The Only Known Vellum Copy in Private Hands
Biblia polyglotta. ΤΗΣ ΚΑΙΝΗΣ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗΣ ΑΠΑΝΤΑ. Novum Iesu Christi D. N. Testamentum. Sacrorum bibliorum tomus quintus. 2 parts in 2 volumes. Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1571.
The vellum New Testament from Plantin’s great Polyglot Bible, printed in Antwerp under the patronage of King Philip II of Spain: the most ambitious and technically complex printing enterprise of the sixteenth century and widely regarded as the greatest printed work ever produced in the Netherlands.
Only thirteen vellum sets were originally ordered by the Spanish court, and probably no more than eleven were ever completed. Today only four vellum examples can be located in public institutions. The present New Testament in two volumes, formerly in the collections of A. Chardin, the Earl of Ashburnham, and Charles Fairfax Murray, is the only known vellum example remaining in private hands.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Two monumental folio volumes (approximately 410–420 × 290 mm), printed entirely on vellum.
Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece depicting the Baptism of Christ after Wierix, Plantin’s woodcut printer’s device at the conclusion, numerous historiated woodcut initials, and decorative woodcut borders throughout.
Bound in superb English dark blue morocco bindings executed around 1825 by Charles Hering over wooden boards, richly gilt with broad inner dentelles, vellum doublures, double vellum flyleaves, and gilt edges.
The Great Polyglot Bible of Antwerp
Plantin’s Polyglot Bible, often called the Biblia Regia, was conceived as a monumental Catholic scholarly response to the confessional upheavals of the Reformation.
As Protestant vernacular Bibles spread rapidly across northern Europe, Plantin recognized both the intellectual and political importance of producing a new authoritative polyglot edition of Scripture based directly on the original languages. The project expanded upon the earlier Complutensian Polyglot printed at Alcalá half a century earlier, already one of the rarest and most celebrated printed Bibles of Europe.
To secure the undertaking, Plantin obtained the patronage of Philip II of Spain through Cardinal Granvelle and the royal secretary Gabriel de Çayas. Philip entrusted the scholarly supervision of the edition to the humanist Benito Arias Montano, assisted by theologians and correctors from the University of Leuven.
The resulting work became not merely a Bible, but a monumental apparatus of biblical scholarship including Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, and Latin texts, grammars, dictionaries, interlinear glosses, and extensive philological commentary.
A Monument of Printing History
The technical demands of the Polyglot Bible were unprecedented.
New Greek and Syriac types had to be specially cut by Robert Granjon in Lyon. The printing itself began in August 1568 and was completed in May 1572, ultimately comprising eight enormous folio volumes and representing the largest and most complicated printing enterprise of the sixteenth century.
Plantin issued the Polyglot in several tiers. Most copies were printed on paper, whether royal paper from Troyes and Lyon or imperial paper from Germany and Italy. Only thirteen vellum sets were intended for the Spanish crown itself. These copies were never offered commercially. Even rulers and collectors such as Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria and William of Orange were unable to obtain one and instead received luxury paper copies.
Philip II, Orthodoxy, and Survival
The Polyglot emerged during one of the most volatile religious moments in European history.
Plantin himself had already been accused of heretical printing in 1562 and temporarily fled Antwerp for Paris while his possessions were dispersed to avoid confiscation. Although publicly affirming Catholic orthodoxy, he maintained intellectual relationships with Calvinists and other heterodox circles.
The Polyglot therefore served multiple purposes simultaneously: a scholarly monument, a declaration of Catholic intellectual authority, a political alliance with Philip II, and a personal strategy of protection and survival. As Leon Voet observed, ambition and self-preservation effectively joined hands in the project.
Even after completion, controversy continued. Pope Pius V initially refused papal approval, shocked that such a monumental biblical enterprise had been undertaken independently of Rome. Only Pope Gregory XIII finally granted approbation in September 1572.
The Escorial Vellum Copy
The present New Testament almost certainly originated from one of the vellum copies sent directly to Philip II for the Escorial.
Contemporary manuscript numbering still survives on both title pages, indicating their place within the original Polyglot set. The parent copy had apparently always been incomplete: already in the eighteenth century Van Praet described an incomplete vellum Polyglot lacking the first volume and partially supplemented with paper volumes. At some later stage, the New Testament — the only internally complete section — was separated and rebound independently.
Its later history passed through some of the great bibliophilic collections of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Jean Gottfried Würtz, the Earls of Ashburnham, and Charles Fairfax Murray.
Thomas Frognall Dibdin, writing in 1817, described the vellum Polyglot in terms approaching reverence: “white, clean, ample: not to be surpassed.” He then admitted that “language can scarcely do justice to its extraordinary beauty and perfection of condition.”
The present copy, preserved at approximately 420 mm in height and in extraordinary condition, fully justifies that assessment.
Provenance
Spanish royal vellum issue, almost certainly originating from the Escorial copies prepared for Philip II. Later A. Chardin, Paris sale 1811. Johann Gottfried Würtz. Bertram, 4th Earl of Ashburnham, and his son. Charles Fairfax Murray.
Literature
BM STC Dutch 22; Brunet I, 851; Clair, Christopher Plantin; Cockx-Indestege et al. 436; Darlow/Moule 1422; Dibdin; Ebert 2103; Rahir 320; Van Praet I, no. 1; Voet, The Plantin Press no. 644. Not in Adams.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 30:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
