UNder this Title we comprehend Italian, Spanish, German, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, English-Saxon, and Modern English, Sclavonian, Bohemian, Polish, and Russian Bibles. See what is said of them in the Dictionary, upon the Article Bibles. See likewise the second Tome of F. le Long’s Bibliotheca Sacra of the Edition in 8vo. or Tome 1. of the Edition in fol. We shall just touch upon them in this Place.
Anthony Bruccioli is one of those who has translated the Bible into Italian. The best Edition of it is that of 1540, at Venice, for Zanetti, 3 Vols. in fol. and 1541, -44, four Vols. in fol. with his Comments. That which was revised by Tudeschi, and printed in 1560, passes for the most correct. See what Vossius says of it in his Critical Enquiries, Simon in his Critical History of the New Testament, ch. 58. p. 873. Baillet in his Jugemens des Savans, sect. 1016. Marmochin only revised it in some Places, and added the Third Book of Maccabees, which as yet had not been translated into this Language; and in the Edition of 1547 we find the Books of Job and the Psalms in Tuscan Verses, composed by some other Author. Bruccioli was of Florence, and a Layman. He lived about 1550. He was put into the Index of prohibited Books, on the score of his Translation of the Bible into the Tuscan Tongue, and because of the Epistle prefixed to it, wherein he shewed the Necessity and Usefulness of such sort of Versions. Santes Marmochin was of Tuscany, and a Dominican. He lived at the same Time as Bruccioli, and understood the Languages, particularly Hebrew. See the new Bibliotheque of the Dominicans, by F. Echard.
Nicholas Antonio, in his new Bibliotheca Hispanica, tom. 1. p. 200. ch. 2. attributes the Bible translated into the Castillian Language by Cassidore de Reyna to Cypriano de Valera, wherein he is mistaken; Valera having been only the Editor, or, at most, the Copier of it. They were both Spanish Calvinists.
Among the German Bibles, the most esteem’d, whether for Purity of Language, or Catholicity, are those of Mentz, printed in 1662, in fol. with Cuts, and in 4to. 1666.
There is in the Library of St. Mihiel a Swedish Bible, printed at Leyden in 8vo. with the Privilege of Queen Christina of Sweden. There is likewise the English Bible, of 1639, in fol at London. This, without doubt, is the second Edition of that in 1612, which was translated in the Reign of James I. or of that which was printed by Order of Henry VIII, when he forsook the Orthodox Faith.
They who would know something of other Foreign Bibles, need only read Fabricius’s Bibliotheca Græca, l. 4. c. 5. p. 191, &c. and the Critical Library, by Father Cherubin de St. Joseph, a Barefooted Carmelite.