Cologne, 1527 : Quentel’s Protestant Bible in Latin

Biblia Sacra utriusque Testamenti, iuxta Hebraicam et Graecam ueritatem, uetustissimorumq[ue] ac emendatissimorum codicum fidem diligentissime recognita.

Coloniae: Petrus Quentel excudebat, 1527.

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About the item

First Protestant Bible printed in Latin. Title-page with large woodcut vignette of arms of Cologne, lion and gryphon rampant with and three crowns; numerous illustrations by Anton Woensam and ornamental initials throughout. Ff. [8], CCCXXV, [1], LXXXVII (i.e. 85), [5]. 1 vols. Folio. Cologne, 1527 : Quentel’s Protestant Bible in Latin. Recent half calf and marbled boards. Title page soiled, old remargining, tissue repairs on verso; some marginal worming and soiling, generally clean, with generous margins. Stamps of Cambridge Public Library in ink or in blind on four leaves. Adams 1007; not in Darlow & Moule but see note to 6107; VD16 B2589.OCLC: 22847218.

Item #318283

The first Protestant Bible in Latin, edited by Johan Rüdel (Rudelius), printed in Cologne by Peter Quentel (or Quentell), and notable for the wood engraved illustrations by Anton Woensam (Anton von Worms), particularly those at the head of each of the four gospels. Matthew faces an angle who is touching his stylus; a lion is seated beside Mark; a bull with Luke; and an eagle stands beside John.

Quentel was the printer of Tyndale’s quarto Cologne English New Testament, known from a single surviving fragment in the Grenville Collection, where this same illustration to Matthew appears. It is a reasonable inference that each of the four gospels would have carried an illustration. The project, which had “‘got as far as the letter K’, the signature that would have taken the work well into Mark” (ODNB) was unfinished at the time of Tyndale’s flight from Cologne in 1525. Quentel’s print shop was raided, but sheets of the first gospel translated from the original Greek and printed in English soon began to circulate in England. Tyndale settled in Worms, where Schöffer completed an octavo printing of the first complete English New Testament in 1526 (a facsimile of the Grenville fragment and its illustration were published in 1871).

The blocks for the illustrations evidently survived the raid on the Quentel’s shop, and are used here at the head of each of the four gospels.

A notable edition in the history of the printing of the Bible.