[PSALMS].

£7,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

Extremely rare books of Psalms in a stunning, and remarkable preserved contemporary polychrome strap-work binding ‘á la cire’, with the translation of the Psalms, made directly from the Hebrew into Latin by Santes Pagnini, printed opposite the French translation, also made directly into French from the Hebrew. The Dominican Sante Pagnini, a pupil of Savonarola, studied both Greek and Hebrew, and became one of the leading philologists and Biblicists of his day. His new Latin translation of the Bible was published in Lyon 1528. Pagnini was the first to divide the text into chapters and verses, and his division of the Hebrew Bible has become standard. His Latin translation of the Psalms was constantly reprinted, often with parallel texts in French or in Hebrew. His main work, the “Veteris et Novi Testamenti Nova Translatio”, was the first Latin translation of the Pentateuch using the original Hebrew since the late 4th-century scholar Jerome’s work. Pagnini prefaced it with his Latin translation of the book of Psalms. Notably, he also incorporated rabbinical commentaries into his version. His translation arrived as the both the Protestant Reformation and the advent of printing amplified the Catholic Church’s concerns with the translation of Scripture into vernacular languages other than Latin. The printer Balthazar Arnoullet had been arrested the previous year in 1553, along with Michael Servetus, for having printed clandestinely at Vienne, Servetus’ work, heretical to both Catho

• Binding: Hardcover

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