From Metal to Enlightenment: Johannes Gutenberg's Legacy

 

In the middle of the 15th century, in the noisy urban area of Mainz, Germany, a revolution took place that set itself in relatively quiet motion in the workshop of Johannes Gutenberg. This revolution was pushing through the metals' noises, ink, and paper. A majestic work of art and technology, the Gutenberg Bible was a herald of that new age. And behind it was the world's first extensive use of movable metal type—a dazzling innovation that brought man knowledge and lit the path to the Renaissance.

Gutenberg's workshop was an alchemist's crucible, in which lead, tin, and antimony fused to the exact shape of letters and symbols. These minute pieces of metal, each a small sculpture in themselves, formed the vision of Gutenberg. He laid them carefully out over the pages of text, dropping a pattern of the most graceful manuscript. The press he devised to lay them exerted even pressure across the paper or vellum, technology, and artistry that wove together to make the clear, uniform text.

The Gutenberg Bible, in fact, was a show of beauty in itself. For when it was printed on soft vellum suitable to the tastes and purses of many and on the more humble, though sturdy paper, the pages of the work glowed with an almost divinely lit luminescence, forty-two lines of the black text on every page, striding in perfect balance for form and function in nearly a haunting harmony, with the Gothic script saluting the hallowed manuscripts of yore. The margin lay blank, awaiting the touch of the brush of the illuminator to burst into color and gold leaf so that each Bible became a unique treasure.

The impact of the masterpiece from Gutenberg was heard more as a murmur than a roar. Fortune eluded Gutenberg, wholly consumed by his masterpiece. But a seed had been sown for the future. The Gutenberg Bible was the lighthouse that opened the door for others to follow in spreading the print, which literally spread like fire across Europe, shackled by the chains of its scarcity to the pockets of the rich or clergy. The book had multiplied and spread in the hands of an emerging middle class. Europe's cultural and educational landscapes were to never again be the same. Literacy abounded as now more people could afford to own books. The works of the printing presses could have never better nurtured the spirit of the Renaissance, a revival of learning and art. The Reformation, too, was nursed by a new voice, which came alive and through the press, which carried its wail of reform in religion to one and all.

The Gutenberg Bible is now regarded as a tribute to human ingenuity and the genius the powers that print bestow. Of the original 180, there remain but 49 copies throughout the world, each a rare gem in the collections of collectors and libraries. The surviving books are, to this day, plain books; they are relics of the beginning of an information age.

The story behind the Gutenberg Bible is traced through threads of ambition and artistry, which led to an unending thirst for knowledge. A testimony to the mighty force print can subject to shaping our world, this guiding light had taken us through the years, reminding us when knowledge became unleashed, and the course of humanity was set on its perpetual journey of change.