Gutenberg’s Revolution
Johannes Gutenberg was one of the most influential persons in human history. He invented the moveable type printing press. On August 24, 1456 in Mainz (present-day Germany) the second volume of the Gutenberg Bible was published and bound, starting the Gutenberg Revolution. It is estimated that there were only 30,000 printed books in all of Europe before Gutenberg, and in less than 50 years there were as many as 12 million! Gutenberg made learning possible and fashionable, a dangerous proposition for the establishment that was heavily invested in keeping people ignorant.
The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed using his invention. Only 49 copies of the Latin vulgate translation survive today in various states of completeness from a production of 160-180 copies. Some were printed on vellum (it was estimated that it took 170 cows or 300 sheep to produce just one Gutenberg Bible), but most were printed on paper.
The moveable type printing press made the Bible available to the common person for the first time in 1500 years! It was part of the perfect storm that led to the Age of Reason and the rise of scientific discovery, humanism (that led to Erasmus’s important Greek New Testament and new Latin translation, 1516), to the printing of Martin Luther’s writings and other evangelical writers, which all resulted in the 16th century Protestant Reformation. It was by reading the Bible that the church discovered anew its view of human nature (the bondage of the will) and of salvation (by grace through faith alone). Thomas Cranmer then wrote a liturgy around the doctrine of justification by faith, the Book of Common Prayer. Leo Tolstoy would soon write about the poison of self-righteousness (Father Sergius), and Victor Hugo about the incomparable power of imputed righteousness to transform men and women for God (Les Miserables). The internet has been compared to Gutenberg’s discovery, but Gutenberg’s revolution was unquestionably the bigger of the two.
Very little is known about the man: when and where Gutenberg was born, if he had a family, where he is buried or what he looked like. From legal and financial papers we know that he was not rewarded for his invention, and that he was sued by his partner in 1455 for a large sum of money. Even though it is estimated that a Gutenberg Bible would go at least 35 million dollars at auction today, it is surmised that Johannes did not profit at all from his famous invention.
If you are picking up your Bible this morning to read the Gospel of John, join me giving thanks to God for the life and contribution of Johannes Gutenberg.
“(It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenberg Bible...required the skins of 300 sheep.
-from an article on printing)
I can see them squeezed into the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed,
all of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike
it would be nearly impossible
to count them,
and there is no telling
which one will carry the news
that the Lord is a shepherd,
one of the few things they already know.”