First Printed Edition Of The Torah In Hebrew $1,400,000 - $2,000,000 At Christie's

by Stephen J. Gertz

"The educated man knows, indeed, from his knowledge of history that the art of Gutenberg saw its inception with a Latin Bible in the middle of the XVth century. Yet what layman knows when the original text appeared for the first time? Not even the bibliophile knows; although a non-Jewish expert, Count Giacomo Manzoni, asserts in his enthusiasm for the book that the first edition of the Hebrew Bible is the most precious book on earth" (Lazarus Goldschmidt, 1950)

A newly discovered, large and complete copy in very fine condition of the first printed edition of the Pentateuch - the first five books of the Bible aka Torah - in Hebrew is being offered by Christie's-Paris in its Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes & manuscrits, Wednesday, April 30, 2014.


Printed on vellum in Bologna by Abraham ben Hayim of Pesaro for Joseph ben Abraham Caravita, this, the Hamishah humshe Torah was published on January, 25, 1482 with Aramaic paraphrase (Targum Onkelos) and commentary by Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac).


Rarer than copies of the Gutenberg Bible (49, per last census), and one of only twenty-eight surviving copies on vellum (with eleven survivors on paper), most incomplete, it is estimated to sell for $1,400,000 - $2,000,000 (€1,000,000-1,500,000; £900,000-1,300,000).

Arguably the most important book in the history of Hebrew printing and publishing, it incorporates the first appearance in print of the ancient Targum attributed to Onkelos. Rashi’s commentary, also included, was first published in Rome around a dozen years earlier. This first edition of the Pentateuch in its original language is the first Hebrew book with printed vowel and cantillation signs (those symbols beneath the letters).

Abraham ben Hayim may have started as a textile printer and dyer and/or bookbinder in Pesaro. His first recorded printing press stood at Ferrara in 1477, which produced two books, beginning with Levi ben Gershom’s Be’ur sefer lyov (Commentary on the Book of Job), edited and/or financed by Nathan of Salò; then it completed - about two thirds of the text - Jacob ben Asher’s Tur yoreh de’ah (Teacher of Knowledge), which had been started at the press of Abraham ben Solomon Conat in Mantua. At his second press, in Bologna, Abraham ben Hayim worked for Joseph ben Abraham, a member of the Caravita, an influential Jewish family of bankers.

In Bologna, Abraham ben Hayim first printed this fully vocalized biblical text with cantillation marks, a landmark in the history of Hebrew book production not only for the importance of its text, but no less for its pioneering technique of casting and setting accents; this fully developed typographical accomplishment can only be compared with Francesco Griffo’s solution for adding accents to the Aldine Greek founts some dozen years later.


Abraham ben Hayim da Pesaro and Francesco Griffo da Bologna are likely to have known each other and it's possible that Griffo cut Abraham’s punches; both were subsequently associated with the Soncino family of printers in Italy, although at dates about two decades apart. An earlier typographical attempt at adding Hebrew accents, in a 1477 folio edition of the Psalms printed by a consortium of typographers in Northern Italy, was aborted after a few pages. The only other surviving Bolognese production by Abraham ben Hayim is slightly later in date than this Torah, a folio edition of the Five Scrolls (Megillot), now recorded in two copies (Vatican and Parma Bibl. Palatina).


Liturgical readings of the Torah in synagogue, then as now, must be done from manuscript scrolls. This, the Bologna editio princeps, combining the text with the Aramaic targum and Rashi’s commentary, was aimed at an educational market, the codex format being most efficient for study.

Rashi’s commentary was first printed in Rome c. 1470 as a separate edition by three Jewish contemporaries of the Christian proto-typographers, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz. The second separate edition - the first dated Hebrew printed book - appeared on February 18, 1475 from the press of Abraham ben Garton at Reggio di Calabria (a single copy known), while the third edition of 1476 is the first Hebrew book printed in Spain.

