“WHAT MORE MERITORIOUS TASK COULD A PRINTER UNDERTAKE?”: 1572 SEPARATE EDITION OF THE INTERLINEAR HEBREW AND GREEK BIBLE FROM CHRISTOPHER PLANTIN’S FAMOUS POLYGLOT
BIBLE. Hebraicorum Bibliorum… Novum Testamentum Graece… Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1572. Folio (11 by 16-1/2 inches), contemporary full speckled calf, elaborately gilt-decorated spine, raised bands, brown morocco spine label.
Separate, self-contained edition of the seventh volume from famed printer Christopher Plantin’s landmark Polyglot Bible, containing the entire Bible (including the Apocrypha), an interlinear printing of the Hebrew and Greek original languages with the Latin Vulgate, in contemporary specked calf gilt.
“To print a Bible in its original languages, the text of which should be as correct as erudition could make it, explained and commented by the greatest theological minds, and printed with loving care upon the finest of paper—what more meritorious task could a printer undertake, and what task more likely, if carried to a successful conclusion, to make his name remembered? In the second half of the 16th century, when the Counter-Reformation was gathering momentum, the idea of such a Bible, printed with the approval of the authorities, to be placed in every center of Catholic faith, was in many minds. [Christopher] Plantin was not the first printer to think of it; but he was the only one of his contemporaries to bring the scheme to fruition” (Clair, 59). Plantin’s monumental “Antwerp Polyglot” appeared in “eight enormous folio volumes with letterpress in five different languages” (Clair, 70) between 1568-72 (the other volumes containing four translations, side-by-side, of the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha, as well as the Apparatus Sacer, a monumental compilation of biblical interpretation). This Hebrew and Greek Bible is the same edition as the seventh volume of that achievement. “An extra number of copies of this [seventh volume] must have been printed and sold separately… And, in fact, in a number of libraries, this Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament is found as a separate publication,” as offered here. “Most copies of this separate edition… are exactly alike volume 7 of the Polyglot Bible… but the other copy of the Bodleian (B 2.6 Th) presents an important variant: on the title page of the Hebrew Old Testament the reference ‘Ad regii sacri operis commoditatem apparatum’ (which makes of this publication a volume of the Polyglot Bible) has been dropped”—as also in this copy—“making of this particular edition a fully independent publication. The title page of the New Testament, which went with this ‘adapted’ Old Testament, has, however, kept the reference to the Apparatus” (Voet I:317). With ornamental woodcut initials. With Plantin’s woodcut printer’s marks on each title page. “In the preface of the famous Polyglot Bible… [Plantin] explains the meaning of the compass which always appears in his marks. The point of the compass turning around signifies work, while the stationary point means constancy” (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). The Old Testament, in accordance with Hebrew practice, begins at the rear of the volume; the New Testament at the front. Includes Apocrypha. Voet I:316-17. See Darlow & Moule 1422 (Vol. 7). Occasional old owner inscriptions and marginalia.
Text with occasional minor foxing, occasional light staining and paper repairs to upper margins of last few leaves. Expert restoration to contemporary calf bindings.