Earliest major book printed in Europe From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Gutenberg Bible, also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42, was the earliest major book printed in Europe using mass-produced metal movable type. It marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of printed books in the West. The book is valued and revered for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities[1] and its historical significance.
The Gutenberg Bible is an edition of the Latin Vulgate printed in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, in present-day Germany. Forty-nine copies (or substantial portions of copies) have survived. They are thought to be among the world's most valuable books, although no complete copy has been sold since 1978.[2][3] In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible displayed in Frankfurt to promote the edition, and that either 158 or 180 copies had been printed.
The 36-line Bible, said to be the second printed Bible, is also sometimes referred to as a Gutenberg Bible, but may be the work of another printer.[4]
The Gutenberg Bible, an edition of the Vulgate, contains the Latin version of the HebrewOld Testament and the Greek New Testament. It is mainly the work of St Jerome who began his work on the translation in AD 380, with emendations from the Parisian Bible tradition, and further divergences.[5]
Gutenberg Bible of the New York Public Library; purchased by James Lenox in 1847, it was the first Gutenberg Bible to be acquired by a United States citizen.
While it is unlikely that any of Gutenberg's early publications would bear his name, the initial expense of press equipment and materials and of the work to be done before the Bible was ready for sale suggests that he may have started with more lucrative texts, including several religious documents, a German poem, and some editions of Aelius Donatus's Ars Minor, a popular Latin grammar school book.[6][7][8]
Preparation of the Bible probably began soon after 1450, and the first finished copies were available in 1454 or 1455.[9] It is not known exactly how long the Bible took to print. The first precisely datable printing is Gutenberg's 31-line Indulgence which certainly existed by 22 October 1454.[10]
Gutenberg made three significant changes during the printing process.[11]
Spine of the Lenox copy
Some time later, after more sheets had been printed, the number of lines per page was increased from 40 to 42, presumably to save paper. Therefore, pages 1 to 9 and pages 256 to 265, presumably the first ones printed, have 40 lines each. Page 10 has 41, and from there on the 42 lines appear. The increase in line number was achieved by decreasing the interline spacing, rather than increasing the printed area of the page. Finally, the print run was increased, necessitating resetting those pages which had already been printed. The new sheets were all reset to 42 lines per page. Consequently, there are two distinct settings in folios 1–32 and 129–158 of volume I and folios 1–16 and 162 of volume II.[11][12]
The most reliable information about the Bible's date comes from a letter. In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible, being displayed to promote the edition, in Frankfurt.[13] It is not known how many copies were printed, with the 1455 letter citing sources for both 158 and 180 copies. Scholars today think that examination of surviving copies suggests that somewhere between 160 and 185 copies were printed, with about three-quarters on paper and the others on vellum.[14][15]
In a legal paper, written after completion of the Bible, Johannes Gutenberg refers to the process as Das Werk der Bücher ("the work of the books"). He had introduced the printing press to Europe and created the technology to make printing with movable types finally efficient enough to facilitate the mass production of entire books.[16]
Many book-lovers have commented on the high standards achieved in the production of the Gutenberg Bible, some describing it as one of the most beautiful books ever printed. The quality of both the ink and other materials and the printing itself have been noted.[1]
The paper size is 'double folio', with two pages printed on each side (four pages per sheet). After printing the paper was folded once to the size of a single page. Typically, five of these folded sheets (ten leaves, or twenty printed pages) were combined to a single physical section, called a quinternion, that could then be bound into a book. Some sections, however, had as few as four leaves or as many as twelve leaves.[17]
Gutenberg Bible on display at the U.S. Library of Congress
