Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 43/52
Bible from Northern France, Haverford College, Quaker & Special Collections, 1250 J2.16.10, fol. 1r
A thirteenth-century Parisian Bible, held until 2002 at the Monthly Meeting of Friends Library but now on permanent deposit at Haverford College, represents an unusually early arrival of a European manuscript in the Philadelphia region, and in the New World more generally.1 In the introduction to the Leaves of Gold: Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections exhibition catalogue, James Tanis briefly mentioned the manuscript’s early provenance in America and illustrated one of its historiated initials.2 This was the first time that any image of the manuscript had been reproduced. Now, of course, the volume has been entirely digitized as part of the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis project. In his essay, Tanis drew attention to an autograph inscription on the flyleaf written by John Pemberton, a leader of the local Friends community, which records his purchase of the book from John Kendall of Colchester, Great Britain, on 13 June 1787, for the sum of 1 Guinea.