Leaf from a Bible (Book of Zephaniah), present-day Belgium (Liège), ca. 1300.
A duplicate number MS.743 was assigned to this object in error and was subsequently cancelled.

Book of Zephaniah
Leaf, with 11-line decorated initial U; man with tall peaked hat playing bag-pipes in marginal decoration
Rubric: Explicit Abacuch, incipit Sophonias propheta I. Verbum domini quod factum
40 lines, 2 cols.

Part of a Bible in three volumes which probably belonged to the house of the Teutonic Knights in Maastricht (Nieuwe Biesen), according to an inscription on a leaf from vol. II (see London, British Library, Add. MS 32058, fol. 9). All leaves now in the V&A collection belong to volume II. The second volume was dismantled by the time the museum acquired a first batch of leaves in 1883 from W.H. James Weale (9036A to 9036Z, 9036Z/A, 9036F/1). Another batch was bought in 1906 (D.544 to D.599-1906). No part of volume I is known to survive (Genesis to II Chronicles) and volume III is now Oxford, Keble College, MS 69.

Part of cuttings purchased in batches from William Henry James Weale in 1883, 95 on 9 April 1883, 258 on 17 April 1883, 20 on 20 February, for the total sum of £96.7.2 (now Museum nos 8972-9042). These included 27 leaves and 1 cutting from the Teutonic Knights Bible, vol. II.

Cuttings from the same manuscript in the V&A collection: Museum nos 9036A to 9036Z, 9036Z/A, 9036F/1, D.544 to D.599-1906.

Cuttings from the same manuscript in other collections: London, British Library, Add. MS 32058, ff. 9-22.

Vol. III (containing the Old Testament): Oxford, Keble College, MS 69.

This is a page from a Bible that was made for a monastery of the Teutonic Knights. The Knights were among the more successful military orders. They were given papal approval in 1199. They oversaw the colonisation by German settlers and the imposition of Christianity in what is now Poland and Lithuania. Like their counterparts, the Templars, they operated a system of banking to get money 'to the front line'. (The Templars had suffered brutal suppression, and their assets were nationalised by the French crown soon after 1300.) This Bible was made in Liège for their house of Nieuwe Biesen in Maastricht, where the Teutonic Order owned property. The ornament in the initials is inhabited by dragons, heads and grotesques, which spill over into the margins.

9036Z