The Gutenberg Bible is perhaps the greatest celebrity in the world of book arts. Forty-eight copies of the two-volume Latin Bible are extant. They are world-renowned for their beauty and for the consummate craftsmanship that went into their creation. In the 15th century Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith in Mainz, invented the technology of movable, reproducible type, a development that changed the face of printing and enabled the creation of the forty-two–line Bible. After Gutenberg’s invention, it became possible to replicate the work of scribes who had for generations meticulously copied texts by hand. These “nova forma scribendi” reproductions were found esthetically equal to exemplary handwriting.
In collaboration with the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, our journal covers carefully reproduce pages from Gutenberg’s ecclesiastic masterwork.