Another edition of the Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haftarot and Megillot, also vocalized and with cantillation accents, was printed somewhere in Italy by Isaac ben Aron d’Este and Moses ben Eliezer Raphael (3 copies extant and 7 single leaves); its date has in the past been assigned to c. 1480 (Goff Heb-13; Offenberg 25), based on research on by A. Spanier (Soncino Blätter I, 77), but it is now more accurately dated to c. 1489 from paper and watermark evidence in the Vatican Library copy (Piccard, Wasserzeichen Lilie II, 945).

Two obscure Iberian editions of the Torah - little known because of their extreme rarity - may also belong to the early 1480s, and may also be candidates for the first printed edition of the Torah in Hebrew: Offenberg 23=Goff Heb-16(III) recorded only in fragments of eight leaves (New York JTSL), one leaf (Oxford Bodleian) and a partial leaf (Jerusalem NLI); Offenberg 26=Goff Heb-16(II) surviving in a single copy (Florence Laurenziana) and a fragment of of 4 leaves (JTSL).

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BIBLE, Pentateuch, in Hebrew – Hamishah humshe Torah, with Aramaic paraphrase (Targum Onkelos) and commentary by Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac). Edited by Joseph Hayim ben Aaron Strasbourg Zarfati. Bologna: Abraham ben Hayim of Pesaro for Joseph ben Abraham Caravita, 5 Adar I [5]242 = 25th January 1482.

Median folio (320 x 230 mm). Printed on vellum (flesh side to flesh side, hair side to hair side, the sheets highly polished to minimize contrast). Collation: 110 28 310 48(-7) 58(-8) 62 710 8-98 106 1110 124 13-146 (Genesis-Exodus); 1510 168 176 18-218.10 228 234 248 256 2610 27-288 296 (Leviticus-Deuteronomy, 19/1v beginning of Numbers, 29/5v colophon, 29/6 blank). 219 leaves: Complete (but without final blank).

Vocalized biblical text with accents, surrounded by paraphrase in a narrow outer column and commentary in long lines above and below, the pages set in formes (the outer forme of the outermost vellum sheet of each quire printed on the fesh side). Square Hebrew type 1:180 (text, headlines), semi-cursive Hebrew type 2:90 (paraphrase, commentary and colophon). 20-21 lines of text and headline and 40-42 lines of paraphrase to the full page, numbers of commentary lines varying, no printed signatures or catchwords. (Light yellowing of the hair sides of the sheets, some minor stains, a few small wormholes at beginning and end, but in VERY FINE CONDITION, WITH LARGE MARGINS.) 18th-century binding of brown sheep over pasteboard (front cover and spine gone, back cover preserved but worn and detached, original sewing somewhat defective, frst quire detached from the book block). Modern folding box.

Provenance: inscribed, signed and dated by three Italian censors. Luigi da Bologna, Dominican friar, March 1599 – Camillo Jaghel 1613 – Fra Renato da Modena 1626. Individual words or short phrases censored, scored through in ink on 1/2r, 1/6r, 2/3v, 5/2v and 22/4r and several words erased on 10/6v and 11/3v, all in Rashi’s commentary. – There is no evidence of more recent provenance, except for the modest 18th-century binding, which is probably French. – French Private Collection, by descent to the present owner.

Hain 12568; GW M30624; BMC XIII, 26-27 (C.49.d.2); Proctor 6557; Goff Heb-18; CIBN Heb-4; IDL 2440; IGI E-12; Oates 2482; Bod-inc Heb-8. De Rossi I, 7; Steinschneider 2; Thesaurus A15; Van Straalen p. 29; Zedner p. 106; Marx 7; Goldstein 20; HSTC 22; Offenberg 13. ISTC ib00525570.

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5/1/2014: UPDATE: Sold for €2,785,500 ($3,850,679).
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Images courtesy of Christies, with our thanks.
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The Most Important Hebrew Book Ever Published

by Stephen J. Gertz

"The educated man knows, indeed, from his knowledge of history that the art of Gutenberg saw its inception with a Latin Bible in the middle of the XVth century. Yet what layman knows when the original text appeared for the first time? Not even the bibliophile knows; although a non-Jewish expert, Count Giacomo Manzoni, asserts in his enthusiasm for the book that the first edition of the Hebrew Bible is the most precious book on earth" (Lazarus Goldschmidt).

