“Bibles: Eight Centuries of Treasures from the Smith College Libraries”
A lecture by Mark Morford
Mark Morford
Latin Missal, c 1505
October 27, 2005
Friends who gathered to hear Mark Morford were rewarded with a tremendously informative lecture about the Mortimer Rare Book Room's collection of manuscript and printed bibles. His illustrated talk amounted to a history of bible making focusing on all the major bibles produced in Europe and North America from the thirteenth century to Barry Moser's 1997 fine press edition. Morford noted that Smith's collection is remarkable in that some 70 of the bibles and about 30 Greek New Testaments are treasures. Only one bible* is missing from what would otherwise constitute a completely representative collection. Morford is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. As the Salloch Fellow in the Mortimer Rare Book Room, he researches and catalogs incunabula. He served as Kennedy Professor of Renaissance Studies at Smith in 1995.
*William Tyndale's revolutionary New Testament, printed in Antwerp in 1536.
