Gutenberg Bible (also known as the
42-line
Bible, the
Mazarin Bible or the
B42) was one of the first books printed in Europe.
It is an
edition of the Vulgate, printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz
, Germany in
the 1450s. Although it was not Gutenberg's first work, it
was his major achievement, and has iconic status in the West as the
book that marks the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age
of the printed book.
The
36-line Bible is also sometimes
referred to as a Gutenberg Bible, but is possibly the work of
another printer.
Relationship to earlier Bibles
In appearance the Gutenberg Bible closely resembles the
manuscript Bibles that were being
produced at the time. The
Giant
Bible of Mainz, probably produced in Mainz in 1452-3, has been
suggested as the particular model Gutenberg used.
The text of the Gutenberg Bible is traditional, falling within the
Paris Vulgate group of texts. Manuscript Bibles all had texts that
differed slightly, and the copy used by Gutenberg as the exemplar
for his Bible has not been discovered.
Printing history
Preparation of the Bible probably began soon after 1450, and the
first finished copies were available in 1454 or 1455. However, it
is not known exactly how long the Bible took to print.
Gutenberg made three significant changes during the printing
process. The first sheets were
rubricated by being passed twice through the
printing press, using black and then
red ink. This was soon abandoned, with spaces being left for
rubrication to be added by hand.
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, probably to 180 copies,
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.
Our most reliable information about the Bible's date comes from a
letter. In March
1455,
Enea Silvio Piccolomini wrote that he had seen
pages from the Gutenberg Bible, being displayed to promote the
edition, in Frankfurt..
It is believed that in total 180 copies of the Bible were produced,
135 on paper and 45 on
vellum.
The production process: 'Das Werk der Bücher'
In a legal paper, written after completion of the Bible, Gutenberg
refers to the process as 'Das Werk der Bücher' :The work of the
books. He had invented the
printing
press and was the first European to print with
movable type. But his greatest achievement was
arguably demonstrating that the whole process of printing actually
produced books.
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 volumes ever printed. The quality of both the
ink and other materials and the printing itself have been
noted.
Paper and vellum
A single complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible has 1,272 pages; with
4 pages per folio-sheet, 318 sheets of paper are required per copy.
The 45 copies printed on vellum required 11,130 sheets. The 135
copies on paper required 49,290 sheets of paper. The handmade paper
used by Gutenberg was of fine quality and was imported from Italy.
Each sheet contains a
watermark, which may
be seen when the paper is held up to the light, left by the
papermold.
Pages
The paper size is 'double folio', with two pages printed on each
side (making a total of four pages per sheet). After printing the
paper is folded once to the size of a single page. Typically, five
of these folded sheets (carrying 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, carried as
few as 4 leaves or as many as 12 leaves. It is possible that some
sections were printed in a larger number, especially those printed
later in the publishing process, and sold unbound. The pages were
not numbered. This whole technique of course was not new, since it
was used already to make white-paper books to be written
afterwards. New was the necessity to determine
beforehand
the right place and orientation of each page on the five sheets, so
as to end up in the right reading sequence. Also new was the
technique of getting the printed area correctly located on each
page.
The folio size, 307 x 445 mm, has the ratio of 1.45. The
printed area had the same ratio, and was
shifted out of the middle to leave a 2:1 white margin, both
horizontally and vertically. Historian John Man writes that the
ratio was chosen because of being close to the
golden ratio of 1.61. To reach this ratio more
closely the vertical size should be 338 mm, but there is no
reason why Gutenberg would leave this non-trivial difference of
8 mm go by in such a detailed work in other aspects.
Ink
Gutenberg had to develop a new kind of ink, an oil-based one (as
compared with the traditional water-based ink used in manuscripts),
so that it would stick better to the metal types. His ink was based
on carbon, with high metallic content, including copper, lead, and
titanium.
Type
The first part of the Gutenberg idea was using a single,
hand-carved character to create identical copies of itself. Cutting
a single letter could take a craftsman a day of work. A single page
taking 2500 letters, crafting per page was unattainable. A less
labour intensive method of reproduction was needed. Copies were
produced by stamping the original into an iron plate, called a
matrix. A rectangular tube was then connected to the matrix,
creating a container in which molten
type
metal could be poured. Once cooled, the solid metal form was
released from the tube. The end result was a rectangular block of
metal with the form of the desired character protruding from the
end. This piece of type could be put in a line, facing up, with
other pieces of type. These lines were arranged to form blocks of
text, which could be inked and pressed against paper, transferring
the desired text to the paper.
Each 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 sequence 'fi'
combined in one character, commonly used in writing) the Gutenberg
Bible needed a set of 290 master characters.
