A bust of Johannes Mentelin in the Humanist Library of Selestat.

A bust of Johannes Mentelin in the Humanist Library of Selestat.

Detail map of Strasbourg, Grand Est, France Overview map of Strasbourg, Grand Est, France

A: Strasbourg, Grand Est, France

Johannes Mentelin Issues the Second Printed Edition of the Bible

1460
The Latin Bible printed by Johannes Mentelin in Strassbourg before 27 June 1466. ISTC No.: ib00624000.
 

The Latin Bible printed by Johannes Mentelin in Strassbourg before 27 June 1466. ISTC No.: ib00624000.

 

The Biblia Latina, printed by Johannes Mentelin by 1460 was the second edition of the Bible and first book printed in Strasbourg. Twenty-eight copies survive, all on paper. There is a copy in the Scheide Library at Princeton. "Until Scheide's purchase in 2001, no copy had been sold for more than 75 years."

ISTC No. ib00528000. In November 2013 a digital facsimile was availablefrom USB Köln at this link

"Gutenberg seems to have given little thought to his choice of a copy text; he used one of many manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate (the fifth-century translation attributed to Jerome). Yet this unconsidered aspect of the printed book proved extremely influential. Virtually all of the Latin Bibles subsequently published in the fifteenth century (a total of some 94 editions, 81 in plain text and 13 with an accompanying commentary) took a printed bible as their model. The earliest editions used a copy of Gutenberg's Bible as their copy text; later fifteenth-century editions used either Gutenberg or one of thes earlier imitators. Unwittingly, therefore, Gutenberg played a major role in fixing the text of the Vulgate as the standard authorised text of Scripture. This would cast a long shadow over sixteenth-century efforts at revision" (Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance [2010] 30).

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