THE ALDINE GREEK PSALTER
[PSALTER.] Justinus DECADYUS, editor.
Ψαλτηριον.
Venice, Aldus Manutius, [not after 1 October 1498].
4to , ff. [150]; α–θ8 ι6 κ–ν8 ο–υ8; Greek text printed in red and black, woodcut initials and headpieces, α3r and κ1r within woodcut borders (very slightly shaved), text on ι1r in its first setting with manuscript correction erased (see below); title-page and final verso dusty, first two leaves with very small wormhole, α2 with small paperflaw to inner margin and short split to backfold, α3 with neatly erased inscription at head resulting in a small hole, light staining to ι1r, small flaw to final leaf with neat repair to blank verso, nonetheless a good copy; bound in early nineteenth-century russia tooled in gilt and blind, spine gilt in compartments and lettered directly in gilt, edges gilt; upper joint neatly repaired, tailband lacking, spine and corners a little rubbed; inscription ‘6 […] in catalogo Edwards 1794’ to front free endpaper verso, armorial bookplate of John Vertue (1826–1900, first bishop of Portsmouth from 1882), to front pastedown.
The elegant first Aldine printing of the Greek Psalter, following two earlier and plainer editions of 1481 and 1486, which had employed much simpler Greek typefaces with fewer ligatures and contractions.
The editor, the Corfiote Justinus Decadyus, addresses his preface to ‘the Greeks in Hellas’, indicating that the book was aimed at native Greek speakers as well as humanist scholars; the preface also mentions further liturgical Greek printing planned by Aldus. The terminus ante quem is provided by the inclusion of this work in Aldus’ advertisement of Greek books for sale, dated 1 October 1498, though the printing may have taken place as early as 1496.
The text was originally misprinted with a line of text omitted from the top of leaves ι1r and ρ1r. The mistake in quire ι was noticed part-way through printing, with the text then added in manuscript at the head of the page on the sheets already printed and the remaining sheets reset with the text on the top two lines in a slightly smaller font; this copy belongs to the first state, though the manuscript text has now been erased. The missing line of text on ρ1r was seemingly not noticed before copies were distributed (Della Rocca de Candal, ‘Lost in transition: a significant correction in Aldus Manutius’s Psalterion (1496/98)’, in The Library, 7th series, 23 (2022), pp. 155–179, appendix, copy no. 108).
The 1794 catalogue of the bookseller James Edwards (1757–1816) does indeed contain a copy of this edition, item 2608, but in an old blue morocco binding.
HCR 13452; BMC v 563; GW M36248; Goff P1033; ISTC ip01033000; Ahmanson-Murphy 29; Aldo Manuzio tipografo 29; Legrand I, 11; Renouard, p. 260, no. 8.
