Biblia Pauperum

An illustration of the apocalypse in a Biblia Pauperum from around the time of the European famine of 1315–1317.

They are both exceedingly close copies of engravings in the Biblia Pauperum, or Poor Man’s Bible, otherwise called “Speculum Humanæ Salvationis,” or the Mirror of Human Salvation.

Of these we will speak on a future day, but we cannot close this article without commemorating another characteristic Biblical work of the ante-Reformation period, which might be justly styled the "Polyglot of the illiterate", and which is commonly known by the name of Biblia Pauperum.

Some of the very first xylographic efforts were devoted to diffuse these Biblia Pauperum, and several editions appeared in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The next step was the application of block engraving and printing to the production of volumes of a more pretentious character, the most noteworthy of which were The Apocalypsio sue Historia Sancti Johannis, the Biblia Pauperum, and the Historia Virginis ex Cantico Canticorum.