What happens when two French Renaissance men are in exile, the one a man of letters the other a distinguished theologian? They write a psalter, of course! Clement Marot and Theodore Beza collaborated on this historically influential version of the psalter while Marot was out of favor with the French court and residing in Geneva.

Les Pseaumes de David Mis en Rime Francoise Par Clement Marot & Theodore de Beze (Paris: Anthoine Vincent, 1565) PDF

On October 15, 2009, Dr. R. A. Muller lectured on this topic in a presentation: Was Calvin a Calvinist? Or, Did Calvin (or Anyone Else in the Early Modern Era) Plant the “TULIP”? at the Meeter Center at Calvin College, Hekman Library. Dr. Muller engages with several lines of scholarship in a winsome, thought provoking look at Calvin’s place and impact in the trajectory and development of Reformed Protestantism. The Meeter Center has made the text of that lecture publicly available here. This is a similar presentation to Dr. Muller’s lectures this past year at the University of Geneva as well as at the Calvin Conference at Dordrecht, Netherlands.

For those of you who are familiar with Francois Du Jon (Franciscus Junius), you know how hard it is to come by original sources of this Reformed theologian of the late 16th century. For those of you who are not familiar with Junius - his bible translation, theological lectures and theses, linguistic lectures, and theological works would influence generations of Reformed and Lutheran theologians. He was a student of Calvin, a friend of Ursinus (he delivered Ursinus’ funeral oration), and an early voice in the development of covenant theology. If that were not enough, his lectures on how to interpret Scripture were influential in the academic contexts at Heidelberg, Neustadt, and Leiden. Abraham Kuyper’s Bibliotheca Reformata series of the late 19th century employed a select fasciculus from Junius for volume 1.

All that to say, besides his works on Google Books (by the way his son was also Franciscus Junius but commented primarily on art and classical literature throughout the 17th c.) you should check out these rare full color editions at the BSB here. I highly recommend the Sacrorum Parallelorum, and don’t forget the cycle of theological theses from Heidelberg (although those can be found in Kuyper’s work as well). Also, the lectures on the Hebrew language as well as his Protoktisia (1589) - lectures on Creation and “on the first Adam from creation in his integrity to his fall into corruption” - are worth your time. The Protoktisia was a set of “praelectiones” that typically accompanied his lectures on the interpretation of Scripture. There is evidence that these lectures were delivered as early as 1579 at Neustadt and 1585 at Heidelberg in conjunction with the lectures on the Hebrew language as well. Additionally in the 1585 Heidelberg lectures, he gave the same cycle of orations (which can be found in his Omnia by the way - go with the 1613 edition since it is a more exhaustive Omnia, and oh by the way the CDC fiche is missing some key sections - not pages!) except this time his test case was out of the psalms.

These orations and lectures on interpretation with examples from the psalms were published in a 1585 edition at Heidelberg (biblio info here).  The present day library at Heidelberg University has only a fiche copy ever since the library of the Palatinate was ‘conveyed’ to the Vatican after the sack of Heidelberg in 1622 - all 5k printed books (which were each a binding of multiple books into one volume) and 3524 manuscripts. It wasn’t until 1816 that a diplomatic envoy to the pope was able to procure the return of approximately 850 manuscripts. There is a digital MSS project of these returned works here. The remainder can be purchased in microfiche form from Saur, with a nice royalty to the Vatican of course. Ironically, Heidelberg has bought the fiche set to get their library back … all 12102 titles or so.

If you want a period dictionary that was expanded upon from its publication in 1502 through its eleven language rendition in the 1590 Basil edition, you need to check out this Latin Lexicon. Alas, this is only the 1534 edition and not the 11 language edition, but it is a good humanist dictionary of the period tracing words back to their Greek and Latin roots as well as noting the specific passages in the primary source material. This dictionary, for example, went through 18 editions from one printer alone. Calepino’s name became almost synonymous with the phrase Latin Lexicon during this period. It was published in polyglot form as late as 1752. It is also noteworthy that the 1752 edition listed below was used in the seminary of Patavia and was intended for theological studies as well.

It is also extremely helpful on Latin phrases  and figures of speech in philosophy and theology as well.

The Bayerische StaatsBibliothek has several editions here. I believe the 1516 is a polyglot edition.

By the way, if your institutional library is so fortunate to have them tucked away in their rare book room, you might look for these: (more…)

The Italian humanist Niccolo Perotti was one of the most influential Latinists of the Renaissance era for his editions of classical texts as well as the grammatical commentary. Even into the modern era, his work is greatly appreciated among scholars of the period for its insight into humanist neo-Latin grammar. For any serious scholar of the era, I would encourage you to find a copy (however, be warned - one of the volumes of the 3rd edition Aldus printing - the Cornucopia - is priced at roughly $13k US in a rare book store).

Also, for those interested here is a 1608 Perotti edition of the text of Polybius with no less than Wolfgang Musculus’ interpretation included.

Although not a complete set, Google books has the following and the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek has others:

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I ran across this a while back and thought it would be good food for thought as a reminder to the broader Christian community to always “worry” over continuously improving their translations and versions of Scripture. As a supply preacher frequently invited to preach across the spectrum of Reformed denominations, I am often asked what the “best” version or translation of Scripture is. (Should we use the NIV, the KJV, the NASB, the ESV, the RSV, the TNIV, the NKJV, etc?) This is the sort of question after a service in a narthex over a cup of coffee that draws a crowd rather quickly. More often than not it is a well-intentioned question by believers seeking to mine the scriptures further after they have just heard a sermon using the breadth of both the Old and New Testament to focus upon a passage. I always want to handle these sorts of questions with care so that one’s confidence in the word of God is augmented while at the same time such confidence is not identified with a sectarian allegiance to a particular translation. And in these cases it is a joy and pleasure to be of assistance. 

