New Testament

Description: 

New Testament
Swiss (Basel), 1519

Printed by Johann Froben

Language: Greek and Latin

Bound with Erasmus, "Annotationes in Novum Testamentum (Commentary on the New Testament)." Pp 322.323: Text page and beginning of "Romans" with borders and decorated initials.

Prior Publication: Diebold, William. The Illustrated Book in the Age of Printing: Books and Manuscripts from Oregon Collections. Portland, OR: Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, 1993, cat. no. 34, p. 20

Multnomah County Library Catalog Info: W225.5 B582 - 31168045415682

 

Diebold, William. The Illustrated Book in the Age of Printing: Books and Manuscripts from Oregon Collections. Portland, OR: Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, 1993, p. 20 - Quoted with permission

This edition of the New Testament is one of the monuments of Humanist scholarship. Prepared for the publisher and printer Johann Froben (who also printed number 27, another Bible) [reference applies to exhibition from which this text was originally a catalog entry] by the great Dutch Humanist Desiderius Erasmus, this book contains the New Testament text in parallel columns, with the original Greek juxtaposed to Erasmus's Latin translation. To prepare the text, Erasmus collated several Greek manuscripts. Although his edition has not stood the test of time, Erasmus effort is significant as an attempt to apply critical standards of text editing, developed by Humanists in a secular context, to the most important sacred text in Europe.

The woodcut borders on this page [refers to page displayed in exhibit from which this text was a catalog entry] were designed by the Swiss artist Urs Graf and are an odd mixture of elements taken from ancient Roman art and contemporary northern and Italian sources. Particularly interesting (considering this is the chief Christian text) is the crouching hermaphrodite in the right margin. The obscuring of its genitalia is common in books from Basel, a result of the strength of a puritan strain of the Protestant Reformation there.