BIBLE, LATIN. Mainz: Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, 14 August 1462

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The fourth printed Bible was the first to state the names of its printers and its date. Besides the text proper, there are printed rubrics, chapter initials and numerals, and the printers’ armorial device. The text source was a copy of the Gutenberg Bible with dozens of hand corrections. Like the Gutenberg Bible, copies were printed both on paper and on vellum. At least 80 copies survive, evidencing the edition’s wide distribution in Germany, France, Italy, Bohemia, and England. The exhibited vellum copy was illuminated by the anonymous “Fust Master,” whose brilliant workmanship enhances numerous early Mainz publications. First recorded in the Duke of Cassano-Serra’s library in Naples in 1807, the Bible passed through three English collections before John Scheide purchased it in 1926.

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Provenance: Duke of Cassano Serra; Lord Spencer; Duke of Sussex; Sir George Holford; acquired July 1925.

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WHS copy is printed on parchment.
WHS also has fragment ([6] leaves ; 40 x 29 cm.) printed on paper; text is John I:31-XIII:4. A fragment of six paper leaves of the fourth (but first explicitly signed and dated) printed Bible. Fust and Schöffer also printed a substantial number of copies on vellum, one of which is in the Scheide Library. The leaves consist of vol. II, fos. 177-182 (leaves 5-10 of quire 18), containing John 1:31 to 13:4. The chapter initials and most chapter numbers are printed in red or blue. The numbers for chapters 9 and 11 were not printed, and so were supplied by the rubricator, who also wrote the headlines in alternating red and blue capitals. On fo. 177v the initial for chapter 4, E, is incorrect, and was corrected by a reader in brown ink to U. A reader also corrected the text of fo. 181v, column a, end of line 9 and beginning of 10 (John 10:15). The printed text reads “Sicut pater”; the reader added “nouit me” in the margin to produce the correct “Sicut nouit me pater”, “as my father knows me.” In the Gutenberg Bible, from which the 1462 Bible was set, the passage is correct, and so this error originated with Fust and Schöffer's compositor.
Ex also has fragment ([1] leaf ; 40 x 30 cm.) printed on paper; text is II Kings XXI:5-XXII:42.
WHS copy bound for Duke of Sussex by Charles Lewis.

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