In Folio: Rare Volumes in the Stanford University Libraries

Brian Walton, 1600-1661, editor.
Biblia Sacra Polyglotta ….
Londini: Imprimebat Thomas Roycroft, 1657.

Polyglot Bibles present Biblical texts in different languages in parallel columns and serve as invaluable tools for textual criticism. The Complutensian Polyglot was the first printed polyglot, produced at Alcalá, Spain (1514-1517). The Plantin polyglot, printed at Antwerp between 1569 and 1572, followed, and the Paris polyglot, printed in ten folio volumes, was finished in 1645. Considered the greatest, most scholarly of all polyglot Bibles, the Walton polyglot (also known as the London polyglot) improved significantly on the scholarship of the bibles preceding it, and included for the first time the Psalter, Canticle of Canticles, and New Testament in Ethiopic; the New Testament in Arabic; and the Gospels in Persian.

Brian Walton (1600-1661) was a biblical scholar educated at Cambridge and ordained an Anglican. A staunch Royalist, he weathered the years of the Interregnum (1649-1660), though not without difficulties. He was for a short time imprisoned, accused of “subtile tricks and popish innovations.” Walton carried out his project with many of the contemporary English biblical scholars of the day, including Edmund Castell (1606-1685), Thomas Hyde (1636-1703), and Edward Pocock (1604-1691). Though the scholars were almost exclusively Royalists (many of whom had lost their benefices or their faculty positions at Oxford and Cambridge because of the religious turmoil of the Interregnum), the publication went through the press smoothly. The Commonwealth Council of State approved of the work as “something honourable and deserving encouragement” as early as 1652, when Walton published his prospectus of the work; Lord Protector Cromwell himself exempted this bible from the customary duties that would have been imposed on the vast amount of paper imported for printing the work. At least two presses were employed throughout the printing, and probably several were in service during 1656 and 1657. Walton’s critical apparatus in volume six stands as an important addition to biblical scholarship. Establishing his bona fides as a Protestant and Englishman, a satisfied Walton declared, “Now care is taken that every private man may have [the original texts] and use them as his own.”

At the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Walton was made Chaplain to the King, and soon after was consecrated Bishop of Chester. This copy of the Walton polyglot includes a dedication to King Charles II, still in exile in 1657. This dedication was not included originally, but at the time of the Restoration (1660), copies yet unsold had their original dedication (to Oliver Cromwell) removed, replaced by a more appropriate one to King Charles II.

 

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