farfel_n03_092_176

during the 40 yrs from 1534 to 1574 about 100,000 Bibles
come from his press. The books from his press are
remarkable for the blackness + cleaness of the type as well as
for the quality fo the paper which is for superiors to that
used by his contemporaries at Wittenberg. It is said that
he annually commenmorated the printing of the Bible by giving
a dinner of Maunday Thur. at which he made a point of
taking an extra quantitiy of liguor, in order, as he said, to
quench the flame in which he was being burst at Rome;
alluding of course to the spiritual flame, to which as a
printer of heretical books, he was condemned by the Bull
"In Coena Domni" annually promulgated on that day.
Luthers opinion of the art of printing - "It is
the highest + ultimate gift whereby God advances the
cause of the Gospel; + his final flare-up before the
extinction of the world."
-With this arrangement i.e. 2 col. + with the clear colored woodcut
initials this Luther Bible is similar to the German Bibles
of the 15th C.
-At this time (1540's) Luther was the best seller of the century
+ his writing in High German soon made that language the
national one.
Wittenberg owed its importance as a center of printing in the 16th C to 2 facts:
the foundation of a university in 1502, but more important still, the survival of
M. Luther. What had previously been no more than a small provincial
township where the 1st two printers, N. Manschalk (1502-4) + W.
Stockel (1504) could only manage to produce about 9 books between them
suddenly took its place in the foremost rank of book producing centers.
p. 368 Will Durant -"The literary fertility of the Reformers transferred the preponderance
of publications from southern to northern Europe, where it has
remained ever since. Printing was the Reformation; Gutenberg
made Luther possible."