Latin (1587) Septuigant - Vetus_Testamentum_Iuxta_Septuaginta
Septuaginta - Vetus Testamentum Iuxta LXX (1587)
The Sixtine Septuagint, the official Roman edition of the Greek Old Testament, printed at Rome by Francesco Zanetti in 1587 under the authority of Pope Sixtus V. The edition carries the Greek text of the Septuagint in a single column, with short Latin notes at the foot of the page recording variants and explanations. Its full title, Vetus Testamentum iuxta Septuaginta ex auctoritate Sixti V Pontificis Maximi editum, announces both its source and its sanction.
The editorial commission had been at work since 1578 under the direction of Cardinal Antonio Carafa, with Pedro Chacón, Antonio Agustín, William Allen (the English Catholic exile and later cardinal), and the paleographer Fulvio Orsini among the principal scholars. Their base text was Codex Vaticanus (B, fourth century), supplemented by additional manuscripts from the Vatican, the Laurenziana in Florence, and the Marciana in Venice. Where Vaticanus had lost leaves (Genesis 1 to 46, Psalms 106 to 138, Hebrews 9:14 to end of New Testament), the commission filled gaps from other witnesses and noted the substitution. The 1587 edition was the first printed Septuagint to take a major uncial manuscript as its primary exemplar; the Aldine (1518) and Complutensian (1517) had relied on minuscules.
The Sixtine Septuagint became the standard Greek Old Testament of European scholarship until the mid-nineteenth century. Tischendorf's Codex Sinaiticus discoveries (1844 and 1859) and the development of critical Septuagint editions at Göttingen from 1908 gradually displaced it, but the Sixtine retained normative force in Roman Catholic biblical scholarship through Pius X. Henry Barclay Swete's 1887 to 1894 Cambridge manual Septuagint followed the Sixtine text through most of the canon while silently correcting its errors against fresh collations.
The 1587 volume carries a dedicatory preface addressed to Sixtus V by Carafa, and a verse preface by the Latin poet Marc-Antoine Muret. The edition was issued in folio at a price of around three scudi; surviving copies are widespread in Catholic institutional libraries and found their way into Protestant collections soon after publication, since no other accessible edition of the full Septuagint existed for a century.
- Date
- 1587 (Sixtine Septuagint, editio princeps of the Roman text)
- Language
- Latin
- Region
- Rome, Italy
- Repository
- Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (origin); complete copies at major research libraries including the British Library, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, and Harvard Houghton Library
- Printer
- Francesco Zanetti
- Type
- Study
- Pages
- 793
A historic Bible preserved by the Digital Bible Society.