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The Bishops’ Bible Illustrations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Margaret Aston
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Extract

The illustrations in the Bishops’ Bible have received more attention from art historians than from historians, though their story—which turns out to have been remarkably complicated—calls for the skills of both disciplines. The tale, which I can only outline here, throws interesting light on the state of the arts and art censorship in the early Elizabethan Church, at a time when there was much interrelationship between England and continental artists and craftsmen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 28: The Church and the Arts , 1992 , pp. 267 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992

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References

1 Only after the delivery of this paper did I learn, thanks to the kind help of Elizabeth M. Ingram, that the main facts of this story had already been published by Colin Clair, ‘The Bishops’ Bible 1568’, Gutenberg Jahrbuch (1962), pp. 287-90. However, as my (inadvertently independent) findings extend as well as confirm Clair’s, I hope this article may give more notice to what now seems like a joint discovery. My thanks also go to Alan Jesson for all the work involved in giving me access to heavy folios in the British and Foreign Bible Society’s collection; and to David Freedberg and Sergiusz Michalski, whose help on other topics contributed unwittingly to this piece.

2 Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. J. Bruce and T. T. Perowne, PS (1853), pp. 248, 256-7, 265 (cited at p. 257); CalsSPD, 1547-1580, pp. 192, 239; Brook, V. J. K., A Life of Archbishop Parker (Oxford, 1962), pp. 179–80, 246–9 Google Scholar; Pollard, A. W., ed., Records of the English Bible (Oxford, 1911), pp. 28–33, 287 Google Scholar; Westcott, B. F., A General View of the History of the English Bible (London, 1905), pp. 95–102, 230–44.Google Scholar

3 Parker Correspondence, pp. 290, 334-7;cf.pp. 425-6, 468, for Parker’s bookbinders. Parker sent Cecil a list of the revisers and the books they had worked on (their initials were printed in the text—’to make them more diligent’); Pollard, Records, pp. 30-1, 293. The Archbishop’s prefaces to the Bible and the New Testament asked readers not to be offended by the ‘diversitie of translatours’. On the copy of the 1568 Bible (STC 2099) in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, which appears to have been a specially bound presentation copy for Elizabeth, see J. N. King, Tudor Royal Iconography (Princeton, 1989), pp. 107–8.

4 Herbert, A S., Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English Bible (London, 1968), p. 70 Google Scholar; The holie Bible (1568), sig.* 2v. See STC, 1, pp. 87-9, nos 2099 et seq., for the various editions. The last folio appeared in 1595.

5 Parker, Matthew, De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae (London, 1572[-1574])Google Scholar, BLG 11757, from the unnumbered pages at the end of the ‘Matthaeus’; ‘Cumque sacrorum bibliorum Anglicana aeditio, quae in singulis ecclesiis ex statuto collocanda fuit, iam prope deleta defecisset…’. The ‘Matthaeus’ (on which see Brook, Parker, p. 2, n. 2) was only included in some copies of the De Antiquitate; it was not in BL C 24 b 8, printed with illuminated vellum title-pages for presentation to Elizabeth. Strype, Parker, 2, p. 212, 3, p. 306.

6 STC, 1, p. 87.no. 2093.

7 Pollard, Records, pp. 284-6 (cited at p. 286).

8 Pollard, Records, p. 297, cf. p. 295 for Parker on Bibles with ‘diverse preiudicall notis’; Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967), pp. 164–5 Google Scholar. The treatment of the Geneva version was an ‘olde ulcer’ in the 1572 Second Admonition to Parliament; Frere, W. H. and Douglas, C. E., eds, Puritan Manifestoes (London, 1907), pp. 83–4.Google Scholar

9 Strype, Parker, 2, pp. 212-24 (cited at p. 220); cf. 1, pp. 414-17.

10 Strype, Parker, 2, p. 214. On these engravings see Colvin, S., Early Engraving and Engravers in England (1545-1695) (London, 1905), pp. 10–26 Google Scholar; Hind, A M., Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1952-64), 1, pp. 64–5, 68–9 Google Scholar, plates 33, 36. King, Iconography, pp. 105–7, sees Elizabeth as personifying Hope.

