Illustrated Manuscript on paper in Latin. Peter Comestor, also known as Peter the Devourer for his insatiable appetite for knowledge, was a twelfth-century French theologian and chancellor at the University of Paris. Completed around 1173, the “Historia Scholastica” is a Biblical paraphrase that used both the Bible and works from secular authors, especially Josephus, and aimed to present the history of the world from Creation to the end of the events that took place in the Acts of the Apostles.

This text proved to be immensely popular and was translated into many Western European vernacular languages, which led to it becoming a key source of biblical knowledge until the fifteenth century. The “Historia Scholastica” was also a required text for curricula at the University of Paris, Oxford, and others. Also bound in this volume is Peter of Poitier’s “Historia actuum apostolorum,” a work that promoted the use of translated Bibles and “Historia Scholastica” to teach the Bible to the masses.