Highlights of the Exhibition
The Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Bible Collection
at
Bridwell
Library
1996-2006
September 7-November 18, 2006
First Combined Edition of a Commentary and the Vulgate
Biblia latina cum postillis Nicolai de Lyra. Venice: [Johann Herbort for] Johann von Köln, Nicholas Jenson, and Associates, 31 July 1481. Vol. 2 of 4.
Italy’s first successful printers, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, printed this vast commentary, known as the Postillae of Nicholas de Lyra (c. 1270–1349) separately (without the Bible text) at Rome in 1471–72. The Postillae provided late-medieval readers with definitive literal and moral interpretations of the entirety of scripture, and they proved highly influential, especially for Martin Luther. Herbort’s edition of 1481 was the first to publish the Postillae along with the text of the Vulgate. An illuminator decorated its first leaf with a floral border in the “Ferrarese” style, with the emblem of the Convent of Monte Carlo added later in the roundel below.
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