Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 73 No. 1, 2003.
Other
Gutenberg's Bible
Adalbert Rebić
; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In this paper the Gutenberg's Bible is described, Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch was born ca 1396 and died ca 1486 in Mainz (Moguntia). He was a printer and inventor of movable type, the father of the printing press. He is known as the first printer of the Bible, so the Bible was the first printed book in the history. Gutenberg began to print the Bible approximately 1452, however, due to complications, the completing of the printing was not until late 1455 or early 1456. For its printing he lended money from Johannes Fust, a banquier. The Bible, he printed, was a Latin Bible which was at the Council of Trent declared as obligatory in the Catholic church; it was the » Vulgate« Bible (so called Mazarin Bible), translated by St. Jerome (396-406 CE) from the Hebrew and Greek into Latin, spoken in the time of St. Jerome. The Bible was printed in two-column format, with each page containing 42 lines, 1282 double-columned pages, also known as the 42-line Bible. The printing of the Bible was a system in which pieces of type (a series of blocks each bearing a single letter on its surface) could be assembled and reused in multiple combination to print a variety of texts. It was printed on a hand press, in which ink was rolled over the raised surfaces of hand-set letters held together within a wooden form. The form was then pressed against a sheet of paper, successfully printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. Gutenberg printed nearly ISO copies of his Bible and it was an immediate bestseller. Only 49 copies of the original print-run remain in existence. They are to be found in the British Library in London, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Library of Congress in Washington DC, the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, and in the possession of the German state of Niedersachsen. One of the first printed copies of the Gutenberg's Bible is deposited in Berlin; it is one of the most beautiful illustrated Gutenberg's Bible. The reprinted Bible, donated to Mons. Marijan Oblak, the former archbishop in Zadar (Croatia), from the Cardinal Lehmann (Mainz), is the facsimile edition of the Bible (today in the Public States Museum of Burgos, Spain), donated by Gutenberg to the king Don Juan Carlos I. the king of the Spain, reprinted in 1992 in Mainz.
Keywords
Bible; Gutenberg; Printing discovery
Hrčak ID:
27967
URI
Publication date:
2.7.2003.
Visits: 7.302 *