The Saint Petersburg Oliver Bible: Concerning the Ownership and Use of an Early Family Bible (1478) in Kent in 1479–1529.

The article focuses on a Latin Bible printed by Anton Koberger in Nürnberg in 1478, now held in the Rare Book Department of the Russian Academy of Science Library (Biblioteka Akademii Nauk, BAN). This particular copy, once owned by the Kentish gentry Oliver Lorncourt family from the late fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, contains extensive English marginalia documenting the genealogy and history of the Oliver-Olivier de Leuville clan, especially its lesser-known Kentish branch. The marginal notes, written primarily between 1479 and 1529 by two generations of Olivers, provide valuable biographical and social information about the family and their French relatives, who attained high nobility in France. Unlike other Koberger Bibles owned by clerics or academics, this Bible uniquely served as a family archive, reflecting the social status and transnational connections of the Olivers. The Bible entered the Russian collection in the early twentieth century after being acquired by the collector Nikolai Likhachev.