BIBLIA PAUPERUM. – A devotional book containing representations of the principal scenes from the life of Jesus, depicted, according to the medieval concept and that is, according to the typology of the Concordantia Veteris et Novi Testamenti, together with stories from the Old Testament and accompanied by figures of prophets. The conventional term B. p. was adopted after the book had been compiled and therefore does not indicate its authentic title; it refers not so much to the “poor in spirit” as to poor clerics who lacked the means to obtain a complete B. and who, moreover, had to provide themselves with the bare essentials for knowing, teaching, and preaching the Sacred Scriptures. This intended use is perhaps confirmed by the fact that several versions of the text exist in German and other languages. It is no longer possible to trace the work’s archetype, but it can be dated to around the end of the thirteenth century and attributed to a Benedictine convent in Bavaria; the original redaction probably comprised 38 groups of images, each of which brought together a scene from the New Testament with two parallel scenes from the Old Testament and four figures of prophets.
The general scheme of the aforementioned compendium has been transmitted to us: 1) by no fewer than 68 manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, all originating in Upper Germany or Austria and divisible, according to the selection, order, and graphic arrangement of the individual scenes, into various classes; 2) by several editions of block books: one of them, originating in the Upper Rhine and preserved in the unique copy in Heidelberg, contains the text in manuscript; among the others, those produced in the Netherlands predominate; two bear engraved German signatures (there is also a late Italian imitation: Opera nuova contemplativa, Venice 1510); 3) by books printed with movable type: for example, the three editions by the printer Pfister (Bamberg), which may chronologically precede the other copies.
The immense diffusion of the B. p. explains its extraordinary iconographic influence on the monumental painting of the late Middle Ages, especially in Germany.