A particularly rare, 560-year-old early printed book, a fragment of the so-called 36-line Bible printed on parchment, has been found in the collection of the National Széchényi Library (OSZK).
The discovery was made by Márton Szovák, a researcher at the library, during the cataloguing of the OSZK’s Old Prints Collection.
They emphasized that what makes the discovery so special is that the 36-line Bible is even rarer than the famous 42-line Gutenberg Bible, with only 76 copies known to exist worldwide, and this is the second known fragment in Hungary.
The newly identified page contains excerpts from Chapter 7 of the Book of Daniel and was placed upside down when the book was bound.
The find is a 16th-century volume, Hannard van Gameren: Authoritates Ciceronis, Plinii et aliorum scriptorum in conscribendis epistolis observandae (Ingolstadt, Alexander and Samuel Weissenhorn, 1566), which has survived as a binding.
Investigations have shown that the fragment comes from a copy of the 36-line Bible, the publication printed with Johannes Gutenberg’s typeface on commission from the Bishop of Bamberg before 1461.
The first known owner of the volume containing the parchment fragment was Johann Gabler, who studied in Ingolstadt from 1570 and, according to his notes, owned the book in 1574. The later owner’s monogram (I G D), dated 1605, documents the volume’s further journey. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the work became part of the collection of Miklós Jankovich (book, antique, and art collector; historian, 1772-1846), and was then purchased by the National Library.
The fragment was discovered in the OSZK during the online cataloguing of 16th-century publications, when bibliographic data was supplemented with the unique characteristics of each copy: completeness, provenance (i.e., previous owners), and descriptions of special bindings.
The announcement highlighted that the significance of the parchment-bound find lies in its direct connection to the dawn of book printing and the legacy of Gutenberg’s workshop. The 36-line Bible is one of the greatest bibliophile rarities of the early era of book printing. Its rustic lettering, even earlier than that of the 42-line Bible, evokes Gutenberg’s experimental period. Commissioned by Bishop Georg von Schaumberg, the parishes of the Bamberg diocese received a uniform text of the Holy Scriptures, an initiative that reflects the spirit of the 15th-century reform efforts.
The current discovery in the OSZK’s Old Prints Collection not only highlights the wealth of Hungarian library treasures, but also shows that new discoveries can be expected even on the shelves of already catalogued collections,”
the announcement states.
The history and scientific significance of the fragment will soon be published in detail on the national library’s blog and in the Magyar Könyvszemle (Hungarian Book Review).
The announcement emphasized that the newly identified parchment fragment is not only a typographical rarity, but also another noteworthy piece of our national cultural heritage on a global scale, evoking both the spirit of Renaissance humanism and the legacy of Gutenberg – the dawn of book printing.
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Via MTI; Featured image: MTI/Kovács Attila
