section_path: Printing/Printed books
section_name: Printed books
paragraph_text: Printed books
  
  Between 1450–55, Gutenberg printed several texts, some of which remain unidentified; his texts did not bear the printer's name or date, so attribution is possible only from typographical evidence and external references. Certainly church documents including a papal letter and two indulgences were printed, one of which was issued in Mainz. In view of the value of printing in quantity, seven editions in two styles were ordered, resulting in several thousand copies being printed. Some printed editions of Ars Minor, a schoolbook on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus, may have been printed by Gutenberg; these have been dated either 1451–52, or 1455. Every copy of printed books were identical; this was a significant departure from handwritten manuscripts, which left room for possible human error.
  
  In 1455, Gutenberg completed copies of a well-executed folio Bible (Biblia Sacra), with 42 lines on each page. Copies sold for 30 florins each, roughly three years' wages for a clerk. Nonetheless, it was much cheaper than a manuscript Bible that could take a single scribe over a year to prepare. After printing, some copies were rubricated or hand-illuminated in the same elegant way as manuscript Bibles from the same period.
  
  48 substantially complete copies are known to survive, including two at the British Library that can be viewed and compared online. The text lacks modern features such as page numbers, indentations, and paragraph breaks.
  
  An undated 36-line edition of the Bible was printed, probably in Bamberg in 1458–60, possibly by Gutenberg. A large part of it was shown to have been set from a copy of Gutenberg's Bible, thus disproving earlier speculation that it was the earlier of the two.