1522 Complutensian Polyglot Bible
Facsimile Reproduction

The six-volume Complutensian Polyglot Bible was printed between 1514 and 1522 but not bound and published until 1522. It is one of the three most important books ever printed in human history. Its 1514 printing of the New Testament in the original Greek predates the Erasmus 1516 edition by two years, making it the very first printing of a Greek New Testament, as well as the first printing of a complete Bible in the original languages. Most importantly, it gave the Protestant Reformers an accurate source text from which to translate and to make God’s Word available in many European languages throughout the 1500s.

NOTE: This 1522 Complutensian Polyglot 6 Volume facsimile set is no longer available, however… full color high resolution digital editions of many ancient Bibles of the 1300’s through the 1800’s are available for free online access at BIBLES-ONLINE.NET 

A Brief History of the Complutensian Polyglot (C-P)

Printed in 1514 to 1517 and published in 1522, The C-P was the first of the three great polyglots. Later in the 16c, 1568-72, the Antwerp Polyglot would be printed, and in 1653-57 Brian Walton would print his Magnus opus in seven giant volumes, the Walton Polyglot.

The oversight behind the C-P project was granted to Cardinal Jimenez. To accomplish the project’s magnitude, one would compare the insurmountable difficulties of such an undertaking to the construction in the 20th century of the Panama Canal.

The project would require a series of undesigned coincidences to overcome the mental and religious prejudices we associate with the Middle Ages. Technology and science would be in their infancy. Galileo and Copernicus would make discoveries, and men like DaVinci would challenge man’s minds with fantastical concepts that brought great accomplishments.

Concurrent with an emerging brave new world that was in process, men were casting off the yoke of bondage that was stifling the very spirit of mankind. The God of creation was going to be made known to the European minds by virtue of His Word going free in the uncorrupted language of the Bible.

It was in Alcala, Spain, that Cardinal Jimenez undertook to challenge the corrupted text of the Latin Vulgate by assembling extremely learned men of trilingual learning in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. These peculiar men who were proficient in the languages of the ancient Scriptures were Jewish by birth but converted to Christianity when their race was expelled from Spain in 1492 during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. They were called “conversos.”

While Columbus was discovering America, the Jews of Spain sought asylum in Italy and Greece from the Spanish Inquisition. During the expulsion, many learned Spanish Jews converted to Christianity, which gave them license to remain in Spain. They were skilled in Hebrew, Aramaic, and other middle eastern languages, which permitted Cardinal Jimenez to have a reservoir of learning at his disposal that would be essential to the C-P.

The C-P Bible would be produced in an environment made possible by extremely high academic standards and freedom of thought that Alcala, with its 7000 students, would afford. Cardinal Jimenez was an integral and essential person to the atmosphere created by such academic freedom. The ingredients for such a recipe to complete such an ambitious project were great financial resources, brilliant Greek and Hebrew scholars who were uncorrupted by High Church influence and wholly committed and devoted to God.

Cardinal Jimenez was that person chosen by God to lead, assemble, encourage and energize his team of devoted men who would by the end product, a six-volume work, that would become the foundation for the Renaissance throughout Europe and England. The minds of men were being set free from man’s bondage to serve Jesus Christ through His faith.

The resistance to correcting the Vulgate was overwhelming. Ignorant men refused to even think of the Vulgate as a corrupted text. Their resistance to correction was the impetus to create an Inquisition that rained terror on anyone who challenged the “sacred Vulgate”; nevertheless, Jimenez stood with great faith against the ignorant and corrupt.

Opponents of the C-P were unrelenting in their desires to defeat the project. Their religious fervor determined to crush Jimenez’s efforts. Despite the enormous quantity of errors, the Vulgate was defended by its ignorant adherents with unrelenting passion. In a desperate attempt to end the project, the Inquisition was called to stop the printing. Using intimidation and threatening the editors’ lives, Jimenez protected his committed scholars. The Inquisition threat was forever neutralized in 1507 when Jimenez became the Inquisitor General. God works in mysterious ways!

The “conversos” (converted Jews) labored tirelessly to bring the project to completion. The “conversos” of Alcala contributed to the establishment of the text of the Hebrew Old Testament since the Polyglot of Antwerp followed mainly their version, and since that of London, in turn, followed mainly the Antwerp Polyglot.

