Bible (Main View (.505v) / book image source)

Monks, angels, and musicians depicted within scrolling vines fill the margins of this Bible made in Bologna in the late 1200s. This city is the site of a thriving university founded in 1221, and the institution created a great demand for manuscript production. Representations of Dominican monks and saints important to the Dominican order appear throughout the pages of this manuscript, suggesting that it was probably made for a Dominican community. In the first half of the thirteenth century, the Dominicans undertook several revisions of the Vulgate--Saint Jerome's fifth-century Latin translation of the Bible--of which this is one edition. Corrections appear in the margins of this copy of the Bible indicating that it was carefully checked for accuracy after its completion.