On 12 March 1455, whilst attending an Imperial Diet at Wiener Neustadt in Austria, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Bishop of Siena (he later became Pope Pius II) wrote a letter to his friend Juan de Carvajal, the Spanish cardinal of Sant’Angelo in Rome. In the letter, he commented on something that he had seen the previous year while in Frankfurt:
Nothing false was written to me about that miraculous man seen in Frankfurt. I have not seen complete Bibles, but several quires belonging to different books, exceedingly clean and correct in their script, and without error, which Your Grace could read effortlessly, even without glasses. I learned from numerous witnesses that 158 copies have been completed, although some others say the number is 180. … I shall try, if possible, to buy a copy on your behalf and have it brought here. But I fear it will not be possible, both because of the distance and because they say that ready buyers had all been found even before the volumes had been finished.1
Piccolomini’s letter contains the earliest account of printed books in Europe. It mentions the clarity and precision of the text, so much so that it could be read even without glasses, and emphasises the fact that 158 or 180 copies had already been made and all had been sold. The quality and sheer number of these printed Bibles must have been astonishing to those who first saw them, considering that prior to this the Bible, indeed all books, had to be laboriously copied out and written by hand.
The Bibles being offered for sale in Frankfurt in 1454 must have been the famous edition known today as the Gutenberg Bible, which was the first major book to be printed in Europe. The identity of the “miraculous man” seen selling them remains a mystery. Perhaps it was Johann Gutenberg himself, the inventor of Europe’s first typographic printing method, though this seems unlikely. More conceivably, it was his business partner Johann Fust, busy selling the products of Gutenberg’s invention.
The advent of European printing during the 15th century was the beginning of a revolution in mass media and information technology. It made possible the mass production of books, which could be made more swiftly and in much greater numbers than had previously been achievable. Over time, books and other products of the printing press became more widely available and at a lower price to a growing population with rising levels of literacy. The new technology of the printing press transformed how knowledge and information were recorded, transmitted and shared.
INTRODUCING THE EARLY EUROPEAN PRINT COLLECTION
Surviving examples of the earliest European printing are rare after over 500 years of use, abuse, neglect, obsolescence, accidents, disasters, wars, damp, the attentions of insects and rodents, and the recycling of material (paper, vellum, parchment) for other uses. The John Rylands Library holds one of the world’s most important collections of these rare treasures of early printing. Consisting of single leaf woodblock and metal plate prints, blockbooks (printed from wooden blocks) and books printed with moveable metal type (known as incunabula), the collection contains some of the earliest examples of Western printing.
Fifty of the earliest and rarest printed items have been selected to form the Early European Print collection in Manchester Digital Collections, the University of Manchester’s online platform for exploring images of a highly curated selection of heritage collections and research projects. Each item featured in the Early European Print collection has been fully digitised in high quality. A detailed bibliographical description has also been provided for each item, produced as part of the Library’s ongoing Incunabula Cataloguing Project. These give details, if known or conjectured, of the authors, titles, places of publication, names of printers, dates of production, along with copious notes drawing together historic and modern scholarship, and full descriptions of provenance, copy-specific features (such as illuminations, decoration, annotations, imperfections, sophistications, etc.) and bindings.
Featured in the Early European Print collection are:
- The unique Saint Christopher woodcut, dated 1423. A woodblock print, this is the oldest known dated example of European printing.
- Two indulgences of 1454/55, printed in Mainz. Printed on parchment, these were issued by the Church to raise money for the defence of Cyprus. One of the indulgences, printed in 30 lines and with the printed date of 1454, was purchased in Cologne by Georgius and Federica de Arnsbergh on 27 February 1455 (Figure 2). The other indulgence, printed in 31 lines and with the printed date 1455, was purchased for one florin in Würzburg by Henricus and Anna Deupprecht (Rupprecht?) on 7 March 1455 (Figure 3).
- The Gutenberg Bible of 1454/55, printed in Mainz by Johann Gutenberg (Vol. 1 & Vol. 2). Also known as the 42-line Bible, this was the first major book to be printed typographically (i.e. using moveable metal type) in Europe.
