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R I C H A R D C. R A M E R
Special List 539
Five Recent Acquisitions
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R I C H A R D C . R A M E R
Old and Rare Books
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March 17, 2025
Special List 539
Five Recent Acquisitions
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Special List 539
Five Recent Acquisitions
Perhaps the Greatest, Most Monumental Example of Early Printing in Spain
The First Great Work of Co-operative Biblical Scholarship to be Printed
The First and Most Influential of All the Polyglot Bibles
Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex—Doheny copy
1. [BIBLE] Ximenez de Cisneros, Francisco]. Complutensian Polyglot
Bible, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. 6 volumes in 7. Alcalá de
Henares: Arnaldo Guillén de Brocar, 1514-1517. Folio (36.5 x 26.3 cm),
seventeenth century calf, raised bands to spine forming compartments,
two compartments with lettering pieces the rest heavily tooled, the sev-
enth volume slightly different but in the same style (boards reattached),
excellent condition, just slightly worn. Hebrew, Greek, and Roman
types, titles printed in red and black, with woodcut arms of Cardinal
Ximenes in woodcut border, woodcut initials in volume 5, printer’s
device. Scattered foxing, sometimes a bit heavy as usual, some quires
a little browned, contemporary marginal annotations to a few leaves,
overall a very tall and fresh copy in excellent condition. Volume I: 299
unnumbered ff. (first blank removed by the binder) including 2 leaves of
errata; volume II: 260 unnumbered ff. including 2 errata leaves; volume
III: 202 unnumbered ff.; volume IV: 268 unnumbered ff. (including the 2
errata leaves); volume V: 222 unnumbered ff. (the additional 49 leaves
were supplied at an early stage from a former copy from the British
Library and form volume VII of the set); volume VI: 222 unnumbered
ff. (without the 2 blanks: π1 after the title, and C4 of the Introductio
artis grammatice hebraice); volume VII: 49 unnumbered ff. (last blank
removed by the binder).
6 volumes in 7. $280,000.00
FIRST EDITION of the first and most influential of all the great Polyglot Bibles of
the Renaissance, the “first great work of co-operative biblical scholarship to be printed”
(Printing and the Mind of Man), including the first printings of the Septuagint and the Greek
New Testament -before that of Erasmus-, a monumental production, of extraordinary
importance for the understanding of the Bible.
“The Complutensian Polyglot was the first, and the most beautiful, of a series of
great polyglot Bibles produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” (PMM).
This is a fabulous copy, once owned by Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-
1843), son of King George III, and later by one of the great collectors of the twentieth
century of religious and early printing, Estelle Doheny.
“The first great work of co-operative biblical scholarship to be printed, it was
instigated by, and produced at the expense of, Cardinal Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros
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(1436-1517), famous both as a statesman and patron of learning and founder of the Uni-
versity of Alcalá. There, under the leadership of Diego Lopez de Zuniga (Stunica), a group
of scholars spent over fifteen years editing the texts, beginning in 1502 and completing
their task only a few months before the Cardinal’s death. Unlike Erasmus they made
use of a considerable number of manuscripts, some-now preserved at Madrid-having
been acquired by Ximenes, and others borrowed from various sources, including several
from the Vatican. The New Testament was finished by 10 January 1514, and was therefore
printed (although not published) before Erasmus’s first edition of 1516.” (PMM, 52).
The publication took almost a decade, as explained in PMM “The Appendix was
completed in 1515, and the four volumes of the Old Testament were printed last, the
final one in 1517. Publication was delayed, however, for over five years and the book
does not seem to have been on sale before 1522. The most probable reason for this delay
is the exclusive imperial privilege granted to Erasmus for four years in 1516. It meant
that the Complutensian text of the New Testament was not available to Luther when he
made his translation, so that most Protestant versions have been based on Erasmus’s less
scholarly text. Full use was made of it, however, in the 1550 edition of the Greek New
Testament published by Robert Estienne in Paris, which became known as the ‘textus
receptus’ and dominated New Testament criticism for three centuries.”
Cardinal Francisco Ximenes commissioned this monument to renaissance scholar-
ship in honor of the birth of the future Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, to reconcile the
many variations in the Latin Vulgate. The undertaking is one of the most industrious
attempts to reconcile the Latin Vulgate and compile a corpus by consulting the original
manuscript texts in Greek and Hebrew, which were borrowed from the Vatican or pur-
chased by Ximenes himself for the project, some of these manuscripts are identified today.
The printer Guillén de Brocar modeled his Greek typeface on one of these manu-
scripts, cited by Proctor as “the finest Greek fount ever cut.”
