The Making of the Wenceslas Bible

CEU Podcasts

In this interview, Maria Theisen talks about her work on the Making of the Wenceslas Bible. This great bible was written in German in the late fourteenth century, and although it was never completed, it still contains 2,000 folios and over 650 illuminations. Maria sets the creation of the bible into the context of the times, particularly the reforms within the church and the power struggles between the Catholic church and King Wenceslas IV. Maria also explains the complex iconography of the period and the symbolism of the images in the great first letter of Genesis. As the bible was not finished, there remain notes in the margins for the illuminators which give clues to the process of making the bible and the lives of the scribes and illuminators.This podcast is part of a series of interviews covering central Europe in the medieval period for MECERN and CEU Medieval Studies.