1598 BIBLE in FRENCH ILLUSTRATED 2 VOLUMES antique OLD & NEW TESTAMENT

[BIBLE in FRENCH]

La Saincte Bible contenant le vieil et le nouveau Testament.


Paris: Claude de Monstreuil et Iean Richer; 1598

(OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT, PRINTED BETWEEN REFORMATION AND COUNTER-REFORMATION)

Parisinian edition of 1598 of the Bible in French, printed by Monstreuil and Richer, at a crucial moment in the history of French religion, the year of the Edict of Nantes.

A monumental two-volume octavo work,
richly structured and equipped with illustrations and engraved title


Full brown morocco-back binding, spines with five raised bands. Red edges

The copy shows signs of reading
Wormhole  in the upper margin of the first part of Volume I.

Leaf 705-706 is blank. 

Minor toning

Pp. (2); 20nn; 800; (2). - (4); 2nn; 801-1444; 4nn; 388; 8nn; (2).




1598 is the year of the Edict of Nantes proclaimed by Henry IV of France, which ended the Wars of Religion by guaranteeing limited tolerance to Protestants. In this climate, French Bible printing takes on a value that is not only religious but political and cultural. The in-8° editions responded to a need for domestic and personal diffusion of Scripture, in line with rising literacy and the central role of the sacred text in private life. The engraved titles confirm a significant editorial investment: the pictorial apparatus served to noble the work and to render it competitive on the market. The two-volume structure, with continuous paging in the first, indicates a coherent and articulated editorial project. The French Bibles of this period reflect the competition between Catholic versions (linked to the Latin Vulgate tradition) and Reformed versions, such as the Geneva-derived edition. A philological check of the prefaces and the psalms would allow precise identification of the confession area to which it belonged.

The biblical text collects the books of the Old and New Testaments, composed along a chronological arc from the 1st millennium BCE to the 1st century CE. For the Christian tradition, authorship is multiple and inspired; for modern criticism, the texts are the result of complex redactional stratifications. The 1598 edition fits into the long history of printed Bible transmission, inaugurated in the 15th century with the first Latin editions and quickly extended to the vernacular languages.


size : 4 1/4 by 7"

Text in French
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