1490 Nicolas de Lyra - Johann Froben Bible

Author: Commentary by Nicolas de Lyra

Year: c. 1490; 15th Century

Description: This incunabula Bible was one of the first printed Bibles in history.

Size: Folio measuring over 9 ½" x 14"

Description: Leaves are derived from an original 15th century 1490 folio, on fine incunabula paper with wide margins. Double-column text with surrounding commentary by Nicolas de Lyra, famed early commentator. These in-text study notes were originally known as glosses.

Biography of Commentator (source Wikipedia): Nicholas Of Lyra (c. 1270–October 1349), or Nicolaus Lyranus, a Franciscan teacher, was among the most influential practitioners of Biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages. He was a doctor at the Sorbonne by 1309 and ten years later was appointed the head of all Franciscans in France. His major work, Postillae perpetuae in universam S. Scripturam, was the first printed commentary on the Bible. Printed in Rome in 1471, it was later available in Venice, Basel, and elsewhere. In it, each page of Biblical text was printed in the upper center of the page and embedded in a surrounding commentary.

Biography of Johann Froben (source Wikipedia): Johann Froben: After completing his university career at Basel, where he made the acquaintance of the famous printer Johann Amerbach (circa 1440 — 1513), Froben established a printing house in that city about 1491, and this soon attained a European reputation for accuracy and taste. In 1500 he married the daughter of the bookseller Wolfgang Lachner, who entered into a partnership with him.

He was friends with Desiderius Erasmus, who not only had his own works printed by him, but superintended Froben's editions of Jerome, Cyprian, Tertullian, Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose. His printing of Erasmus' Novum Testamentum (1519) was used by Martin Luther for his translation.
Froben employed Hans Holbein the Younger to illuminate his texts. It was part of his plan to print editions of the Greek Fathers. He did not, however, live to carry out this project, but it was very creditably executed by his son Hieronymus Froben and his son-in-law Nikolaus Episcopius. Froben died in October 1527 in Basel.
Froben's work in Basel made that city in the 16th century the leading center of the Swiss book trade. An extant letter of Erasmus, written in the year of Froben's death, gives an epitome of his life and an estimate of his character; and in it Erasmus mentions that his grief for the death of his friend was far more poignant than that which he had felt for the loss of his own brother, adding that all the apostles of science ought to wear mourning. The epistle concludes with an epitaph in Greek and Latin.

 

Random Old Testament Leaf selection from our collection. Accompanied with a certificate of authenticity from the Christian Heritage Museum