The C-P Polyglot resulted in the first Greek translation of the Old Testament in print that we commonly refer to as the Septuagint.

Tomes I-IV contains the Old Testament and Hebrew text in the outer columns. The Greek of the Septuagint in the inner column and the Latin Vulgate in the center. There are no verse divisions. There are chapter divisions with subdivisions marked by capitals A, B, C, and D.

Tome V contains the New Testament in Greek and Latin in two columns. The Acts of the Apostles are positioned after the Epistle to the Hebrews following the Pauline Epistles.

Tome VI contains aids for students of the Hebrew and Greek texts; furthermore, the editors provided a dictionary of Hebrew and Aramaic words with Latin equivalents. Of essential assistance to the students, who were only learned in Latin, were explanations of the meaning of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek names in the Bible.

In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Turks. In 1455 John Gutenberg invented the printing press with a moveable type. The first book printed was the Vulgate Bible, with all of its errors and corruptions of New Testament doctrine. As the Greek-speaking immigrants fled into Europe in the wake of the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the proliferation of 1200 years of Greek studies and history with God’s Word at its heart was poised to destroy the Latin-speaking world’s monopoly on education.

The Renaissance was being birthed by this series of undesigned coincidences. The stranglehold on religion and knowledge by power brokers in the Catholic Church was going to be broken. But, what price is freedom?

Six hundred copies were authorized by Pope Leo X. A large number (450) of that quantity were destroyed when the ship transporting them to Italy sank to the bottom of the sea. Perhaps, 150 sets survive in complete sets of fragments. In U. S. dollars, the cost of the project was more than $12,000,000!

Some important and interesting facts about the Complutensian Polyglot:

1. The Polyglot marks a significant period in the history of the Church as well as new developments in the European mind that helped the Reformation era immensely.
2. Converted Jewish scholars made the task an intellectual masterpiece.
3. The Polyglot was historically important because it exposed the Vulgate errors, which were regarded as the fundamental text of the Bible.
4. The “academics” of that day were challenged without exception because of the Polyglot – including Erasmus.
5. Volume 6 contains several aids for students of Hebrew and Greek texts. The largest contribution is a dictionary of Hebrew and Aramaic words with Latin equivalents, described by the editors as “most useful and correct.”
6. The Polyglot set a bold standard in that there were very few printing errors.
7. The original Prologue in Volume One offers this explanation: “We are impelled by many reasons to print the original text of Holy Scripture, since no version can translate all the force and naturalness of the original faithfully, especially when it treats the language in which God Himself has spoken, which words were, to speak thus taken from the senses and fountains of mysteries which only can be glimpsed of known from the original in which the Holy Scriptures were written.”

NOTE: This 1522 Complutensian Polyglot 6 Volume facsimile set is no longer available, however… full color high resolution digital editions of many ancient Bibles of the 1300’s through the 1800’s are available for free online access at BIBLES-ONLINE.NET 

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The First Edition of the Matthew-Tyndale Bible, 1537

[Bible in English.] [The Byble,/ which is all the holy Scrip-/ ture: In whych are contayned the/ Olde and Newe Testament truly and purely translated into Englysh by Thomas Matthew.][Printed for R. Grafton and R. Whitchurch of London: Antwerp?, 1537.][per Herbert]

The first edition, the first printing of the Bible called the “Matthew’s Bible” – that is, the William Tyndale Bible (as much as he had completed) seen through the press by John Rogers. “Thomas Matthew” is a pseudonym, not of John Rogers, but of William Tyndale (or perhaps a purely fictional misdirection, since Tyndale’s name, was still outlawed). (For his work on this Bible, John Rogers became the first martyr of the Marian persecutions, being executed in 1555.)

[Per Herbert:] Place of printing is unknown, but evidence points to Antwerp, perhaps the press of Matthew Crom. The Kinges most gracyous lyce[n]ce was obtained by Cromwell at Cranmer’s request despite the translation being predominantly Tyndale’s.

A scan of the professional third-party collation and descriptive write-up is available immediately via email upon request.

Overall, a nice copy, mostly clean and respectably tall.

