This Latin Bible is exceptionally large for one produced as late as the 15^th century. Bibles like these would have been placed on lecterns to be read aloud. It is possible that the manuscript was used in this way at the College in the Middle Ages, and there is a possible reference to it in a 1433 inventory of the Fellows’ Library.

The Bible was once full of illuminated initials, almost all of which were cut out before 1839, when the manuscript was described by W. T. Alchin. The most elaborate surviving initial is at the beginning of Psalm 97 (fol. 76v), and is painted with a floral design in orange, blue, green and a dusty pink.

In this Bible, the Psalms are presented in two parallel versions: the Gallican on the left, so called as it spread in Gaul from the 9^th century, and the Hebrew on the right, so named because it was translated directly from Hebrew Psalms. Both versions were made by St Jerome at the end of the 4^th century. Each sentence begins with alternating red and blue initials framed within squares of penwork, making it easier for the reader to align the two translations.

 

Literature: Walter Oakeshott, ‘Winchester College Library Before 1750’, The Library, vol. IX. no. 1 (1954), pp. 1–16, 15, no. 1; Neil R. Ker and Alan J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Volume IV: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1969), p. 622; Paul Yeats-Edwards, Winchester College (Warden and Fellows’ Library) Medieval Manuscript Collection: Brief History and Catalogue (London, 1978), p. 7; Paul Quarrie, Winchester College and the King James Bible (Winchester, 2011), pp. 29–31;  James M. W. Willoughby, The Libraries of Collegiate Churches, Vol. 2 (London, 2013), p. 753.

Provenance: Unknown, at Winchester College by 1634 (possibly by 1433).

Location: Fellows’ Library