(From a collection of essays “This Is Why The Aliens Don’t Visit”)
A surviving copy of the Gutenberg Bible
It is considered one of the most important inventions in human history, since the invention of the wheel in 3,500BC in Mesopotamia. It’s not the lightbulb, the iPhone, the internet, or penicillin. It is, of course, the Gutenberg Printing Press. The Gutenberg Press with movable type introduced reusable, individually-cast metal letters that could be quickly arranged, significantly accelerating and, more importantly, democratising access to printed material. This invention made it possible for the mass production of books for the first time and some 585 years later, it is the reason we all have library cards, shelves of self-help books, and also why we all receive junk mail. Before all of these printed items, Gutenberg’s first big project was, of course, the most important printed work in the history of literature, the Gutenberg Bible. Both the Gutenberg Press and the Gutenberg Bible have become synonymous with the birth of mass printing, the dawn of the printing revolution, the spread of literacy and knowledge and of course, religious transformation and the Reformation.
Prior to this, production of books or other documents was carried out either by a handwritten scribe or by woodblock printing. This latter process involved carving in relief onto a block of wood and then pressing the paper or vellum onto the ink-covered block to transfer the image. Imagine the amount of deforestation caused trying to print War and Peace using this process.
We are not actually sure what the Gutenberg Press looked like, reconstructions being based on court records, woodcut illustrations, and the design of other screw presses from decades later.
It is akin to trying to work out what the Model A Ford looked like based on the design of the 1959 Cadillac Cyclone. Same idea, but miles off the correct look.
Model A Ford – 1903
The 1959 Cadillac Cyclone
Because there are no woodcut illustrations of Gutenberg himself, we also don’t know what he looked like. But we can hazard a guess that he was a determined and industrious-looking character.
We have to remember that at the time Gutenberg designed his printing press, there weren’t any others, so there were no handwritten manuals or how-to guides available for him to read on the subject – no Gutenberg Press For Dummies had been printed. It was completely for him to invent. So, what was it that motivated him to invent the printing press? First and foremost, it seems that he was keen to earn money. As a skilled German goldsmith and metallurgist, Gutenberg had been losing money in business ventures. No doubt he witnessed scribes, with their ink-stained fingers, carrying their manuscripts around for months or years, and he possibly pondered if there was a special kind of soap he could invent to clean the ink from scribes’ fingers.
Certainly, he must have wondered if there was a way to produce these scribes’ manuscripts faster and in larger quantities. By developing a machine capable of producing books at an unprecedented speed and efficiency, he could create a commercial solution that would secure his future. The soap idea would have to wait until he could print a recipe for it.
But why the Bible? It’s not like the Bible was the only book being scribed by dirty fingers and read during this period of history. There were other religious texts such as psalters, prayer books (Books of Hours), commentaries, Saints’ lives, liturgical books, and sermons. There was classical literature: Works by ancient Greek and Roman authors such as Aristotle, Virgil, Ovid, and Cicero, which were studied in monasteries and later by scholars at medieval universities. Also, there were treatises on astronomy, mathematics, medicine (often based on earlier Greek, Roman, or Arabic sources), and natural history. There were legal documents, Canon (church) and Civil (Roman) law manuscripts which were vital for legal scholars. There were countless other documents being painstakingly copied by hand, including scholastic works, debates, commentaries by figures like Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, epics, romances, fables, poetry, and various textbooks used in cathedral schools and early universities. But the Bible was of immense cultural, socio-political, and religious importance, and there would have been demand for Bibles among churches, monasteries, and universities. Breaking the manuscript monopoly might raise some challenges for the established authorities, but the demand for books from the new universities emerging in Europe and the Church’s desire to ensure its survival and growth, meant that Gutenberg was on the cusp of a not just a great invention for the sake of the mass production of literature, but also on the verge of creating a brilliant business opportunity. Gutenberg’s choice to build a printing press, not just any printing press, but a Gutenberg Printing Press, and use it to print the first Gutenberg Bible was marketing genius. The Bible was, after all, the most important book on the European part of the planet.