Ask most people who printed the first Bible and Gutenberg's name will be recalled. Ask them when and they may answer the mid-15th century.

Ask the average person when the first edition of the Pentateuch,  the first five chapters of the Old Testament otherwise known as the Torah or the five books of Moses, in the original Hebrew was first published and you'll draw a blank.

The first printed edition of the Torah in Hebrew, the Bologna Pentateuch, was published on 5 Adar 1, 5242 by the Jewish calendar, January 25, 1482 by the Gregorian.

Not incidentally and who knew, January 25, by biblical calculation, is accepted as Moses' birthday.

Published in Bologna by Abraham ben Hayyim 'the Dyer' of Pesaro, it is considered to be the most important Hebrew printed book ever published. Many Jewish scholars assert that this first edition of the Hebrew bible is the most  precious book on Earth.

The original print run is unknown but only thirty-six copies have survived; the book is rarer than the Gutenberg bible, of which there are forty-eight extant copies, only twenty-one of which are complete.

Of the thirty-six surviving copies of the Bologna Pentateuch the majority, twenty-seven, are printed on vellum (animal skin). The remaining ten copies are on paper, and of those ten copies only three are complete; the others lack leaves. For the number of vellum copies to exceed that for paper copies is an unusual phenomenon. Usually it’s the other way around, with vellum copies in the minority as a special printing. It has been suggested that this reflected the publisher’s desire to honor the text, too holy to be  printed on paper as sifrei Torah (handwritten scrolls).

Another noteworthy feature is that it’s the first Hebrew book with printed vowels, and cantilation signs for the  cantor to vocalize the text. This was a major innovation and challenge to the printer

Further, it’s the first Hebrew edition in which the Biblical text has been combined with commentary and a paraphrase in Aramaic, the commentary above and below the text in long lines, the Aramaic paraphrase, Targum Onkelos, in a column at the outer edge of the page.

This was another innovation. The commentaries on the Torah by Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac), the foremost biblical commentator of the Middle Ages, first appeared in print at Rome, 1470; all Hebrew commentaries were printed separately within the first few years of printing. But printers soon realized that it would be easier to combine texts and commentaries on one page through the flexible medium of composing type. This answered the educational need for texts and commentaries in one volume,  conveniently arranged and formatted.

Publisher Abraham ben Hayyim appears to have begun as a textile printer and bookbinder at Pesaro. In Bologna, working for Joseph Caravita, he showed remarkable skill, being the first printer to find a solution for the difficult technical problem of adding vowels and cantilation signs to the unvocalised biblical text. An earlier attempt, in a folio edition of the Hebrew Psalms, printed by a consortium of printers in 1477, somewhere in northern Italy, was abandoned after a few pages. 

By 1488 Abraham ben Hayyim was a master printer for the famous Soncino family. It appears that it was the famous font designer and cutter, Francesco Griffo da Bologna (c. 1450-1518) ,who solved the problem of integrating vowel and cantilation signs. Griffo, who later worked for the Soncinos, cut all the characters used by Aldus Manutius at Venice, and it seems likely that Abraham ben Hayyim knew Griffo and may have introduced him to the Soncinos, the distinguished Jewish family of Italian printers.

This is, as you might imagine, an exceptionally rare book. Only one copy has come to auction since ABPC began to index auction records in 1923.

It sold at Christie's in 1998 for £370,000 (including premium), slightly less than $600,000.

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[BIBLE, in Hebrew -- PENTATEUCH]. Humash ve-Targum u-ferush Rashi. With Aramaic paraphrase (Targum Onkelos) and commentary by Rashi. Edited by Joseph Hayyim ben Aaron Strasbourg Zarfati for Joseph ben Abraham Caravita. Bologna: Abraham ben Hayyim 'the Dyer' of Pesaro, 5 Adar I, [5]242 [January 25, 1482].

