Latin Vulgate 1528

Biblia

Paris: Robert Estienne, 1528. In-folio

Adams B1009. Darlow & Moule  6109

STROZIER, Special Collections Vault (oversize) -- BS751528

Pages displayed: f. 174v.-175.  Book of Psalms.

First edition of the Latin Vulgate of Saint Jerome by the humanist printer Robert Estienne (1503-1559), who had taken over the shop of his father, Henri Estienne (d. 1520) in 1526 and became king’s printer in 1535. Following the philological work of the evangelical Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (1455-1536), which his father had published, Estienne collated for this edition medieval manuscripts from Parisian monastic libraries, Saint-Denis and Saint-Germain-des-Pres in particular. Paradoxically, as Estienne fled Paris for Geneva in 1550, declaring himself a Calvinist, his text, revised in 1532, 1534, 1540 and 1546, was used for the Roman Catholic edition of the Vulgate published under the aegis of Pope Clement VIII (1536-1606) in 1592.

Estienne only used Roman type in his Biblical publications in Latin or French, a clear break with the black-letter tradition and still a novelty in 1528 as the first-known Parisian example is the in-16 edition of Simon de Colines (1480-1546), who trained Estienne as a printer, in 1522.