This influential edition of the Bible contains the textual recension of Santes Pagnino, the Dominican friar and Hebraist who was “the first to divide the biblical text into numbered verses” (Museum of the Bible).
His version had an important influence on later vernacular translations of the Bible, including the early English versions, but especially the 1563 Biblia Brzeska and the earliest Polish Bibles, which Rajmund Pietkiewicz’s research suggests repeatedly follow Pagnino’s recension. This version is therefore one of the principal intermediary texts behind the first Protestant Bible in Polish.
Modern scholarship on Jan Kochanowski has also identified the dependence of the Psałterz Dawidów on Pagnino. The present book can therefore also be considered a textual precursor to one of the greatest works of Renaissance Polish literature. The textual dependence continued through to the 1632 Biblia Gdańska and beyond.
This copy bears several early manuscript annotations of a Protestant nature, including references to sola Scriptura, making it an early witness to the Protestant Reformation.
Bound in near-contemporary vellum, preserving substantial fragments of a late medieval manuscript on vellum reused as binder's waste, it is a handsome copy of this scarce edition, which is represented by only a single copy in Poland (Biblioteka Ossolineum) via the USTC.
Near contemporary vellum, rubbed with some ink stains, and minor loss of vellum to the bottom corner of the rear board. Binding secure. Pastedowns lifted, presumably to inspect the vellum binder’s waste, appearing to be from a legal document.
Some ownership inscriptions. Page block evenly trimmed, just catching the edges of marginalia in places, otherwise largely preserving margins, not catching headlines, signatures, or other printed text. Some damp staining in places to edges of leaves, mostly to AA1-C1, K2-Hh5, and ff2-ff6, not affecting legibility. Wanting Nn2-5 (Ps. LXVI-LXXXVI), x2, and x5 (supplementary text on translation).
[USTC 616563; VD16 B 2616; NUKAT xx004241508; Rajmund Pietkiewicz, “Hebraica veritas in the Brest Bible,” Reformation & Renaissance Review 17, no. 1 (2015), pp. 44–62.]
