The Bury Bible is a giant illustrated Bible written at

Bury Saint Edmunds Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as Bury, is a historic market, cathedral town and civil parish in Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

, England between 1121 and 1148, and illuminated by an artist known as

Master Hugo Master Hugo (fl. c.1130-c.1150) was a Romanesque lay artist and the earliest recorded professional artist in England. His documented career at Bury St Edmunds Abbey spans from before 1136 to after 1148. He is most famous for illuminating the f ...

. Since 1575 it has been in the

Parker Library The Parker Library is a library within Corpus Christi College, Cambridge which contains rare books and manuscripts. It is known throughout the world due to its invaluable collection of over 600 manuscripts, particularly medieval texts, the ...

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Corpus Christi College (full name: "The College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary", often shortened to "Corpus"), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. From the late 14th century through to the early 19th century ...

, with the shelf-mark Cambridge CCCC M 2. Bury Bible - F1v - Frater Ambrosius

It is an important example of Romanesque illumination from

Norman England England in the High Middle Ages includes the history of England between the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the death of King John, considered by some to be the last of the Angevin kings of England, in 1216. A disputed succession and victory at the ...

, and bears comparison with other giant bibles produced in England in the 12th century such as the Dover Bible (also in the Parker Library),

Lambeth Bible The Lambeth Bible is a 12th-century illuminated manuscript (perhaps produced circa 1150–1170), among the finest surviving giant Bibles from Romanesque England. It exists in two volumes; the first is in Lambeth Palace Library (MS 3) and cov ...

, Rochester Bible, and the

Winchester Bible The Winchester Bible is a Romanesque illuminated manuscript produced in Winchester between 1150 and 1175 for Winchester Cathedral. With folios measuring 583 x 396 mm., it is the largest surviving 12th-century English Bible. The bible belongs ...

Description

Only the first part of the original two-volume work has been preserved. Twelve pictures were painted on parchment on separate pages and then incorporated into the work; six remain. 42 of the original 44 painted initials have been preserved.Rodney M. Thomson, ''The Bury Bible acsimile' Boydell Press, 2002, 102 p. (). A. Heslop, ‘The production and artistry of the Bury Bible’, ''Bury St Edmunds: medieval art, architecture, archaeology, and economy'', ed. A. Gransden (1998), 172–85 The preserved portion of the Bible is bound in 3 volumes, with dimensions 52.2 cm high by 36 cm wide. They contain 357

folio The term "folio" (), has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book ma ...

s in total.

References

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External links

Internet site about the history of Bury St Edmunds Abbeylink to Parker Library on the web
Illuminated biblical manuscripts Manuscripts of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 12th-century biblical manuscripts