The 42-line Bible was printed on the size of paper known as 'Royal'.[18] A full sheet of Royal paper measures 42cm ×60cm (17in ×24in) and a single untrimmed folio leaf measures 42cm ×30cm (17in ×12in).[19] There have been attempts to claim that the book was printed on larger paper measuring 44.5cm ×30.7cm (17.5in ×12.1in),[20] but this assertion is contradicted by the dimensions of existing copies. For example, the leaves of the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, measure 40cm ×28.6cm (15.7in ×11.3in).[21] This is typical of other folio Bibles printed on Royal paper in the fifteenth century.[22] Most fifteenth-century printing papers have a width-to-height ratio of 1:1.4 (e.g. 30:42cm) which, mathematically, is a ratio of 1 to the square root of 2 or, simply, . Many suggest that this ratio was chosen to match the so-called Golden Ratio, , of 1:1.6; in fact the ratios are, plainly, not at all similar (equating to a difference of about 12 per cent). The ratio of 1:1.4 was a long established one for medieval paper sizes.[23] A single complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible has 1,288 pages (4×322 = 1288) (usually bound in two volumes); with four pages per folio-sheet, 322 sheets of paper are required per copy.[24] The Bible's paper consists of linen fibers and is thought to have been imported from Caselle in Piedmont, Italy based on the watermarks present throughout the volume.[25]
Ink
In Gutenberg's time, inks used by scribes to produce manuscripts were water-based. Gutenberg developed an oil-based ink that would better adhere to his metal type. His ink was primarily carbon, but also had a high metallic content, with copper, lead, and titanium predominating.[26] Head of collections at the British Library, Kristian Jensen, described it thus: "if you look [at the pages of The Gutenberg Bible] closely you will see this is a very shiny surface. When you write you use a water-based ink, you put your pen into it and it runs off. Now if you print that's exactly what you don't want. One of Gutenberg's inventions was an ink which wasn't ink, it's a varnish. So what we call printer's ink is actually a varnish, and that means it sticks to its surface."[27][28]
Type
Each unique character requires a piece of master type in order to be replicated. Given that each letter has uppercase and lowercase forms, and the number of various punctuation marks and ligatures (e.g., "fi" for the letter sequence "fi", commonly used in writing), the Gutenberg Bible needed a set of 290 master characters. It seems probable that six pages, containing 15,600 characters altogether, would be set at any one moment.[6]
Type style
The Gutenberg Bible is printed in the blackletter type styles that would become known as Textualis (Textura) and Schwabacher. The name Textura refers to the texture of the printed page: straight vertical strokes combined with horizontal lines, giving the impression of a woven structure. Gutenberg already used the technique of justification, that is, creating a vertical, not indented, alignment at the left and right-hand sides of the column. To do this, he used various methods, including using characters of narrower widths, adding extra spaces around punctuation, and varying the widths of spaces around words.[29][30]
Initially the rubrics—the headings before each book of the Bible—were printed, but this practice was quickly abandoned at an unknown date, and gaps were left for rubrication to be added by hand. A guide of the text to be added to each page, printed for use by rubricators, survives.[31]
The spacious margin allowed illuminated decoration to be added by hand. The amount of decoration presumably depended on how much each buyer could or would pay. Some copies were never decorated.[32] The place of decoration can be known or inferred for about 30 of the surviving copies. It is possible that 13 of these copies received their decoration in Mainz, but others were worked on as far away as London.[33] The vellum Bibles were more expensive, and perhaps for this reason tend to be more highly decorated, although the vellum copy in the British Library is completely undecorated.[34]
There has been speculation that the "Master of the Playing Cards", an unidentified engraver who has been called "the first personality in the history of engraving,"[35] was partly responsible for the illumination of the copy held by the Princeton University library. However, all that can be said for certain is that the same model book was used for some of the illustrations in this copy and for some of the Master's illustrated playing cards.[36]
Although many Gutenberg Bibles have been rebound over the years, nine copies retain fifteenth-century bindings. Most of these copies were bound in either Mainz or Erfurt.[33] Most copies were divided into two volumes, the first volume ending with The Book of Psalms. Copies on vellum were heavier and for this reason were sometimes bound in three or four volumes.[1]
Binding of the copy at the Bavarian State Library, one of the few Gutenberg Bibles to retain their original bindings.
