The Reformation of the Bible/The Bible of the Reformation
This exhibition highlighted the pivotal role the Bible played in both the Renaissance and the Reformation. The works were selected by Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History at Yale, and were drawn from Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Divinity Library, University Art Gallery, and the Center.
The exhibition featured texts that document the recovery of the Biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek during the Renaissance and focused on the use of the Bible during the period of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Works by the reformer Martin Luther were highlighted, accompanied by woodcuts of Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Durer, and others. Early Bibles printed in vernacular languages were on exhibit, including the first complete Bible produced in the thirteen colonies (which was also the first book printed in a Native American language, Algonquin).
On March 27, 1996, Professor Pelikan delivered a lecture on “The Rhetoric of the Reformation” at the Center. An illustrated catalogue, written by Pelikan and Hotchkiss, was published by Yale University Press.
Venues
Yale Center for British Art: February 3–April 7, 1996
Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University: March–September 1996
The Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University:
November 1996–February 1997
The Houghton Library and the Widener Library, Harvard University:
January 1997
Credits
The exhibition was organized by a former student of Professor Pelikan’s, Valerie Hotchkiss, Director of the Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University, to honor him on the occasion of his retirement after fifty years of teaching.