Biblia Pauperum

[bib-lee-ah pou-pe-room, bib-lee-uh paw-per-uhm]

noun

1. any of the picture books illustrating Biblical events and usually containing a short text, used chiefly in the Middle Ages for purposes of religious instruction.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Biblia Pauperum¹

< New Latin: literally, Bible of poor men

Example Sentences

An illustration of the apocalypse in a Biblia Pauperum from around the time of the European famine of 1315–1317.

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They are both exceedingly close copies of engravings in the Biblia Pauperum, or Poor Man’s Bible, otherwise called “Speculum Humanæ Salvationis,” or the Mirror of Human Salvation.

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Of these we will speak on a future day, but we cannot close this article without commemorating another characteristic Biblical work of the ante-Reformation period, which might be justly styled the "Polyglot of the illiterate", and which is commonly known by the name of Biblia Pauperum.

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Some of the very first xylographic efforts were devoted to diffuse these Biblia Pauperum, and several editions appeared in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.

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The next step was the application of block engraving and printing to the production of volumes of a more pretentious character, the most noteworthy of which were The Apocalypsio sue Historia Sancti Johannis, the Biblia Pauperum, and the Historia Virginis ex Cantico Canticorum.

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