Skip to Main Content

Historic Bibles from the Middle Ages to the Reformation: The Bible in the Renaissance

An introduction to the holdings of L. Tom Perry Special Collections

Introduction

The fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were a time of great intellectual change throughout Europe – change which directly influenced the availability of scripture in the vernacular to the average reader. The advent of the printing press in the mid-fifteeenth century sped both the production of texts and the transmission of ideas. The Latin Bible was a popular item in the early years of printing. After the appearance of the Gutenberg Bible (printed in Mainz, Germany about 1455), over 90 other editions of the Vulgate, some with commentary, originated from presses across Europe. Jewish communities in Europe adopted the printing press to distribute the Hebrew Bible; the first complete edition of the Hebrew Bible was issued in Bologna in 1488.

In Italy, the movement known as Humanism renewed scholarly interest in antique Latin and Greek texts. Humanists, seeking out old manuscript exemplars of classical and early Christian writers, eventually began to examine and compare the earliest known manuscripts of the Bible in Latin and Greek. Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch humanist, undertook a comparison of the Bible in Greek and the Latin Vulgate around 1511. He simultaneously edited the Greek New Testament for publication and updated Jerome’s Latin translation based on the Greek text. Erasmus published his work, the first New Testament to be printed in the original Greek, in 1516. Other scholars produced their own editions of biblical texts throughout the sixteenth century, including multilingual editions called "polyglot Bibles."

Selected Special Collections Holdings

Early Printed Latin Bibles

Gutenberg Bible Leaf. From A noble fragment: Being a leaf of the Gutenberg Bible, 1450-1455: with a bibliographical essay (Gabriel Wells, 1921). Mainz: Johannes Gutenberg, 1450?

  • Call number: Vault Collection Folio 093 G982 1450 Gutenberg leaf

Biblia Latina. Strassburg: Heinrich Eggestein, 1468.

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto 093 Eg34 1468

Biblia Latina. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1480.

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto 093 K796 1480

Biblia Latina. Basel: Johann Froben, 1491.

  • Call number: Vault Collection 093 F92 1491

Biblia. Lyon: Antoine du Ry, 1528.

  • Call number: Vault Collection 220.425 P14 1528

Biblia. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1532.

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto 094.2 Es86d 1532 no.1

Biblia. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1540.

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto 094.2 Es86d 1540 no.1

Early Printed Greek Bibles

Novum Testamentum. [Erasmus, third edition]. Basel: Johann Froben, 1522

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto 094.2 F92 1522

Novum Testamentum. [Stephanus, first edition]. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1546

  • Call number: Vault Collection Agate 094.2 Es86d 1546 no.2

Novum Testamentum. [Stephanus, third edition]. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1550

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto 094.2 Es86d 1550 no.1

Novum Testamentum. [Beza, first edition]. Geneva: Henri Estienne, 1565

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto 094.2 Es86h 1565 no.3

Early Printed Hebrew Bibles

[Leaves from Job]. Thessalonike: Judah Gedaliah, 1517.

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto 223.1Ar11 1517

Torah, Nevi'im, Veketuvim. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1539-1547.

  • Call number: Vault Collection 094.2 Es86d 1542 no.13

Early Printed Polyglot Bibles & Facsimiles

Psalterium Hebraseum, Graecum, Arabicum, & Chaldaeum. Geneva: Nicolas Paulus & Petrus Porrus, 1516.

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto 223.2 B47 1516

Complutensian Polyglot [facsimile, original 1514-1517]. Valencia; Madrid: Fundación Biblia Española; Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1987.

  • Call number: Vault Collection Quarto BS 1 1514z
  • Original leaf at call number: Vault Collection Quarto BS 1 1514 leaf