The Bible seems to have sold out immediately, with some initial purchases as far away as England and possibly Sweden and Hungary.[1][37] At least some copies are known to have sold for 30 florins (equivalent to about 100 grams or 3.5 ounces of gold), which was about three years' wages for a clerk.[38][39] Although this made them significantly cheaper than manuscript Bibles, most students, priests or other people of moderate income would not have been able to afford them. It is assumed that most were sold to monasteries, universities and particularly wealthy individuals.[31] At present only one copy is known to have been privately owned in the fifteenth century. Some are known to have been used for communal readings in monastery refectories; others may have been for display rather than use, and a few were certainly used for study.[1] Kristian Jensen suggests that many copies were bought by wealthy and pious laymen for donation to religious institutions.[34]
The Gutenberg Bible had a profound effect on the history of the printed book. Textually, it also had an influence on future editions of the Bible. It provided the model for several later editions, including the 36 Line Bible, Mentelin's Latin Bible, and the first and third Eggestein Bibles. The third Eggestein Bible was set from the copy of the Gutenberg Bible now in Cambridge University Library. The Gutenberg Bible also had an influence on the Clementine edition of the Vulgate commissioned by the Papacy in the late sixteenth century.[40][41]
Joseph Martini, a New York book dealer, found that the Gutenberg Bible held by the library of the General Theological Seminary in New York had a forged leaf, carrying part of Chapter 14, all of Chapter 15, and part of Chapter 16 of the Book of Ezekiel. It was impossible to tell when the leaf had been inserted into the volume. It was replaced in the fall of 1953, when a patron donated the corresponding leaf from a defective Gutenberg second volume which was being broken up and sold in parts.[42] This made it "the first imperfect Gutenberg Bible ever restored to completeness."[42] In 1978, this copy was sold for US$2.2 million to the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart, Germany.[43]
Locations of known complete Gutenberg Bibles
As of 2009[update], 49 Gutenberg Bibles are known to exist, but of these only 21 are complete. Others have pages or even whole volumes missing. In addition, there are a substantial number of fragments, some as small as individual leaves, which are likely to represent about another 16 copies. Many of these fragments have survived because they were used as part of the binding of later books.[37]
Substantially complete copies
More information List of substantially complete copies, Country ...
Vol. I, 104 leaves missing,[49] bequeathed by Edmond Puissant to the city of Mons in 1934, but not identified until 1950.[50] Part of the same copy as the volume in Indiana (see below).[14]
Is distinguished by being inscribed with the earliest date that appears on any copy— 24 August 1456 on the first volume and 15 August 1456 on the second volume, the dates on which the rubricator and binder (Henricus Cremer) completed his work.[55][56] Online images of vol. 1
The first copy to be discovered around 1760 in the Bibliothèque Mazarine (hence the name Mazarin Bible) by Guillaume-François Debure and described in the first volume of his Bibliographie instructive: ou Traite de la connoissance des livres rares et singuliers devoted to theology, which was published in Paris in 1763.[57][58][59] Online images of vol. 1 and vol. 2(in French)
One of only two copies to contain the "tabula rubricarum" (index of rubrics) on four leaves at the end. Also one of three existing copies in its original binding.[47][48] Online images of vol. 1 and vol. 2(in German)
Printed in Mainz with the original 15th Century Erfurt binding, stamped calfskin, signed by Johannes Vogel. Donated by John Fuller (1757–1834). Belonged in the 15th century to the Carthusians at Erfurt. Only copy to retain the original binding in both volumes and is complete. Also one of three existing copies in its original binding. Also the only copy with the original binding to be signed with the binders mark. Illuminated copy, probably in Erfurt.[79][80]
Online images Printed on vellum and bound in three vellum-covered volumes. On permanent display. Purchased in 1930 with government funds for the Library of Congress. It is the centerpiece of a larger book collection acquired from Dr. Otto Vollbehr.
Binding of the copy at the University of Texas at AustinIn 1952 the US Post Office issued a commemorative stamp celebrating the 500th anniversary of the first printing of the Bible with moveable type.The stamp depicts an image of Gutenberg showing a proof of his Bible to Aldoph of Nassau, Archbishop of Mainz.
