Old Testament Miniatures with Latin, Persian, and Judeo-Persian
inscriptions France, Paris, 1240s Scholars believe that the
Picture Bible was commissioned by Louis IX of France, the
Capetian monarch who built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to house
the crown of thorns before leaving for the first of his two
crusades in 1248. The Bible later passed to the cardinal of
Cracow, who then offered it as a diplomatic gift to the great
Persian Muslim shah 'Abbas in the early seventeenth century. The
manuscript eventually fell into the hands of Jewish owners,
probably during the eighteenth century. These various owners
left Latin, Persian, and Judeo-Persian inscriptions around the
images. With these inscriptions, the keepers of the manuscript
used their languages to assert their ownership of the book,
appropriating its narrative contents and assimilating it into
their own cultures. The Latin captions are the earliest. They
can be labeled as "early fourteenth-century," and were possibly
made by a scribe trained in Bologna