2024-07-21

Censorship by Fire: The Brest Bible of the Radziwiłłs (Summary)

Jolita Liškevičienė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/DIS/2014.6.2

The article researches the iconography of the frontispiece of the Brest Bible as a programme artwork of the ‘new’ religion, i.e., the Reformation. The Polish translation, commissioned by the Lithuanian noble Mikołaj ‘the Black’ Radziwiłł, was printed in Brest (formerly Brest-Litovsk) in 1563 and was considered to be the grandest achievement of printing throughout the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In Lithuanian historiography, the title page of the Brest Bible is commonly acknowledged as a unique artwork. Nevertheless, a comprehensive survey of the Bible translations into national languages allows one to conclude that similar frontispieces are typical of most reformist publications. The didactic prototype for the illustration ‘The Fall and Salvation’, based on the new doctrine of the Reformation, was created by a German artist, Lucas Cranach the Elder, in 1529. A wood carving relying on this iconography was also included in the German translation of the Bible by Martin Luther (Lübeck, 1533–1534). A two-sided tree of life divides the illustration in half, with naked branches on one side pointing at the Old Testament and leafy branches on the other side pointing at the New Testament, hence symbolising two separate teachings, the old one (Roman Catholicism) and the new one (the Reformation).

The frontispiece of the Brest Bible is one of the splendid examples of the reformist iconography that declares the pan-European movement with explicit and comprehensible visual rhetoric of the Reformation. What distinguishes it from other coeval examples is a decorative arch bending over the visual programme of the Reformation. Although architectural elements here fully prevail over the iconographic message, the latter did not evade the eye of vigilant censors: the book was being persecuted, listed among banned books, torn to pieces and even burned.

Keywords: the Brest Bible, Mikołaj ‘the Black’ Radziwiłł, Reformation, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, iconography