Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
The desire to credit Gutenberg with some really handsome and important
piece of printing has caused his name to be connected with two other
large folios, a Latin Bible, of thirty-six lines to a column, printed in
a variety of the type used for the _Sibyllenbuch_ and the _Kalendar_ of
"1448," and a Latin Dictionary known by the name _Catholicon_, the work
of a thirteenth century writer, Joannes Balbus, of Genoa. The type of
the Thirty-six Line Bible passed into the hands of Albrecht Pfister, of
Bamberg, who printed a number of popular German books with it in 1461
and 1462. There is considerable evidence, moreover, that a large number
of copies of the Bible itself were sold at Bamberg about 1460. The
greater part of the text appears to have been set up from a copy of the
Forty-two Line Bible. Where, when, and by whom it was printed we can
only guess, but the place was more probably Bamberg than Mainz, and as
the type is believed to have been originally Gutenberg's, and there is
evidence that Pfister, when he began printing the popular books of
1461-2, was quite inexperienced, Gutenberg has certainly a better claim
to have printed this volume than any one else who can be suggested. The
Thirty-six Line Bible is a much rarer book than the Forty-two Line, but
copies are known to exist at the British Museum, John Rylands Library,
Bibliotheque Nationale, and Musee Plantin, and at Greifswald, Jena,
Leipzig, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Wolfenbuttel. A copy is also said to be
in private hands in Great Britain, but has not been registered. None has
been sold in recent times. Besides the more complete copies mentioned
above, various fragments have been preserved and some of these are on
vellum. The vellum fragment of leaf 204 now in the British Museum was at
one time used as a book-cover.
The _Catholicon_ is printed in a small type, not very cleanly cut. It
was issued without printer's name, but with a long colophon, which has
been translated:
By the help of the Most High, at Whose will the tongues of infants
become eloquent, and who oft-times reveals to the lowly that which He
hides from the wise, this noble book Catholicon, in the year of the
Lord's Incarnation 1460, in the bounteous city of Mainz of the
renowned German nation, which the clemency of God has deigned with so
lofty a light of genius and free gift to prefer and render illustrious
above all other nations of the earth, without help of reed, stilus, or
pen, but by the wondrous agreement, proportion and harmony of punches
and types has been printed and brought to an end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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