Paris Bible

Last updated November 01, 2024

The Paris Bible (Latin : Biblia Parisiensia^[1]) was a standardized format of codex of the Vulgate Latin Bible originally produced in Paris in the 13th century. These bibles signalled a significant change in the organization and structure of medieval bibles and were the template upon which the structure of the modern bible is based.

Up to the beginning of the 13th century there was no single structure for the order of the biblical books, and it was often presented in 4 volumes. The Paris Bible was unique for its time; it was a pandect (complete single volume) with a uniform order, which is similar to the order of the modern Bible used today. Between 1230 and 1280 AD this bible was copied more frequently and spread more widely across Europe than any other copy of the Bible.^[2]

Common characteristics

Paris Bible is the name given to bibles produced by scribes mainly in Paris and areas of Northern France although examples are believed to have originated in England and Italy.^[3] However, scholars caution that the term is used too broadly as it is often confused with the 'pocket bible'^[4] which is applied to bibles produced from the 12th century onwards. These were small enough to be carried in a saddle or travelling bag or indeed a pocket.^[5]

Scholars apply the term to bibles which possess a number of common characteristics. Each pandect contained the Deuterocanonical books (though not the apocryphal Epistle to the Laodiceans or the Fourth Book of Esdras),^[6] 64 prologues mostly based on the commentaries of Jerome and most have an index of the interpretations of Hebrew names (IHN). Whilst the thirteenth century bibles were divided into chapters, they were yet to include numbered verses.^[7]

Structure and format

The bibles varied, especially by region, from almost 200mm by 120mm, to a small 130mm by 80mm. The smaller "pocket" versions were intended for traveling friars.

Scholars have disputed the fact that all Paris Bibles were single volume manuscripts as several two volume bibles are still in existence. Several leading Book Historians have suggested that where there is evidence of highly decorated pages mid-way through a one volume bible it is evidence of a two-volume manuscript being rebound at a later date as one volume.^[2]

Readers and owners

The explosion of the mendicant orders of preaching friars, in particular the Franciscans and Dominicans, lead to innovation in manuscript Bible design and manufacture:

Friars differed from monks in that they did not reside in closed communities but went out to live and preach in society. As they renounced possessions and travelled extensively to preach, they required small books which could be carried on their person. The orders of friars were remarkably successful, and as every preaching friar was required to have a Bible, pocket Bibles would have been required, according to de Hamel, in their thousands – a fact which accounts for their relative prevalence today.
— Libby Melzer, State Library of Victoria^[8]

20,000 small-format Paris Bibles are estimated to have been produced in the 13th century alone, in France, Italy and England.^[8]

The founding of a flurry of universities in the thirteenth century can be regarded as one of the major changes which determined how the Bible would change. One of the often-heard comments^{[ who? ]} of the Paris Bible is that it was designed for studying the newly-introduced scholastic theology. Mendicant Orders also created schools (studia) which had, at the heart of the education program, an academic study of the scriptures. It was these changes which led to the desire to rearrange the format of the Bible in order that students, masters and preachers could retrieve information effectively. Adding reading aids like running headers and chapter numbers allowed readers to find the Books of the Bible and essential text.^[9]

Related Research Articles

The deuterocanonical books, meaning "Of, pertaining to, or constituting a second canon," collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be canonical books of the Old Testament by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and the Church of the East. In contrast, modern Rabbinic Judaism and Protestants regard the DC as Apocrypha.

The Vulgate is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina Gospels used by the Roman Church. Later, of his own initiative, Jerome extended this work of revision and translation to include most of the books of the Bible.

The Douay–Rheims Bible, also known as the Douay–Rheims Version, Rheims–Douai Bible or Douai Bible, and abbreviated as D–R, DRB, and DRV, is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by members of the English College, Douai, in the service of the Catholic Church. The New Testament portion was published in Reims, France, in 1582, in one volume with extensive commentary and notes. The Old Testament portion was published in two volumes twenty-seven years later in 1609 and 1610 by the University of Douai. The first volume, covering Genesis to Job, was published in 1609; the second, covering the Book of Psalms to 2 Maccabees plus the three apocryphal books of the Vulgate appendix following the Old Testament, was published in 1610. Marginal notes took up the bulk of the volumes and offered insights on issues of translation, and on the Hebrew and Greek source texts of the Vulgate.

