throughout Christendom as The Book. These two editions of the Bible are most clearly defined by the specification of the number of lines to the page in the columns of each book: one is the Bible of 42 lines,[1] in types of Paragon body, usually bound in two volumes; the other is the Bible of 36 lines,[2] in types of Double-pica body, usually bound in three volumes.
It is not certainly known which was printed first. Each edition was published without printed date, and, like all other works by Gutenberg, without name or place of printer. They were not accurately described by any contemporary author. In the sixteenth century they were obsolete, and the tradition that they had been printed by Gutenberg was entirely lost. When a copy of the Bible of 42 lines was discovered in the library of Cardinal Mazarin, and was identified as the work of John Gutenberg, it was not known that there was another edition. The Bible of 42 lines was consequently regarded as the first—as the book described by Zell, which, he says, was printed in 1450. This belief was strengthened by the subsequent discovery, in another copy of this edition, of the certificate of an illuminator that, in the year 1456, he had finished his task of illumination in the book. More than twenty copies of this edition (seven of which are on vellum) have been found, and they have generally been sold and bought as copies of the first edition.
The Bible of 36 lines was definitely described for the first time by the bibliographer Schwartz, who, in 1728, discovered a copy in the library of a monastery near Mentz. In the old manuscript catalogue of this library was a note, stating that this book had been given to the monastery by John Guten-
- ↑ It is sometimes described as the Mazarin Bible, and sometimes as Gutenberg's First Bible.
- ↑ This is known as the Bamberg Bible, because nearly all the known copies of this edition were found in the the neighborhood of the town of Bamberg; as Pfister 's Bible, because it has been attributed, incorrectly, to Albert Pfister, a printer of Bamberg; as the Schelhorn Bible, because it was fully described by the bibliographer of that name; as Gutenberg's Second Bible, because it is belief of many authors that it should have been printed by Gutenberg about 1459, after his rupture with John Fust.
