A seventeenth century Latin Bible contemporary pigskin, with monastic provenance. Folio. Bound in full contemporary blindstamped pigskin. Retaining only the upper clasp to the fore-edge.
 
A well-preserved Latin Bible with interesting provenance. The library at Waldsassen Abbey is one of the most beautiful, and most-photographed libraries in the world, famed for its carved bookcases and rows of vellum and pigskin bindings.  The library we see today was constructed when this volume was published, beginning in 1681, and completed in 1688, with further decoation added in the early 18th century. By the 1740s, the library possessed 12,000 volumes, of which “only a few” dated from before the Thirty Years War. This Bible is one such volume. When the monastery was dissolved and secularised in 1804, the collection had grown to around 19,000 volumes, but only 3,520 of these transferred to Amberg, where they entered the newly founded Provincial Library together with holdings from other dissolved monasteries. The present volume did not go to Amberg, which is how it has ended up in private hands.