Modern full calf to style by Starr Bookworks of Arizona.

Herbert asserts that this edition “is generally considered to be the real primary version of our English Bible” (p. 18).

Herbert 34. DM 17. STC 2066.

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The First Edition of the “Great” Bible 1539

[Bible in English.] The Byble in/ Englyshe, that is to saye the con-/ tent of all the holy scrypture, bothe/ of ye olde and newe testament, truly/ translated after the veryte of the/ Hebrue and Greke textes, by ye dy-/ lygent studye of dyuerse excellent/ learned men, expert in the forsayde/ tonges./ Prynted by Richard Grafton &/ Edward Whitchurch./ Cum priuilegio ad imprimen-/ dum solum./ 1539.

The first edition, first printing of the Miles Coverdale “Great” Bible, “the hole byble of the largest volume,” which Thomas Cromwell, as the King’s vice-regent (King Henry VIII), in an injunction to the clergy (September 1538), ordered to be set up in sum conuenient place wythin the said church that ye haue cure of, where as your parishioners may moste comodiously resorte to the same and reade it.

Collates exceptionally complete: quire * (of preliminaries) compromised with substantial chipping and repair – general title-page supplied, sized – lacks *2, first leaf of the Kalendar. [Q4], blank, excised as expected. Lacks only [Aai] (NT title-page) and [Nn8] final leaf (Table and Colophon). GGv mis-signed BBv. Mm iiii mis-signed M iiii. Woodcuts as called for.

Overall an exceptionally tall and crisp clean copy, with far less damp and other staining and repair than expected or usually encountered.

The single most important Bible of the established Church of England (the official Anglican Church) until the 1611 King James Bible. (The Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer still carries forward the Coverdale Psalter of the “Great” Bible. This Bible is a revision by Miles Coverdale of the 1537 “Matthew’s” Bible (of John Rogers) which Coverdale “corrected” chiefly by the aid of Sebastian Munster’s new critical Latin from the Hebrew OT (1534/5) and employing the Erasmus new Latin NT with a glance to the Complutensian Polyglot (see Herbert, p. 25). Coverdale worked under the direct patronage of Thomas Cromwell, so this edition is sometimes nicknamed the “Cromwell Bible” – and from the Second Edition forward the “Great” Bible contained a prologue by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, and is therefore sometimes nicknamed the “Cranmer Bible” (or version).

Ex-libris Zion Research Library, the A. Marguerite Smith Collection of Bibles and Related Books. Ex-Quaritch with their collation notes (matching mine) penciled on rear pastedown. (Quaritch describes this copy as better than the Rylands copy, “one of the finest in existence.”)

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The Second Quarto Edition of Coverdale’s Diglot New Testament

[Bible in English.] The newe tes-/ tament both in Latine and/ Englyshe eche correspondente to/ the other after the vulgate text, com-/ munely called S. Jeromes… Prynted in Southwarke by James Nicolson. Set forth wyth the Kynges moost gracious lycence. [1538]

The second quarto edition of Coverdale’s diglot New Testament, a corrected edition of Nicolson’s faulty first edition (Herbert 37) which was repudiated by Coverdale. Here, the corrected text point shows at Matthew 26 C, “crowe” now for “synge.”

Collates as Herbert 37. Title-page here in old facsimile. Has 2 (of 6) preliminary leaves. A-Z8, Aa-Vv8. Revelation ends at Vv6 verso. Internally wants leaves [Bb8] and Cc[i], containing end of Acts 23 (modern verses 20-31) – that is, the text wants only eleven verses of text. Two final leaves of “Table” heavily repaired. Some tears/chips (some repaired); some damp and other staining. Some ink notes, e.g. II Corinthians [Gg6] verso.

Overall a near fine example of an exceptionally rare book.

nb: Title-page states Jeremiah quote as “xxxi” and Herbert states “xxii” while actually, the quote is from Jeremiah 23. Also, title page of this edition replaces attribution to Coverdale with attribution to one Johan Hollybushe, though work is still Coverdale’s.

Herbert 38 (cf. Herbert 37). DM 20 (cf 19). STC 2818 (cf 2816). Mozley, Coverdale and his Bibles, p. 188.

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