The Martinická Bible

The Martinická Bible (location number 1TB 3) in digital format, digitized for the Memoria Mundi Series Bohemica Project by Albertina Icome Beroun, s.r.o., can be accessed at http://www.manuscriptorium.com.

The experts consider this manuscript to be one of the best and the most interesting bible transcripts of Czech origin from the first half of the 15th century, in terms of both artistic and textual rendering. The text is in Latin, written in two columns of 51 lines on 434 folios of parchment, featuring 55 calligraphic and 108 illuminated initials. Five of them are figural. The Martinická Bible is uniquely decorated, in that its initial “I” is associated with the oldest known picture of the burning of Master John Huss at the stake. What makes Martinická Bible decoration unique is the initial I with the oldest surviving depiction of burning at the stake of John Huss.

A search for the previous owners of this Latin bible begins precisely with the painted initial of Master John Huss. The scene portrays a man with a book in his hand, walking away from the burning pyre and looking back at it. He could be the man for whom the manuscript was made, believed to be Petr of Mladoňovice, a direct disciple of Huss, who attended the Council of Constance and penned a “Report on the Trial and Sentencing of Master J. Huss in Constance".

Assuming that Petr of Mladoňovice, otherwise a parish priest at St. Michael‘s in Prague from 1439, was in fact the first owner of this manuscript, then the bible probably remained at the parish after his death. In 1627, Ferdinand II gave this parish to the Order of the Servits, who started to build a monastery at the White Mountain. However, they never finished the building, stayed at St. Michael’s, and, in 1673, sold the buildings at the White Mountain to Maximilian Valentin of Martinice. Already in this man’s possession was a manuscript of the Richenthal chronicle from Prague, dealing with the Council of Constance. It is therefore possible that he got the Latin bible with the burning of Huss from the Servits for the family library.

Sometime in the first third of the 19th century, the Martinice family library was moved to Smečno, with “our” bible probably coming along. This ownership gave the bible its popular epithet Martinická. The bible is documented to have been in the property of landowner J. Filip in Smečno in 1924, and it appeared as “Hussite Bible” in a Zink auction catalogue in 1926. In 1967, the bible was again for sale in an antiquarian bookshop, where it was bought by the Main Library of the Academy of Sciences (today Library of the Academy of Sciences) to become the most precious book in its historical book collection, administered by the Department of Historical Bibliography.

From September 2005 to January 2006, the bible was on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York as part of a prestigious exhibition “Prague, The Crown of Bohemia 1347-1437”. From February to May 2006, the exhibition was shown at the Prague Castle as “Charles IV - Emperor by the Grace of God”. Prior to loaning it out, the bible was completely digitalized (www.memoria.cz, pressmark I TB 3), painter/restorer David Frank manually re-created eight pages of it, including the one with the burning scene, while restorer Mrs. Jarmila Franková crafted a bound book for the facsimiles, and repaired some modern-time damage and insensitive alterations to the binding of the original bible.

In 2006, the Academy of Sciences Library mounted an exhibition entitled “Martinická Bible and Its Journey from the 15th to the 21st century: A Story of One Exhibit from the Charles IV – Emperor by the Grace of God Exhibition. The Restoration Work of Jarmila and David Frank". The entire photographic documentation and the explanatory texts from this exhibition are captured on a CD-ROM (only in Czech language), which may be purchased (price: 100 CZK plus postage). Place Order»