Beschreibung:

BIBLIA LATINA. [Mainz: Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust 1455]. Royal 2° (363 x 267mm). Single leaf, containing Ezechiel, 10:7-12:16. 42 lines, double column. Type: 1:140G. Two 2-line initials in red, headline and foliation added in a 16th-century hand. Bull's head watermark visible. (Lightly stained.) Loose in red morocco folding case. Provenance : Trier, Benedictine monastery of St. Maximin -- Trier, Stadtbibliothek -- [sale Sotheby's, 21 June 1937, to:] -- A.S.W. Rosenbach -- Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. -- Charles Scribner's Sons. A SINGLE PAPER LEAF FROM THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED WITH MOVABLE TYPE. The present leaf is from the now widely dispersed Trier copy, once owned by the Benedictines at the monastery of St. Maximin. The volume disappeared at some point between the French occupation of the city in 1794 and the secularization of religious houses in 1802. Part of the first volume and all of volume II were found by Johann Hugo Wyttenbach, founder of Trier City library, in 1828, and it remained at Trier until the early part of this century, when it was sold at auction by Sotheby's in 1937 to A.S.W. Rosenbach. Some leaves went to help perfect John H. Scheide's copy, and the remainder was bought by Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., who in turn used it in part-exchange for his purchase from Scribner's Book Store of the nearly complete Shuckburgh copy in 1953. Most of the New Testament went to George A. Poole, Jr., who bequeathed it to the Lilly Library; the remainder of part I was sold as small fragments and single leaves. The largest fragment of part I of the Trier copy survived to re-emerge only in 1926 and is now at the University of Mons. Cf. Gunther Franz, 'Die Schicksale der Trierer Gutenbergbibeln', Gutenberg-Jahrbuch , 1988, pp.22-42. H *3031; BMC I, 17 (IC. 55); GW 4201; Needham Census ( PBSA , 79, 1985), P-48; Norman, Pictorial Census , pp.253-8; Goff B-526.