Collectors' items or manifestations of confessionality? : Bibles in book collections of Bohemian renaissance nobility
Abstract
The extant research on the role of the Bible during the Reformation has focused primarily on then-efforts to make the biblical text widely accesible. On the contrary, book collections of this period have not received sufficient attention, even though it is obvious that both printed and manuscript Bibles were not only read during the second half of the 16th century, but they also became objects of purposeful collecting.
The most extensive collections of Bibles in the Czech Lands prior to 1620 could be found in the libraries of the Rosenberg Family (the total of 10,000 books out of which 165 were Bibles) and of Ferdinand Hoffmann of Grünbüchl (almost 4,000 books out of which 140 were printed Bibles and there were probably also dozens of biblical manuscripts). Their comparison showed that the noble owners paid extraordinary attention to their collections, yet in a slightly different manner.
The owners' confessionality influenced their Bible collections only to a limited extent - although the Bibles in both collections fulfilled a role of a symbolic expression of piety, they served mainly as collectors' items.