This Bible was printed in Leipzig in 1605 and there’s some impressive gold-working (or whatever the technical term is) undertaken here by the city’s goldsmiths. But, impressive as the Bible might be, the element that surprised and delighted me the most was knowing that generations of council members swore their solemn oath of office on this book, pledging to help everyone in the city regardless of whether they were rich or poor.
There is another Bible, published in 1597, that is near identical and was by Leipzig’s two most important goldsmiths, Hans Reinhart the Younger and Elias Geyer, and an early city chronicler, Johann Jacob Vogel (1660-1729), mentioned that they were made in quick succession, one for the judges and one for the council members. Both Bibles are hugely important as previously the council members had sworn on Catholic relics, meaning that it took them half a century for them to swear on a Lutheran Bible, making this something of a public declaration of Protestantism.