The Gutenberg Bible is where it all started: it is the first major book printed using movable type in the West. Known variously as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible, or simply the B42, it has been written about extensively both by scholars and in the media. Below is an informative and entertaining video featuring Stephen Fry exploring how Gutenberg managed to create his type, press, and this famous Bible.

You could write an entire book on the Gutenberg Bible. In fact, that’s just what Eric Marshall White did. His book is a great place to find out more. In the meantime, though, here a few facts to consider.

Johann Gutenberg, born in Mainz, Germany, around 1400, came from an aristocratic family with ties to the local metalworking industry. It was in Strasbourg, in present-day France, where he commenced his early experiments with movable metallic type. By the mid-1450s, he had refined his printing process with movable type, which he used to print St Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible, known simply as the Gutenberg Bible.

Interestingly, Gutenberg operated two presses: one focused on commercial texts like indulgences, and the other was devoted to the printing of the Bible. It was a massive undertaking, however, and he soon ran into financial trouble. In 1455, Johann Fust, Gutenberg’s moneylender, accused him of misusing funds. A lawsuit soon followed resulting in Gutenberg losing his shop and most of his bibles. That left Fust in effective control of this marvellous new invention. The legal records produced in the process are the reason we know as much as we do about this singular moment in history.

Before he went bankrupt, scholars estimate (deduced from a letter by Enea Silvio Piccolomini who saw samples of Gutenberg’s work in Frankfurt in 1455) that Gutenberg produced approximately 180 copies: around 150 on paper and the remaining 30 or so on vellum. Amazingly, the production of a single vellum copy required the skins of 170 calves. Upon leaving the printer’s workshop, each Gutenberg Bible printed on paper was priced at about thirty florins, equivalent to three years’ wages for a clerk. The vellum copies, of course, commanded an even higher price. It is easy to see how Gutenberg, having to bear such enormous capital costs before reaping a single florin, ended up walking a financial tightrope.

BIblia Latina, Mainz, Johann Gutenberg, c1455. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Photographed by Scott McLaren.

Today only 49 copies of the Gutenberg Bible exist and among those only 20 are complete. The rarity and historical significance of these survivors make them exceptionally precious artefacts in the world of antiquarian books. William Scheide, a lifelong bibliophile and philanthropist, was the last person to privately own a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. When he died in 2015, at the age of 100, his Gutenberg Bible passed to Princeton University Library. Today, there are no copies in private hands. In the extremely unlikely event that a complete (or near complete) copy should ever appear on the market again, it would command an extraordinary — almost unimaginable — price. Single leaves typically fetch between $50,000 USD and $60,000 USD. In 2015, the same year Scheide died, eight pages of a Gutenberg Bible sold for nearly a million dollars at Sotheby’s.

The Gutenberg Bible is not just a historical milestone: it is a remarkable piece of craftsmanship. Gutenberg’s types were strikingly beautiful and he used a special ink of his own invention that has remained crisp for more than five centuries. The Gutenberg Bible made its first commercial appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair, a notable marketplace dating back to 1074. But it was Fust, not Gutenberg, who was in charge of those precious wares. There is a wonderful apocryphal story about how some prospective buyers, upon carefully examining Fust’s bibles and finding them all to be identical, accused him of having produced them using diabolical means. Indeed, Fust has sometimes even been confused with the necromancer “Doctor” Johann Georg Faustus who reputedly sold his soul to Mephistopheles for worldly knowledge and pleasure. Gutenberg would no doubt have thought that confusion quite understandable.

Despite all the attention The Gutenberg Bible has attracted, a few mysteries still remain. For example, the precise year in which the Gutenberg Bible was completed is not entirely certain. In fact, the only determinative evidence we have for that is a dated notation of “1455” on the binding of a single surviving paper copy.

Johan Gutenberg: Creator Of The First Printing Press with Stephen Fry.

Further Reading

  • The Gutenberg Bible, Taschen, 2018. Full-colour two-volume facsimile of one of the copies currently held in the Bibliotheque nationale de France.
  • Eric Marshall White. Editio princeps: A History of the Gutenberg Bible. London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2017.
  • Davis, Margaret Leslie. The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book’s Five-Hundred Year Odyssey. New York: TarcherPerigee, 2019.