EDITIO PRINCEPS, the first printed Hebrew Edition. This copy with leaves varying between 297 x 180 mm and 275 x 180 mm, and containing 212 leaves (of 220, lacking 1/1-4 (Genesis 1:1 - 4:26), 10/5-9 [fols. 82-85] (Exodus 25:12 - 28:5), 14/1 [f. 103] (beginning of Leviticus) and 28/4-6 [ff. 218-220] (including the colophon and the final blank). Leaf 8/7 [f. 69] bound after leaf 9/2 [f. 72]. The biblical text of fols 1-4 and f. 103 has been supplied on unwatermarked paper in an early Hebrew hand, imitating more or less the printed Italian square types of the book and providing no clue as to its derivation.

Two columns. Vocalised biblical text with cantilation signs in one column, surrounded by Rashi's commentary (in long lines) at upper and lower part of the page and by the paraphrase (in a narrow column) at the outer side next to the biblical text. No foliation, signatures or catchwords. Headlines. To reach even lines in the biblical text, one or sometimes two anticipating letters were used at the end of the lines, in the commentary and paraphrase the same design (up to three letters) and abbreviated words were made use of.

Darlow & Moule 5072; Oates 2482; Goff Heb-18; Proctor 6557; Hain 12568; Goldstein 20; Rossi 7; Steinschneider 2; Ginsburg pp.794-802

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.

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Custer's Bible At Little Bighorn to Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

It’s Custer’s last Bible and it survived his Last Stand. Custer died with his boots on and this Bible just a yonder. 

Gen. George Armstrong Custer’s signed and inscribed personal Bible, which accompanied him on the Little Bighorn Expedition, will be auctioned on November 16, 2010 at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, TX.  It is estimated to sell for $25,000 - $50,000.

"G.A. Custer/ US Army/ Fort Abraham Lincoln Dacota [sic]/ Oct. 1st, 1874."

It is an intimate, personal relic of a tragic chapter in nineteenth century America, the possession  of one of the most colorful - and controversial - military personalities of his time through ours. Custer’s Last Stand, firmly a part of the American David v. Goliath heroic mythos, proved to be the Native-Americans' last heroic military triumph in their struggle to remain on their homelands and practice their way of life. The inevitable came soon enough for the U.S., too soon for the Great Nations of the Dakotas.

This Bible was clearly of great importance to Custer. After a somewhat wild youth of dubious faith and much drinking,  he became a devout Christian during his experience of the Civil War. He swore off whiskey and committed himself to God.

Upper board, elaborately blindstamped.

In May of 1864, he wrote to wife Libbie during the Wilderness Campaign of the Civil War:

"On the eve of every battle in which I have been engaged, I have never omitted to pray inwardly, devoutly. Never have I failed to commend myself to God's keeping, asking Him to forgive my past sins, and to watch over me while in danger... and to receive me if I fell, while caring for those near and dear to me. After having done so all anxiety for myself, here or hereafter, is dispelled. I feel that my destiny is in the hands of the Almighty. This belief, more than any other fact or reason, makes me brave and fearless as I am."

The Bible was a gift from his dear mother, and the only reason it survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn is due his leaving it in his personal wagon, which remained with the pack train guarded by Captain Benteen, the commander of the regiment’s scouting column. After the remnants of Custer's forces returned to Fort Lincoln, this Bible was returned to his widow, Libbie, and remained in possession of the Custer family until the late 1980s, when it was part of a large group of artifacts released by the descendants of Nevin Custer, Armstrong's sole surviving brother.

The battle occurred June 25/26th 1876.

Without question one of the most dramatic episodes in United States history, the Battle of the Little Bighorn (The Battle of the Greasy Grass to Native-Americans) was the central action of the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. Custer, leading the 7th Cavalry regiment of the U.S. Army, met the combined forces of the Lakota, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne under the leadership of Crazy Horse and spiritual guidance of Sitting Bull. After a series of grievous assumptions and miscalculations thirty-six officers and 566 enlisted men were annihilated by an estimated 1,800 Native-American warriors. In its aftermath, Custer leaped into American history, became an instant legend, and is now part of the great American narrative, though the humiliation of the Army, the anger of the citizenry, and the desire for revenge did nothing to improve the quality of further relations, certainly not the quality of  mercy in further encounters with Native Americans.

