A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. II.

by Aldus Manutius in 1504, and John vi. 1-14 at Tübingen in 1514, yet the first printed edition of the whole in N. T. the original is that contained in—

1. THE COMPLUTENSIAN POLYGLOTT(149) (6 vols., folio), the munificent design of Francis Ximenes de Cisneros [1437-1517], Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, and Regent of Castile (1506-1517). This truly eminent person, six years of whose humble youth were spent in a dungeon through the caprice of one of his predecessors in the Primacy of Spain, experienced what we have seen so conspicuously illustrated in other instances, that long imprisonment ripens the intellect which it fails to extinguish. Entering the Franciscan order in 1482, he carried the ascetic habit of his profession to the throne of Toledo and the palace of his sovereign. Becoming in 1492 Confessor to Queen Isabella the Catholic, and Primate three years later, he devoted to pure charity or to public purposes the enormous revenues of his see; founding the University at Alcalá de Henares in New Castile, where he had gone to school, and defraying the cost of an expedition which as Regent he led to Oran against the Moors. In 1502 he conceived the plan of the first Polyglott Bible, to celebrate the birth of him who afterwards became the Emperor Charles V, and gathered in his University of Alcalá (Complutum) as many manuscripts as he could procure, with men he deemed equal to the task, of whom James Lopez de Stunica (subsequently known for his controversy with Erasmus) was the principal: others being Æ. Antonio of Lebrixa, Demetrius Ducas of Crete, and Ferdinand of Valladolid (Pintianus). The whole outlay of Cardinal Ximenes on the Polyglott is stated to have exceeded 50,000 ducats or about £23,000, a vast sum in those days:—but his yearly income as Primate was four times as great. The first volume printed, Tom. v, contains the New Testament in two parallel columns, Greek and Latin, the latter being that modification of the Vulgate then current: the colophon on the last page of the Apocalypse states that it was completed January 10, 1514, the printer being Arnald William de Brocario. Tom. vi, comprising a Lexicon, indices, &c., bears date March 17, 1515; Tom. i-iv of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, 1517 (Tom. iv dated July 10), on November 8 of which year the Cardinal died, full of honours and good deeds. This event must have retarded the publication of the whole, since Pope Leo’s licence was not granted until March 22, 1520, and Erasmus did not see the book before
2. As not more than six hundred copies were printed, this Polyglott must from the first have been scarce and dear, and is not always met with in Public Libraries.