BIBLE, decorated manuscript

by decorated manuscript Bible

£175,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

This is a handsome and weighty thirteenth-century most probably English Bible, the format in which most readers of the Middle Ages knew the complete text. Due to its vast size, most Early Medieval Biblical books included only sections of the complete canon, but the needs of students in the fledging university in Paris in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries lead to advancements in the methods of book production in order to mass-produce complete copies for that market. Script became miniaturised and the words themselves heavily abbreviated in an effort to push resources to their limit, and at the same time libraires or master-book producers divided up master-copies to hand out in sections (or pecia) to multiple copyists at once, dramatically increasing the rate of copying. Thus they survived relatively in large numbers. However their multiple decorated initials and fine script often attracted the attentions of the commercial book dispersers from the nineteenth century onwards, and they have become fewer and fewer in the market in the last century, with examples continuing to fetch record prices. Here the form of the text is mostly that of a more common Parisian Bible, and with the standard abbreviations of Hebrew names in the form Aaz apprehendens at its end. Crucially, however, the script and penwork decoration here appear English and the books of Tobit, Judith and Esther are in the order usually identifying English use. In addition, the early notes on Hebrew at the end

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.