In some cases, however, it seems that (more…)

As you can probably tell from the various sites that I am visiting, today I have been working on footnotes for parts of the translation of Petrus van Mastricht Theoretico-Practica Theologia (for those of you interested I am about 90 pages into the piece). Mastricht has been interacting with Jesuits, Arminian/Remonstrants, English Puritans, Cameronians (think Amyraut et al), and more recently medieval and renaissance rabbis. I am happy to say that I have found almost all of the texts in some digital library or another. There are a few texts I might have to travel a little in order to check, but over all it was a good day.

One of several medieval rabbis that Mastricht cites favorably at points is Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), who was studied during the medieval period by Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, and Andrew of St. Victor among others. In the renaissance and reformation period he was studied for his emphasis upon the literal sense of scripture and a philosophical defense of God and the authority of Scripture. His work was originally written in Arabic, translated into Hebrew, and then translated again into Latin. The edition that was popular among 17th c. philosophers, humanists, and exegetes was probably the rare and coveted 1629 Buxtorf edition that was translated from the Arabic directly into Latin. (If you find a pdf copy let me know!!)

So today, poking around a bit I was pleased to find a Latin 1520 edition of the Moreh Navukhim by R. Moses Maimonides for free based off of the Hebrew translation from the Arabic as well as several Hebrew editions. Granted it’s not the 1479 Hebrew translation from the Arabic that went for $44k on Christies’ auction block recently (183 pages at  roughly $240/pg!) , and it is not in my favorite pdf format (DJVU … ?), but there is a wonderful digital collection of early printed 15th c. to 19th c. editions of various famous works of Judaica at the Jewish National University and Library Book Repository which I highly recommend. The JNUL (which recently changed its name to the National Library of Israel) is located in Jerusalem and has roughly 5 million books. Their mission is to have copies of everything (regardless of language) which touches upon Judaism, Hebraica, or Israel. Needless to say, their digital library isn’t quite up to their holdings, but there are fine specimens of printed Hebrew and Latin translations from the early renaissance to the early 20th century. (I even found a Latin copy of Nicolas of Lyra …). You can also check out their other online resources here.

By the way, make sure you have the DjVU plugin installed for your web-browser and also for downloading the images (read the system specs carefully!) as well as any necessary Hebrew fonts, as the catalog does list the works in a Western or Hebrew alphabet depending on the titles and language of publication.

If you thought Google Books was a boon for downloading primary source documents, the digitilization project at the Bavarian State Library (Bayerische StaatsBibliothek) will rock your socks. You can read about it here in German. The gist is basically this, the BSB is digitalizing all of the 16th c.documents published in German speaking lands irregardless of the language of the work. At the moment they have 23,289 documents available for free, the large majority available in PDF format. When the smoke clears, they hope to have almost 100k. That just makes a Historical Theologian giddy …

A few -/+ points: you do have a daily download limit, however, on the upside, unlike some other German university projects, with the BSB you can download a pdf rather than image by image. Some of the works are true high quality color photos, others are scans.

If you want to search their digital catalog, try here. If you want to browse, try here. If you want to just scroll through by title, try here.

If you have ever wanted a full color PDF copy of a 15th c. manuscript edition of Nicolas of Lyra’s Bible, this is the place to go. Or one of Martin Luther’s sermons on the Lord’s Supper (1527), skip the photocopies, microfiche, and film, go here. You won’t regret it.

I recently ran across Andreas Wengerscius’ Libri Quattuor Slavoniae Reformatae and must say I wish I knew a group of Latinists that would translate this into the languages of Eastern Europe. (This would also be a valuable work to have in English on one’s shelf right next to D’Aubigne). This work was introduced and endorsed by Voetius and chronicles the ecclesiastical histories of Poland, Bohemia, Russia, Prussia, and Moravia, from the time of the apostles’ through the Reformation. The fact that this work remains untranslated is not a gap in the scholarship but a tremendous chasm in Reformed Protestant Church history: Secondly, it would also give modern missions efforts in Eastern Europe a good back story prior to the modern period of the controversies and various unification efforts that occurred as well as the many persecutions that faced Protestants in largely Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox lands. Thirdly, as a result, on a doctrinal level this also narrates some of the engagements of the Reformed Orthodox with the Eastern Orthodox churches. Also, in the fourth book, some sections read like a roster or missions report of the names, locations, and status of the pastors, churches, and cities in Eastern Europe. It is virtually a Reformed “who’s who” of Eastern Europe chronicling who was where and when and doing what in the mid-17th century. Lastly, there is also a fascinating transcript of the questions, arguments, and responses at the Colloquy of Roznov (in modern day Czech Republic) in 1660. This was a dispute between the “Arians/Socinians” or as they called themselves the Christian Unitarians and the Roman Catholics on a variety of topics but especially the Trinity.

By the way the table of contents is here

Bonjour mes amis, have you ever wanted to read Bullinger’s thoughts to Calvin on Servetus’ execution? Or Calvin’s private thoughts on how the Reform in Geneva was going? If so then you will want to dust off your French and Latin and pick up some of Aimé-Louis Herminjard’s volumes. Now available online for all of you, francophiles Réformées spanning 1512 - 1544 are 7 of the first 10 volumes … (Sorry this will only get Calvin to Geneva, fired, re-hired, and up to the ruin of the Libertines!)

[1]     [2]     [3]     [4]     [5]     [6]     [7]     [8]     [9a]     [9b]

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t have them all yet … c’est la vie!

BUT … the Internet Archive has them all right here! … de rien, avec plaisir