Biblia Pauperum

Biblia Pauperum ('Bible of the Poor') was a sort of picture-book of the middle ages, giving, on from thirty-four to fifty leaves, the leading events of the Old and New Testaments, each picture being accompanied by an illustrative text or sentence in Latin. A similar and contemporaneous work on a more extended scale, and with the legend or text in rhyme, was called Speculum Humane Salvationis—'the Mirror of Human Salvation.' Before the Reformation, these two books took the place of the Bible with the laity, and were the chief text-books used by the preachers of the mendicant orders. According to one derivation, as these monks took the title of Pauperes Christi, 'Christ's Poor,' hence the name; but others explain it as referring to the spiritually poor, the unlearned. Heinecken, however, is said to have first employed the title in his Idée générale d'une Collection d'Estampes (1771). Many manuscripts of the Biblia Pauperum, and of the Mirror of Salvation, several as old as the 13th century, are preserved in different languages. The pictures of this series were copied in sculptures, in wall and glass painting, altar-pieces, &c., and thus became of importance in the art of the middle ages. After the invention of printing, each picture and text was at first cut on one block, and the pages were pasted back to back, and made into a book. The use of separate types only increased the popularity of the work; but as improved methods enabled printers to issue the whole Bible, it gradually lost ground, and ceased to be used about the beginning of the 16th century. There have been English fac-simile reprints in 1859, 1877, and 1884 (the last with preface by Dean Stanley).—This book must not be confused with a work of the same title by Bonaventura (q.v.). See BOOK, PRINTING; and for illustration, WOOD-ENGRAVING.