Today, few copies remain in religious institutions, with most now owned by university libraries and other major scholarly institutions. After centuries in which all copies seem to have remained in Europe, the first Gutenberg Bible reached North America in 1847. It is now in the New York Public Library.[96] In the last hundred years, several long-lost copies have come to light, considerably improving the understanding of how the Bible was produced and distributed.[37]
In 1921 a New York rare book dealer, Gabriel Wells, bought a damaged paper copy, dismantled the book and sold sections and individual leaves to book collectors and libraries. The leaves were sold in a portfolio case with an essay written by A. Edward Newton, and were referred to as "Noble Fragments".[97][98] In 1953 Charles Scribner's Sons, also book dealers in New York, dismembered a damaged paper copy of volume II. The largest portion of this, the New Testament, is now owned by Indiana University. The leaf carrying part of Chapter 14, all of Chapter 15, and part of Chapter 16 of the Book of Ezekiel was donated to the General Theological Seminary to repair their copy of the bible (now located at the Württembergische Landesbibliothek).[42] The matching first volume of this copy was subsequently discovered in Mons, Belgium, having been bequeathed by Edmond Puissant to the city in 1934.[14]
The only copy held outside Europe and North America is the first volume of a Gutenberg Bible (Hubay 45) at Keio University in Tokyo. The Humanities Media Interface Project (HUMI) at Keio University is known for its high-quality digital images of Gutenberg Bibles and other rare books.[70] Under the direction of Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya, the HUMI team has made digital reproductions of 11 sets of the bible in nine institutions, including both full-text facsimiles held in the collection of the British Library.[99]
The last sale of a complete Gutenberg Bible took place in 1978, which sold for $2.4 million. This copy is now in Austin, Texas.[96] The price of a complete copy today is estimated at $25−35 million.[2][3]
A two-volume paper edition of the Gutenberg Bible was stolen from Moscow State University in 2009 and subsequently recovered in an FSB sting operation in 2013.[100]
Possession of a Gutenberg Bible by a library has been equated to keeping a "trophy book".[101]
St. Mark's Library (General Theological Seminary). The Gutenberg Bible of the General Theological Seminary. New York: St. Mark's Library, the General Theological Seminary, 1963.
The Gutenberg Bible of 1454, Göttingen Library, Facsimile Edition, 2 vols + booklet, ed. Stephan Füssel, 1400 pp. Taschen: Cologne. In Latin
Klooster, John W. (2009). Icons of invention: the makers of the modern world from Gutenberg to Gates. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press. ISBN978-0-313-34744-3. OCLC647903993.
British Library, The differences in line lengths per pageArchived 2009-09-07 at the Wayback Machine: pictures showing differences between the Keio copy (40 lines per page) and the British Library copy (42 lines per page) in Genesis 1. Accessed 10 July 2009
Lane Ford, Margaret (2010). "Deconstruction and Reconstruction: Detecting and Interpreting Sophisticated Copies". In Wagner, Bettina; Reed, Marcia (eds.). Early Printed Books as Material Objects: Proceedings of the Conference Organized by the Ifla Rare Books and Manuscripts Section Munich, 19–21 August 2009. De Gruyter Sur. pp.291–304. ISBN978-3-11-025324-5.
Paul Needham, 'Format and Paper Size in Fifteenth-century Printing', In: Materielle Aspekte in der Inkunabelforschung, Wiesbaden, 2017, pp. 59–108: p. 83.
Jensen, Kristian (2003). "Printing the Bible in the fifteenth century: devotion, philology and commerce". In Jensen, Kristian (ed.). Incunabula and their readers: printing, selling and using books in the fifteenth century. British Library. pp.115–38. ISBN0-7123-4769-0.
Shestack, Alan (1967). Fifteenth Century Engravings of Northern Europe. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. LCCN67029080.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
van Buren, Anne H.; Edmunds, Sheila (March 1974). "Playing Cards and Manuscripts: Some Widely Disseminated Fifteenth Century Model Sheets". The Art Bulletin. 56 (1): 12–30. doi:10.1080/00043079.1974.10789835. ISSN0004-3079. JSTOR3049193.
White, Eric Marshall (2010). "The Gutenberg Bibles that Survive as Binder's Waste". In Wagner, Bettina; Reed, Marcia (eds.). Early Printed Books as Material Objects: Proceedings of the Conference Organized by the Ifla Rare Books and Manuscripts Section Munich, 19–21 August 2009. De Gruyter Sur. pp.21–35. ISBN978-3-11-025324-5.
McGrath, Alister (2001). In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture. Anchor Books. p.15. ISBN0-385-72216-8.
Needham, Paul (2010). "Copy Specifics in the Printing Shop". In Wagner, Bettina; Reed, Marcia (eds.). Early Printed Books as Material Objects: Proceedings of the Conference Organized by the Ifla Rare Books and Manuscripts Section Munich, 19–21 August 2009. De Gruyter Sur. pp.9–20. ISBN978-3-11-025324-5.
St. Mark's Library (General Theological Seminary). The Gutenberg Bible of the General Theological Seminary. New York: St. Mark's Library, the General Theological Seminary, 1963.
