This volume from the library of the Duke of Sussex is the first published edition of the New Testament in Greek and thus among the most consequential books in the history of Western textual scholarship, for the first time in print placing a critical Greek text of the New Testament alongside a revised Latin translation in parallel columns, further supplying it with annotations that subjected the Vulgate to philological scrutiny. Erasmus’s emendation of the Vulgate’s rendering of Matthew 4:17, for example, from the traditional penitentiam agite (do penance) to the more linguistically accurate in mentem redeatis (change your mind), alone had enormous theological repercussions, since it removed a proof-text for the sacrament of penance that Luther would shortly use in his own critique of the Church. The presence of extensive handwritten marginal notes in this particular copy also elevates it from a printed book to a document of intellectual engagement. Whoever made the annotations was reading Erasmus as a working scholar reads a contested text, carefully recording his disagreements, cross-references, and questions in the margins.
