CHAPTER SIX

THE EDITIO PRINCEPS 1

The editio princeps of the printed Syriac New Testament was, as we have said, the product of an extraordinary cooperation between a scribe sent by the Patriarch of Antioch, and two Western scholars working under the patronage of Ferdinand I who was looking to enhance the reputation of his newly reformed University and perhaps also (in the light of his confrontation with the Turks) taking an interest in Eastern Christians and the evangelisation of Moslems.2 The Patriarch wanted

1 Liber Sacrosancti Evangelii De Iesu Christo Domino & Deo nostro. Reliqua hoc Codice com- prehensa pagina proxima indicabit. Div. Ferdinandi rom. imperatoris designati iussu & liberalitate, characteribus & lingua Syra, Iesu Christo vernacula, Divino ipsius ore c secrata, et a Ioh. Eugelista Hebraica dicta, Scriptorio Prelo diligter Expressa . . . A description of the is given in T. H. Darlow and H. F. Moule, Historical catalogue of the printed editions of Holy Scripture in the of the British and Foreign Bible Society (2 vols in 4) (BFBS, 1903, reprinted New York, 1963) Vol. IV pg 1528–1529. Technically there appear to be two versions of the , A & B, which have minor but unmistakable differences. These are described by Darlow and Moule, loc. cit. They conjecture there that type A are early circulation copies perhaps for presentation or those dispersed by Moses who we shall see sold his stock. The bulk of the copies (Version B), they believe, were published in 1562 and bear that date. I do not believe that anyone has previously connected the second with the information given in Bayerische Hauptstatarchiv Oefeleana 18/2 which we have described above and is summarised in O. Hartig, Die Gründung der Münchener Hofbibliothek pg 18–9. A letter there to Ferdinand from Albrecht 1 April 1561 indicates that Zimmermann was to be allowed all the remaining printed copies of the editio princeps, though not, of course, the type. It is not stated but one assumes that he was able to buy them from Widmanstetter’s orphans. Surely the second edition then is the result of Zimmermann coming into possession of these remaining copies in 1561 and putting them on the market with a new title, border, date etc. in 1562. 2 The type of the editio princeps is of a particular distinction and delicacy. There is no reason to doubt Postel’s claim that it was he who supervised its production. We know of no one with comparable expertise. He was the only person from whom Plantin ever asked advice on cutting type, and he sent him directions on how Granjon should proceed. (See the letter of Postel to Plantin on Syriac ligatures 28 July 1569 in M. van Durme, Supplement à la Correspondance de (De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1955) pg 111–112.) The letters were clearly based upon Moses’s hand (E. Nestle “Zur Geschichte der syrischen Typen” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlän- dischen Gesellschaft LXXV (1903) pg 16–17 for the rst recognition of this). The steel punches for striking the matrices were engraved by Kaspar Kraft, a Swabian artist from Ellwangen: “characteres syros ex Norici ferri acie sculptebat” it says at the end of the book. The printer was Michael Zimmermann (Cymbermannus). After both working for the printer Aegidius Aquila (Adler) who is reported to have been interested in Oriental languages, 172 chapter six printed Syriac Gospel- and New Testaments for use amongst his ock as scribal production in the East had never satis ed pastoral needs. It is evident that for his purposes the editio princeps had to be serviceable as a recognisably Eastern book with the necessary liturgical material and also printed to an acceptable standard of accuracy. Less straightforward are the motivations of the Western scholars. Much of our discussion so far has been dedicated to exposing and making intel- ligible the interests of Postel and Widmanstetter in the of the Syriac New Testament. We shall turn now to examine the editio princeps more closely to isolate in turn the features characteristic of East and West in this remarkable collaborative production.

The Eastern Book

The intended liturgical and pastoral use of the editio princeps by the Patriarch necessitated a book that retained essential features of a Syriac . The canon, order of books, and the Peshitta text3 these two had a distinguished partnership that from 1553 produced books in German, Italian, Spanish, Latin as well as Hebrew and Arabic. Theirs was the rst Arabic in and preceded that produced in by 27 years. Zimmermann died in 1565. Kraft also worked with the printer Raphael Hofhalter until he ed for Hungary in 1565. After this we lose all trace of Kraft. The two are discussed in Georg Fritz, Geschichte der Wiener Schriftgiessereien (H. Berthold Messinglinienfabrik, Vienna 1924) pg 20–24. Postel left Vienna in May 1554 before printing actually began, though he had evidently done what was necessary for the felicitous engraving of the punches. Matthew was completed (as is evident from the colophons) on 14 February 1555 and all Four Gospels on 18 May. The Pauline were printed by 18 July and Acts (which follows the Epistles in the order of the books) by 14 August. The nal colophon is dated 27 September. Sebastian Brock has drawn attention to what appears to be a delightful competition for praise for the lion’s share of the work conducted by Moses and Widmanstetter in the successively appearing colophons: “The Development of Syriac Studies” in ed. K. J. Cathcart, The Edward Hincks Bicentenary Lectures (Univ. Coll. , Dublin 1994) pg 94–113 on pg 96–97. 3 The text of the Gospels was printed from two that Widmanstetter in the Dedicatio calls “vetustissima” and in the Colophon “Singularis dei exemplaria”. Of the text of the Pauline Epistles, Acts and the Catholic Epistles nothing speci c is said other than the following which follows the title of the Three Epistles: “Reliquae S.S.S. Petri, Johannis, et Judae Epistolae una cum Apocalypsi, etsi extant apud Syros, tamen in exemplaribus quae sequuti sumus defuerunt”. For the Gospels Widmanstetter had whatever he had received from Teseo, his Sienese transcripts from the Ptolemean Library and Moses’s manuscript that Masius said in the Dedication to his Grammatica Linguae Syricae (Pg 4) had been copied at Mosul: “. . . ille librarius, qui in urbe Mozal ad umen Tigrim exemplar illud Novi Testamneti scripsit; de quo id optimi & benignissimi Caesaris Ferdinandi liberalitate & Mosis Mardeni industria typis est expressum . . .”. (This remark is made in regret that the manuscript did not have a massorah and is discussed further below). It may be that the manuscript Gospels