Psalter, Polyglot

Imperial 4to (12 1/2 x 9 in.; 318 x 229 mm). Title printed in red and black within a fine woodcut arabesque border, printed on paper in Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Roman types, eight parallel columns across page openings with four columns to the page, headings to beginning of text as well as a prefatory paragraph printed in red, 13 woodcut floriated initials (5 Latin, 4 Hebrew, 2 Greek, and 2 Arabic), no pagination, registrum and woodcut printer's device on recto of terminal leaf; light to moderate browning throughout, lacking quires V–Z, &⁸ (40 leaves). Sixteenth-century stiff vellum with overlapping fore-edges, edges stained blue-green; a few minor tears to extremities, lower free endpaper glued to pastedown.

Bookplate monogrammed "U.P." on front pastedown

Formatting the Word of God 3.3; Adams B–1370; Alden & Landis 526/4; BM STC Italian 97; Darlow & Moule 1411; Sabin 66468

First polyglot edition of any part of the Bible, the second book printed in Arabic, and the only book printed at Genoa in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The Milanese printer Pietro Paulo Porro maintained a press at Turin with his brother Galeazzo. Some time between 1512 and 1516 the learned Dominican Agostino Giustiniani, Bishop of Nebbio in Corsica from 1514 and later Professor of Hebrew at Paris, summoned Porro to Genoa expressly for the production of this edition. A monument of Renaissance typography, the fonts were designed and cut for this edition under the Porro's direction.

Giustiniani supervised and financed the work, and wrote the commentary for it. Of particular interest is his long note to Psalm 19:4 on the life of Christopher Columbus and his discoveries (C7r–D1r), prompted by the phrase “and their words shall go to the ends of the earth.” Giustiniani’s comments contain previously unpublished information about the second voyage of the explorer and Genoese native, thus constituting the first biography of Columbus. Another notable example is the correction of “unicorn” in the Vulgate with a scientific description of a rhinoceros on E3r (Formatting the Word of God).

Shortly after the book was printed, Columbus’s son, Ferdinand, Duke of Veragua, complained to the Genoese Senate about Giustiniani's somewhat unflattering representation of his father. It seems he was offended that the Bishop had revealed the Admiral’s working-class origins. Giustiniani described his difficulties in selling the edition in his history of Genoa (1537), and recorded an edition size of 2,000 paper copies and 50 copies on vellum. The Senate ultimately ordered the Psalter destroyed.