The Apostolic Fathers in Print: Ignatius of Antioch & Polycarp, Basel 1520

Ignatius of Antioch; Pseudo-Ignatius; Polycarp.
Gloriosi Christi Martyris Ignatii Antiocheni antistitis, Epistolae undecim.
Item una beati Polycarpi martyris epistola, cum argumento Iacobi Fabri
Stapulen[sis] in easdem.
Basel: Adam Petri, August 1520.
Quarto.

A handsome Basel edition of the epistles attributed to Saint Ignatius of Antioch, together with the Epistle of Polycarp, edited and introduced by the French humanist and biblical scholar Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples. The volume belongs to the early sixteenth-century revival of interest in the Apostolic Fathers and represents one of the earliest printed collections through which Western scholars gained access to the writings attributed to Ignatius and Polycarp.

As was customary before the textual criticism of the seventeenth century, the collection includes the expanded corpus of eleven Ignatian epistles, four of which are now regarded as later pseudepigraphic compositions. Printed at Basel by the noted humanist printer Adam Petri, the edition reflects the Renaissance effort to recover and disseminate the literature of the primitive Church, furnishing theologians of both the Catholic and emerging Protestant traditions with important patristic texts. For much of the sixteenth century it served as an influential witness to the so-called Longer Recension of the Ignatian corpus, before being superseded by later critical editions.

The title page is enclosed within an attractive woodcut border designed by Ambrosius Holbein, one of the most accomplished book artists active in Basel during the early decades of the sixteenth century.

The USTC records 26 extant copies held institutionally, including only one copy held in Poland (Ossolineum) and none in the United States.