Psalterium in quatuor linguis: Hebraea, Graeca, Chaldaea [i.e. Ethiopic], Latina (Cologne, 1518). Baltic Trade and Cultural Connections: Evidence from the Paper

Abstract

The archiving and study of images of the watermarks in the British Library’s three copies of Psalterium in quatuor linguis: Hebraea, Graeca, Chaldaea [i.e. Ethiopic], Latina (Cologne, 1518) enables close comparison to be made of the make up of the books. Access to the Bernstein on-line database of watermarks indicates a close correlation of watermarks in the books with the activities of the Hanseatic League even as far afield as Moscow. Finally a brief comparison is made of the layouts of Psalterium and its contemporary multi-language work, the Complutensian Polyglot. It is suggested that the different layouts reflect, respectively, the progressive and the conservative world views of the publishers.