Aside: I wonder if Gutenberg named everything in his procession The Gutenberg…. .
“Ah, von Clinkwerter, come and sit on the Gutenberg couch and I’ll make you a Gutenberg coffee while we discuss my latest Gutenberg invention.”
Not everyone was literate in 15th-century Europe and outside the clergy, the Church, or wealthy nobles, the common man would not have owned a hand-copied Bible. Hand-copied Bibles were, therefore, very rare and expensive to produce, and as Stephen Fry says in his Documentary Johann Gutenberg: Creator of The First Printing Press, “far beyond the reach of ordinary mortals”. Also, the best scribes made mistakes. Printed and mass-produced exact copies could be a solution to this problem.
Stephen Fry with a model of the Gutenberg Press
No one is really sure when Gutenberg had his Mesopotamian Wheel Moment (the lightbulb had not yet been invented), but no doubt as he pondered on the issue of making multiple copies of the Bible, somewhere between thinking about woodblock printing techniques and thirstily watching grapes being pressed into wine, the idea came to him.
We can imagine Gutenberg popping out to his local wine producer to collect some bottles of wine to drown his financial sorrows, and seeing a traditional screw press used for wine (and oil) pressing. His industrious mind springs into action as he sees the press screwed down, extracting the grape juice. His imagination running wild, he sees the juice flowing beneath the press into collecting basins, the juice of the grape turning into ink and then forming letters, gathering into the basket as words, and forming in the great barrels as books of the Old and New Testament.
Medieval Wine Press
“Hold that thought, Gutenberg!” he exclaimed to himself. “I must head home to the Gutenberg house, walk with my Gutenberg legs, through the Gutenberg door, and start work on the development of movable metal type, moulded type setting, innovations in ink, and the final printing process.” Then reverting to his native language he holds up a finger and exclaims, “Und ich nenne ez die Gutenberg Presse!” (and I call it the Gutenberg Press”)
Many, many bottles of wine later, approximately 15 years from his initial ideas, design, and experiments in 1436, Gutenberg can be seen marvelling at his first complete Gutenberg Bible, somewhere around 1454-1455.
In between drinks, there were lots of challenges to overcome. The invention was revolutionary. In that time, one could be burned at the stake for crossing the road the wrong way, so to invent something that created exact copies of documents, especially the Bible, Gutenberg was taking what might have been considered a perilous path.
However, Gutenberg’s biggest hurdle, it seems, wasn’t being burnt alive, ironically strapped to a Birch or Beech tree (both common in the making of paper in the Rhineland region of Germany). Gutenberg’s major challenge was that he was strapped for cash. To stave off starvation and to help fund his printing press, in the early 1430s, Gutenberg developed a special mirrored periscope, designed for pilgrims visiting a church in Arcen. The idea allowed pilgrims wanting to see over the heads of the thousands of other pilgrims and get a glimpse of Christian relics. This is another example of Gutenberg’s marketing genius. His device promised not only to allow the pilgrim to see the goings on at the altar, but also to capture the image of the relic, allowing its powers to be unleashed on the pilgrim when opened in the future. All that seemed to be going well for him until one of his other challenges arrived. The great challenge of all inventors, and just about everyone else living in this era, was the regular visitations of The Plague.
When an outbreak of the Black Death occurred during the 15th Century, it meant that pilgrims hung up their walking shoes and stayed at home. This dried up Gutenberg’s mirror market. Gutenberg did miss out on an emerging pervert market, as the mirrored periscope may have been helpful near convent walls and high bedroom windows.
To forestall further financial failure and any other alliteration, and to keep his invention ticking over, in 1450, Gutenberg entered into a partnership with Johann Fust, in fact it was a Fust Finanancial Affiliation for Forbearance. To fund his ongoing work, Gutenberg convinced Fust to lend him 800 guilders – equivalent to tens of thousands of dollars by today’s economic standards. This was followed by a further 800 guilders a few years later.