Custer's Last Stand by William Reusswig.

Many books have been written about Custer and this battle. Hollywood has adapted it to film. It's a great story, no matter who you're rooting for.

Published by the American Bible Society, New York, in 1872, its binding had suffered over the years and has undergone painstaking conservation efforts  by a talented professional. The interior pages are untouched and in excellent condition, including the boldly inscribed and signed flyleaf page.

As a collectible this Bible, in and of itself, has little if any value. This is an example of provenance, inscription, and back-story being everything. The Bible was last seen in 1995, when Butterfield & Butterfield (now Bonhams) offered and hammered it at $46,750. 

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The Case Of The Purloined Letter And The (Allegedly) Stolen Bible, Part Two.

Detail From: T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on parchment.
(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

Ask any bookstore owner or librarian which book is most frequently stolen from their shelves, and the answer is likely to be: "The Bible." Surprising perhaps, but as bookstore owner Steve Bercu told the New York Times: "Some people think the word of God should be free." But even that doesn't entirely explain it. The manager of an Oregon Christian bookstore complained of Bible snatching despite the fact that the store gives anyone who asks a free copy. But even given the apparent legions of light-fingered gospel grabbers, this recent news headline packs a wallop: Armenian Church Sues Getty Over Stolen Bible Pages.

A lawsuit pits Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, a branch of the oldest national Christian Church in the world, against the J. Paul Getty Museum, one of the wealthiest and most influential art museums on earth. The dispute: who is the rightful owner of seven pages ripped from a 13th century illuminated manuscript known as the Zeyt’un Gospels. In the civil complaint filed by the Church, the Getty is said to be "wrongfully in possession" of seven key pages of the holy book, known collectively as the "canon tables of the Zeyt’un Gospels," which the museum "knew, or should have known, were stolen." (Strangely enough the legal document (.pdf file) in its entirety is available from--of all places--Harvey Levin's online gossip rag, tmz.com.)

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on parchment.
(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

The redress sought by the Armenian Church proves that the Bible in question is not exactly the kind the Gideons leave in every nightstand at your local Motel 6: they are suing the Getty not only for the return of the disputed seven pages, but also for punitive damages in the amount of $105 million dollars. The Zeyt’un Gospels are not just a cultural treasure to Christians in Armenia: they are a reminder of the horrific death toll and nationwide devastation wrought by the 1915 Armenian genocide, and are even thought to possess supernatural magic powers.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on parchment.
(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

The Church writes in their legal filing that during the darkest days of the Armenian genocide the Zeyt’un Gospels were "paraded...through every street in Zeyt’un in order to create a divine firewall of protection around the entire city." Sadly, this Biblical force field failed to repel the invading Turks, and the Gospels were given to "descendants of an Armenian royal family" for safekeeping in 1915. The family in possession of the magical text did survive the genocide, as did the book itself. It was eventually returned to the Church in 1928. But because the manuscript had been in limbo for over a decade, in 1948 the Church sent it to a trusted source for authentication. When it was returned, seven pages were discovered to have been torn out.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on parchment.
(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

The identity of the thief remains a mystery, but the pages eventually ended up in the hands of an unidentified private collector in the United States. In 1994, the pages were lent to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City for display in an exhibition, Treasures in Heaven: Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts. Here they were seen by representatives of the Getty, who subsequently purchased them for the Museum's antiquity collection.

The Getty's website describes the seven pages of the Zeyt’un Gospels held in their collection as: "made in the scriptorium at Hromklay for Katholikos Constantine I in 1256, [they] are the earliest signed work of T'oros Roslin, the most accomplished illuminator and scribe in Armenia in the 1200s. These canon tables were separated from the manuscript at some point in the past and eventually acquired by the Getty Museum, while the rest of the manuscript is in a public collection in Armenia." The vague language used to describe the history of these pages makes it sound like they just accidentally slipped out of the binding and got lost. As if that happens all the time. Churches just lose track of the most important pages of their sacred religious texts, and they turn up in a museum 7,000 miles away on the other side of the Atlantic sixty years later.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on parchment.
(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

