Gutenberg’s Bible was set up from the Latin manuscript version designated by scholars as the Vulgate. Previous to its issue most manuscript Bibles were written either in Greek or Hebrew. Now, for the first time, it appeared available to all who could read, translated into Latin, the “vulgar” or common language of the Church.
BELLE DA COSTA GREENE
During the past few years I have purchased four copies of the Gutenberg Bible. The first, at the Hoe sale in 1912, was an edition printed on paper, and with Alfred Quaritch I later sold it to the late P. A. B. Widener, of Philadelphia. It is now in the collection of his son, Mr. Joseph Widener. The second copy, in a superb binding by Fogel, and now in the greatest private collection of Bibles in this country, came from the library of the late James W. Ellsworth, of Chicago. It was in a strange manner that I bought this copy. I was halfway across the Atlantic. Before sailing I had been treating for its purchase, along with the rest of his splendid library. I completed the transaction by wireless. It was thus that the fifteenth century and the twentieth met in mid-ocean! To buy a Gutenberg Bible by radio—it seemed almost sacrilegious.
And this recalls another story. I met for the first time aboard one of the great liners a distinguished collector, a man of great taste and judgment. He said to me in the smoking room, fifteen hundred miles out of New York, “Have you a set of the four folios of Shakespeare?”
“Yes,” I replied, “a fine one, the Trowbridge set; at least, I have if it has not been sold.”
He asked me to verify it by wireless, which I did, and on receipt of the message he purchased it in mid-Atlantic. No man that ever lived had the prophetic foresight of Shakespeare; yet even he could not have pictured such a thing. And the price? That is still another story.
I purchased another Gutenberg Bible, printed on paper, at the Carysfort sale in London, four years ago, and paid £9500—a little less than $50,000—for it. To-day it rests, with other great examples of printing and literature, in the library of Mr. Carl H. Pforzheimer, in New York City.
The Melk copy, which I bought at the Anderson Galleries last year, was as exciting an acquisition as I have ever made. Of course there were many collectors and dealers besides myself who yearned to own it. The price I paid for it—$106,000—was like the first shot of the Revolution, heard around the world. Mrs. E. S. Harkness bought this copy from me and most graciously bestowed it upon the Library of Yale University, in memory of Mrs. Stephen V. Harkness. It is certainly one of the greatest gifts ever made to a university in this country. So many copies have passed into public institutions during the past few years, it is unlikely that many more perfect ones can come into the market. What will its price be in the future? One could as well stem the tides as to block its steady and irresistible march. It is only a matter of time. To-day it sells for more than $100,000; more than $1,000,000 will some day be a reasonable price for it.
Although much stress has been laid upon the value and rarity of the Gutenberg forty-two-line Bible, and it is generally thought to be the most valuable in the world, I believe the thirty-six-line Bible (known as the Pfister, or Bamberg, Bible) is infinitely rarer. It also was the work of a Mainz printing press, and was probably made under Gutenberg’s supervision, after he had finished the one which now bears his name. In the old days it was thought to have been printed before the Gutenberg Bible, but scholars have proved by long study that mistakes are made which could only have been the result of using Gutenberg’s for copy, instead of one of the written texts. There are only fourteen copies of this thirty-six-line Bible known; four are in England, seven in Germany, one is in Belgium, one in France, and another in Austria. Yet in all this broad land there is not one copy. But I rejoice in having a single leaf of it, which, I assure you, I prize greatly.