Facsimile of Duke of Alba's Bible. In British and Foreign Bible Society - The Alba Bible was created near the end of the manuscript era, in fifteenth century Spain. Following a five-hundred year bloom of Sephadic Jewish culture and scholarship in Spain, there had been a series of anti-Semitic riots in Madrid. The Catholic Grand Master of Calatrava, Don Luis de Guzman of Maqueda, commissioned a Hebrew interpretation of the Bible, in hopes that a beautifully illuminated manuscript Bible, translated into vernacular Castillian Spanish from the Hebrew, with rabbinical commentary, would promote tolerance and understanding between the religions. 固opFoto