Chapter 16 of the Book of Ezekiel. It was impossible to tell when the leaf had been inserted into the volume. It was replaced in the fall of 1953, when a patron donated the corresponding leaf from a defective Gutenberg second volume which was being broken up and sold in parts.[40] This made it "the first imperfect Gutenberg Bible ever restored to completeness."[40] In 1978, this copy was sold for US$2.2 million to the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart, Germany.[41] Locations of known complete Gutenberg Bibles. As of 2009, 49 Gutenberg Bibles are known to exist, but of these only 21 are complete. Others have pages or even whole volumes missing. In addition, there are a substantial number of fragments, some as small as individual leaves, which are likely to represent about another 16 copies. Many of these fragments have survived because they were used as part of the binding of later books.[35] Substantially complete copies
Binding of the copy at the University of Texas at Austin Today, few copies remain in religious institutions, with most now owned by university libraries and other major scholarly institutions. After centuries in which all copies seem to have remained in Europe, the first Gutenberg Bible reached North America in 1847. It is now in the New York Public Library.[90] In the last hundred years, several long-lost copies have come to light, considerably improving the understanding of how the Bible was produced and distributed.[35] In 1921 a New York rare book dealer, Gabriel Wells, bought a damaged paper copy, dismantled the book and sold sections and individual leaves to book collectors and libraries. The leaves were sold in a portfolio case with an essay written by A. Edward Newton, and were referred to as "Noble Fragments".[91][92] In 1953 Charles Scribner's Sons, also book dealers in New York, dismembered a paper copy of volume II. The largest portion of this, the New Testament, is now owned by Indiana University. The matching first volume of this copy was subsequently discovered in Mons, Belgium.[13] The only copy held outside Europe or North America is the first volume of a Gutenberg Bible (Hubay 45) at Keio University in Tokyo. The Humanities Media Interface Project (HUMI) at Keio University is known for its high-quality digital images of Gutenberg Bibles and other rare books.[66] Under the direction of Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya, the HUMI team has made digital reproductions of 11 sets of the bible in nine institutions, including both full-text facsimiles held in the collection of the British Library.[93] The last sale of a complete Gutenberg Bible took place in 1978, which sold for $2.4 million. This copy is now in Austin, Texas.[90] The price of a complete copy today is estimated at $25−35 million.[2][3] A two-volume paper edition of the Gutenberg Bible was stolen from Moscow State University in 2009 and subsequently recovered in an FSB sting operation in 2013.[94] Possession of a Gutenberg Bible by a library has been equated to keeping a "trophy book".[95]
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Page 2The 36-line Bible, also known as the "Bamberg Bible",[1] (and sometimes called a "Gutenberg Bible") was the second moveable-type-printed edition of the Bible. It is believed to have been printed in Bamberg, Germany, circa 1458–1460. No printer's name appears in the book, but it is possible that Johannes Gutenberg was the printer.[1] The primary, or particular meaning of the term Gutenberg Bible, is the first moveable-type-printed edition of the Bible, circa 1450–1455. The Gutenberg has 42 lines of text on each page in comparison to the Bamberg's 36 lines, and the Bibles are thus sometimes therefore referred to by this criterion. However, because the 36-line Bible could have been printed by Gutenberg and was printed at a similar time, it is sometimes referred to by, and included in, the term "Gutenberg Bible". In the past, some scholars have argued that the 36-line Bible was an early, and primitive, version of Gutenberg's 42-line Bible, which would have meant that it was printed prior to 1455.[2] Careful comparisons of the texts, however, have since shown that (with the exception of the first few pages) the 36-line Bible was set from the Gutenberg's 42-line Bible, thus proving the 42-line was the first.[3][4][page needed] The date "1461" was marked by a rubricator (a scribe who hand-wrote initials and other items in red text, for decoration or emphasis) written in one copy of the 36-line Bible, indicating that it would not have been printed any later than this.[5] Most scholars now agree that the 36-line Bible can be dated to c. 1458–60, making it the second printed edition of the Bible.[1] An existing fragment of a 40-line Bible was probably printed around 1458 or earlier, and printed with the same type. However it is believed that the fragment is only a trial piece, and that this Bible was never fully printed. It has been suggested that the first few pages of the 36-line Bible (the pages that were not made from Gutenberg's 42-line Bible) were set from the same manuscript used for the 40-line Bible fragment.[3] Several pieces of evidence suggest that the 36-line Bible was printed in Bamberg, Germany. Firstly, the paper used is from a group of Italian papers known to have been used at Bamberg, and not found in use at Mainz, the location of Gutenberg's press. Second, those copies in early bindings show evidence of having been bound in or near Bamberg. Thirdly, many copies can be shown to have early Bamberg provenances. Furthermore, fragments of the 36-line Bible have been found among the waste-paper used in binding executed at Bamberg or for other books printed there.[6] The printer's identity is unknown. It may have been Gutenberg, someone who had worked for him, or someone who had bought type and other equipment from him.[7] Several pieces of evidence show that Gutenberg was linked in some way with the 36-line Bible. In the 1980s cyclotron analysis performed by Richard Schwab and Thomas Cahill established that the ink used was similar to that used for the 42-line Bible.[2] The type is a version of the so-called D-K type, also known as the 36-line Bible type.[8] This type is crude and older than that used for the 42-line Bible. It had been used for some very early works, probably predating the 42-line Bible and almost certainly printed by Gutenberg, such as an Ars minor by Donatus (various printings c. 1452-53) and several leaves of a pamphlet called the Turkish Calendar for 1455 (likely printed in late 1454), hence the name D-K for "Donatus-Kalendar".[8][9] Gutenberg lost much of his original equipment to his banker Johann Fust in a lawsuit in 1455, and it is possible this type was the only one left available to him.[10] A number of works seem to have been printed with the D-K type in Mainz between 1455 and 1459, perhaps by Gutenberg.[11] Albrecht Pfister, who is known to have used the D-K type in Bamberg from at least 1461, has also been suggested as the printer.[5][12] Many authorities believe that Pfister is unlikely because later works known to be by him have poorer-quality printing.[13][14] Fourteen complete or nearly complete copies are known, all on paper, plus many fragments and single leaves from vellum copies, which have survived because they were used in the bindings of later books.[15][page range too broad] The small number of surviving copies suggests that far fewer were printed than of the 42-line Bible. A higher proportion may have been printed on vellum.[citation needed] Eight of these copies are in Germany. This Bible has been much less sought after than the 42-line Bible, with a higher proportion remaining in Germany and only one having been acquired by an American library, an incomplete copy at Princeton University Library. A copy is on permanent display in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery in the British Library, and another is contained in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp.[citation needed]
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