What are Gutenberg Bibles and why do they matter 500 years after their printing?

NEW YORK (AP) — This is not just any book.

Back in 1454, when the Bible became the first work printed on a large scale using a movable type printing press, Johannes Gutenberg knew exactly what he was doing.

To get the most out of his invention, the German goldsmith offered his unpublished version of the Holy Scriptures to the only wealthy clients who read Latin: the hierarchs of the Catholic Church.

Although he initially planned to print 150 Bibles, demand was such that he opted to produce 30 more. Of those 180 “Gutenberg Bibles,” about 48 are preserved.

None are known to be in the hands of private collectors, but among the institutions that preserve copies is the Morgan Library in New York.

Its main room displays one printed on paper, but in its vaults — along with another 120,000 books — it keeps another pair that were printed on animal skin.

What makes these Bibles so special and why do they still matter more than 500 years after they were printed?

Here is a look at the influence they had on the history of printing, books and the transformations they brought to Christianity.

What is a Gutenberg Bible?

The term refers to each Bible—composed of two volumes—that Gutenberg printed in his workshop in the 15th century.

Until before that, all existing Bibles were handmade copies. That process could take up to a year, said John McQuillen, curator at the Morgan Library. In contrast, Gutenberg is believed to have finished all 180 of his Bibles in a span of six months.

Each Gutenberg Bible has about 1,300 pages and weighs about 30 kilos. All were printed in Latin in two columns, with 42 lines per page. Most were produced on paper, although a quarter were printed on animal skin.

When it came off the press, the sheets had only black letters printed on them. The capital letters in color and the binding were added later, depending on the taste and budget of each buyer.

Many of these sets were added in Germany, but others in France, Belgium and Spain. That’s why each Gutenberg Bible is unique, McQuillen said.

Why did your impression give the story a twist?

Gutenberg’s invention caused complete biblical texts to multiply massively.

The first effects of this massification were notable among academics and priests, who for the first time had previously unthinkable access to the Holy Scriptures, said Richard Rex, professor of Reformation history at the University of Cambridge.

“This massive multiplication even led to the term ‘Bible’ being widely adopted to describe the book,” Rex explained. “There are medieval authors who once mentioned the term, but ‘Scriptures’ was more common.”

Psychologically speaking, he added, there was also another effect: the character and appearance of the printed text—its accuracy and uniformity—contributed to the tendency to resolve theological arguments on the basis of the printed Bible. That is, greater authority began to be given to printed texts.

Later, the printing of Bibles in other languages—especially Martin Luther’s Bible and William Tyndale’s New Testament, in the early and mid-1520s respectively—affected the relationship that the devout had with their beliefs and the clergy.

The limits of literacy still meant that access to the Bible was not universal, but faith leaders gradually ceased to be its sole interpreters.

“The phenomenon of laypeople questioning or interpreting biblical texts became more and more common after 1520,” Rex said.

More than a book

About three times a year, a Morgan Library curator turns the page of the Gutenberg Bible that is always on display in its main room.

In its pages lies not only a sacred history, but also the history of those who once owned the volume.

A few years ago, studying the initials that were added by hand, McQuillen found the origin of his decoration: a German monastery that has since disappeared.

In a similar discovery in the 2000s, a Japanese scholar found small marks on the surface of the paper copy of the Old Testament, revealing that those sheets were used by Gutenberg’s successors to print their own edition in 1462.

“No matter how many times it has been examined, it seems that every time a researcher looks at it, the Gutenberg Bible reveals something new,” McQuillen said.

“This book has been around for over 500 years, but who are the people who have touched it? How can we tell their personal stories combined with a larger idea of ​​what printing technology implied on a European or global scale?”

Among the thousands of other Bibles that JP Morgan acquired, the annotations of many of their owners can still be read: names, dates of birth and other details that tell intimate stories that go beyond paper.

“Today a Bible looks like a book on a shelf,” McQuillen said. “But at some point it was a personal item.”

“In a museum they become art and become a bit distant, but what we try to do is break that distance.”