The Schuyler Family Bible

 by Sarah Lindecke

The Schuyler Family Bible 

The Schuyler Family Bible is a fascinating item that gives us a peak into the Schuyler family’s history. In this post, we will look at the history of family Bibles and bookmaking before diving into the Schuylers’ Bible.

In many European nations, religious devotion was popularly expressed in a variety of forms. Perhaps most common were churches and their elaborate decorations, as well as more personal items like rosaries and jewelry. With the expansion of scriptoriums and other dedicated facilities for book creation during the Medieval period, there was an expansion of bookbinding as an act of piety. Most of this work was done by religious adherents, Christian monks, and other skilled craftsperson’s who dedicated many hours of labor towards the creation of beautiful and expensive manuscripts. Examples of these early illuminated manuscripts would usually have been specific books of the Bible or devotionals called Books of Hours. Many of these books had elaborate cover and internal art, sometimes made from expensive materials like gemstones, pigments for illumination, and vellum (the more expensive version of parchment made from animal skins).

Book of Hours, c. 1530
Held by the MET

With the advent of the printing press and other revolutions in the production of written materials, the artform of decorative books became more accessible, but books were still mainly commissioned by the gentry and merchant classes. Those who could afford the elaborately painted book covers and insets began purchasing customized books and manuscripts in vernacular languages. With this increase in literacy for the gentry, families began to expand their book collections, and often used those books to track their familial records as the books themselves functioned as family heirlooms. They typically recorded birthdates, marriages, deaths, and other significant life events on blank pages. These items provided families with the opportunity to leave information for descendants about ancestors and seminal events in their world.

The Schuyler Family Bible

For the Schuyler family, their family Bible provided all these functions while still being a work of art indicative of their status. The Schuyler family Bible was printed in 1719, most likely by Pieter Keur, under the company of Pieter Rotterdam in Dordrecht (Dordt in English), one of the five largest cities in the Netherlands today. The outside binding of the book is made from leather decorated with ornate corner covers and clasps. Even with its elaborate decoration, the spine of the Bible is unfortunately in poor condition. In previous years the Bible was displayed all open causing much of the damage seen today.

The Bible is printed in the Statenvertaling, or “Staten General,” version of the Bible. This version of the Bible was specifically translated after the Synod of Dordrecht (1618/19) declared it necessary for a new edition of the Bible to be rendered in Dutch from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages to preserve the integrity of the translation into Dutch. The translation was meant to ensure that the original wording and manner of the text were uncorrupted, and often included brief explanatory and summary passages to assist with understanding. Generally, this translation is the Dutch equivalent of the King James Bible, which was commissioned by the Church of England in 1611 under the patronage of King James VI and I of England and Scotland for the same reason.

The Schuyler Family Bible

With this new translation into Dutch, the design layout was updated to reflect a style attractive to the people commissioning the Bibles. Like many illuminated manuscripts from the earlier Medieval period, the designs in these newer Bibles were intricate and often symbolic. For example, within the Schuylers’ family Bible, the title page is designed to look like a neoclassical temple with a banner hanging down from the entablature explaining the version and contents of the Bible, alongside its maker at the bottom. The columns are a close match for Roman Etruscan columns because of their signature rounded edges. There is also a large seal placed in front of the banner. This seal shows a raging lion—a common symbol for the seven provinces of the Netherlands—holding a sword raised in one paw with a sheaf of seven arrows in his other. These items and the choice of a lion are generally meant to symbolize strength and courage but, in this case, the lion and accoutrements most likely represent how the 7 Dutch provinces were taken back from the Holy Roman Empire at the beginning of the 17^th century, creating unity within Dutch lands.

Around this symbolic lion is the phrase “eendracht maeckt macht,” which roughly translates to “unity creates power.” This form of the Bible itself is a work of unity as it was commissioned by a collective within the Protestant Church of the Netherlands to present more harmony within Biblical texts and teachings, while also unifying those in the Dutch world under the same version of the Bible. Many other symbolic items can be found throughout the design program of the “Staten General” Bible the Schuylers owned, but, beyond the interesting aspects of the Bible as a work of art, the Schuylers also used their it to record their family genealogy.

Genealogy in the Schuyler Family Bible 

The first entry into the genealogy pages records the marriage of Philip Schuyler’s (1733-1804) father Johannes Schuyler (1697-1741) and Cornelia van Cortlandt (1698-1762) on October 18^th, 1723. The next entry announces the birth of Philip Schuyler’s older sister, Gertrude (1724-1813), who was born August 18^th, 1724. Further down, it lists on November 20^th, 1733, the birth of Philip Schuyler. Other family events such as the marriage of Philip Schuyler and Catharine van Rensselaer Schuyler (1734-1803) on September 7^th of 1755, and the births of their many children, are listed in the Bible.

Within the bounds of the Schuyler family Bible, there are five children whose history exists only on those pages. These five children are the twins and triplets Catherine had in 1761 and 1770, respectively. We learned from the Bible record that one twin died at birth and was left unnamed, but the other was a girl who survived for about a month before passing away. Her name was Cornelia—a name that was later reused for another Schuyler daughter. The triplets were born in 1770, and were either stillborn or died shortly after birth. None were named and their sexes are not listed. The Schuylers do not write a lot about these twins and triplets, suggesting that the family may have wanted to recuse themselves from extended conversation about their losses. These children were not the first or last children the Schuylers would lose during childhood, but the loss may have felt much larger in these cases.    

The Schuylers’ family Bible provides us with a window not only into their religious world, but their familial one as well. While its present condition makes it to impossible to display open, the Bible is safely on display in the Yellow Parlor of Schuyler Mansion. We’re fortunate to have  research scans of the genealogy in particular, without which so much of the Schuylers’ history would be lost. 

The Schuyler Family Bible

The Schuyler Family Bible

Bibliography and Further Sources 

18th and 19th Century European and American Paper Binding Structures (culturalheritage.org)

De Hamel, Christopher. A History of Illuminated Manuscript (Phaidon, 1986)

History Between the Pages: The Family Bible in Genealogical Research (montgomeryhistory.org)

Israel, Jonathan (1995), The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806, Clarendon Press, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-873072-1.

Israel, Jonathan. "The Statenvertaling Bible." Calvin University. Last modified 1995. Accessed September 18, 2024. https://calvin.edu/centers-institutes/meeter-center/about-the-synod-of-dordt/the-statenvertaling-bible.

Rudy, Kathryn M. (2016), Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts, Open Book Publishers, doi:10.11647/OBP.0094

Simms, P. Marion, PhD. The Bible in America: Versions That Have Played Their Part in the Making of the Republic. New York: Wilson-Crickson, 1936. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015026292543