Johannes Gutenberg — "God suffers in the great multitudes whom his sacred word cannot reach."
God suffers in the great multitudes whom his sacred word cannot reach.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Johannes Gutenberg
"Religious truth is captive in a small number of manuscript books, which guard the common treasure, instead of diffusing it. Let us break the seal which holds the holy things; give wings to the truth t…"
"Give me twenty-six soldiers of lead and I will conquer the world."
"The work of the scribes is doomed to oblivion."
"God suffers in the multitude of souls whom the scriptures cannot reach."
"It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall soon flow in inexhaustible streams the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men!"
Verification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: gemini
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
The divine suffers when people cannot access sacred scripture. More broadly, knowledge and truth carry moral weight — withholding them from the masses is a form of spiritual injury, to both the people and to God himself. It frames the spread of the written word not as commerce or craft but as a moral and theological obligation. Access to sacred text is a right owed to every human soul.
Relevance to Johannes Gutenberg
Gutenberg spent his life solving exactly this problem. His movable-type press, developed in Mainz around 1440, was used first to print the Bible — his Gutenberg Bible of 1455 being the first major book mechanically printed in Europe. A devout man in a deeply religious age, he saw printing not as industry but as divine mission: ensuring God's word could escape the monastery and reach ordinary believers who previously had no access to scripture.
The era
In 15th-century Europe, Bibles existed only as hand-copied Latin manuscripts — each taking months to produce, costing a laborer's yearly wages, and locked inside monasteries and cathedrals. The laity heard scripture only through priests. Literacy was rare; even literate commoners owned no books. The Church's interpretive monopoly went unchallenged because ordinary people had no access to the source text. Gutenberg's press shattered that barrier, making scripture reproducible, affordable, and eventually readable in vernacular languages.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].