Das Antiquariat ... (in German). Vol.7. W. Krieg. 1951. pp.122–. Das Exemplar enthält das älteste festgestellte Da*tum, das im Zusammenhang mit der Gutenberg*Bibel steht. ... Mit der „tabula rubricarum", auf 4 Blättern am Schluß des Werkes gedruckt. ... Das Exemplar gehörte früher Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal, dem Kurfürsten von Mainz, dessen Bibliothek 1793 aufgeteilt wurde.
The AB Bookman's Yearbook. Bookman's weekly. 1956. p.392. This copy contains the earliest recorded date associated with the Gutenberg Bible. At the end of both volumes are notes ... With the "tabula rubricarum" (index of rubrics) printed on 4 leaves at the end. These additional leaves occur in only one ...
Antiquarian Bookman. 14–26. Vol.18. R.R. Bowker. 1956. pp.1410–. The example of the Gutenberg Bible in Mons is quite incomplete, containing only 220 leaves of Volume I. Folio 1 is ... end of the Book of Ruth (folio 128 verso) and chapter 5 of Kings II (folio 149 recto) These comprise the 104 missing leaves.
Josef Stummvoll (1971). Die Gutenberg-Bibel (in German). Österreichisches Institut für Bibliotheksforschung. pp.26–. ...Kanonikus Edmond Puissant in Mons. 1934 beim Tode Puissants an die Stadt Mons gekommen. Wurde erst 1950 vom Bibliothekar Dr. M. A. Arnould identifiziert. Nur bei Norman (20) und Stöwesand (14) verzeichnet. Aufbewahrt in der ...
Veröffentlichung der Gutenberg-gesellschaft (in French). Vol.5–9. 1908. pp.58–. Cédé en 1767 par les Bénédictins de Mayence à Dom Maugérard, pour Dupré de Geneste, Administrateur des Domaines à Meç, dont la bibliothèque fut vendue en 1788 par le cardinal Loménie de Brienne à la Bibliothèque ...
AB Bookman's Yearbook. Bookman's weekly. 1956. pp.391–. It is hoped these emendations will bring this revision of the Gutenberg Bible list totally up to date. The compiler ... In 1788 or shortly afterwards, it was rebound in red morocco, with the arms of Louis XVI stamped in gilt on the covers, in 4 vols.
Das Antiquariat ... (in German). Vol.7. W. Krieg. 1951. pp.122–. Am Schlüsse der beiden Bände sind Vermerke des Rubrikators und Buchbinders Henricus Cremer über die Voll*endung seiner Arbeit eingetragen: (Bd. I ... 24. August 1456; Bd. II . . . 15. August 1456).
Talbot Wilson Chambers; Frank Hugh Foster (1890). Concise Dictionary of Religious Knowledge: Biblical, Doctrinal, Historical, and Practical. Christian Literature Company. pp.553–. Mazarin Bible, The, or Gutenberg Bible, Mentz, 1450–55, the first book printed with movable types. It was discovered by De Burc in the Mazarin Library at Paris about 1760. Six copies on vellum are known and 81 on paper. One of the latter is in ...
Alexandre Saint-Léger (1984). Revue du Nord. 261–263 (in French). Vol.66. pp.637–. Nous ne saurions bien évidemment passer sous silence un volume de la Bible à 42 lignes de Gutenberg, conservé à Saint-Omer et venant de l'abbaye de Saint-Bertin '3, mais le catalogue relève également les éditions de Pierre Schoeffer à ...
The Living Church. Vol.176. Morehouse-Gorham Company. January 1978. pp.75–. A Gutenberg Bible has been sold by New York book dealer Hans P. Kraus for $1.8 million, the same price for which he bought it in 1970. ... Known as the Shuckburgh Bible, the Kraus copy was named after Sir George Shuckburgh, its 18th century owner, who ...
Sandra Kirshenbaum (1978). Fine Print. S. Kirshenbaum. pp.102–. Early in March Mr. Kraus sold his Bible, known as the Shuckburgh copy, to the Gutenberg Museum of Mainz for $1,800,000, the highest price ever paid ..
While this Gutenberg Bible copy is technically complete, the leaf carrying part of Chapter 14, all of Chapter 15, and part of Chapter 16 of the Book of Ezekiel is not original to this copy. It was inserted in 1953 from another Gutenberg Bible to replace a forged leaf.
