One cannot imagine today the impact of Gutenberg’s Bible as soon as it was published in 1455. The “Print! Gutenberg’s Europe”, presented by the National Library of France (BnF) in Paris and whose The cross is a partner, refers to it by the exclamation mark in its title. It reflects the excitement of scholars of the fifteenth century in the face of this revolution.
A letter from Enea Silvio Piccolomini, future Pope Pius II, bears witness to this: “What I have been told about this admirable man whom we saw in Frankfurt is correct. I have not seen a complete Bible, but a number of notebooks of different books in very neat and correct handwriting, without any errors and which you could read without difficulty and without glasses, he wrote on March 12, 1455 to Cardinal Juan de Carvajal. I learned from several witnesses that 158 copies are completed, but I was also told that there were 180.
A copy of Gutenberg’s press on display at the BnF
Two copies of this Gutenberg Bible, one on parchment, luxuriously painted and illuminated in the region of Mainz, the other printed on paper and more modest, can be discovered in the exhibition. They come from the very rich collections of the BnF, rarely visible. Printed in series over nearly 1,300 pages, these ample works, still legible and in bold colors more than five hundred years after their production, testify to technical expertise as much as to an economic adventure.
“Gutenberg appropriates the multiple technique and confronts its success. His contemporaries grasped the importance of this masterstroke for the dissemination of writing. explains curator Nathalie Coilly, curator at the Rare Books Reserve.
Shaped by medieval manuscripts, the landmarks of 15th century readers, clerics or lay people (10 to 15% of the European population), are in colour. “Gutenberg confronts this difficulty and manages the feat of printing in duotone to place his book in the continuity of reading habits. His copies are often finished by hand,” says the commissioner.
Attraction of the exhibition, a monumental wooden press, reconstructed according to the original model and lent by the Johannes-Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, allows printing on vellum, with black, red and blue inks taken with a roller, a page in the conditions of the time.
The vital forces of the BnF are exposed
The exhibition presents an exceptional profusion of documents. “We wanted to put Gutenberg in context. He is not the only one to have implemented these techniques, explains curator Caroline Vrand, curator in the Department of Prints and Photography. It was a period of great effervescence that some historians call “the age of start-ups”. And documents from Asia show that it was possible to print before typography”.
Gutenberg Bible, circa 1455. / BNF, rare books reserve
With 250 pieces presented, including twenty loans, “these are the living forces of the BnF, with its collections of incunabula among the richest in the world, which are exposed”, adds Caroline Vrand. A Cosmography (“Geography”) of Ptolemy, a Divine Comedy of Dante illustrated after Botticelli, a Apocalypse of Dürer, missals and books of hours… bear witness to the blossoming of humanism. Novels of chivalry, primers, plays, scores, or even the amazing little account book Arithmetic by Filippo Calandri, intended to help Florentine merchants calculate with their hands… bear witness to a modernity on the move.
The dark side of the printing press, a tool for propagating religious hatred, is also revealed with the Wishboneor witches hammer, instrument of persecution of the Inquisition. The historian Ann Blair, professor at Harvard, establishes at the end of the course an exciting parallel between the revolution of the book and that of the Internet, new forms of expression which provoke debates on their control and the truth.
Rabelais did not hide his enthusiasm, which made Pantagruel say in 1532: “Very elegant and correct impressions are used everywhere, which were invented in my time by divine inspiration, as, conversely, artillery was by suggestion of the devil. Everyone is full of learned people. »
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The Korean Jikji, the first printed work
The “Jikji”, a Korean Buddhist work from 1377, is the first printed from movable metal type still preserved. This volume of Uplifting Traits of the Patriarchs Collected by Monk Baegun, by Päkun (1298-1374), is kept in the oriental manuscripts of the BnF. Acquired in Korea by the diplomat Victor Collin de Plancy between 1896 and 1899, it was shown at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, then bought in 1911 by the jeweler Henri Vever, who bequeathed it to the BnF in 1950. he Yonhap news agency points out that this book, presented in the exhibition “Print! “, has not been shown since 1973. The Republic of Korea would like to exhibit it on its territory one day within the framework of a loan.