The scholar John Man has calculated the number of pieces of types
required. A single page has about 2600 characters. It seems
probable that six pages, containing 15600 characters altogether,
would be set at any one moment. Since it would take a craftsman a
whole day to hand-cut type for one character, such a large number
was probably produced through the mass-production of copies of one
master-type.
Type style
The Gutenberg Bible is printed in the
blackletter type styles that would become known
as
Textualis and
Schwabacher. The name texture 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. On top
of this, he subsequently let punctuation marks go beyond that
vertical line, thereby using the massive black characters to make
this justification stronger to the eye.
Rubrication, illumination and binding
Detail showing both rubrication and
illumination
Copies left the Gutenberg workshop unbound, without decoration, and
for the most part without rubrication.
Initially the rubrics -- the headings before each book of the Bible
-- were printed, but this experiment was quickly abandoned, 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.
The spacious margin allowed for illuminated decoration to be added
by hand. The amount of decoration presumably depended on how much
each buyer could or would pay for. Some copies were never
decorated. The place of decoration can be known or inferred for
about 30 of the surviving copies. Perhaps 13 of these received
their decoration in Mainz, but others may have been worked on as
far away as London and Scotland. 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.
Although many Gutenberg Bibles have been rebound over the years, 9
copies retain fifteenth-century bindings. Most of these copies were
bound in either Mainz or Erfurt.
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.
Early owners
The Bible seems to have sold out immediately, with initial sales to
owners as far away as England.
At least some copies are known to have sold for 30 florins.
Although this made them significantly cheaper than manuscript
Bibles, most students, priests or other people of ordinary income
would have been unable to afford them. It is assumed that most were
sold to monasteries, universities and particularly wealthy
individuals. 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. Kristian Jensen suggests that many copies were
bought by wealthy and pious laypeople for donation to religious
institutions.
Influence on later Bibles
The Gutenberg Bible had an incalculable 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 the
36 Line Bible, while a Strasbourg edition of
the Bible from 1470 is known to have been set from the copy of 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.
Surviving copies
As of 2009, 47 or 48 42-line Bibles are known to exist, but of
these only 21 are complete. Others have leaves or even whole
volumes missing. The figure of 48 copies includes volumes in Trier
and Indiana which seem to be the two parts of one copy. In
addition, there are a substantial number of fragments, some as
small as individual leaves.
There are twelve copies on vellum, although only four of these are
complete and one is of the
New
Testament only.
The country with the most copies is Germany, which has twelve,
while the United States has eleven and the United Kingdom eight.
New York has four copies, Paris and London have three each, and
Mainz, the Vatican City and Moscow have two each.
Institutions which have copies on permanent display include the
Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, the British Library and the Library of
Congress.
Copy numbers listed below are as found in the
Incunabula Short Title
Catalogue, taken from a 1985 survey of existing copies by
Ilona Hubay; the two copies in Russia
were not known to exist in 1985, and so were not catalogued.
Substantially complete copies of the 42-line
Bible
| Country |
Holding institution |
Hubay-nr |
Notes |
| Austria (1) |
Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek , Vienna |
27 |
Complete, paper |
| Belgium (1) |
Bibliothèque universitaire, Mons |
1 |
Incomplete, paper |
| Denmark (1) |
Kongelige Bibliotek,
Copenhagen |
12 |
Vol. II, incomplete, paper |
| France (4) |
Bibliothèque
nationale , Paris |
15 |
Complete, vellum |
| 17 |
Incomplete, paper. Contains note by binder dating it to August
1456 |
Bibliothèque Mazarine , Paris |
16 |
Complete, paper |
Bibliothèque Municipale, Saint-Omer |
18 |
Incomplete, paper |
| Germany (12) |
Gutenberg Museum , Mainz |
8 |
One copy is vol. I, incomplete, paper; the other
both vols., incomplete, paper. It is unclear which is which.
online images of the 2 volume copy |
| 9 |
| Landesbibliothek, Fulda |
4 |
Vol. I, incomplete, vellum |
| Universitätsbibliothek, Leipzig |
14 |
Incomplete, vellum |
Niedersächsische Staats-und
Universitätsbibliothek , Göttingen |
2 |
Complete, vellum online images |
Staatsbibliothek , Berlin |
3 |
Incomplete, vellum |
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek , Munich |
5 |
Complete, paper online images of vol. 1 vol. 2 |
| Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt-am-Main |
6 |
Complete, paper |
| Hofbibliothek, Aschaffenburg |
7 |
Incomplete, paper |
Württembergische
Landesbibliothek , Stuttgart |
10 |
Incomplete, paper. Purchased in April 1978 for 2.2 million US
dollars. |
| Stadtbibliothek, Trier |
11 |
Vol. I?, incomplete, paper. Possibly sister volume to Hubay 46,
in Indiana |
| Landesbibliothek, Kassel |
12 |
Vol. I, incomplete, paper |
| Japan (1) |
Keio University Library , Tokyo |
45 |
Vol. I, incomplete, paper. Purchased in October 1987 for either
4.9 or 5.4 million US dollars (sources disagree) online images |
| Poland (1) |
Biblioteka Seminarium Duchownego, Pelpin |
28 |
Incomplete, paper online
images of vol. 1 vol.
