Binding: Contemporary blind-tooled, alum-tawed pigskin over beech boards, elaborately worked using embossing rolls with religious vignettes and busts. Covers with etched metal corner bosses and remnants of leather and metal clasps.

Provenance: 17th-century spine label with initials “S.F.” and a tree design between them. Ownership signature of Gordon Duff; Yale University (bookplate) — deaccessioned.

•  Edition: Moreau, II, 930; Shaaber, British Authors Printed Abroad, P57; not in Darlow & Moule. Binding: Fogelmark, Flemish and Related Panel-Stamped Bindings, plate XXXII R.46 & pp. 48–49.  Volume rebacked and much of old spine reapplied; lacks title-leaf and last leaf torn across corner with loss replaced of old, colophon partly supplied in manuscript.  Highlights to initials as above; occasional early underlining or another mark and a later pencilled note on last leaf. Missing leaf and torn second one notwithstanding (though they do lower the price), this isa very nice copy in a notable early binding.

Melanchthon (1497–1560), the great Humanist and Luther's friend and supporter, wrote the preface to this edition. The three leaves bearing that essay are missing from this copy and this may be due to a Catholic or Inquisitorial censor removing them so that the text of the Bible proper could be used by Catholic readers. All of Melanchthon's writings, including introductions, were on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The text of the Bible proper, here, is complete.

The text of the O.T. "follows the Aldine Bible of 1518; with variant readings, and restoration of the usual order in Provers and Ecclesiasticus. The Apocrypha are grouped together as in No. 4602 [i.e., the Strassburg edition of 1524–26]. The N.T. text appears to agree with the quarto edition printed at Basel in 1545" (Darlow & Moule). The New Testament just referred to was the sole Greek-only Testament that Froben published and it follows the text of the fourth Greek N.T. of Erasmus, meaning that the N.T. here is also a close reprinting of the Erasmus fourth.

Provenance: Late-17th- / early-18th-century ownership signature of "Pet. Wedderburn; 18th-century bookplate of Lord Eliock; later pencilled signature of "[?].T. Coleridge" (not Samuel Taylor Coleridge; possibly, however, Justice John Coleridge). At back, "Ex dono D. Al: Brown, M.D." and another ownership inscription entirely in Greek.

Elias Hutter (1553–1609) was an orientalist and professor of Hebrew at Leipzig. The text here is drawn from his famous and sought after polyglot New Testament in 12 languages (Nuremberg, 1599), and so shares in the censure Hutter received for there translating and inserting "in some versions missing passages which he found in others" (Darlow and Moule)—but, he was open about that. The present work was apparently for devout students of Hebrew, both to further their knowledge of that language and to give them comparative texts for study and meditation on the week’s lessons. Polyglot lectionaries are not common, and this is the only polyglot lectionary of the epistles and gospels listed by NUC Pre-1956 before the 19th century.

•  Not in Darlow & Moule, but see 1430, 1431, 1432, 1433, and 1434 for Hutter’s polyglot New Testament in 12 languages, and his St. Matthew’s Gospel, St. Mark’s Gospel, polyglot Psalter, and polyglot New Testament in four languages. Sheep, spine simply gilt with a red leather title label; leather rubbed and abraded, front joint opening. Pages with some instances of light waterstaining or browning. All edges red.

The title-page bears Cramoisy's printer's device, inherited from his grandfather Sébastien Nivelle: two storks with the motto “Honora patrem tuum et matrem tuam ut sis longaevus super terram.” The work is also decorated with four very large, foliated Hebrew initials

Provenance: First dedication page with inked inscription of Dr. Henry Power (ca. 1626–68), a physician and natural philosopher who became one of the first elected fellows of the Royal Society. The title-page bears an inked inscription reading “S. Pepys” (lined through), but a tipped-in manuscript letter signed by Derek Pepys Whiteley, curator of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, notes that the handwriting is “quite unlike examples of [the diarist's] signature.”

•  Steinschneider, Catalogus hebraeorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana, 459b. Not in Darlow & Moule. On Power, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Later calf, spine with gilt-stamped leather label and gilt-ruled raised bands, board edges with gilt roll, rebacked preserving original spine; corners and joints refurbished, edges rubbed. Hinges (inside) unobtrusively reinforced. Back pastedown with institutional bookplate almost entirely obscuring early inked inscription. Title-page with early inscriptions at head and foot mostly trimmed away, also with inscription as above; dedication page with inscription as above. Pages age-toned; first few leaves with staining and minor chipping in lower portions. A very few early pencilled and inked marginalia in both Latin and Hebrew; one instance of inked underlining.  (25937)

This is the first stand-alone printing of the Psalms in Hebrew in England, published around the same time as the London (i.e., “Walton”) Polyglot.

•  ESTC R210526; Wing (rev.) B2742C; Cowley, Hebrew Printed Books in the Bodleian Library, 92. Not in Darlow & Moule, not in Herbert, not in Rumball-Petre. On Robertson, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Recent quarter calf and mottled paper–covered sides; spine with gilt-stamped and gilt-ruled title, gilt-dotted raised bands, and blind-tooled compartment decorations; leather edges tooled in blind. Title-page with edges chipped, touching lower outer portion of publication information; first and last few leaves also with edges chipped, and slight darkening.  (25358)

Incontestably, the culmination of his studies was this volume, still a standard in the field. Having his own printing press, and cutting the Syriac types himself, certainly ensured his total control over the production.

•  Darlow & Moule 8966.   Contemporary plain vellum over paste boards. Ex-libarary with call number on spine, one small numerical stamp in a lower margin, acquisition information in a gutter margin, and a (touching!) typed note about the purchase of the volume tipped-in among the preliminary leaves. Without the added engraved title-page. Old private bookplates and ownership inscriptions of the 18th and 19th centuries; rubber-stamp on the lower edge of the closed volume. A very good copy.  (23163)