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The Paris Polyglot Bible Please provide footnote text Chapter 7 The Paris Polyglot Bible During the early years of King Louis XIV (1638–1715) a new complete polyglot Bible saw the light, this time in Paris. The actual process of composition, pro- duction, and publication (1629–1645) was accompanied by many obstacles. The Paris Polyglot Bible was a reprint of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible with extra volumes to also provide the Samaritan version and the Syriac and Arabic trans- lations of the Old Testament. The history of this Bible and the motives behind its composition show that the world had changed over the decades. New cultures and languages were studied, renewed contacts with the Eastern churches had been made. Arabic had become important as a trading language, while the Syriac language became interesting because of the Syriac church and its history and Bible translation. Within this political and church political environment the motives for making a polyglot Bible shifted from Biblical studies and the unity of the Church to apologetical and missionary zeal towards adherents of other faiths and faith traditions. Once more, the French capital would be the centre of Christian Aramaism, but only to be defeated by the coming of the more comprehensive and also cheaper Polyglot Bible coming from the English capital, London. 7.1 Short History The plans for the making of what is now known as the Paris Polyglot Bible started in Rome. Missionaries and diplomats had made contact with Eastern Christianity. ‘Catholics sought to draw these isolated communities back into the Roman Church even as Protestants saw in their continued existence proof of the limits of Roman authority.’1 These Christians were valued not only for their manuscripts, but also for the unique information and skills they pos- sessed to decipher and interpret them. Pope Gregory XIII established the College of Maronites in Rome in 1584 for them.2 1 Peter N. Miller, ‘Making the Paris Polyglot Bible: Humanism and Orientalism in the Early Seventeenth Century’, in: Herbert Jaumann (ed.), Die europäische Gelehrtenrepublik im Zeitalter des Konfesionalismus. The European Republic of Letters in the Age of Confessionalism (WF, 96; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001), 59–85, esp. 63. 2 Miller, ‘Making the Paris Polyglot Bible’, 63. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004355934_008 192 Chapter 7 It was against this background that the idea of making a larger polyglot Bible came up. The Typographia Medicea in Rome, a printing firm for Oriental publications founded in 1584 by Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, was run and later owned by Giovan Battista Raimondi (1536–1614). He among other things produced Arabic works, mainly for the Ottoman market, hoping also to sell Arabic versions of Scripture and various missionary texts.3 At the beginning of the seventeenth century Raimondi aspired to issue a new polyglot Bible, which would also include Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Armenian, Coptic and Slavonic translations.4 He mentioned it several times to the papal court, suggesting that it would be to the glory of the Pope: Biblia non Regia sed Pontificia, ‘a Bible not royal but papal’.5 Raimondi never had the chance even to start printing or publishing a poly- glot Bible. His plans, however, were taken up by two successive French ambas- sadors in Rome, Cardinal Jacques Davy Duperron (1556–1618), book collector, and the orientalist François Savary de Brèves (1560–1627).6 The latter had been French ambassador in the Ottoman Empire, where he had learned Turkish and Arabic. He had bought 96 manuscripts in Constantinople for that aim and ori- ental characters in Rome, his subsequent posting as ambassador.7 It was in those Roman years that the idea of producing a new and extended polyglot Bible was suggested to Savary de Brèves by Raimondi.8 De Brèves suggested several ideas to his cousin and long-time correspondent, Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553–1617), President of the Parlement of Paris: a printing shop that would publish Arabic works and a college in Paris for education in oriental languages in order to com- municate in the three main languages of the Ottoman Empire.9 In January 1615 de Brèves established his press in Paris with the help of two Maronite Christians: Gabriel Sionite (Jibra’il as-Sahyuni; 1577–1648) from Lebanon, and Jean Hesronite (Yuhanna al-Hasruni; d. 1626). In order to keep them in France, Gabriel Sionite 3 Hamilton, William Bedwell, 23. 4 Hamilton, William Bedwell, 83. 5 Hamilton, William Bedwell, 83. 6 Miller, ‘Making the Paris Polyglot Bible’, 64. 7 ‘Vitré ou Vitray (Antoine)’, in: Joseph Fr. Michaud (ed.), Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, vol. 43 (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlangsanstalt, repr. 1968), 663–66, esp. 663; Gerald J. Toomer, Eastern Wisedome and Learning. The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth- Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 30. 8 Yaron Ayalon, ‘Richelieu in Arabic: The Catholic Printed Message to the Orient in the Seventeenth Century’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 19 (2008), 151–65, esp. 153. 9 Miller, ‘Making the Paris Polyglot Bible’, 67. See also Elisabeth D. English, ‘The Le Jay Polyglot Bible’, Renaissance Papers: a selection of papers, presented at the Renaissance meetings in the southeastern states, North Carolina State University, 1954 (Durham: Southeastern Renaissance Conference, 1954), 88–89, esp. 89: ‘they advanced the knowledge of Eastern languages’..
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