The Diocesan Museum in Pelplin (Polish: Muzeum Diecezjalne w Pelplinie) holds one of the finest collections of medieval art in Poland. It is located in the town of Pelplin in Tczew County (Pomeranian Voivodeship) and is managed by the bishopric of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pelplin. It bears the name of Bishop Stanisław Wojciech Okoniewski (1870–1944), the founder of the museum (pl), who died in Lisbon during World War II. Founded in the Second Polish Republic in 1928 during the interwar period, the collections have been housed in a modern-style building complex since 1988. Among the museum's most precious objects is Poland's only copy of the Gutenberg Bible.
The Gutenberg Bible (pictured below) held by the museum,[4] originally from the Franciscanmonastery in Lubawa, is one of only 48 copies which survived to modern times. Of those, only 20 are complete, and are worth up to $100 million each.[5] It is one of only nine copies surviving in its original 15th century binding,[6][4][p. 157] which was added by Henricus Coster of Lübeck.[7] It is printed on both sides of 641 sheets of paper (folios), in two columns measuring 285 mm × 85 mm each, with 40–42 verses, for the total of 1,282 pages of text.[8] Leaves are inserted between some gatherings.[9] During its printing, a loose typesetting sort fell upon a page of this copy and made a mark. This unique feature of the Pelplin Bible enabled scholars to deduce the shape of Gutenberg's type.[10] The binding consists of two beveled oak boards covered in red goat leather, with five brass buttons, corner fittings and buckles fastened to leather straps.[11] The Bible from Pelplin was rescued during World War II by the Polish government,[6] and came to Canada through Paris and London. Kept in a vault at the Bank of Montreal in Ottawa,[6] it was not returned to Poland until 1959.[8]
The museum collections of early prints include the priceless manuscript of St. Augustine of Hippo from 425 titled "De civitate Dei".[12] The collections of the venerated objects of piety contain monstrances and reliquaries from the workshops of Gdańsk, Toruń, and Nuremberg. The collections also include liturgical garments, such as vestments and dalmatics.[13]
^Jan Pirożyński (2005). Early Imprints from the Gutenberg Press in the Jagiellonian Library(PDF). Foreign Collections in Polish Libraries Today. Vol. 6. Warsaw: The National Library. p. 32 (31 of 131 in PDF) and pp. 120–121 in "Review" by Andrzej Tomaszewski. ISSN0867-6976. Gutenberg produced 36-line, 40-line, and 42-line bibles over time. It seems obvious that Gutenberg did not commence his printing activities by publishing the 42-line Bible, a work of as many as 643 leaves.
^The British Library (2017). "Gutenberg Bible: The Gatherings". Background. Leaves inserted between gatherings are not consistent. Twelve surviving copies of the Bible include as many as 643 folios with additional sheets inserted after leaves 4, 7, 8 and 9 in the first volume; and leaves 3, 7 and 10 in the second volume. Archived from the original on 2008-06-07. Retrieved 2017-03-15. See also: "Composition and presses". Treasures in Full. "The types". Treasures in Full. "The ink". Treasures in Full. Archived from the original on 2007-09-11. Retrieved 2017-03-15. "How many". Treasures in Full. Archived from the original on 2023-10-05. Retrieved 2017-03-15.
^Sutter, Sem (2008), "The Treasures of Pelplin", The Holocaust and the Book, University of Massachusetts Press, p. 144, ISBN9781558496439
Roman Ciecholewski: Skarby Pelplina, Wydaw. Diecezjalne, Pelplin 1997, ISBN8385087524.
Roman Ciecholewski: Quis ut Deus. Treasures from the Diocesan Museum Pelplin. Art at the time of the Teutonic Order: Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, Lüneburg, 2000; ISBN3932267273.
Bogna Derkowska-Kostkowska, Szczepan Warmijak: Gotycka rzeźba pomorska i starodruki z XV wieku ze zbiorów Muzeum Diecezjalnego i Biblioteki Diecezjalnej w Pelplinie (Gothic Pomeranian Sculpture and Early Prints), Muzeum Okręgowe in the. Leona Wyczółkowskiego w Bydgoszczy, Bydgoszcz, MO, 1992.