Middle English Bible translations covers the age of Middle English, beginning after the Norman Conquest (1066) and ending about 1500.

Vetus Latina, also known as Vetus Itala, Itala ("Italian") and Old Italic, and denoted by the siglum , is the collective name given to the Latin translations of biblical texts that preceded the Vulgate.

Middle English Bible (MEB) or Wycliffe's Bible or Wycliffite Bibles or Wycliffian Bibles (WYC) are names given for a sequence of orthodox Middle English Bible translations from the Latin Vulgate which appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Codex Amiatinus</span> Considered the best-preserved copy of the Vulgate version of the Bible

The Codex Amiatinus is considered the best-preserved manuscript of the Latin Vulgate version of the Christian Bible. It was produced around 700 in the northeast of England, at the Benedictine Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in the Kingdom of Northumbria, now South Tyneside, and taken to Italy as a gift for Pope Gregory II in 716. It was one of three giant single-volume Bibles then made at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow, and is the earliest complete one-volume Latin Bible to survive, only the León palimpsest being older. It is the oldest Bible where all the biblical canon present what would be their Vulgate texts.

The name "Esdras" is found in the title of four texts attributed to, or associated with, the prophet Ezra. The naming convention of the four books of Esdras differs between church traditions, and has changed over time.

These are the books of the Vulgate along with the names and numbers given them in the Douay–Rheims and King James versions of the Bible. They are all translations, and the Vulgate exists in many forms. There are 76 books in the Clementine edition of the Latin Vulgate, 46 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, and 3 in the Apocrypha.

A correctory is any of the text-forms of the Latin Vulgate resulting from the critical emendation as practised during the course of the thirteenth century.

The Old Testament is the first section of the two-part Christian biblical canon; the second section is the New Testament. The Old Testament includes the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or protocanon, and in various Christian denominations also includes deuterocanonical books. Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants use different canons, which differ with respect to the texts that are included in the Old Testament.

The earliest surviving manuscripts of the Septuagint, an ancient translation of the ancient Hebrew Torah into Koine Greek, include three 2nd century BCE fragments from the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and five 1st century BCE fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, only. The vast majority of Septuagint manuscripts are late-antiquity and medieval manuscript versions of the Christian Greek Old Testament tradition.

The Bible Historiale was the predominant medieval translation of the Bible into French. It translates from the Latin Vulgate significant portions from the Bible accompanied by selections from the Historia Scholastica by Peter Comestor, a literal-historical commentary that summarizes and interprets episodes from the historical books of the Bible and situates them chronologically with respect to events from pagan history and mythology.

In Biblical studies, a gloss or glossa is an annotation written on margins or within the text of biblical manuscripts or printed editions of the scriptures. With regard to the Hebrew texts, the glosses chiefly contained explanations of purely verbal difficulties of the text; some of these glosses are of importance for the correct reading or understanding of the original Hebrew, while nearly all have contributed to its uniform transmission since the 11th century. Later on, Christian glosses also contained scriptural commentaries; St. Jerome extensively used glosses in the process of translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bible translations in the Middle Ages</span>

Bible translations in the Middle Ages went through several phases, all using the Vulgate. In the Early Middle Ages, written translations tended to be associated with royal or episcopal patronage, or with glosses on Latin texts; in the High Middle Ages with monasteries and universities; in the Late Middle Ages, with popular movements which caused, when the movement were associated with violence, official crackdowns of various kinds on vernacular scripture in Spain, England and France.

The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate or Clementine Vulgate is an edition of the Latin Vulgate, the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. It was the second edition of the Vulgate to be formally authorized by the Catholic Church, the first being the Sixtine Vulgate. The Clementine Vulgate was promulgated in 1592 by Pope Clement VIII, hence its name. The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate was used officially in the Catholic Church until 1979, when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated by Pope John Paul II. The Clementine Vulgate is still in use in the 1962 missal and breviary of the Catholic Church.

The Bible translations into Latin date back to classical antiquity.

The León Palimpsest, designated l or 67, is a 7th-century Latin manuscript pandect of the Christian Bible conserved in the cathedral of León, Spain. The text, written on vellum, is in a fragmentary condition. In some parts it represents the Old Latin version, while following Jerome's Vulgate in others. The codex is a palimpsest.

William of Luxi, O.P., also Guillelmus de Luxi or, was born in the region of Burgundy, France, sometime during the first quarter of the thirteenth century. He was a Dominican friar who became regent master of Theology at the University of Paris and a noted biblical exegete and preacher.

