The Morgan Library & Museum is the only institution in the world to possess three copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the first substantial book printed from movable type in the West. One of the volumes of the Gutenberg Bible is always on display in the museum’s historic East Room in New York City so the public has visual access to it. In this video, John McQuillen, Associate Curator, Printed Books and Bindings, explains how Gutenberg's work revolutionized European literacy and learning.
The Gutenberg Bible marked a revolutionary shift from the laborious, handwritten manuscripts of the past to a more efficient and accessible method of book production. This innovation paved the way for the widespread availability of printed materials, enabling the rapid spread of knowledge and ideas, and playing a crucial role in the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. The Gutenberg Bible's technical and cultural impact was profound, ushering in a new era of mass communication and literacy that would shape the course of Western civilization.
I'm John McCoolin, the Associate Curator of Printed Books and Bindings here at the Morgan
Library and Museum, and this is the first volume in one of our copies of the Gutenberg Bible.
Johann Gutenberg was trained as a goldsmith from Mainz, Germany. He worked as a metal worker,
and we think that experience, trying to punch out tiny little metal tin mirrors,
that he came up with the idea of individual letters. What history records him doing is
inventing movable type in Europe, and this is the first really major and exceptional production
of Gutenberg's printing press and European typography, printed in about 1454. Gutenberg's
development of typographic printing in Europe revolutionized European information, learning,
literacy. Gutenberg printed about 180 copies of the Bible. Only about 48 are extant today,
in more or less complete form. When the book came off the press, only the black letters
were printed. Anything in color had to be added later, by hand, by whoever purchased
the printed sheets. So every copy has decoration specific to the first owner, so the decoration
of every copy is different. This copy, you can see a blue initial I here, for the beginning of
in Principio, in the beginning, the first words of Genesis, and some sort of marginal filigree
decoration. That decoration is specific to one single monastery outside of Worms, Germany,
so we know that they owned this copy of the Gutenberg Bible. When this complete copy came
on the market in 1911, Morgan was adamant that he acquire it for his collection, and he and his
librarian, Beldacross de Green, worked closely with a book dealer in England to ensure that this copy
made it to the Morgan Library. We always have one of the volumes of the Gutenberg Bible
on display, so the public always has visual access to one of the treasures of Morgan's
collection in the library. Looking back at one of the first items of printing kind of really brings
that timeline into focus, and you kind of understand a history of 500 years, and where we
are now.