Gutenberg used the word darlehensvertrag instead of Kapitalanlage, which was a mistake; a Darlehensvertrag had to be paid back.Had Fust provided a Kapitalanlage (Capital Investment) rather than an arranged Darlehensvertrag (loan agreement), they may not have had their eventual zank (falling out). Gutenberg failed to repay either Darlehensvertrag, and the subsequent court case caused Gutenberg to have ongoing challenges with financial stability. What made matters worse was that neither Gutenberg nor Fust spoke modern German as represented above. They both spoke Early New High German, and Gutenberg had actually asked Fust for a lîhen when he should have asked him to invest, which made matters more challenging as there was no word in Early New High German for investment. And there’s your problem.
By the end, Gutenberg would be legally bound to hand over his printing press and all his goods and chattels to Fust, who enjoyed the fruits of Gutenberg’s labour. What ein schalkhaftig wîch.
Aside: Many years later, looking down from heaven, Gutenberg must have kicked himself as he watched through the clouds to see the Prussians using printed money (Kassenscheine).
Gutenberg eventually finalised his invention and printed the first of his documents, probably initially as test runs but perhaps also to fund a larger print run of the Bible. These first printed documents were mainly church documents, indulgences, grants, or certificates issued by the Church, allowing those who could afford them a way to buy their sins away. After printing enough indulgences to allow lots of German people in his neighbourhood to get out of purgatory, Gutenberg got down to the real work of printing the first Bible.
The first of Gutenberg’s Bibles was printed on vellum, a high-quality parchment made from calfskin.
Aside: I’ve pondered whether or not Gutenberg was aware that the Chinese first inventing paper and then inventing gun powder (the Chinese invented paper in 105CE and then gun powder in 900CE) and if perhaps he had been worried that the two were somehow connected and that some sheets of Chines paper might explode in his printer or worse, blow up in the reader’s face. Is it possible he contemplated and dreaded the thought of the archbishop having his face blown off by a page of the Old Testament? Fortunately, no such explosive paper ever made it to Germany, or at least there’s no record of it; all those records having exploded soon after being written.
It was more likely the mathematical requirement for the thousands of head of calves needed to create vellum meant that Gutenberg would have to buy a really big block of land outside Mainz or take that chance on paper. In fact, some 92 calves would have been required to create one of the surviving 332-page vellum Gutenberg Bibles. To create the 40 or so vellum Gutenberg Bibles, some 6,800 calves were required.
Assuming Gutenberg purchased all of his calves at the same time, he would have needed approximately 13,600 acres of grazing land on the Gutenberg Farm, or 2 acres per calf for a full year of food production. This land area is equivalent to 55 square kilometres of land. For Gutenberg to own this amount of land, he would have had to have pritned his own money or have been a significantly wealthy nobleman – individual noble estates commonly ranged from 200 to over 1,000 acres. Gutenberg probably purchased his vellum over many years in readiness for the final print run, and not from the same herd of cattle. But if he wished to continue to print on vellum, one doesn’t need to be a mathematical genius to recognise that paper was a cheaper and easier option.
We shouldn’t assume that paper was a rare commodity in Medieval times. Far from it. Its use was certainly on the increase; however, as the literate populaton at that time was small, it had limited use in literature beyond the minority of wealthy people.
Aside: The commercialisation of toilet paper in the West was still 600 years away, so people continued with the discomfort of wiping their arses with corn husks. For Europeans at this time, the cornhusk far outweighed the risk of poorly absorbent exploding Chinese paper bursting into flames, causing one to get shit on one’s fingers.
As previously mentioned, the Chinese invented paper in 105AD. They then invented toilet paper in 589AD. That’s 489 years of standing around wondering.
Paper was very much on the way by Gutenberg’s time. It had started its European journey in Spain in the 11th or 12th century, where it spread to France and Italy. It was used as a substitute for vellum, primarily in official records and documents.
