Probably the most beautiful Bible after the Gutenberg is in two volumes, forming what is known as the 1462 Bible. It is the first one that is dated, and was issued at Mainz, printed by Fust and Schöffer, August 14, 1462. The copies on vellum seem to be more numerous than those on paper. I bought the last copy, belonging to the Earl of Carysfort, for £4800. It is not only the first dated Bible but the earliest example of a book formally divided into two volumes. But it is not considered a rare edition of the Bible in any sense of the word, as more than sixty copies are known. In fact, we had two copies of it at one time in our New York vault, both of which were illuminated with grotesque birds and beasts, probably by the same artist. It is odd that, although there are few collections of incunabula in South America, there are two copies of this Bible in the National Library at Rio de Janeiro.
Probably the greatest sport of all is the collecting of Bibles in manuscript. It takes a king’s ransom to-day to secure a really fine one. I do not mean the ordinary late-fifteenth-century ones, which are quite common, but those executed from the ninth to the twelfth century, especially when they are illustrated. Of course, the earliest codices, the very foundation stones of the history of the Bible, such as the Codex Vaticanus in Rome, the Alexandrinus in the British Museum, and the Sinaiticus at Leningrad, are safely beyond the purse of the richest collector. The Pierpont Morgan Library contains the finest collection of illuminated Bibles in America. The vault at 33 East Thirty-sixth Street, New York, is an achievement almost unequaled in the history of collecting. It is like a view of Paradise. The latest acquisition by Mr. J. P. Morgan of some of the Holkham manuscripts from the library of the Earl of Leicester is a notable triumph in the history of great libraries.
Some years ago I was talking with Mr. Henry E. Huntington in his old library at 2 East Fifty-seventh Street, New York. I said most humbly, although with proper pride, “How would you like to own the original Conqueror Bible of the architect of the Tower of London?”
“There ain’t no sich animile,” quoted Mr. Huntington.
I thereupon produced from a cavernous Gladstone bag two large folio volumes, elegantly bound in blue morocco. “This is it,” I said. The Bible was written in the eleventh century for Gundulph, 1024-1108, Bishop of Rochester, who came over with William the Conqueror and later became the designer of the Tower of London. On the first leaf of each volume the bishop had written an elaborate curse, excommunicating anyone who should destroy, mutilate, or carry it off. When I showed Mr. Huntington these fatal words, he said to me, with a twinkle in his eye, “You old rogue, this applies to you, too, you know. I will take the Bible, but without the curse!”
LEAF FROM AN ENGLISH BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPT OF THE
NINTH CENTURY
I recall one day several years ago when I visited the library of the late Sir Thomas Phillipps, at Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham. His grandson, Mr. T. FitzRoy Fenwick, and I were looking over the precious volumes, and we talked of Sir Thomas’s ardent love of manuscripts. For more than fifty years he had been the world’s greatest gatherer of everything written by the hand of man. His knowledge was equal to his love, and he succeeded in forming an unrivaled library of manuscripts, which included some of the greatest specimens in existence. He did not confine himself to Continental examples alone, but was the first great collector of manuscripts relating to America. Sir Thomas Phillipps was the patron not only of Lord Kingsborough, whose researches on Mexico are well known, but of George Catlin, who depicted so graphically the life of the American Indian. Mr. Fenwick, who inherited from his grandfather his appreciation and love of fine things, and who possesses an almost unequaled knowledge of old manuscripts, asked me if I had ever seen a manuscript containing Anglo-Saxon writing. I said that I had not, and he thereupon produced the Four Gospels, an English manuscript written in West Anglia in the time of King Alfred, A.D. 850-900, which contained splendid full-page illustrations of an unusual type. There upon the margins were characters in Anglo-Saxon, written long before the Conqueror came to the shores of Britain.
Nothing, however, surprises me at Thirlestaine House. One day Mr. Fenwick showed me the Liesborn Gospels, a superb manuscript made in the ninth century for King Widekind, the only successful opponent of Charlemagne. It was in its old binding of carved wood, and is one of the few very early manuscripts in existence giving the name of the scribe who wrote it.
He also showed to me the famous French Historiated Bible of the fourteenth century, in two magnificent volumes, which contained almost a hundred illustrations, quite in the modern manner, more like William Blake than an artist of old Touraine. I now have these three precious Biblical manuscripts, and I doubt whether there is a nobler assemblage in existence.