[Bible in English] | The first tome or volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the newe testamente, 1548

Desiderius Erasmus

The first tome or volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the newe testamente. London: Edwarde Whitchurche, 1548

Folio (256 x 182 mm), gothic type, title within woodcut border, woodcut initials, woodcut device on verso of final leaf, the odd pen trial in an early modern hand, later tree calf, lacks f.88 of part 3, marginal dampstaining, some margins cut close, rebacked

This volume contains paraphrases on the Gospels and Acts. The translations were carried out by Udall, Thomas Key, Miles Coverdale, John Olde, Leonard Cox, and the future Queen Mary, and were plain in style so that they could be easily understood by the lay reader. The importance of this work to the religious situation in England at the time is shown by Edward VI's decree that a copy of these Paraphrases (volume one only) should be acquired for every parish Church, to be kept alongside the Great Bible of 1539. The reign of Edward VI (1547-1553) was marked by the profusion of printed English Bibles. Erasmus's Paraphrases were originally published in Latin in the 1520s.

PROVENANCE:

Ownership inscription in a seventeenth-century hand to front free endpaper ("Christopher Simpson his Booke"); pasted in table of births and deaths of the Browning family in an eighteenth-century hand ("John Browning Born Nov[embe]r 20 1643, Ob. July 20 1710... William Browning Born Dec[embe]r ye 11 1687 was Mayor of Canterbury in ye Years 1733 & 1740, OB. Nov[embe]r 22 1753..."); Valentine Simpson of Bobbing Court, Kent: nineteenth-century armorial bookplate

LITERATURE:

ESTC S714; Darlow & Moule, 73