[Title in Syriac] Liber
sacrosancti evangelii de Iesu Christo ... In urbe Viennae ... hoc opus anno
a Christi nativitate MDLV [1555] XXVII Septembris Regiis impensis. Caspar
Craphtus Elvangensis suevus characteres Syros ex norici ferri acie sculpebat.
Michael Cymbermannus prelo et operis suis excudebat. [I.488] (Darlow &
Moule 8947)
The first book printed in Syriac
and the editio princeps of the New
Testament in this language, printed in Vienna in 1555. It was edited by Johann
Albrecht Widmanstadt (1506-1559) with the aid of Moses of Mardin, a scribe in
the service of the Patriarch of Antioch, and dedicated to Ferdinand, King of
Hungary and Bohemia, Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy, at whose expense
the work was published. Although ostensibly for Syriac-speaking Christians who
were in need of a New Testament in their language, it was created partly as a
missionary tool to convert Jews and Muslims in the East. It was also the
product of a sixteenth-century humanistic interest in the Orient in response
to the rising threat of the Ottoman Empire and the desire to go back to the roots
of the Bible. According to Widmanstadt
in his dedication to Ferdinand, who succeeded Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor
in 1558, more scholars were able to read Hebrew and Chaldean than ever before,
which went a long way to undo the linguistic dispersal after the Babel episode.
This edition had a print-run of 1000 copies of which 300 were given to Moses to
take to the Patriarch of Antioch. A second edition was produced by Michael
Zimmermann (Cymbermannus) in 1562, after obtaining imperial licence to use the
Syriac type.[1]
It is mentioned in the 1611 English King James version as being in ‘most
learned men’s libraries’ in the translators’ note to the reader.
This
copy was given to the Baptist Union by J.B. Sherring, who possibly inherited it
from R.B. Sherring. It carries a Baptist Union Library bookplate, covering an
older plate, and a note that Dr. Whitley gave the volume to Henry Wheeler
Robinson. When Wheeler Robinson’s library was transferred to Regent’s Park
College in 1945, it came to the Angus Library. It has a distinguished
provenance in that it appears to have come from the library of the Duke of
Sussex, i.e. Prince Augustus Frederick (1773-1843), sixth son of King George
III and Queen Charlotte. According to the ODNB:
He supported the progressive political policies of his time, including
the abolition of the slave trade, Catholic emancipation, the removal of the
civil disabilities of Jews and dissenters, the abolition of the corn laws, and
parliamentary reform.
Augustus Frederick was a great
patron of the arts and sciences. He was elected president of the Society of
Arts in 1816, and between 1830 and 1838 served as president of the Royal
Society. He resigned from this post to concentrate his expenses on his not
insignificant library, which contained c. 50,000 volumes, including about 1000
Bibles.[2]
This library was sold in stages after the Duke’s death in 1843 by the
auctioneer R.H. Evans, who had also presided over the famous Roxburghe sale of
1812.[3]
[1] R.J. Wilkinson, Orientalism, Aramaic and
Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation : The first printing of the Syriac New
Testament. Leiden:
Brill, 2007. Ferdinand has been elected Emperor designate in 1531.
[2] T. F. Henderson,
‘Augustus Frederick, Prince, duke of Sussex (1773–1843)’, rev.
John Van der Kiste, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford
University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/900, accessed 6 July 2012 ]
[3] D. Pearson, Provenance
research in book history. London: British Library & Oak Knoll, 1998,
pp. 148-9.