The Septuagint, comprising vols I-IV, was finished in 1517—a year before the Aldine
Greek Bible. The fifth volume, containing the New Testament, was actually the first to
be printed, thus predating Erasmus’s 1516 Greek New Testament. However, although
completed in 1517, the Complutensian Bible was not ofÏcially published until 1520, the
year in which the exclusive privilege for Erasmus’s inferior Greek New Testament expired.
The Papal privilege for the present edition was granted in March 1520 and specifies that
as many as 600 copies were printed. Its text was the basis for Robert Estienne’s 1550
Greek New Testament, known as the ‘textus receptus’, which became the primary text
of Biblical criticism for the next three centuries.
Jimenez was the main character of the ecclesiastic reform that began in Spain in the
middle of the 15th century leading to the creation of a religious- cultural-university policy
common to Spanish monarchy and church. Its ideology was based in a reformer program
and in a reconstruction process of the reign according to postulates of centralization and
unification of the political power, the creation of a new Hispanic Monarchy. Jimenez
conceived the creation of a citadel for Christianity, in which Renaissance humanism and
biblical theology would harmonize; visited by masters, students, monks and reformer
friars, writers and printers.
Catholic Monarchs and Jimenez were sure of the importance of education and
culture into the reformer project undertaken by the Church and the State. Thanks to the
collaboration between monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand, Jimenez, and the Pope Alexander
VI, the project of the creation of a new university in Spain arose, more concretely in the
reign of Toledo, meeting the necessities of the educational ideals of new times shared
by all of them. In order to place such center, Jimenez chose Alcalá, place upon which
Toledo’s Archbishop had jurisdiction.
Jimenez conceived the new institution of the university as an ideal instrument to
carry a reformer program, as a response to the needs of humanistic, intellectual and
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university renovation of the ecclesiastical pictures of that time and of Castilian society.
His idea was to create an institution elevating the spiritual level of society in general and
of clergy in particular, by means of a whole organism of teaching, from basics to deep
knowledge, mainly oriented to theology. The Complutense Polyglot Bible symbolizes
his extraordinary and universal project.
The Polyglot Bibles published in Europe between 1500 and 1700 offered some of the
best expressions of the objectives of late Renaissance humanism. Exquisitely printed, in
an increasing number of ancient and Eastern languages, edited by the greatest biblical
scholars of the day, they combined the ideals of the bibliophile with those of the philologist.
Distinguished provenance: Petri Ludovici Ruvialis (signatures on volumes I, II, III, IV
and VI); Andrea Solex (early inscription on title of volume V); British Museum (stamp at
end of volume VII); Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843), son of King George
III (book plate in each volume); Estelle Doheny (book plate in each volume), her sale
Christie’s 14 December 2001, lot 155.
❊ PMM, 52. Adams, B968. Darlow & Moule 1412 and 4593. Martin Abad, La imprenta
en Alcalá de Henares (1502-1600) 28. Norton, Printing in Spain, 1501-1520, pp. 33-48, 139-40;
A Descriptive Catalogue of Printing in Spain and Portugal, 1501-1520 27. Lyell, Early Book
Illustration in Spain, pp. 159-64; Cardinal Ximenes. Statesman, Ecclesiastic, Soldier and Man
of Letters, with an Account of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. David Stem, The Jewish Bible:
A material history, pp. 177-8.
Early Portuguese Anarchist Tract
2. ETIÉVANT, Jorge. A minha defeza (Declarações do autor, ácerca d’um
pretendido crime de que foi accusado, para serem lidas no tribunal). Lisbon:
Edição da Revolta, 1892. Bibliotheca Anarchista, I. 8°, original pink
printed wrappers. In fine condition. 31 pp.
$200.00
FIRST and ONLY EDITION. From the press of A Revolta: Revista Semanal do Socialismo
anarchico. The author had been accused of stealing dynamite.
❊ OCLC: 80884288: (International Institute of Social History). Not located in Porbase.
Not located in KVK (51 databases searched).
3. LEIKIN, Julia, and Elena Smilianskaia, eds. Russian Faith, Honour,
& Courage Displayed in a Faithfull Narrative of the Russian Expedition by
Sea in the Years 1769 & 1770 by Rear Admiral John Elphinstone Late Com-
mander in Chief of a Squadron of Her Imperial Majesty’s Ships & Captain in
His Majesty’s Royal Navy Compiled from Original Letters, Papers & Journals.
London: The Hakluyt Society, 2024. Hakluyt Society, Third Series, nº.
43. Large 8°, publisher’s navy cloth, gilt, with light blue dust jacket.
Frontispiece portrait of Elphinstone. 4 maps in text. As new. xiv, 327
pp., 12 color plates.
$100.00
FIRST and ONLY EDITION.
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