HKB
all that was possible before the invention of printing; and, indeed, by an unfortunate chance, the worst of the three correctoria, the “Parisiense,” was made use of by Robert Stephen.
Among the earliest productions of the press, Latin Bibles took a prominent position; and during the first half-century of printing at least 124 editions were published(77). Of these perhaps the finest is the earliest, the famous “forty-two line” Bible, issued at Mentz between 1452 and 1456, in two volumes, and usually ascribed to Gutenberg(78). This is usually called the “Mazarin Bible,” from the copy which first attracted the notice of bibliographers having been discovered in the Library of Cardinal Mazarin; in the New Testament, the order of books is Evv., Paul., Act., Cath., Apoc. Mr. Copinger enumerates twenty-five copies on vellum and paper as still known to exist; there are two in the British Museum. The first Bible published at Rome is dated 1471, and was printed by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, two vols., folio; the first octavo edition, or “poor man’s Bible,” was printed at Basle in 1491 by Froben. The early editions, however, reproduced the current mediaeval type of text, or copied from each other, the only exceptions being those printed by Froben, whose copies, says Mr. Copinger, were sought after, for their accuracy, by the best scholars in Europe, and whose edition of 1502 with the “glossa ordinaria” sometimes stands quite alone in possessing the true reading. The first, edition with a collection of various readings appears to be one published at Paris in 1504(79), followed by others at Venice and Lyons in 1511, 1513; and a definite revision of the text was attempted by Cardinal Ximenes, in the famous Complutensian Polyglott (1514, &c.; see Chap. V)(80), in which he made use of the Bible of Alcalá (see below, no. 42); but though an advance was made on previous editions, the text was still far from pure. Erasmus, in his famous edition of the Greek Testament, appended a Latin translation; this he made himself directly from the Greek, but in his notes he discusses the current Vulgate text and gives readings from MSS. which he had examined; of these he mentions those at the Royal Library at Mechlin, St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, Corsendonk Austin Priory, Constance Cathedral, St. Donatian (Abbaye des Dunes) of Bruges; of these the first and third only can be now identified, see below, pp. 84, 81, nos.(81) 134, 109. The first edition of a really critical nature was that of Robert Stephen, in 1528; for this he used three good MSS., the Exemplar S. Germani parvum (Par. lat. 11937), the Corbey Bible (Par. lat. 11532-3), and the Bible of St. Denis (Par. lat. 2); see below, nos. 22, 20, 10; and he published a more important edition in 1538-40 (reprinted 1546), in which he made use of seventeen MSS., of which the following(82), numbered 19, 21, 22, 100 below, have been identified. This edition is practically the foundation of the Modern Vulgate, and is cited by Wordsworth as ϛ. Later, John Hentenius, in his folio edition of the Bible, (Louvain, 1547, and often reprinted); cited by Wordsworth as [Gothic: H] seems to have used about thirty-one MSS. and two printed copies; but as no various readings are cited from individual MSS., they cannot well be identified; see his preface. Lucas Brugensis (see his catalogue at the end of the Hentenian Bible of 1583, p. 6) also gives a long list of MSS., which seem impossible to be identified(83), and we must also bear in mind the corrected editions published by Th. Vivian (Paris), and Junta (Venice), 1534 (both are small copies of the New Testament, corrected occasionally from the Greek), Isidore Clarius (Venice, 1542), J. Benedictus (Paris, 1558), Paul Eber (1565), and Luke Osiander (1578).