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“The 36-Line Bible”

Bridwell Library Special Collections

Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Bible Collection

Biblia latina.  [Bamberg:  Printer unknown, ca. 1458, not after 1461].         One vellum leaf, Maccabees I, chapters 12-13.
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This solitary vellum leaf came from an otherwise lost copy of the 36-Line Bible, believed by many specialists to be the second Bible printed in Europe. It is the only book comparable to the Gutenberg Bible (Mainz, c. 1455) in its importance for the study of the earliest impact of the printing press on Christian culture. Published without name or date at Bamberg, c. 1458-61, the 36-Line Bible was so-named because it has 36 lines of type per column, as opposed to the 42 lines of its model, the Gutenberg Bible.

Possibly Gutenberg or one of his associates printed the 36-Line Bible with Gutenberg’s earliest moveable type, which he had used c. 1450-57 to print small pamphlets and single-sheet publications. Since Gutenberg had used this type before he printed the 42-Line Bible, many nineteenth-century scholars believed the 36-Line Bible was Gutenberg’s first Bible, but close analysis has proved that the 36-Line Bible was copied from the 42-Line Bible, and not vice-versa. A large body of circumstantial evidence places the publication in Bamberg, although the technology came from Mainz.

The type used for the 36-Line Bible was larger than that of the 42-Line Bible, making the Bamberg edition 485 pages longer than Gutenberg’s first edition. This immense size illustrates the original function of the 36-Line edition as a Bible intended for communal reading in German monasteries, as opposed to the later tendency to print portable Bibles for personal reading. The leaf’s unlikely survival as a later bookbinder’s recycled wrapper for a smaller book reflects the sudden disregard for the Vulgate translation of the Bible in Reformation Germany. 

Shown here is a detail of the former spine of the book once bound in this leaf.

The 36-Line Bible is a great rarity: it exists in only four complete and nine defective copies (the Gutenberg Bible is 3½ times more common), all printed on paper. No complete vellum copy of the 36-Line Bible survives. Vellum leaves such as this one, are the only evidence of the existence of these “deluxe” Bibles. Single leaves from the 36-Line Bible are recorded in only seven American collections.

This addition to Bridwell Library was made possible through the generosity of the Prothro family.

Eric Marshall White, PhD, Curator of Special Collections