For it's part, the Getty claims it is "confident that it has legal ownership of these pages, known as Canon Tables, which have been widely published, studied and exhibited." That the pages were purchased only "after a thorough review of their provenance," and that "the lawsuit is groundless and should be dismissed." All of which might be easier to swallow if the Getty hadn't already had numerous legal problems, with both Italy and Greece demanding the museum return looted antiquities. In fact, a former curator of antiquities at the Getty has been the object of a five-year-long (and counting) criminal trial in Italy, charged with conspiracy to traffic in illicit antiquities and receiving stolen goods.

The Getty has also been known to indulge in what has become a fairly common practice for museums unsure of the ownership background of ancient works: "antiquity laundering." Pieces with shady backgrounds start out in private hands for some years, then are loaned to a prestigious museum for a high profile exhibition. Photos and descriptions of the pieces are published in an exhibit catalog, and presto!, provenance is established. Of course this never accounts for how the items were removed from their country of origin in the first place. The Getty has in at least one case purchased an entire collection of questionable antiquities from a private collector, with the only published "provenance" being two exhibit catalogs produced when the items were on loan: one from the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the other from (you guessed it) the Getty itself.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on parchment.
(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

But the Getty is far from the only museum getting its hands dirty through dubious dealings in the antiquities market. According to a June 3, 2010 article in the New York Times, a just released 14-page legal notice from the public prosecutor’s office in Rome, states that J. Michael Padgett, antiquities curator at the Princeton University Art Museum, is the focus of a criminal investigation for "the illegal export and laundering" of Italian archaeological objects. And many other American museums have recently repatriated antiquities with questionable provenance to their homelands to avoid facing the kind of legal action now plaguing the former Getty curator.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on parchment.
(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

The former director of the Getty, John Walsh, summed up the problems with the antiquities market best when he called it a field "not only full of dubious material but full of untruthfulness and deceit of every kind." Part One of this piece dealt with a return of a stolen national treasure where everyone involved came out smelling like a rose. However the court case between the Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America and the J. Paul Getty Museum turns out, it seems certain somebody is going to wind up stinking like the famous corpse flower at another California temple of the arts, The Huntington Library.

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15th Century Woman's Heart (And Soul) Won With Extravagant Book

Books have been given as tokens of love for centuries, even before the invention of printing. Illuminated books of hours like the one pictured above were precious objects commissioned from highly skilled artists and were often given as a wedding gift. This book of hours was created in the middle of the 15th century, and the fineness of its execution indicates that it was created by a top flight atelier. It was a great treasure from the time it was created, and has survived in near-perfect condition to this day because it has always been treated with great reverence.

There are hints that this particular book of hours was created especially for a beloved woman. The sequence of prayers to individual saints, called suffrages, here is unusual in that the female saints precede the males: texts in the codex for Mary Magdalene, St. Catherine, St. Anne, St. Susanna, and St. Margaret come before those for St. Christopher, All Saints, and St. Sebastian. This sequence (and the fact that the "Obsecro te" and the suffrage to St. Christopher are in the feminine form) suggest that the first owner of the manuscript was a woman.

Most books of hours have miniatures depicting significant events in the life of the Virgin Mary: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation in the temple, and her Coronation as Queen of Heaven. Other frequent subjects are the Crucifixion, Pentecost, some portrayal of a funeral to remind the devout of their mortality, and perhaps King David composing the Psalms. A books of hours commissioned for an individual might include a miniature of the owner's patron or name saint. This Book of Hours is unusual in that it contains the quite rare Suffrage to St. Susanna; not only is the text of this Suffrage present, but the person who commissioned the manuscript has chosen Susanna's story as the subject matter for one of the book's six large miniatures.

The scene, shown above, depicts the central moment in the Apocryphal Book of Daniel, showing the saintly woman being defended by the young Daniel against two elders who had falsely accused her of adultery after trying to seduce her. Depictions of the story of Susanna are quite rare--her story in in the Apocrypha, and she was not one of the female saints especially venerated in Medieval times, as Saints Margaret, Catherine, and Barbara were. The only likely reason for including the tale of this beautiful and virtuous wife is that the woman for whom is was intended was named Susanna or Suzanne.