11 Hind, Engraving, 1, p. 65: ‘In 1563 there were no English engravers to approach;… so the Archbishop had of necessity to appeal to the foreigner with his command of craft…’; on Remigius Hogenberg, pp; 12-13, 64-6, 72–8.

12 Colvin, Early Engraving, p. 21, n. 1. Colvin and Hind (following Strype) both assume that the ‘B’ in Psalms complimented Burghley in 1568, though (as Clair pointed out) this was well before he acquired the title. On fears of portraiture see M. G. Winkler, ‘A Divided Heart: Idolatry and the portraiture of Hans Asper’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 18 (1987), pp. 213-30. Another problem, with similar outcome, was the secularity of Jugge’s initial letters, with scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses; Herbert, Historical Catalogue, pp. 71, 76; Clair, ‘Bishops’ Bible’, pp. 288, 289.

13 Herbert, Historical Catalogue, p. 71, for the count of blocks; my count of frames (on occasion used upside down). This total does not include maps, on which see C. Delano Smith, ‘Maps as Art and Science: Maps in Sixteenth Century Bibles’, Imago Mundi, 42 (1990), pp. 65-83.

14 Puritan Manifestoes, p. 118.

15 The holie Bible (1568), pt 1, fol. 110r, marginal note (h).

16 After making the observations that follow I found that Darlow, T. H. and Moule, H. F., Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture, 2 vols (London, 1903-11), 2, p. 497 Google Scholar, had noted the resemblance between the illustrations in the Catholische Bibell (Cologne, 1575) and those in the 1568-68 Bishops’ Bible.

17 Schmidt, Philipp, Die lllustration der Lutherbibel 1522-1700 (Basle, 1962), pp. 216–44 Google Scholar(p. 236 on the significance of a picture-series by one master illustrating the whole Bible text); Reinitzer, H., Biblia deutsch: Luthers Bibelübersetzung und ihre Tradition (Wolfenbüttel, 1983), pp. 240–3, no. 147 Google Scholar; Ubisch, E. von, Virgil Solis und seine Biblischen lllustrationen (Leipzig, 1889)Google Scholar; O’Dell-Franke, I., Kupferstiche und Radierungen aus der Werkstatt des Virgil Solis (Wiesbaden, 1977), pp. 3–4, 14–17 Google Scholar; Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, 31, pp. 248-53.

18 Biblische Figuren (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1560), sig. A2v: ‘Zuletst auch umb der einfeltigen Christen willen, so die schrifft nicht lesen kónnen, und dannoch lust unnd lieb darzu haben, denen werden diese Figuren ohn zweifel auch als ein Leyen Bibell sein.’ Of course, the form is quite different from the Biblia pauperum proper, the typology of which, as Avril Henry shows in her edition, Biblia pauperum (Aldershot, 1987), pp. 17–18, was more suited to meditation than teaching the unlearned.

19 Reinitzer, Biblia deutsch, pp. 244-6, no. 149; Schmidt, Lutherbibel, pp. 245-62. On the Gregorian theory in England see Nichols, A. E., ‘Books-for-Laymen: the demise of a commonplace’, Church History, 56 (1987), pp. 457–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Reinitzer, Biblia Deutsch, p. 240; Ubisch, Virgil Solis, pp. 54-70; Schmidt, Lutherbibel, p. 485, conveniently lists editions. There were two more Feyerabend Bible editions with the Solis cuts after Sigmund’s death (1590), in 1595 and 1606. See Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künsller, n, pp. 523–4, on Feyerabend and the possibility (considered also by Reinitzer, p. 244, and O’Dell-Franke, pp. 21-2) that the monogram ‘SF’ which appears in the 1564 Neuwe Biblische Figuren is his.

21 Ubisch, Virgil Solis, pp. 68-71.

22 Catholische Bibel (Cologne, heirs of J. Quentell and G. Calenius, 1564), fols 45V, 101r-v; these annotations were in the 1534 Dietenberger Biblia (Mainz), fols 36v-37r, 83V. On this Bible version see Reinitzer, Biblia Deutsch, pp. 203–5, no. 117; CHB, 3, pp. 108-9, 346.

