Notes hidden for almost 500 years in England’s first official printed Bible have revealed quotations from Thomas Cromwell’s ‘Great Bible’ as well as notes about a thief dubbed ‘Mr Pickpocket’.
The fascinating scribbles, unfitting of the holy tome, were discovered beneath pieces of thick paper in one of seven surviving copies of a Bible published in 1535 by Henry VIII’s printer. One expert believes the important artefact sheds light on the speed of the Reformation and shows how the Royal text swiftly found its way into the hands of the common man and thieves.
Dr Eyal Poleg, a historian from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) made the discovery in the Bible housed in Lambeth Palace Library in London. ‘We know virtually nothing about this unique Bible – whose preface was written by Henry himself – outside of the surviving copies,’ he said.
The Lambeth copy at first seemed ‘clean’ but Dr Poleg noticed heavy paper had been pasted over blank parts of the book. ‘The challenge was how to uncover the annotations without damaging the book,’ he explained. The researchers worked with Dr Graham Davis, a specialist in 3D X-ray imaging at QMUL’s School of Dentistry, using a light sheet slid beneath the pages to expose the hidden text. They took two images in long exposure – one with the light sheet on and one with it off.
The first image showed all the annotations, scrambled with the printed text, while the second showed only the printed text. Dr Davis then used software to subtract the second image from the first, leaving a clear picture of the annotations.
The notes are copied from the famous ‘Great Bible’ of Thomas Cromwell, seen as the epitome of the English Reformation – a series of events in 16th century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.
One example reads: ‘On the iij Sonday [of Lent] | [E]phe. v. a. be ye therfore follo. | Lk. xi. b. and he was casting out’. Dr Poleg told MailOnline: ‘This means that the text to be read at Mass on the Fourth Sunday of Lent is the Letter to the Ephesians 5:1 (beginning with ‘be ye therfore’) and Luke 11:14 (beginning “and he was casting out”).’
Written between 1539 and 1549, they were covered and disguised with thick paper in 1600 and remained hidden until this year.According to Dr Poleg, their presence supports the idea that the Reformation was a gradual process rather than a single, transformative event.