A BIBLE thought to have been owned by Scottish religious reformer John Knox has been discovered in a University of Glasgow library archive. The large folio Old Testamen appears to bear Knox’s signature dated 1561 on the reverse of the title page.
The folio, which was published in 1546 in Basel, Switzerland, was bequeathed to the University of Glasgow in 1874 on the death of insurance broker and Bible collector William Euing.
The ‘Knox’ Old Testament was purchased by Euing in 1864 from the London bookseller Ebenezer Palmer. A letter from Palmer pasted to the inside cover of the volume states: “The grand attraction... is that it has the handwriting and was the property of John Knox.”
Library Special Collections Professor Jane Dawson of the University of Edinburgh, an authority on Knox’s life, believes the bible could well have belonged to the reformer. She said: “Knox had returned to Scotland in 1559 and would have been dependent upon the usual arrangement of a friend or agent purchasing the volume for him and sending it to Scotland.
“A packet of letters from Geneva including one from Calvin to Knox arrived in Scotland in the early summer of 1561 and it is conceivable this delivery might have included the Old Testament.”e-1-4236533
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