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Where did this go?

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By Emma VanSeveren '23

The early ownership of the Morgan Bible is unclear.  Scholars believe that after the death of King Louis IX of France, the Morgan Bible was passed along to his younger brother Charles I.  It was probably under Charles I that the Latin text was added to the Bible.

The first recorded owner of the Morgan Bible was Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski, the Bishop of Poland. Maciejowski most likely obtained the Bible while studying for the priesthood in Italy.
Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski in 1604 gifted the Bible to Shah Abbas; this is recorded on the first folio: “Bernard Maciejowski, Cardinal Priest of the Holy Roman Church, Bishop of Cracow, Duke of Siewierz, and Senator of the Kingdom of Poland with sincere wishes offers this gift to the supreme King of the Persians at Cracow the mother city of the kingdom of Poland on the seventh of September 1604.”

In 1608, Shah Abbas, while in Persia, had the Persian inscriptions added to the Bible. At a later date in history, perhaps around 1722 when Afghans conquered Isfahan, the royal treasury and library were looted. The manuscript reached a Persian Jewish person, who then added the Judeo-Persian Inscriptions.
Eventually, the manuscript reached Cairo, the capital of Egypt, where it was purchased by a British employed collector, John d’Athanasi.
The manuscript was brought to London to be sold at auction. It was purchased by London dealers Payne and Foss, who then sold it to Sir Thomas Phillipps. Following his death, his daughter, Katherine inherited his belongings. 
On December 10th, 1910, Sotheby’s, on behalf of the Phillipps Trustees, offered the manuscript to Pierpont Morgan for £10,000. At first, Morgan declined the sale and when he died in 1913, all new acquisitions to his collection stopped. After his death, the library and the collections were inherited by his son John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.; who eventually founded the Morgan Library in 1924. However, in 1916, Belle da Costa Greene, the librarian of the Morgan collection, had a second opportunity to buy the manuscript. She jumped at the chance at purchasing it for the original 1910 asking price, without waiting for permission from John Pierpont Morgan, Jr., Pierpont Morgan's son and heir. The Morgan Crusader Bible became the centerpiece of the Morgan collection and sparked J.P. Morgan's interest in continuing his father's work. 
The 48 original folios of the Morgan Picture Bible no longer reside together as a full series. 43 folios find their home in Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, while two folios reside in the National Library of France. The J. Paul Getty Museum is now home to a single folio. Two of the original folios are thought to be missing.  

 

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  1. Morgan Crusader Bible Folio 13r (MS M.638) Brooke Hendershott

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