Mentelin Bible
The Mentelin Bible is the first of the pre-Lutheran German Bibles and the first ever printed Bible in a vernacular . It appeared in 1466, just 11 years after the Latin Gutenberg Bible , which appeared in 1455.
The university library of the LMU Munich has two copies of the Mentelin Bible, which are part of the Zimelia collection : Cim. 56 and Cim. 56a. The origin of the one cradle print (Cim. 56) with colored initials and floral tendrils in a contemporary pigskin strap on wood with blind pressing is unknown. The other cradle print (Cim 56a) with colored initials and floral tendrils in a contemporary pigskin strap on wood with blind pressing comes from the Augustinian canons of Polling, from whose library over 7,300 volumes came to the University Library of Landshut in the course of the secularization of 1803.
Johannes Mentelin from Schlettstadt († 1478) acquired civil rights in 1447 as a gold scribe in Strasbourg . There is no evidence that he acquired his printing skills from Gutenberg . Presumably he had sent his colleague Heinrich Eggestein to Mainz so that he could learn the printing trade there.
Mentelin made sure to increase the number of print lines by using a smaller font (a Gotico-Antiqua ) in order to reduce the costs compared to a Gutenberg Bible. Mentelin's Bible now had 61 lines in two columns. He printed 406 sheets with a sheet format of 43 cm high by 30 cm wide ( folio ). Only the text was printed, the initials and capital letters at the beginning of the sentence were added in red by the rubricator . In the copy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek , handwritten by the Augsburg chronicler Hektor Mülich , the buyer, one can read about the proud price: 1466 27 June, ditz buch kaft vneingepunden vmb 12 gulden. That was about the value of four oxen.
Mentelin was less lucky with the choice of the text than with the sale of his works. He used a translation from the 14th century from the Nuremberg area, which was based on the "word for word" translation principle that was widespread in the Middle Ages. So it could be used as an aid to understanding above all next to the Latin text. It was particularly widespread in Bohemia, but qualitatively inferior to the somewhat more recent second complete Bible translation. This was the Wenceslas Bible , which was made in Prague and ensured fluent German, but was never printed.
However, Mentelin must also have known this second translation, the Wenceslas Bible. The theologian Wilhelm Walther was able to prove that both branches of translation use the same version of the biblical prologues and arguments as well as the psalm tituli. Since these additions are translated more skilfully than the ongoing text of the Mentelin Bible and they are missing in the manuscripts of the first branch, it was obvious to him that they were borrowed from there - perhaps only from Mentelin.
At the time of printing, the translation must have sounded old-fashioned. The quality of the text did not detract from the project. The Mentelin Bible was to be published thirteen more times by other publishers in southern Germany. Only with the Reformation did the situation change. Luther's main opponent Eck planned to use the Mentelin text as a weapon against the Lutheran text for the Catholic side, but rejected this after he had identified over 3,000 passages that did not match the text of the Vulgate and made his own translation ( Eck Bible ).
Edition
- Wilhelm Kurrelmeyer : The first German Bible . 10 volumes. (= Library of the Litterarian Association in Stuttgart , Vols. 234, 238, 243, 246, 249, 251, 254, 258, 259 and 266). Laupp, Tübingen 1904–1915
literature
- Wilhelm Walther: The German Bible Translation of the Middle Ages, Braunschweig 1889–1892, Sp. 306–320.
- Michael Landgraf, Henning Wendland: Biblia German. Bible and Bible illustration in the early days of printing . Evangelischer Presseverlag Pfalz, 2005
