Johannes Gutenberg printed the first bible using the Textura font. Gutenberg based his letter forms on the scripts being used at that time which were Textura Quadrata- a form of Blackletter. Gutenberg wanted a font that would hold up to mass production, his primary goal was to speed up production and make manuscripts more widely available. Gutenberg attempted to recreate script in a format that could be printed mechanically, without taking forever and a day.
Lora Raykova in her article ,The Hidden Story of Gutenberg's First Typeface published in the blog Fontfabric ,states that " The original typeface used by Johannesโ press is recognizable by its dramatic thin and thick strokes, some elaborate swirls on the serifs, and the impression of the texture of a woven pattern across the page."
In this modern era Blackletter is not used for body text because it is not as easily legible as many other fonts more popular such as Helvetica. Today Textura Quadrata would be used as a display font more typically. A statement- attention getter, not a body text font. Apparently the bibles that Gutenberg printed were also later embellished with illustrations, this enhanced his printed versions of the original manuscripts, increasing the similarity between the two and building a bridge from the past into the future.