2 |
| Portugal (1) |
Biblioteca Nacional de
Portugal , Lisbon |
29 |
Complete, paper |
| Russia (2) |
Russian National Library |
- |
Incomplete, vellum |
Lomonosov University Library, Moscow |
- |
Complete, paper |
| Spain (2) |
Biblioteca Universitaria y Provincial, Seville |
32 |
New Testament only, paper online images |
| Biblioteca Pública Provincial, Burgos |
31 |
Complete, paper |
| Switzerland (1) |
Bibliotheca Bodmeriana , Cologny |
30 |
Incomplete, paper |
| United Kingdom (8) |
British Library , London |
? |
Complete, vellum online images |
| ? |
Complete, paper online images |
National Library of Scotland , Edinburgh |
26 |
Complete, paper online images |
Lambeth Palace Library , London |
20 |
New Testament only, vellum |
| Eton College Library,
Eton |
23 |
Complete, paper |
John Rylands Library , Manchester |
25 |
Complete, paper online images of 11 pages |
Bodleian Library , Oxford |
24 |
Complete, paper |
University Library , Cambridge |
22 |
Complete, paper online images of vol. 1 vol. 2 |
| United States (11) |
The Morgan Library &
Museum , New York |
37 |
Incomplete, vellum |
| 38 |
Complete, paper |
| 44 |
Incomplete, paper |
Library of Congress , Washington DC |
35 |
Complete, vellum online images |
New York Public Library |
42 |
Incomplete, paper |
Widener Library , Harvard University |
40 |
Complete, paper |
Beinecke Library , Yale University |
41 |
Complete, paper |
Scheide Library, Princeton
University |
43 |
Incomplete, paper |
| Lilly Library, Indiana
University |
|
Incomplete, paper. Possibly sister volume to Hubay 11, in
Trier |
Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino |
36 |
Incomplete, vellum |
Harry
Ransom Humanities Research Center , University of Texas at Austin |
39 |
Complete, paper. Purchased in 1978 for 2.4 million US dollars.
online images |
| Vatican City (2) |
Bibliotheca Apostolica
Vaticana |
33 |
Incomplete, vellum |
| 34 |
Vol I, incomplete, paper |
Recent history
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.
One copy is known to have been lost during the destruction of the
library of the
Catholic
University of Leuven in 1914.
In the 1920s a New York 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. (Also referred to as a "Noble Fragment") These leaves
now sell for $20,000–$100,000 depending upon condition and the
desirability of the page.
During the Second World War the Red Army removed two copies from
Leipzig. Their whereabouts were unknown for many years until it was
revealed they were in Moscow.
The last sale of a complete Gutenberg Bible took place in 1978. It
fetched $2.2 million. This copy is now in Stuttgart.
On 22 October 1987 a Japanese buyer, Eiichi Kobayashi, a director
at the Maruzen Company, purchased the first volume of a Gutenberg
Bible (Hubay 45) for $5.4 million. This was the first, and so far
only, copy, to be acquired by a non-western country.
In recent
years many copies of the Gutenberg Bible have been digitized, mostly by a team from Keio
University. Many
of these images are available online, and are aiding the scholarly
study of the Bible by allowing comparison of the typesetting and
decoration of different copies.
See also
Notes
- British Library, The text of the Bible accessed 4 July 2009
- University of Texas -The Gutenberg Bible
- British Library, Three phases in the printing process accessed 4 July
2009
- British Library, Three phases in the printing process accessed 4 July
2009.
- British Library, The differences in line lengths per page: pictures
showing differences between differences between the Keio copy (40
lines per page) and the British Library copy (42 lines per page) in
Genesis 1. Accessed 10 July 2009
- British Library, Gutenberg's life: the years of the Bible. Accessed 10
July 2009
- British Library, Gutenberg Bible: background accessed 10 July 2009
- British Library, Making the Bible: the gatherings accessed 10 July
2009
- British Library, Making the Bible: the ink accessed 18 October
2009.
- Television presentation, "The Machine that Made Us", presenter:
Stephen Fry
- TORBJØRN ENG, "InDesign, the hz-program and Gutenberg's
secret",http://www.typografi.org/justering/gut_hz/gutenberg_hz_english.html,
retrieved 8 Oct 2009
- British Library, The copy on paper - decoration, accessed 18 October
2008.
- Clausen Books Gutenberg Bible Census accessed 7 July 2009
- Kenyon College Library
http://lbis.kenyon.edu/sca/exhibits/incunabula/z241b58.phtml
- New York Times
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