White, Eric Marshall; Rosenstein, Natalee; Travis, Trysh; Adams, Peter W.; Baensch, Robert E. (2003). "Book reviews". Publishing Research Quarterly. 19 (2): 65–72. doi:10.1007/s12109-003-0009-3. ISSN1053-8801. S2CID189906589.
Davis, Margaret Leslie (2019). The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey. New York: TarcherPerigee. ISBN9781592408672.
"Rare Gutenberg Bible Found In Russia 50 Years After War". The Seattle Times. 10 December 1993. A rare 15th-century Gutenberg Bible that was among the treasures the Red army brought back as trophies from World War II was hidden so well in Russia's State Library that even the curator didn't know it was there. The Bible belonged to a museum in Germany, and was brought to Moscow in 1945 with other manuscripts and rare books, the newspaper Izvestia quoted the library director, Igor Filippov, as saying. [...] Russian authorities have agreed to negotiate their return.
Popova, Anna (22 April 2021). "8 major cultural trophies the USSR took home after WWII". Russia Beyond. Retrieved 18 January 2024. Two Bibles printed by Johannes Gutenberg from the German Museum of Books and Writing in Leipzig also ended up in Moscow. Of 180 copies, only 47 have survived to our time, so one can imagine how rare these editions are. One of the Bibles is currently kept at Moscow Lomonosov University (MGU) and the other, as it emerged only in the 1990s, is at the 'Leninka' (the Russian State Library, formerly the Lenin Library) in Moscow.
Becker, Peter von (22 March 2012). "Buch- und Schriftkultur: Das Geisterhaus – Kultur – Tagesspiegel". Der Tagesspiegel Online (in German). Archived from the original on 22 April 2016. Retrieved 10 April 2016. Doch die beiden Pergamentbände verwahrt bis heute die Russische Staatsbibliothek in Moskau, als Kriegsbeute.
Randolph G. Adams (1939). The Americanists. pp.49–. This particular Bible came from Erfurt, in Germany.24 It was handled by a Berlin dealer, A. Asher, who also had a ... So Brinley got a Gutenberg Bible at ,£637-15-0, and, as Stevens said, "Cheap at the price." 25 But ... Brinley– Hamilton Cole– Brayton Ives– James W. Ellsworth– A. S. W. Rosenbach– John H. Scheide.
Grolier Club (1966). Gazette of the Grolier Club. pp.116–. There were three main type groups represented in the exhibition: The type of the 42-line Bible. The type of the 36-line ... THE 4'2-LINE BIBLE This work is the masterpiece of Johann Gutenberg. Mr. Goff has ... now owned by Arthur A. Houghton Jr.; and the Brinley-Cole-Ives-Ellsworth copy, now owned by William H. Scheide.
The Princeton University Library Chronicle. Vol.37–39. Friends of the Princeton University Library. 1976. pp.77–. sold the Bible a year later for $46,000 to the late John H. Scheide, the father of the present owner. The Brinley-Cole-Ives-Ellsworth- Scheide copy was brought to Princeton from Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1959, where it had remained for 35 years. ... Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt in his Gutenberg and the Master of the Playing Cards (New Haven and London, 1966) has shown the relationship of a number of ...
The Friends of the Lilly Library Newsletter. Vol.29–32. Indiana University Foundation. 1998. pp.5–. The second volume of the Gutenberg Bible from which the Lilly Library New Testament would eventually be extracted was discovered in 1828 in a farmhouse ... The copy had 116 leaves of the original 128 of a full Gutenberg New Testament.
Pearson, David (2006). Bowman, J (ed.). British Librarianship and Information Work 1991–2000: Rare book librarianship and historical bibliography. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. p.178. ISBN978-0-7546-4779-9.
Hetzer, Armin (1996). "'The Return from the States of the Former Soviet Union of Cultural Property Removed in the 1940s' as a Bibliographical Undertaking". Solanus. 10. Translated from German and Russian by Gregory Walker. ISSN0038-0903– via Internet Archive. The 'trophy' books fulfilled a threefold function. A part of them consisted of trophies in the stricter sense, for example the Gutenberg Bible now held in the Russian State Library (formerly the Lenin Library). Such books are not put to use for practical purposes: they are simply objects of beauty. Another part was ... [p. 17]