thumb|upright=1.25|The end of the story of [[David and Absalom]]
The Morgan Bible (mostly Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Ms M. 638), also called the Morgan Picture Bible, Crusader Bible, Shah Abbas Bible or Maciejowski Bible, is a unique medieval illuminated manuscript. It is a picture book Bible of which 46 folios survive, with two thought to be missing. The book consists of miniature paintings of events from the Hebrew Bible depicted from a Christian perspective, set in the scenery and costumes of thirteenth-century France. It is not a complete Bible, as it consists largely of illustrations of stories of kings, especially King David. The illustrations are now surrounded by text in three scripts and five languages: Latin, Persian, Arabic, Judeo-Persian, and Hebrew. The level of detail in the images and the remarkable state of preservation of the work make it particularly valuable to scholars.
Description
The majority of the Morgan Bible is part of the Morgan Library & Museum's collection in New York (Ms M. 638). It is a medieval picture Bible, originally containing 48 folios; of these, 43 still reside in the Morgan Museum, two are in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, one is in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and two have been lost. In full, the manuscript contained over 380 scenes. Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski, Bishop of Kraków, had the book given as a gift to Shah of Safavid Iran, Abbas The Great in 1608. Abbas ordered inscriptions in Persian to be added, mostly translating the Latin ones already there. Later, in the eighteenth century, inscriptions were added in Judeo-Persian. The Latin text allowed art historians to identify the subjects of the miniatures.
The manuscript is of particular interest to scholars because of the quality and preservation of the illuminations. The level of detail included, from architecture to siege engines to haircuts, provides historians with valuable clues as to what life was like at the time, while the stylistic changes and subtle variations in the story-lines give some insight into one of the most powerful men in Europe. A suggestion by Allison Stones, expanding on conclusions by others such as François Avril, that it was instead illuminated in northern France around 1250 has not won general acceptance.
The modern imagery may have been a political statement because the Franks, especially during the reign of Louis IX, saw themselves as the legitimate heirs of Rome. Under Louis IX, France took a militant position against the enemies of Christendom, taking an active part in the Seventh and Eighth Crusades.
Ownership up to this point has been based mostly on guesswork and circumstantial evidence. The first recorded owner of the Bible was Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski, who was the Bishop of Cracow, Poland.