The next token of love, created some 400 years later, was a 25th anniversary gift. In the mid-19th century, Parisian publishers issued a number of elaborately presented religious works with illustrations from several hands . . . Curmer's 'Les Saints Évangiles' [the Gospels] is the most attractive of the lot." (Ray) The present copy also has added lovely illuminations, a charming original watercolor, and an exquisite binding by one of the top Parisian binders, Leon Gruel.

The most unusual binding is done in a Neo-Gothic style, its dark green silk velvet covers mounted with delicately and elaborately carved boxwood frames after designs by Martin Riester. The front cover is adorned with the recipient's monogram, and the edges of the leaves are elaborately gauffered in a red and gold design.

According to the handsomely designed presentation page at the front, this beautiful object was assembled at the order of C. J. T. Tiby, and given to his "dear wife," Anaïs Duret Tiby on 2 June 1855, as a "Souvenir of 25 years of Happiness." In the accompanying watercolor of the wedding ceremony (shown below), which took place at midnight a quarter century earlier, we see a shy bride in white and a tall officer in uniform standing before a candlelit altar, surrounded by their families.

Mme. Tiby must have been a shining example of the perfect wife, as described in the Book of Proverbs and recalled in the presentation, for her husband certainly would have committed to a liberal expenditure in commissioning this painstakingly crafted edition of the Gospels.

Like the thoughtful wife described in last week's post, M. Tiby and the husband of the Medieval Suzanne chose not a piece of jewelry, which can be worn and displayed, to honor their beloved, but a book, which in addition to being an object of great beauty to be enjoyed (and yes, displayed) is also something with which one engages intellectually and emotionally--a feast for the mind and the heart, as well as for the eyes.

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Images courtesy of Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books and Manuscripts.

The World's Most Expensive Inexpensive Bible

Our friend, Maurice Earp, bookslinger at Blackwell Rare Books in the U.K., enjoys sending reports of bizarrely priced books found on Advanced Book Exchange (ABE). I love receiving them yet I never know whether to laugh, cry, or call the book police. This is a job for Tombstone's favorite sheriff, Wyatt Earp, with whom Maurice shares nothing but surname and sharp aim.

Today’s episode of Have You Lost Your Mind? concerns the the large-print edition of the Life Application Study Bible NLT, published by Tyndale House in 2009.

On ABE-UK, there are seven copies being offered by the same dealer, Beagle Books, of Milpitas, CA, USA. Act now, and a copy can be yours for only £66,989.21 ($103,292.55). Plus £3.25 ($5) for shipping. At that price you figure they’d let the shipping cost slide but no.

Holy Bible, Batman!

It’s a $30-$50 book in good to very good condition. But, as always, a premium must be paid for fine/as new copies, hence the dramatic price for the Beagle copies. This beagle must have smelled a potential bonanza and bought a bunch of new copies when this edition of the bible was originally published - one year ago. Shrewd move. Or, perhaps, screwed move.

Five years ago I had a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible pass through my hands. It was priced at $60,000. Here, you get the whole bible for a bit less than twice that amount. It’s a deal of biblical proportions! Another dealer on ABE-UK, Michael Hollan, of St. Petersberg, Florida, USA, is offering another copy of this edition for the exact same price. It, too, is a new copy.

The other three copies being offered are, alas, in merely good to very good condition and are priced accordingly - $30-$50.

I suspect a data upload error to be the culprit. The days of rare book dealer as buccaneer are long gone. (The establishment of trade organizations like ABA, ABAA and ILAB put a halt to diabolical practices like irrational, stratospheric prices to harpoon the unwary and thus made the world safer for collectors).

Here’s hoping someone at Beagle Books, Michael Hollan Books, or ABE-UK wakes up and fixes this. Insane prices do not inspire confidence in buyers.

Not so by the way, new copies can be bought directly from Tyndale House for $69.99. There is a God.