Lot 24
  • 24

New Testament in Greek

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • [Title in Greek] Nouum Iesu Christi D. N. Testamentum. Ex Bibliotheca Regia. Paris: Robert Estienne, 15 June 1550
  • ink, paper, leather
Median Folio, two volumes (324 × 213 mm) Collation: volume I: *-**8 (title, Estienne’s preface in Greek and Latin, prologue to Gospels by St John Chrysostom, Eusebian canon tables, etc); a-q8 r6 (Gospels, Acts): 150 leaves, foliated. Volume II: A-M8 N6 (title-page, prologue by St John Chrysostom, Pauline and Catholic Epistles, Apocalypse, errata, colophon, device): 102 leaves, foliated. Estienne’s name is written over or deleted everywhere it appears. A few late marginal notes. Eighteenth-century red morocco-grained sheep, gilt fillets, edges brown-stained; foot of spine of vol. II torn away, spotting and gouges on covers. 

Provenance

Francis Fry (pencil notes on flyleaf) — William P. Hatch, 1875-1972, New Testament scholar (his letter to a dealer, 26 November 1946, laid in)

Literature

Formatting the Word of God 5.6;Darlow & Moule 4622; Adams B1661; Mortimer French I no. 78

Condition

Median Folio, two volumes (324 × 213 mm) Collation: volume I: *-**8 (title, Estienne's preface in Greek and Latin, prologue to Gospels by St John Chrysostom, Eusebian canon tables, etc); a-q8 r6 (Gospels, Acts): 150 leaves, foliated. Volume II: A-M8 N6 (title-page, prologue by St John Chrysostom, Pauline and Catholic Epistles, Apocalypse, errata, colophon, device): 102 leaves, foliated. Estienne's name is written over or deleted everywhere it appears. A few late marginal notes. Eighteenth-century red morocco-grained sheep, gilt fillets, edges brown-stained; foot of spine of vol. II torn away, spotting and gouges on covers.
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Catalogue Note

Estienne’s third, but first folio edition, known as the Editio Regia, widely reprinted for centuries as the “textus receptus.” It was set with the third and largest-bodied of the Greek royal types cut by Claude Garamont after calligraphic models of Angelos Vergetios. It was the first to present a rudimentary textual apparatus of variant readings, placed in the inner margin with Greek-letter sigla for different sources, including fifteen manuscripts, though its text differs little from Erasmus’s. Shortly after its publication Robert Estienne moved his printing shop from Paris, where he was under deep suspicion of Protestant sympathy, to Geneva.