February 23, 1455

Gutenberg Bible

Traditional publication date assigned to the Gutenberg Bible

The famous Bible does not name its printer, carry a publication date, or verify the day now used to commemorate it.

A date with nothing behind it

No surviving colophon, production record or contemporary testimony establishes that Gutenberg completed or published the Bible on 23 February 1455. The date is a modern traditional attribution rather than a documented day-level event.

Institutions date the object variously: the Library of Congress gives 1454–1455, its catalogue permits 1454–1456, and another Library of Congress account says printing was probably completed late in 1455.

What was actually made in Mainz

The work was a large-format Latin Bible printed in Mainz with movable metal type, predominantly in two columns of 42 lines, running to about 1,282 pages and requiring 290 different cast characters.

Estimates of the print run differ: at least 120 paper copies and perhaps as many as 40 on vellum, with a traditional larger estimate of roughly 180 copies. Printing, rubrication, illumination, binding and sale were separate stages — which is part of why a single publication day is so hard to define.

The letter that outranks the anniversary

A letter written by Enea Silvio Piccolomini — the future Pope Pius II — on 12 March 1455 reports that he had seen printed gatherings from a Bible, probably at Frankfurt in October 1454. That proves sheets were circulating before the traditional February date, without identifying any completion day.

One further correction: this was not the first book printed with movable type anywhere. East Asian movable-type printing predates it by centuries, so the defensible claim is the first great large-format book printed with movable metal type in Western Europe.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 3 audit passes Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at ~1455.

What the sources leave uncertain

Treat 23 February 1455 as a commemorative or traditional date only.
The Bible contains no printed publication date or printer’s name.
Institutional catalogs variously date the object 1454–1455, about 1455, late 1455, or 1454–1456.
Counts of surviving and complete copies differ slightly by census and by what qualifies as a substantial copy.