THE FIRST PRINTED GREAT LIGHT
Sometime between 1450 and 1455, the Gutenberg
Bible-the first complete Bible to be printed-
was given to the world. No other book has had
so great an influence on the Craft. The heart
of all Masonic lodges is the Great Light in
Masonry-the Holy Bible.
In every recognized lodge the world over, it
lies open upon the Altar whenever a lodge is
open. In this country it is usually open at
the 133rd Psalm in the Entered Apprentice
Degree, the 7th chapter of Amos in the
Fellowcraft Degree, and the 12th chapter of
Ecclesiastes in the Master Mason Degree.
The Holy Bible is the rule and guide of
Masonic faith and practice. The degrees of
Masonry are based upon the building of King
Solomon's Temple and upon Biblical history.
Quotations from the Book of Books occur
throughout the ritual. Characters from the
Bible are a part of Masonic degrees. Without
the Bible there would be no Freemasonry as we
know it.
For nearly two hundred years the Great Light
has been the center of the lodge. From it has
emanated that light by which Masons see the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
Its teachings are the Masonic teachings. The
spirit of Masonry, in which all men stand
upon an exact equality and are valued for
their internal, not their external
qualifications, comes from these sacred
pages.
Books, newspapers, magazines and Bibles are
so easy to obtain that they are taken for
granted. More copies of the Bible have been
printed in more languages in more countries
than any other book. In every hotel bedroom
will be found the Bible, placed therein by
the Society of Gideons. No man without a
Bible but can obtain one, free if he has no
money, from Bible Societies and churches. In
practically every home in the civilized world
is a Bible in which is recorded the
marriages, births, and deaths of the family.
In millions of homes, reading from the Bible
is a part of everyday life.
But these things were not always so. The
Bible, now available to all, is a modern
miracle. For nearly fifteen hundred years
after the death of the Man who walked by
Galilee, Bibles were only in manuscript, so
expensive that only the richest men could own
them. Later there were the Bibles of the
Poor, printed from blocks of wood on which
were a few pictures, a few words only.
Not until sometime between 1450 and 1455 was
there a printed Bible as we know it, the
beginning of that torrent of printed Bibles
which has carried the sacred words the world
over.
Man's three greatest inventions were speech,
by which sounds conveyed ideas from speaker
to hearer; writing, by which characters
represented speech; and printing from
moveable type, which made writing the common
property of all men.
No invention of machinery or process could
have been possible without these; no
discovery, no new idea, no conception, could
have encompassed the world of men without
them.
So far as we know animals do not speak,
except in the small language of bark or cry
which denominate only elemental ideas-hunger,
mating, distress, pleasure. No animals read
or write. Only man conveys thought by sound;
only from man has come the abstract thought
of philosophy, mathematics, science, art.
Charity, education, religion, learning are
man's gift to man. None of these could have
been more than local, had it not been for
speech, for writing, for printing.
Throughout the centuries the writings of
scholars upon stone, clay, papyrus,
parchment, and finally upon paper, resulted
in the creation of a caste: men who could
read; men who, sitting silently before a
manuscript, could follow in their minds the
thoughts of other men.
With the growth of learning arose a demand
for books; but producing them by means of a
quill and brush made them so costly that they
were the exclusive possessions of princes -
either of the Church or of the State.
Scholars are generally agreed that the art of
printing as we know it had its birth in
Germany. In the earliest examples of
printing, not only illustrations but text
were cut in relief in solid blocks of wood.
But it was not until the invention of
moveable metal types, capable of innumerable
combinations of letters forming words, that
printing as we know it came into existence.
It was about 1439 or 1440 that Johann
Gansefleisch, known today by his mother's
name of Gutenberg, began the experiments that
led to his great contribution to civilization-
the invention of moveable metal types and the
molds in which to make them. Born in Mainz on
the Rhine in 1397, he moved thirty years
later to Strasbourg, where he lived for
nearly twenty years. Most of our knowledge of
his life comes from records in the law
courts. He formed several partnerships and
negotiated a number of loans, but seems to
have been so unsuccessful financially that
most of these affairs brought him into court.
He needed more and more money, according to
one document, for rent, workmen's wages,
parchment, paper, ink, and "the work of the
books." In the 1450's, he lost most of his
printing equipment to one of his ex-partners
or creditors, Johann Fust, who later, with
his son-in-law, became a famous printer of
Mainz. Some of these associates, however,
seem to have had great trust in the eventual
success and value of his work, and to have
stayed by him.
