Printing of the Gutenberg Bible

The event

Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith from Mainz, spent roughly a decade and a half developing a practical system of printing with movable metal type — durable, precisely cast individual letter blocks that could be arranged, reused, and combined with oil-based ink and a modified wine press to reproduce text far more quickly and consistently than the laborious process of hand-copying manuscripts.

Financed by the businessman Johann Fust, Gutenberg's workshop completed its masterwork around 1455: a two-volume Latin Bible printed with movable type, of a typographic quality rivaling the finest hand-illuminated manuscripts. Approximately 180 copies were originally produced, of which around 49 survive today in varying states of completeness, among the most valuable printed books in existence.

A legal dispute with Fust shortly after the Bible's completion stripped Gutenberg of his press and equipment, and he died in relative financial obscurity in 1468, but the printing technology he developed spread with remarkable speed across Europe over the following decades, with printing presses established in dozens of European cities by the 1470s and 1480s.

The long-term significance of Gutenberg's invention for Christian history is difficult to overstate: within a few generations, printing dramatically lowered the cost of producing books, accelerated literacy, and enabled the rapid mass production and distribution of texts — a capability Martin Luther and other Reformers exploited directly and decisively just over sixty years later, when printed pamphlets carried Luther's arguments across Germany and Europe with a speed no earlier reform movement, including those of Wycliffe and Hus, had ever been able to achieve.

Other witnesses

• surviving copies of the Gutenberg Bible (Library of Congress, British Library, and other institutional holdings)

Further reading

• Christian History Magazine 43: How We Got Our Bible — free full issue
• Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): Johann Gutenberg