Gutenberg Prints His Bible With Movable Type
A Mainz goldsmith's press turns books from a luxury into a technology
Quick facts
- Printer
- Johannes Gutenberg
- Location
- Mainz
- Format
- Double columns, 42 lines per page
- Surviving copies
- Held by Library of Congress, British Library, and others
What happened
Around 1454 and 1455 in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg completed his great Bible, the first large book printed in Western Europe using movable metal type. Gutenberg is credited with devising a system of uniform, interchangeable metal letters, along with the mold and hand-casting process needed to produce enough of them, and an oil-based ink suited to printing on metal type rather than the water-based inks used for woodblock printing. The Bible was set in double columns of forty-two lines per page in the Latin Vulgate text, with initials and rubrication added afterward by hand; the surviving copies in paper and vellum are now held by institutions including the Library of Congress and the British Library.
Why it matters
Movable-type printing made it possible to reproduce a text far faster and more cheaply than hand copying, and within decades presses across Europe were producing classical texts, humanist scholarship, and eventually the pamphlets of the Reformation at a volume no scriptorium could match.
How we know
Surviving Gutenberg Bibles have been studied and digitized by institutions including the Library of Congress, which describes the printing method and 1455 date from its own copy, and the British Library, which holds two further copies from the same edition.
Sources
- Library of Congress. The Gutenberg Bible · Primary source (author-declared)loc.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Printing Press · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry.
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineThe Renaissance27 events · How Europe rediscovered antiquity and reinvented art, science, and thought between 1300 and 1600View all →