Personal and Colourful

By Angela Mortimer, Master of Information Studies (MISt) student at McGill University. Angela is passionate about material culture, public libraries, and social history, and getting people interested in the same.   

While working at Rare Books and Special Collections, I have had the privilege to help with a variety of projects and see many beautiful and interesting materials. One of my bigger projects was to collect bibliographic information surrounding a selection of 37 tall and imposing historical Bibles.  McGill Libraries houses over 2000 Bibles. The date range of the Bibles I consulted was from 1659 to 1927, and in languages varying from English, to Latin, to Russian, to Swedish and more. This was a truly enlightening experience for me as I had the opportunity to challenge some of my preconceived notions of what a Bible contains and what they can look like.

One thing that became apparent was just how personal Bibles are. As holy texts, I know there is and always has been a lot of spiritual value taken from Bibles by their owners, but what I had not considered was that those previous owners imbued the pages with small bits of themselves too. When opening one version of The Holy Bible with a Complete Commentary, I suddenly came face-to-face with three generations of the Ridley family.

Family ties

The endpapers had the carefully written names and birthdays of the family ranging from 1745 to 1828. While this copy was clearly owned by the Ridley family, it was donated by Edward Greenshields and Mrs. Graham Drinkwater to Divinity Hall, now William Henry and Birks Building in the early 20^th century. As I continued to go through the Bibles, it was clear that writing names with birthdays, marriages, and even family deaths was a common practice and even encouraged. I opened an edition of The Illuminated Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments from 1846, which had these colourful yet blank early pages, each devoted to these three major life events. This inclusion shows the numerous ways a Bible can be precious to a family. It is not only the beliefs and guidance the scripture holds but is also a record of family history. With each family member who likely touched, read, and was named in the Bible, a personal family legacy formed, and sentimental ties were created.

On top of these extremely personal family connections, there were also examples of moments of appreciation and recognition within the Bibles. In one of what I would consider the most impressive Bible, was a beautiful blue silk endpaper and gold lettering leaving the message:

“Presented to Rev. B. Davis PH.D by the members of the central committee of the Canada Baptist missionary society on his return to his native land as an expression of their unfeigned esteem and affection”

Polyglot Bibles

This particular Bible is incredibly stunning and would have been an expensive gift. Not only was it was written in eight languages (Hebrew, Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, English and German), but it also contains the special Pentateuchus Hebraeo- Samaritanus, or Samaritan Pentateuch, at the end. The Samaritan Pentateuch is the biblical canon of Samaritanism written in paleo-Hebrew and was introduced to the West in 1616 by Pietro della Valle. It began being published as part of polyglot Bibles like this one, in Paris in 1628 but now there are over 6000 variations and translations [1]. This addition along with the amount of time that it would have taken to set type in eight languages with three distinct alphabets, make this Bible even more special. It also has gilt edges on all sides with additional punctured designs known as gauffering. It likely would have meant a great deal to Rev. B. Davis. It showed that he was a valued member of the clergy here and now his legacy gets to live on at McGill’s Rare Books through this extra personal touch.

In addition to the intimate nature of the family Bible, the beautiful, coloured inks used in the Bibles pleasantly surprised me. Before beginning this journey, I believed that the Bibles were going to almost all be entirely in black ink, like the ones I used in elementary school, potentially with some red ink for the title page, in imitation of older manuscripts that I had the opportunity to see while working here at Rare Books. I also assumed that any designs included would be small, simple flourishes. I was wrong. There were Bibles that did stick to greyscale; yet they held incredibly detailed designs, maps, as well as copper and steel engraved illustrations.

Use of Colour

However, it was the examples of these elements (not including maps) in stunning bright colours that stuck out most to me. One of my favourites was an Illustrated Family Bible that began with multiple colourful pages of designs and half title. It also included over 1500 engravings on both steel and wood throughout the Bible. It was presented to Wesleyan Theological College, now McGill’s Wilson Hall by William Lunn, in November of 1883. The bright blues, greens, reds, golds, and oranges were jumping off the pages when I began to flip through. Published and produced in Toronto, Canada by William Briggs, this Bible was also special to me, a Canadian who grew up an hour from the Greater Toronto Area.

The experience of working with these Bibles, and at Rare Books and Special collections in general, has taught me so much. I now know specific terms used to describe features of books, such as, gauffered edges and half titles but also got to appreciate the care and personal testimonies placed within materials like Bibles. I hope I have shown that Bibles are not only containers of textual scripture, but also of family histories, and they are art.  I encourage you to look through our catalogue, find materials on topics that spark interest and begin to explore the hidden treasures within them and  of rare books material culture in general because you never know what you may find or learn from them.

Footnote:

[1] “Biblical Literature,” Encyclopædia Britannica, March 14, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/Deliberate-changes#ref597350.