23 Ubisch, Virgil Solis, pp. 78-85 (pp. 79–81, lists the monograms in the original and the copied series). On the ‘SHF’ monogram see Nagler, G. K., Die Monogrammisten… aller Schulen, 5 vols (Munich, 1858–79), 5, p. 2, no. 9.Google Scholar

24 Den Bibel Inhoudende hel oude ende nieuwe Testament… Met schoonen nieuwen ftgueren verschiert (Cologne, 1566). There were many editions of this version following (like Birckmann’s) the revised 1553 Louvain text; Darlow and Moule, Historical Catalogue, 2, p. 303; CHB, 3, p. 123. The Birckmann firm of Cologne had business links in Antwerp and London; Febvre, L. and Martin, H.-J., The Coming of the Book (London, 1976), p. 189 Google Scholar; Worman, E. J., Alien Members of the Book-Trade during the Tudor Period (London, 1906), pp. 3–5.Google Scholar

25 The Newe Testament of our Saviour Iesus Christe (London, 1566?); STC 2873; Herbert, Historical Catalogue, p. 68. The book includes a miscellany of illustrations.

26 It was Colin Clair (‘Bishops Bible’) who noticed the Antwerp Vulgate’s place in this jigsaw. The Biblia ad vetustissima exemplaria nunc recens castigata (Antwerp, widow and heirs of Jan Steels) has dates 1570 on title-page and 1571 for colophon. The cut used, fols 39r and 46r, for Leviticus 24 and Numbers 15 shows a chip off one corner that was intact in 1568.

27 What follows is based on a comparison of the British and Foreign Bible Society’s copies (in the University Library, Cambridge) of the four Bibles. For an example of a damaged block (inside the frame) with corner and lower edge chipped, see one in Rev. 6; The holie Bible (1568), pt V, fol. 146.

28 Den Bibel (1566), fols 1r, 2r; The holie Bible (1568), fols 1r, 2r. For illustrations of the Creation cuts see Clair, ‘Bishops’ Bible’, p. 289.

29 BiKia (1570), fol. ir-v, Catholische Bibel (1571), fols 1r, 2r. For the technique of altering a block by ‘plugging’ (with examples) see D. P. Bliss, A History of Wood-Engraving (London, 1928), p. 4; Henry, ed, Biblia pauperum, p. 22.

30 Formularies of Faith, ed. C. Lloyd (Oxford, 1825), p. 135; A Catechism set forth by Thomas Cranmer, ed. D. G. Selwyn (Appleford, 1978), pp. 19–21, cited at p. 21;John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill, tr. F. L. Battles = Library of Christian Classics, 20-1 (Philadelphia, 1961), pp. 112, 544; Lxi.12; III.ii.1. See also Freedberg, D., The Power of images (Chicago, 1989), p. 427.Google Scholar

31 Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, ed. W. H. Frere and W. M. Kennedy, 3 vols = Alcuin Club Collns, 14-16 (London, 1910), 3, pp. 90 (no. 32), 104 (no. 36); C. Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion (London, 1876), p. 359; W. P. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 239-42.

32 The holie Bible (1568), fol. 18v. There are other similar depictions in Gen. 4, 7, 9, Exod. 16, Josh. 6, and elsewhere. See also Clair, ‘Bishops’ Bible’, p. 288.

33 The Bible and Holy Scriptures (Geneva, 1560), ‘To the Reader’, and fol. 333V; Pollard, Records, pp. 282-3. Ezek. 1. 26; ‘and upon the similitude of the throne was by appearance, as the similitude of a man above upon it.’

34 Perkins, W., A Warning against the Idolatrie of the Last Times (Cambridge, 1601), p. 21, cf. pp. 107, 162.Google Scholar

35 Den Bibel (1566), pt 2, fol. 64r; The holie Bible (1568), pt 3, fol. 139r Biblia (1570), fol. 271V; Catkolische Bibell (1571), fol. 441V.

36 The holie Bible (1572), fol. Ir. The scene of the flood at the centre top of this illustration omits the divinity in the sky depicted in the 1568 Bible’s woodcut (fol.5v).

37 The holie bible (London, 1569), pt 1, fol. 1r; STC 2105; Herbert, Historical Catalogue, p. 72, no. 126. This cut of Adam naming the creatures was later used in the folio Bibles (with a frame of multiple scenes), but in the quarto it was the only illustration.

38 Hind, Engraving, 1, pp. 64, 67; Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, 17, pp. 306-7.