Secret Notes Found Hidden in a Bible Reveal Unexpected Details on the Reformation of Henry VIII

Hidden annotations in England’s first printed Bible, published in 1535, show there was a short transition period between the Catholic era in England and the Reformation that violently transformed English religious history.

A few years after the Reformation began, the reformers brutally repressed the last vestiges of Catholic Church practices and adherents.

The historic Bible was later owned by a pickpocket who was hanged at Tybourn in 1552, an inscription on the back page shows. The Bible’s preface was written by Henry VIII and later recorded a transaction between the pickpocket and another man.

The historian Eyal Poleg, who did the research, told Phys.org:

“The book is a unique witness to the course of Henry’s Reformation. Printed in 1535 by the King’s printer and with Henry’s preface, within a few short years the situation had shifted dramatically. The Latin Bible was altered to accommodate reformist English, and the book became a testimony to the greyscale between English and Latin in that murky period between 1539 and 1549. Just three years later things were more certain. Monastic libraries were dissolved, and Latin liturgy was irrelevant. Our Bible found its way to lay hands, completing a remarkably swift descent in prominence from Royal text to recorder of thievery.”