[Musealia : The Bucharest Bible]

The Biblia was added to the Malesherbes Library's collections when the collections of the Institute of Romanian Studies were integrated. It is one of the few surviving copies of a unique and fundamental editorial project on the history of the Romanian language.

Why is this Bible of particular interest? Firstly, because it is the first complete translation of the Bible into Romanian.
Between the 9th and 17th centuries, Romanian definitively supplanted Slavonic, to become a written language (ecclesiastical, cultural, administrative) and cease to be "a simple peasant language". This Bible was therefore published at a key moment in the history of the Romanian language and played a major role in the process of unifying this language and in the construction of a still nascent Romanian identity. This translation, based on the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible ) attributed to Nicolas Milescu, was printed on the initiative of the Wallachian prince Serban Cantacuzino, who is known to have played a major role in the foundation of the Saint Sava Academy, a forerunner of the University of Bucharest, and in the creation of printing works in Romanian and Greek.

Secondly, due to the very period in which it was printed, this Bible has the particularity of being published in Cyrillic. There are very few documents in which the Romanian language is written in Cyrillic, as the Latin alphabet was soon to become the norm.

The copy kept in the Malesherbes Library has recently been restored. It was in poor condition and remains incomplete. The title page, which is highly ornamented, and the introductory sections in praise of Serban are notably missing. It is nevertheless an important witness to an emerging culture and know-how.
The copy kept at the Lucian Blaga Central University Library has been digitised and is available on Europeana.

By Hélène Fortin, head of the Malesherbes Library, Sorbonne University Library.

Data sheet

• Name : Bible de Bucarest
• Description : 37.5 x 27,5 x 9
• Date : 1688 (on funding from Serban Cantacuzino)
• Place of storage : Malesherbes Library