[Paris Polyglot Bible]. Libri Judicum ac primum Josue. [Tome - Lot 93

[Paris Polyglot Bible]. Libri Judicum ac primum Josue. [Tome VII]. Paris, Antoine Vitré, 1642. One volume (of 10) large in-folio brown calf, spine ribbed and decorated (period binding). Binding badly damaged with significant leather loss. Typography in Latin and Arabic. Heavy dampstaining on last few pages. Several wormholes. Rousseurs. The seventh and only volume (of 9) of this monumental Bible was intended as an improved or enlarged edition of the Alcalá Polyglot (1514-1517), which integrated four languages, and the Antwerp Polyglot (1569-1572), which integrated five. This was followed by the London Polyglot (1654-1657), which added Persian and Ethiopian. Pope Paul V, enthroned in 1605, submitted the idea of the Polyglot Bible to two successive French ambassadors to the Holy See: Cardinal Duperron (1604-1606), then François Savary de Brèves (1607-1614), himself an orientalist scholar. Another influential scholar in Paris was won over to the project: Jacques-Auguste de Thou, both a friend of Duperron and uncle of Savary de Brèves' wife, Anne de Thou. As early as 1615, according to a letter from J. A. de Thou, Cardinal du Perron had begun preparations, which were interrupted by his death in 1617. A few years later, the Parisian lawyer Guy Michel le Jay took over the project and, at the cost of immense expenditure of money and labor, finally brought it to a successful conclusion.