For many years it was thought that the famous
Gutenberg Bible was his first production,
which, considering its perfection, would have
been astonishing. It now has been proved that
he began on far less ambitious projects.
Perhaps the first was a popular, long German
poem on the "World judgment," possibly
printed in Strasbourg, and one page of which
is now in the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. Then
came the Latin grammar, called the Donatus,
from the name of its author, of which at
least sixteen editions were printed. These
and other scraps of printing show that he was
experimenting and improving his types. The
first dated piece of printing is an
indulgence, dated 1454, granted for
contributions to the Pope's fund for a
campaign against the Turks, who had captured
Constantinople in 1453.
Somewhere in or between 1451 and 1455,
Gutenberg must have been at work on the Latin
42-line Bible, the first important effort of
the inventor; nor has another book yet been
discovered in which he employed the types
used in this Bible. As an example of printing
it has never been surpassed. Of all the arts,
printing at its birth reached perfection more
nearly than any other.
The book gives no information as to the date
at which it was printed, or the place, or the
printer. It has no title-page or colophon;
its six hundred and forty-one leaves are
unnumbered, and there are no catch words. It
is printed in Latin, in large Gothic
characters, in double columns and some pages
are beautifully and elaborately hand-
decorated in color and in gold.
The printing was done both upon vellum and
upon paper; which was first used cannot
possibly now be determined, but is generally
believed that the paper copies are the
earliest.
The printing is an imitation of writing, in a
brilliant black ink of a quality which has
defied the centuries. The paper, too, is of
an exceeding beauty and texture. In a copy in
the Bibliotheque Nationale, at Paris, there
is a manuscript note in which the rubricator,
who did the hand illumination, says that he
finished his work on the twenty-fourth of
August, 1456, adding thereafter, as was not
unusual, the word "Alleluia."
The United States owns a perfect and complete
Gutenberg Bible. It is on exhibition in the
Library of Congress. It came to this nation
as part of the Vollbehr Collection of
Incunabula (books printed before January 1,
1501) purchased under the authorization
provided by an Act of Congress approved by
President Hoover on July 3, 1930. The sum of
$1,500,000 was appropriated for the purchase
of the entire collection of 3,000 items, one
of which was the copy on vellum of the
Gutenberg 42-line Bible, known as the Saint
Blasius-Saint Paul copy in three volumes.
This is one of the three perfect vellum
copies known to exist, the other two being in
the British Museum in London and the National
Library of France in Paris.
The copy which came to the Library of
Congress with the Vollbehr Collection was in
the possession of the religious order of
Benedictines for nearly five centuries. Until
about the year 1794 it was kept at the Abbey
of Saint Blasius in the southwestern part of
Germany. In the wars growing out of the
French Revolution the monks, fearing for the
security of their treasures, took this great
book away from Saint Blasius to other houses
of their order, first in Switzerland, later
in Upper Austria, and finally, about 1809, to
their Abbey of Saint Paul in the valley of
the Lavant River in the eastern part of
Carinthia, where it remained until it passed
into the hands of its buyer, Dr. Otto H. F.
Vollbehr, on August 16, 1930. The price paid
by Dr. Vollbehr for the Bible was $250,000,
increased by interest charges and an export
tax to a total in excess of $350,000, the
highest price ever paid for a single printed
book.
Gutenberg's first types were cut from apple
wood, one of the best for carving, but these
did not prove satisfactory. Then he conceived
the idea of casting metal type in an engraved
matrix and thus laid the foundation for the
printing industry of today. At least eighteen
years were required to perfect his method. He
had also to design and build a press, make
all auxiliary equipment, perfect his type
metal, and even to make an ink suited to his
types.
Circumstances indicate that his invention was
motivated by a high purpose, the production
of church literature, and, more probably, the
Bible. His type faces were cut accurately to
reproduce the appearance of manuscript copies
of the Bible and required a font of 290
characters.
Although plagued by debt, lawsuits, and
unfortunate partnerships, Gutenberg
persevered in his purpose and about 1450 or
1451 (exact dates of the Gutenberg Bible are
lost in the shadows of history), he began the
printing of Jerome's Latin translation of the
Bible, the Vulgate. As the printing
proceeded, it was necessary to alter his type
from the 40 lines originally planned to 41
lines and again to 42 lines per column, which
meant a costly and heartbreaking delay.
