This is the earliest complete printed Bible in SC&A, dating from 9 December 1475, by the Nuremberg printers Johann Sensenschmidt and Andreas Frisner. Its former owner, Sir Charles Sydney Jones, also presented the Library with individual leaves from the 1462 printed Bible, and a single leaf from the famous Gutenberg Bible – the very first printed book, which had appeared twenty years earlier.

The date in the two-volume 1475 Bible is given in the colophon, or printer’s statement at the end of the book, since early printed books had no title page. Printed in double columns, without page numbers, and with hand-painted and gilded initials marking the beginnnings of sections of  the text, this Vulgate Bible (from the Latin versio vulgata, ‘common  translation’) shares many features with contemporary manuscripts.

The images show illuminated initials marking the start of the Gospel of Matthew, and the Apocalypse.