In the 1450s, when Gutenberg produced the first run of his Bibles, an estimated 150 to 180 copies were made. Approximately 75% of these were printed on paper, while the rest, as mentioned previously, were created using vellum. Today, scholars believe that about 48 or 49 Gutenberg Bibles are still in existence, though many are incomplete, with only around 21 to 25 surviving in their entirety. Most of the remaining examples are paper editions, with approximately a dozen printed on vellum. So, paper won the day, and thousands of little German calves breathed a sigh of relief.
As indicated earlier, while one of the downsides of hand-written copies was the issue of quality (scribes, as skilled as they were, still made mistakes). However, Gutenberg’s Bible was not perfect and did suffer from human error, and mistakes were made. These were often corrected or annotated by scribes in some copies.
Aside: One can imagine Gutenberg shouting at his assistant Min got, du hast Moses mit einem Z gschriben (My God, you’ve spelled Moses with a Z).
The mistakes in the Gutenberg Bible were more driven by being a product of its pioneering but complex production process. One such error is in Genesis 11. In some copies, a phrase is missing from the printed text of that book. Aside from textual mistakes, surviving Bibles reveal other physical “errors”: manufacturing defects in the vellum (such as stitched or patched rips), inky fingerprints, foliation marks, and other evidence of the printing shop’s processes. These are not textual mistakes, but they do show the challenges and human element of early printing.
It is perhaps the knowledge of these small errors that elevates the Gutenberg Bible above perfection and allows us to place value in the enormity and complexity of the work he had undertaken.
Mistakes aside, once printed, Gutenberg’s Bible and his printing press sparked a revolution for the modern world. Not only did it please the small population of animal activists in Germany, but it also played a pivotal role in accelerating the Renaissance, transforming how ideas could be shared across Europe. The rapid, large-scale production of books made knowledge far more accessible and affordable. New ideas about philosophy and religion, scientific discoveries, art, literature, and music could now reach a much wider audience.
As mentioned before, when Gutenberg produced the first printed Bible in the 1450s, reading skills were possessed by only a tiny fraction of Europeans.
In Germany, historians estimate that overall literacy hovered around 5%, though urban areas sometimes saw literacy climb closer to 30%. In England and other regions of Western Europe, male literacy by 1500 was probably still under 10–25%, and the rate was even lower among women.
Importantly, the more books that were produced, the more people could read. As people developed the skill of reading, so too did they learn to write. As they learned to write, they learned more about self-expression and greater thinking. Descartes should have said “Lego, ergo sum” (I read; therefore I am ).
At the demise of the financial arrangments with Johann Fust, Gutenbergs was forced to hand over his printing press. However he did not completely disappear from the printing world. Evidence suggests that he continued to print, likely in a smaller independent workshop, though much of his later work remains unattributed since he didn’t put his name on printed outputs. While Fust took control of Gutenberg’s first press, there was no such thing as modern patents, Gutenberg may well have built a second press. Certainly, he would have ironed out all the design issues through the development of the first press.
What is known is that his final years were marked by relative obscurity and economic hardship. In 1462, political turmoil in Mainz forced Gutenberg temporarily into exile. However, in 1465, upon his return, he received some recognition and support: the Archbishop of Mainz, Adolf II of Nassau, made him a courtier, which came with a modest pension, clothing, grain, and wine, as well as exemptions from civic duties. This support allowed Gutenberg to spend his last years free from poverty, though not wealthy or widely celebrated.
He died in Mainz in early 1468, most likely in February, and was buried in the cemetery of a Franciscan church. One hopes that, at Gutenberg’s funeral, the Franciscan Priest read Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want – from a well read and rustic, decade old printed Bible.
The church, adjoining monastery, and graveyard were all lost after centuries of change, including the rebuilding of a new church on the site, and subsequent destruction caused by the Napoleonic Wars. Gutenberg’s exact resting place is unmarked and irretrievable, as neither the church nor its cemetery survives… and……. there are no printed records left behind to help us.
See also
Inalienable Write 