A PROTESTANT SCHOLAR IN BOHEMIA
BIBLE.
Biblia cum concordantiis veteris et novi testamenti et sacrorum canonum: necnon & additionibus in marginibus varietatis diversorum textuum …
[(Colophon:) Lyons, Jean Marion, for Anton II Koberger in Nuremberg, 19 August 1520.]
Folio, ff. [xiv], [25], [1, blank], CCCXVII; with blank CC10 but without blank R6, the indexes (quires AA–CC) bound after the preliminaries; title, a1 and H5–8 printed in red and black, large woodcut of St Jerome by Hans Springinklee to title-page, woodcut initials, full-page woodcut of the Six Days of Creation to bb6v, smaller woodcut illustrations to the start of each book (some attributed to Springinklee or Erhard Schön), larger woodcut of King Solomon to start of Proverbs, large woodcut of the Nativity to H4v, both by Springinklee, many of the smaller woodcuts with early colouring and manuscript captions, occasional red initial strokes; old marginal repair to upper outer corner of title-page, occasional light staining, s1 torn across and repaired in margins at an early date (one repair with early annotations on it), a few other mostly marginal tears or paper-flaws (without loss), tiny wormhole in quire n and surrounding leaves (affecting a few characters), final leaf reinforced along inner margin (covering a few characters), but a good, wide-margined copy; bound in contemporary Silesian or Bohemian blind-stamped half pigskin over wooden boards, a border of foliate rolls with a central column of a budding shrub tool with a curved foliate surround and a band of quatrefoils across head and foot, spine in compartments with the same quatrefoil stamp, two brass clasps to fore-edge, sewn on 4 split tawed thongs, vellum index tabs cut from a manuscript (a red letter ‘a’ visible on the tab on h4) to mark the start of each book; pigskin slightly rubbed and darkened, boards a little scratched, front joint neatly repaired, endpapers sympathetically renewed, a few tabs detached (e.g. on m2) or lacking; heavily and attractively annotated throughout the Old Testament in red and black in several contemporary and later sixteenth-century hands, a few manicules, later sixteenth-century signature of Casparus Seifart Gryphenb[urgensis] to title-page, ink stamp of the library of S. Maria Magdalena (Breslau) ‘Ex. Bibl. ad aed. Mar. Magdal.’ and duplicate stamp of the Breslau Stadtbibliothek to verso of title-page, blind stamp of the General Theological Seminary, New York, to title-page, g3, and final leaf, their booklabel to front pastedown, and stamped inventory number 29175 to title verso.
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Biblia cum concordantiis veteris et novi testamenti et sacrorum canonum: necnon & additionibus in marginibus varietatis diversorum textuum …
A handsomely printed Bible in a contemporary Silesian or Bohemian binding, richly annotated by a Protestant scholar and with numerous woodcuts in contemporary colouring.
In the sixteenth century, this area of what is now western Poland became Protestant and remained so until the restoration of Habsburg rule at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, at which time the Protestant churches were closed. The city of Breslau (Wrocław), where this book was located in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (if not earlier), was on the border between Catholic and Protestant lands; the first named owner of the book came from a town eighty miles west of Breslau, which was part of Bohemia at the time.
The extensive annotations seem to be in the same hand, though perhaps written over a period of time, in both red (sometimes faded) and dark brown ink, using a distinctive form of capital R in which the aslant upright makes the letter resemble an X. The annotations start in the alphabetical index, where additional entries have been supplied by more than one reader. Some of the annotations merely repeat or highlight words from the text (there is a pleasing conjunction of ‘Asteriscus’ and ‘Obelus’ written in the margin of bb3r) to make it easier to find particular passages, and there are underlinings in both red and dark brown ink. The woodcut illustrations are occasionally coloured and supplied with manuscript captions.
On f. LXXXVIIv, the annotator refers to the German Protestant theologian Sebastian Franck (1499–c. 1543) for more information on King Hezekiah (in Franck’s Chronica, f. lx), and on f. XCIVv notes that a prophecy in Chronicles is about Christ. The Protestant nature of the annotations is reinforced by the note ‘Antichristus Papa’ (the Antichrist Pope) on f. CCXVIIr.
There are also a few references to contemporary events in the annotations. At the head of f. CXLI, in Psalms, the hand with the distinctive diagonal R writes: ‘Reperta est hec prophecia de Ferdinando et [?]Verbo De[–] q[uo]d florebit [–] eo in Biblioteca civitatis Budissensis alias Bautzen’, about a prophecy found in a manuscript in a library in the town of Bautzen, now in Germany, just over the border from Silesia. This could date our annotator to the mid-sixteenth century, when Ferdinand (1503–1564, the brother of Charles V) was king of Hungary and Bohemia; in 1547 he put down a Protestant revolt in Prague.
Although the annotations occur throughout the volume, there are no annotations to the (short) books of Ruth and Lamentations, only one to all four books of Esdras, and just one to Esther. There are very few notes in the New Testament, though there is another mention of the Antichrist in II Thessalonians (P1r), and the final two leaves of Revelation contain more overtly anti-papal comments, ‘Meretrix magna Roma, cum abominationibus suis’ (The great whore of Rome with her abominations), along with ‘Anabaptist. articulus’, plausibly referring to the notorious Anabaptists of Münster, who held sway in that town in 1534–1535.
This is the first of two editions printed by Jean Marion for Koberger in 1520; the second is dated 12 December. The woodcuts were originally used in the 1512 Bible printed by Jacques Sacon in Lyons, also for Koberger. The New Testament is preceded by the Eusebian canon tables, which are then referred to in the text by a system of printed marginalia.
Provenance:
1. Caspar Seifart of Greiffenberg (Gryfów Śląski, Silesia), with his sixteenth-century ownership inscription.
2. The library of the Protestant church of S. Maria Magdalena, Breslau (Wrocław), founded in 1644 and in 1861 merged with other libraries in Breslau to form the town library.
3. Breslau (Wrocław) town library, which seems to have sold off duplicates at the end of the nineteenth century.
4. General Theological Seminary, New York.
USTC 616602; VD16 ZV 25679; cf. Darlow & Moule 6101 (1521 Sacon edition); cf. Mortimer, Harvard French 63 (December edition).