The Vulgate is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible, largely edited by Jerome, which functioned as the Catholic Church's de facto standard version during the Middle Ages. The original Vulgate produced by Jerome around 382 has been lost, but texts of the Vulgate have been preserved in numerous manuscripts, albeit with many textual variants.

References

↑ Canellis, Aline, ed. (2017). "Introduction : Du travail de Jérôme à la Vulgate" [Introduction: From Jerome's work to the Vulgate]. Jérôme : Préfaces aux livres de la Bible[Jerome : Preface to the books of the Bible] (in French). Abbeville: Éditions du Cerf. p. 217. ISBN 978-2-204-12618-2.
1 2 Light, Laura (2012). "The thirteenth century and the Paris Bible". The New Cambridge History of the Bible. 2: 380–391. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521860062.023. ISBN 978-0-521-86006-2 – via Cambridge Core.
↑ Ruzzier, Chiara (May 2013). "The miniaturisation of Bible manuscripts in the 13th century. A comparative study". Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. By L. Light – E. Poleg, Pp. 105-125. doi:10.1163/9789004248892_006 – via Academia.edu.
↑ O’Daly, Irene (July 25, 2014). "Size Matters: Portable Medieval Manuscripts". medievalfragments. Archived from the original on Sep 7, 2023.
↑ Light, Laura (1994). 'French Bibles c. 1200-30: A New Look at the Origin of the Paris Bible' in Richard Gameson (ed.), The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 155–76.
↑ Magrini, Sabina (2013). Vernacular Bibles, Biblical Quotations and the Paris Bible in Italy from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century: a First Report, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. by E. Poleg and L. Light, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2013 /, 27). Leiden-Boston: Library of the Written World, Brill. pp. 237–259.
↑ Liere, Frans Van (2012). The Latin Bible, c. 900 to the Council of Trent, 1546. pp. 93–109. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521860062.007. ISBN 978-0-521-86006-2.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
1 2 Melzer, Libby. 'A pocketful of miracles': The small- format Paris edition manuscript Bible at State Library Victoria (PDF). State Library Victoria.
↑ Rouse, R.H and M.A (1982). 'Statim invenire. Schools, Preachers, and new attitudes to the page', in R.L. Benson and G. Constable (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 201–25.

External links

The Paris Bible Project

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[:03-1] Canellis, Aline, ed. (2017). "Introduction : Du travail de Jérôme à la Vulgate" [Introduction: From Jerome's work to the Vulgate]. Jérôme : Préfaces aux livres de la Bible[Jerome : Preface to the books of the Bible] (in French). Abbeville: Éditions du Cerf. p. 217. ISBN 978-2-204-12618-2.

[:0-2] 1 2 Light, Laura (2012). "The thirteenth century and the Paris Bible". The New Cambridge History of the Bible. 2: 380–391. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521860062.023. ISBN 978-0-521-86006-2 – via Cambridge Core.

[3] Ruzzier, Chiara (May 2013). "The miniaturisation of Bible manuscripts in the 13th century. A comparative study". Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. By L. Light – E. Poleg, Pp. 105-125. doi:10.1163/9789004248892_006 – via Academia.edu.

[4] O’Daly, Irene (July 25, 2014). "Size Matters: Portable Medieval Manuscripts". medievalfragments. Archived from the original on Sep 7, 2023.

[5] Light, Laura (1994). 'French Bibles c. 1200-30: A New Look at the Origin of the Paris Bible' in Richard Gameson (ed.), The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 155–76.

[6] Magrini, Sabina (2013). Vernacular Bibles, Biblical Quotations and the Paris Bible in Italy from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century: a First Report, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. by E. Poleg and L. Light, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2013 /, 27). Leiden-Boston: Library of the Written World, Brill. pp. 237–259.

[7] Liere, Frans Van (2012). The Latin Bible, c. 900 to the Council of Trent, 1546. pp. 93–109. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521860062.007. ISBN 978-0-521-86006-2.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)

[Melzer-8] 1 2 Melzer, Libby. 'A pocketful of miracles': The small- format Paris edition manuscript Bible at State Library Victoria (PDF). State Library Victoria.

[9] Rouse, R.H and M.A (1982). 'Statim invenire. Schools, Preachers, and new attitudes to the page', in R.L. Benson and G. Constable (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 201–25.

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