Biblia pauperum ~1450

by Hyperslower - uploaded on May 20, 2026, 11:17 pm

A page from a religious book dating from around 1450, found in the digital archives of the Kingdom of Belgium.

Note:

"The Biblia pauperum (Latin for "Paupers' Bible") was a tradition of picture Bibles beginning probably with Ansgar, and a common printed block-book in the later Middle Ages to visualize the typological correspondences between the Old and New Testaments. Unlike a simple "illustrated Bible", where the pictures are subordinated to the text, these Bibles placed the illustration in the centre, with only a brief text or sometimes no text at all. Words spoken by the figures in the miniatures could be written on scrolls coming out of their mouths. To this extent one might see parallels with modern comics."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblia_pauperum

FYI, I added solid black lines over the original image, which I vectorized using Inkscape.