The New Testament,

extra illustrated with 38 interleaved woodcuts from the 1877 Biblia Pauperum

An excellent example of the second printing of Wycliffe's (d.1384) New Testament, extra illustrated with 38 interleaved woodcuts taken from an edition of the Biblia Pauperum printed by the Unwin Brothers in 1877 to coincide with the qaudricentennial celebration of the printer William Caxton.

These woodcuts are believed to have been printed from blocks dating to the latter half of the fifteenth century (see no. 2008 in Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English Bible 1525-1961... revised and expanded by A.S. Herbert).

The text is a reprint of John Lewis' edition of Wycliffe's New Testament that was brought out in a limited run of 160 copies in 1731, and marked the first time that Wycliffe's translation appeared in print. Both follow the text of the 'Later Version' of the Wycliffite Bible, which replaced the direct transliteration of the Latin Vulgate of the 'Early Version' for a more sense-by-sense rendering of the text into English.

According to Darlow & Moule the 'text was obtained by Llewis from two MSS., both representing the later Wycliffite version:-(1) an early fifteenth-century MS. belonging to himself, now in the Bodleian (Gough Eccl. top. 5); (2) a MS. written about 1420, belonging to Sir Edw. Dering, and in 1850 the property of W. Conybeare, Dean of Llandaff. (See Forshall and Madden's edition of the complete Bible, 1850, Preface, P. i n., p. l, and p. lxiv)'

Wycliffe was a controversial figure in his own day, blurring the the boundaries between theologian and philosopher, and unwisely becoming embroiled in Court politics of fourteenth-century England. His great attack on the temporal authority of the Church De civili dominio ('On civil dominion') earned the official condemnation of Pope Gregory XI in 1377, and his Eucharistic teachings were condemned by ecclesiastical council in 1382. This would all lead ultimately to his posthumous declaration as a heretic, and the exhumation of his bones in 1428, which were burned, the ashes being scattered into the River Swift.

His legacy nevertheless survived in the Lollard heresy that gripped England in the fifteenth century, and the Hussites of Bohemia, and he would go on to be declared the prophetic 'Morning Star' in the hagiographical biographies of the Protestant Reformation that followed.

Second edition, extra illustrated; large 4to (32 x 24.5 cm); engraved portrait frontispiece, offsetting to title, extra illustrated with 38 interleaved woodblock prints and contents sheet from the Biblia Pauperum, probably from the edition printed by Unwin Brothers in 1877, occasional light spotting, hinges repaired at endpapers with cloth; contemporary gilt vellum, skilfully rebacked preserving the original spine which has been laid down, marbled edges, a little soiled and rubbed at extremities, very good.

Herbert 1537; DM 1014; (cf.Herbert 1011 & 2008).