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Title: A Lutheran Image on the Title-Page of the Last Bible without a Confessional Label
Author(s): CLIFTON, James
Journal: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
Volume: 84    Issue: 1   Date: 2008   
Pages: 69-86
DOI: 10.2143/ETL.84.1.2030894

Abstract :
La Saincte Bible published by Martin Lempereur in Antwerp in 1530 has been called the last Bible to be published without a confessional label. But its title-page carries an allegorical scene that derives from Lucas Cranach compositions, usually called Law and Grace, that are specifically Lutheran. Lempereur reused the image on his second edition of La Saincte Bible and a Latin Bible, both published in 1534; only these later editions were proscribed in the Indexes of Leuven and Antwerp, apparently because of their paratextual material rather than the title-page image. As inoffensive as Lempereur’s 1530 Bible may have been to the authorities, its title-page allegory may have stimulated illicit discussion among laypersons in conventicles.

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