The Gutenberg Bible

The Gutenberg Bible is the first great book printed in Western Europe from movable metal type. It is therefore a monument that marks a turning point in the art of bookmaking and consequently in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world. Gutenberg’s invention of the mechanical printing press made it possible for the accumulated knowledge of the human race to become the common property of every person who knew how to read—an immense forward step in the emancipation of the human mind.

At Princeton University, the Scheide Library copy, belonged to Erfurt’s Dominican friars until 1522, when the city adopted Lutheranism. Forgotten for three centuries, it was discovered in an ancient chest of the former Dominican church in 1838. In 1872 the Bible was purchased by a Berlin bookdealer. A year later the American dealer Henry Stevens sold it to George Brinley of Hartford, Conn. Subsequent owners were Hamilton Cole, Gen. Brayton Ives of New York, and James Ellsworth of Chicago. In 1924 the Philadelphia bookseller A. S. W. Rosenbach sold it to John Scheide, whose son William bequeathed it to Princeton University in 2014.