No other technology man has devised came as close to perfection so early in its infancy as book printing. The Gutenberg Bible was impossibly refined—still today it is beautiful. It was also the first book ever mass printed.
The ambition was remarkable. Had this technology followed a normal arc, the first book would surely have been a glorified pamphlet. Instead, Gutenberg printed over 150 copies of the entire Latin Vulgate, each copy consisting of 1288 pages when complete. A quarter of the books were printed on vellum: each such copy required the death of three hundred sheep.
Imagine the sensation it must have made. To the farsighted, it would have seemed like something from the future. A sliver of modernity thrusting itself backwards into the middle ages. We know that the future Pope Pius II was impressed: he wrote in a letter "What was written to me about that marvellous man seen at Frankfurt is entirely true".
An analogy. Imagine if in eighteen-ninety-whatever, Herr Benz announced he had created the first practical horseless carriage. And then pulled out into the streets of Mannheim, strewn with horse shit and things fallen off the sides of hand carts, in a gleaming 1964 Porsche 911 classic. This, I think, is what the Gutenberg Bible must have been like.
Blocks of flawless blackletter, each glyph more perfect than the work of any scribe. Too perfect: inhuman. Only the rubrication preserving the thread of human artistry. Books from before 1500 have a special name: 'incunabula', from the Latin word for swaddling clothes. They tend to still be illuminated by hand, perhaps to reassure people that they were not so alien as they seemed.
Of course it was expensive (though less so than a scribal copy). But what a thing to own! In a world where obscene wealth was best dispensed of by the purchase of land and people, here was something totally new. A whole new class of luxury good: the first whisper of consumerism, and of a new economic system to come.
The ambition was remarkable. Had this technology followed a normal arc, the first book would surely have been a glorified pamphlet. Instead, Gutenberg printed over 150 copies of the entire Latin Vulgate, each copy consisting of 1288 pages when complete. A quarter of the books were printed on vellum: each such copy required the death of three hundred sheep.
Imagine the sensation it must have made. To the farsighted, it would have seemed like something from the future. A sliver of modernity thrusting itself backwards into the middle ages. We know that the future Pope Pius II was impressed: he wrote in a letter "What was written to me about that marvellous man seen at Frankfurt is entirely true".
An analogy. Imagine if in eighteen-ninety-whatever, Herr Benz announced he had created the first practical horseless carriage. And then pulled out into the streets of Mannheim, strewn with horse shit and things fallen off the sides of hand carts, in a gleaming 1964 Porsche 911 classic. This, I think, is what the Gutenberg Bible must have been like.
Blocks of flawless blackletter, each glyph more perfect than the work of any scribe. Too perfect: inhuman. Only the rubrication preserving the thread of human artistry. Books from before 1500 have a special name: 'incunabula', from the Latin word for swaddling clothes. They tend to still be illuminated by hand, perhaps to reassure people that they were not so alien as they seemed.
Of course it was expensive (though less so than a scribal copy). But what a thing to own! In a world where obscene wealth was best dispensed of by the purchase of land and people, here was something totally new. A whole new class of luxury good: the first whisper of consumerism, and of a new economic system to come.