February 23 1455 – 5 Adar 5215
Traditionally supposed to be the date on which Johannes Gutenberg printed the first pages of his Latin Bible. Guttenberg was not the first to use a printing press – that was invented by the Chinese hundreds of years earlier – but he was the first to show the process was a viable way of producing books. His bible was also widely acknowledged as a new departure in ease of reading. Future pope Pius II wrote to a colleague in March :
“All that has been written to me about that marvelous man seen at Frankfurt is true. I have not seen complete Bibles but only a number of quires of various books of the Bible. The script was very neat and legible, not at all difficult to follow—your grace would be able to read it without effort, and indeed without glasses.”
The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is widely regarded as the beginning of both the Protestant reformation and the renaissance, by making knowledge widely and cheaply available whereas previously it had been confined to the libraries of nobles and monasteries.
Twenty years later, the first Hebrew book was printed; Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki’s (acronym Rashi) interpretation of the Bible, in Reggio di Calabria, soon followed by a codex of Jewish law, Arba Turim, by Rabbenu Jacob ben Asher, printed in Fieve di Sacco.