A Little Leaf
at Princeton University Library
from a Miniature Latin Vulgate Bible

2 columns in 47 lines

[Posted on 25 November 2025]

Poster 3 for 2025 Autumn Colloquium. Workshops on “Fragments at Princeton”

For the recent 2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium on Fragments, our Associate Eric M. White presented a pair of Workshops on “Fragments at Princeton”, with a focus on “Books in Fragments / Fragments in Books”. The workshops took place in Special Collections of the Princeton University Library, in two sittings.

With a few variations in each workshop, the selected specimens considered a range of manuscript and printed materials. They included, for example, single manuscript leaves (or fragments thereof) on their own or manuscript fragments (single leaves or conjoint bifolia) reused as part of bindings, pastedowns, or endleaves for other texts.

For many of these specimens, Eric demonstrated their characteristics with a riveting commentary about the processes of discovery which brought them to Princeton or which enriched understanding about them once the curator or scholar came across them in the stacks or within their secondary homes in the form of composite codices mixing layers from different dates and places of production and different genres of books.

He presented some specimens of individual leaves as curiosities about which little is known — in case they might be recognized. About one of them I said that I thought I knew of another similar leaf.

A Small-Format Vulgate Bible Leaf
Opening the Book of Isaiah

The specimen shown by Eric came from a miniature Latin Vulgate Bible laid out in two columns of 27 lines of text. With damage along the edges, notably at the upper outer corner, the leaf carries the opening portion of the Book of Isaiah, with an illustrated initial.

The recto displays the closing column of the Preface to Isaiah by Saint Jerome or Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (circa 342–347 – 420), then opens the Book of Isaiah with a rubricated title leading to an inset 7-line polychrome decorated initial U for Uisio at the top of the right-hand column. The letter encloses a scene of three male figures. Two men stand to either side and saw through the head of the staff-holding prophet Isaiah, who kneels between them as he undergoes martyrdom.

The initial, which extends to the left into the intercolumn and upward into the upper margin with a back-turning foliate terminal, appears to displace to the left the bichrome running title YSAIE, which hovers over the left-hand column of text. The right-hand column continues Chapter 1 to partway through 1:13, which resumes on the verso.

Princeton, Princeton University Library, Taylor Collection of Manuscript Leaves, MS 132.23. Single Leaf from a Bible, recto. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

The verso concludes Chapter I and opens Chapter 2 up to 2:10. The inset 2-line blue initial is embellished with penwork in red pigment which fills the bow of the initial and extends the full length of the intercolumn with branching, scrolling, and curling tips.

A blank patch of paper, subtriangular in shape, is pasted to the upper outer portion, filling out the gap of the corner damaged in a long, curved line with nibbled contours. A similarly ragged contour marks the shorter curved gap at the lower outer edge of the leaf. These contours appear to be characteristic of vellum leaves of a closed textblock nibbled by the sharp gnawing teeth of rodents.

Princeton, Princeton University Library, Taylor Collection of Manuscript Leaves, MS 132.23. Single Leaf from a Bible, verso. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Other Leaves from the Same Book?

Do you know of other leaves from the same Vulgate Bible manuscript? To you recognize the work of a specific artist, scribe, or scribal artist in other surviving books or fragments, whether Bibles or other texts?

Please let us know.

Princeton, Princeton University Library, Taylor Collection of Manuscript Leaves, MS 132.23. Single Leaf from a Bible, recto: top. Photograph by Mildred Budny.