THE BIBLIA PAUPERUM, OR BIBLE OF THE POOR.
This is the most famous and the most creditable specimen of the early block-book.[1] The title, Bible of the Poor, seems to have been used at an early period to distinguish it from the Bible proper, a fair manuscript copy of which was sold in France, in the year 1460, for five hundred crowns of gold. The Bible proper, as then made, in two or more stout folio volumes of fine vellum, was the Bible of the rich; its epitome, in the shape of the book of forty pages of engravings, about to be described, was the Bible of the poor.
The author of the Bible of the Poor is unknown, but the designer of the illustrations was not the writer of the texts that explained the designs. There are frequent incongruities between the words and the pictures, which fully show that the author did not always understand the intent of the artist. It is probable that the illustrations were made first, and that, in the beginning, the Bible of the Poor was a book of pictures only.[2] Some German antiquarians say that the book, in its
- ↑ The engraver or the printer of the book published it, as all other books of this kind were published, without a printed title. It has been described by different authors under these titles: Types and Antitypes of the Old and the New Testament; The Histories and the Prophecies of the Old Testament; The Typical Harmony of the Bible; Typical Illustrations of the Old Testament, and Antitypical Illustrations of the New, or the Story of Jesus Christ as told by Engravers. Chatto calls it the Bible for Poor Preachers, and claims that it was written especially for their use. He objects to the title, Bible of the Poor, as leading to the erroneous opinion that the book was bought by the poor of the laity, who, he says, were unable to read in their own language, much less in Latin, This observation is true, yet Chatto's addition to the old title is not really needed. He overlooks the fact that the charm of the book was in its pictures, which could be appreciated by the poor of the laity as well as by poor preachers. In this sense, it was truly the Bible of the Poor.
- ↑ The British Museum has a French manuscript, entitled Figures de la Bible, in which the illustrations occupy nearly all the page, leaving room for little more than the text that describes the cuts. The same library has two copies in Latin verse of an abridgment of the Bible, in which the text occupies nearly all the page, while the illustrations are in miniature. These manuscripts of the fourteenth century are not Bibles of the Poor, but they show the fondness for books with biblical pictures.