- The Mainz Psalter of 1457. A beautiful liturgical book containing the Latin psalms and canticles for use in church worship, with spaces left for musical notation to be added by hand. The second major book to be printed in Europe, it was the first to give the names of its printers (Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer) and the date of printing (14 August 1457). Printed on vellum, it was also the first book to incorporate colour printing, with ornamental initial letters printed in red and blue. Only ten copies survive. This copy is the only known complete copy of the 143-leaf issue.
- The Mainz Psalter of 1459. The third major book to be printed in Europe, it was a revised edition of Fust and Schoeffer’s 1457 Psalter, arranged this time for use in monasteries.
- The 36-line Bible (Vol. 1 & Vol. 2). Long-thought to be a candidate for Europe’s first printed book, this Bible was probably printed in Bamberg by Albrecht Pfister sometime before 1461. The printing of it has also been ascribed to Johann Gutenberg or to an anonymous Mainz printer in about 1458. Only 14 copies survive and it is much rarer than the Gutenberg Bible.
The Gutenberg Bible, the 36-line Bible, and the 1457 and 1459 Mainz Psalters were traditionally thought to have been the first four printed books in Europe. Only four libraries in the world hold complete or substantially complete copies of them all: the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the British Library in London, the Scheide Library at Princeton University, and the John Rylands Library in Manchester.
Other treasures featured in the Early European Print collection include:
- Fifteen blockbooks. These rare books consist of a combination of text and illustrations, in which each page was printed from a carved block of wood (known as xylographic printing). For a long time it was believed that blockbooks were evidence of a precursor technology to printing with moveable metal type (known as typographic printing), but modern research has revealed that blockbooks emerged at around the same time as typographic printing in the middle of the 15th century. The two printing technologies ran side-by-side for a few decades before blockbook printing almost entirely ceased to be used by the end of the century. The earliest surviving blockbook is the John Rylands Library copy of the Apocalypse, printed in the Low Countries and dated to circa 1450-1454 (Figure 8). Other blockbooks in the collection include copies of the Biblia pauperum, the Ars moriendi, the Canticum canticorum, the Speculum humanae salvationis, Die Kunst Ciromantia, and the Mirablia Romae.
- Six items printed at Bamberg by Albrecht Pfister. From Mainz, typographic printing spread first to Strasbourg and to Bamberg, where the 36-line Bible was probably printed by Pfister. We know of another eight Bamberg publications by Pfister, all of which are incredibly rare. Pfister was the first typographic printer to integrate woodcut illustrations with the printed text.
- Two early printed advertisements. One of the advertisements is for an edition of Augustinus Epistolae and eight other books, which was printed in Strasbourg by Johann Mentelin in about 1471. The other is, remarkably, the earliest surviving printed advertisement in English publishing history (Figure 10). It is for an edition of the Sarum Ordinal printed by William Caxton – England’s first printer – in Westminster in about 1477. In the advertisement, Caxton says of anyone wanting the book, “late hym come to Westmonester in to the almonestrye at the reed pale and he shal haue them good chepe”. The ‘Red Pale’ in the Almonry, Westminster, was Caxton’s shop. The advertisement ends with a request in Latin (“Supplico stet cedula”) for it not to be removed, showing that it was meant to be attached to a wall or a door.
The John Rylands Library’s Early European Print digital collection is of fundamental importance for the history of early printing in Europe. It will open up one of the world’s greatest collections of these rare printed specimens to a much wider audience. For specialist researchers, scholars and students it will be an invaluable resource for the study of early European printing. For general readers and those curious about the printed treasures in the John Rylands Library, it will allow access to items that are rarely seen other than occasionally in display cases as part of exhibitions.
More early printed treasures from the Library’s collection of ca. 4,000 incunabula will be added to the Early European Print collection at later dates.
Click here to access the Early European Print collection.
Click here to access Manchester Digital Collections.
- Translation as given in Eric White, Johannes Gutenberg: A Biography in Books (London: Reaktion Books, 2025), p. 90. Based on Martin Davies, ‘Juan de Carvajal and Early Printing: The 42-Line Bible and the Sweynheym and Pannartz Aquinas’, The Library, 6th series, XVIII/3 (September 1996), p. 196. ↩︎