Bible. New Testament. Syriac.

4to (202 x 145mm.), ff. [26], 127 only (containing the prefatory matter and all but the last two leaves of the Four Gospels), title printed in red and black with large Syriac characters in woodcut, prefatory material in Latin, text in Syriac, a few full-page woodcuts, with misprint "Quemdmodum" on a*****2r, later paper wrappers, lacking all after f. 127 (i.e. the rest of the NT), title-leaf detached, wrappers worn

Georgius de Revelles, inscription on title-page stating that the volume was bought in Famagusta, Cyprus, on 18 October 1556, for one Venetian scudo, from Moses of Mardin of Mesopotamia (incorrectly described as a Catholic bishop), while en route to Syria by night on a ship bound for Tripoli in the Lebanon. De Revelles is also recorded in Moldavia in 1559 writing letters on behalf of Prince Lapusneau.

Darlow & Moule 8947; Robert Wilkinson, Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation: the first printing of the Syriac New Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2007)

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The first book printed in Syriac, and the editio princeps of the Gospels in Syriac. It was the result of a combined effort by the German humanist Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter, Guillaume Postel and the Syrian priest and scribe Moses of Mardin, on whose handwriting the Syriac type was based. Moses had been sent to Rome by the Patriarch of Antioch to obtain printed bibles in Syriac to overcome the paucity of manuscript copies available to the Eastern Churches. While in Rome he made important contacts with other scholars such as Andreas Masius and Postel and important cardinals such as Marcello Cervini and Reginald Pole; however, in 1553 the climate in Rome turned against Catholic Orientalism (as championed by Cervini and Pole) and there was talk of Moses needing to be reconsecrated as a Catholic priest. Moses left Rome soon after in the company of Pole, meeting Widmanstetter in Dillingen on his way north, and travelling with him to Vienna, where Widmanstetter was in the service of Ferdinand I.

This copy was purchased directly from Moses of Mardin in Cyprus, the year after publication. The whole edition comprised 1,000 copies, of which 500 were for distribution in Europe and 500 were entrusted to Moses, with 300 intended for the Patriarch of Antioch. Wilkinson (p. 187) has not been able to trace what happened to Moses's copies, but this copy indicates that he was selling them on his way back to Syria in 1556, perhaps to pay for his journey.