GREATSITE.COM Presents
1536 Prologue to Romans, Item # TYN1536

[excerpted from:] The Newe Te-/ stament of oure Sa-/ ueour Jesus Christ translated by/ M. Wil. Tyndall, yet once agay/ ne corrected… [ Antwerp? 1536]

For all intents and purposes this is the earliest printing one could ever hope for of the cornerston e tract of all Reformation thought.

Comprising nineteen leaves, c.ii. through e.iiii. – Thirty-six pages of Tyndale’s Prologu e to Romans and the first seventeen verses of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Also includes last few verses of Acts.

Marginal pen trials on [c7]v and [c8]r. Else fine: crisp and clean, very comfortably margined.

The fragment is lovingly preserved in a clamshell-style conservation box with leather spine and gilt lettering.

“While in Worms [1525-1526], Tyndale gav e to Peter Schoeffer a small book to print, A Compendious Introduction, Prologue or Preface unto the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, of which one copy survives, in the Bodleian Library. This, based loosely on Luther’s Vorrhed e t o Romans in all his German New Testaments, was the second printed reformed tract circulating in England. It is Luther’s exposition of Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. It was expanded in Tyndale’s 1534 revision of his New Testament” (-- David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence, New Haven: Yale, [2003], p. 146).

Herbert 79, cf. Herbert 22, 23, 24 and 25. Darlow and Moule 79. STC 2856.

FRY, Francis. A Bibliographical Description of the Editions of the New Testament Tyndale’s Version in English… London: Henry Sotheran & Co., 1878. See Fry nos. 10-13 and the General Not e thereto, and Fry no. 23 (pp. 82-92 and pp. 124-128). See also Plates 21 and 46 for woodcut comparisons.

WILSON , Lea. Bibles Testaments Psalms and other Book of the Holy Scriptures in English. London: 1845. Privately printed. See pp. 145-151 and pp. 170-172 for three printings of 1536 and one dated 1549, but “I believ e the volum e to be much earlier than 1549 and printed at Antwerp.”