Having perfected his fonts, he then proceeded
with the 42-line Bible, of which it is
believed some 30 copies were printed on fine
paper and about 180 copies on vellum.
Gutenberg's Bible is a technical masterpiece
and is acknowledged by printing authorities
today as an almost perfect piece of printing,
an artistic and finished piece of work. Begun
1450-1451, the Gutenberg Bible was completed
sometime in 1454-1455.
Having lost his printing equipment through
misfortune and debt, Gutenberg was at last
befriended by Adolph II, Prince Elector of
Mainz, appointed a courtier, and provided a
pension until his death on February 3, 1468
at the age of 70. Thus passed Gutenberg,
unhonored by his generation and a business
failure by conventional standards.
But Gutenberg was not a failure. He was a
working tool in the hands of the Supreme
Architect of the Universe and a living
example of the saying, "God works in a
mysterious way His wonders to perform." For
scarcely had Gutenberg slept with his fathers
than printing presses were busy throughout
Europe and a slumbering giant began to stir.
Now came Martin Luther, strong, fearless, and
defiant, courageously facing death when on
October 31, 1517 he dared to post his 95
Theses Against the Abuse of Indulgence at the
door of the Castle Church in Wuttenberg.
These were printed both in Latin and in
German translation and eagerly read and
discussed throughout and beyond the bounds of
the Empire. Later, while imprisoned at
Wartburg, he produced a translation of the
Greek New Testament into German, which was
published in 1522. He then translated the Old
Testament and published the complete Bible in
German in 1534.
Although Wycliffe had translated the Vulgate
into English about 1378, this was before the
invention of printing from moveable type. In
1523 and 1524, Tyndale, a Master of Oxford
and England's greatest scholar of Hebrew and
Greek, translated the New Testament into the
English vernacular. The Tyndale Bible was
printed in Germany and copies smuggled into
England, but it was suppressed by the
bishops, and Tyndale took refuge in Antwerp.
Later he was betrayed, imprisoned, tried for
heresy, and condemned, and on October 6,
1536, he was strangled at the stake and his
body burned, his last words being, "Lord,
open the King of England's eyes."
The first complete Bible printed in English
was that of Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, who
completed his translation in 1535. He was
employed by Cromwell to assist in producing
the Great Bible of 1539 which was ordered to
be placed in all English churches. At Geneva
in 1558, he also assisted in the preparation
of the Geneva Bible.
The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to be
printed in Roman type and with numbered
verses, and enjoyed great popularity in
England, going through 140 editions in 84
years. It was the Bible of Shakespeare,
Milton, and the Puritans, who brought it to
America.
With the Reformation accomplished, and
printing and paper making processes greatly
improved, the Bible became accessible to the
English people as well as to those of the
European countries.
In 1611, the King James Version brought the
Bible into the modern idiom without
sacrificing the scholarship and vigor of
Tyndale or the delightful mode of expression
introduced by Coverdale and thus produced a
work which has been classed as supreme in
English literature. Of the King James Version
in its successive editions, more copies have
been printed and sold than of any other book
in any language.
The Bible has been translated into 1,118
different languages and distributed to the
ends of the earth. A number of Bible
Societies here and abroad distribute Bibles
wherever they are needed. The American Bible
Society has issued 405 million volumes of
Scripture in the last 135 years. Bibles for
the blind are produced in 34 languages and
systems.
Gutenberg's Bible was forgotten for 300 years but now copies are the most
expensive of all rare books. His vital contribution to world enlightenment was
the freeing of the Bible from ecclesiastical bondage, and making the Book of
Books available to all.
"A thousand years," declared the psalmist,
"are in Thy sight as but a day." As we stand
at this noontide of a millenium, we find a
printed Bible on the Altar of every Masonic
lodge and draw renewed hope from the promise
that in every clime a Mason may find a home
and in every land a brother.
Johann Gutenberg was a man with the love of
the word of God in his heart, who gave to the
world the art of printing. This art is not
only basic to all learning as we know it, its
invention also began the long process of
breaking the power of the priesthood and
making the words of the Great Architect, as
set forth in His Book, the common property of
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