The Velislav Bible and Latin biblical mnemonics in the 14th and 15th century Bohemia, in: Daphnis: Zeitschrift für Mittlere Deutsche Literatur und Kultur der Frühen Neuzeit (1400-1750) 41 (2012): 327-355. (original) (raw)

After an overview of late medieval Latin biblical mnemonic tools with a special attention to those transmitted in Bohemia, the study moves to an analysis of the most singular biblical retelling from Bohemia, the Biblia picta Velislai (Velislav bible) from ca. 1340. While this “biblical comics” displays many inconsistencies both in its visual and textual aspects (e.g. there are only nine precepts of the Decalogue included), the author argues that it was quite common during the Middle Ages and did not exclude its use for education and meditation. Like substantially later Manualník by Jan Amos Komenský (1623, printed 1658), the main aim of this and other biblical retellings was the moral edification of the readers.