bavarikon4UDescription
Stephen Langton (around 1150/1155-1228) studied in Paris, where he later taught artes liberales and theology. As an exegete, theologian and preacher, the "doctor nominatissimus" developed an extremely fruitful activity. During his teaching activities in Paris, he also introduced the Vulgata's division into chapters, which is still in use today. The particularly delicate Gothic font used here, which is still easy to read despite its small size, is called pearl script. Since the turn of the eleventh to the twelfth century, it was selected in Paris for the production of the Bible to place the entire Old and New Testament in one volume, saving space. Thus, it was possible to carry it as a pocket book, for example when travelling or to the university. The text of such bibles is always written in two columns, each column in this exemplar fills 52-54 lines with a typeface that is only 10 cm wide. In addition to the small size of the type, the extremely thin parchment is striking and in this quality has to come from very young animals - probably lambs. The almost 500 parchment sheets, lying on top of each other, amount to a height of just 9 cm - only with this fine material, the scribe could meet the specifications. Around the middle of the sixteenth century, Georg Fabricius from Chemnitz (1516-1571), headmaster of the Princely School at Meissen, owned the manuscript. In 1763, it can be ascertained in the extensive collection of the mayor of Gera, David Gottfried Schöber (1696-1778). When it was auctioned in 1779, Prince Kraft Ernst von Oettingen-Wallerstein acquired this Bible. // Datum: 2017