The Lipnice Bible is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

biblical manuscript A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures (see ''Tefillin'') to huge polyglot codices (multi-ling ...

written in the first half of the 15th century in

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...

. It was partially finished in May 1421 "in Lypnicz", very likely in

Lipnice nad Sázavou Lipnice nad Sázavou (german: Lipnitz an der Sasau) is a town in Havlíčkův Brod District in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 600 inhabitants. Administrative parts The village of Vilémovec is an administrative part of L ...

. It is currently part of the collections of the

Museum of the Bible The Museum of the Bible is a museum in Washington D.C., owned by Museum of the Bible, Inc., a non-profit organization established in 2010 by the Green family. The museum documents the narrative, history, and impact of the Bible. It opened on No ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Description and history

The Lipnice Bible is written on

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of ...

and contains 431 folios. The codex is not a mere Bible but contains a number of added texts. The decoration of the manuscript was carried out in three different phases, as the codex was forced to change its location. Thus it is a precious witness to a restless period of the

Hussite Wars The Hussite Wars, also called the Bohemian Wars or the Hussite Revolution, were a series of civil wars fought between the Hussites and the combined Catholic forces of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, the Papacy, European monarchs loyal to the Cat ...

. The only figural illumination of the Lipnice bible shows God as the Creator at the beginning of the

book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning") ...

. Nothing is known about the first owner of the Lipnice Bible. Only his name Mathias of Roudnice (''Mathias de Rudnicze)'' is mentioned in the codex. Very likely he was a wealthy priest or a member of a religious community or a university who was interested in the religious disputes of his time (see the

Bohemian Reformation The Bohemian Reformation (also known as the Czech Reformation or Hussite Reformation), preceding the Reformation of the 16th century, was a Christian movement in the late medieval and early modern Kingdom and Crown of Bohemia (mostly what is no ...

). The place of his origin could have been

Roudnice nad Labem Roudnice nad Labem (; ) is a town in Litoměřice District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 13,000 inhabitants. The town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument zone. A steel road br ...

, a town owned by the Archbishops of Prague where an important Augustininan monastery was located. Nevertheless, no evidence for the connection between the Lipnice Bible and the

Augustinian Canons Canons regular are priests who live in community under a rule ( and canon in greek) and are generally organised into religious orders, differing from both secular canons and other forms of religious life, such as clerics regular, designated by ...

in Roudnice can be found. At the end of the

book of Revelation The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament (and consequently the final book of the Christian Bible). Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: , meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". The Book of R ...

, there is a unique colophon calling the Bible “the shield of faith, with which the sons of God fight, the eye of the righteous, stumbling block to the unbelievers”. This sentence points to a special authority that the owner attributed to the Bible. The further history of the codex is not clear. It reappears in the 20th century in the collection of

Charles William Dyson Perrins Charles William Dyson Perrins FRAS (25 May 1864 – 29 January 1958) was an English businessman, bibliophile and philanthropist. He was born in Claines, near Worcester, the son of James Dyson Perrins, the owner of the Lea & Perrins Worcestersh ...

, who acquired it before 1920 but it is not known where. It changed owners several times before entering the private

Green Collection The Green Collection, later known as the Museum Collection, is the one of the world's largest private collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts, made up of more than 40,000 biblical antiquities assembled by the Green family, founders of th ...

in 2011 from where it was given to the

. During the summer 2021, the Lipnice Bible was exhibited in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

References

External links

{{Commons category
The Lipnice Bible websiteThe Lipnice Bible online exhibition on the website of the Czech National Library
Biblical manuscripts 15th-century illuminated manuscripts 15th-century books

Description and history

References

Further reading

External links