Novum Instrumentum omne

One of the first days of March 1516, in Basel

On or about 1 March 1516, the Basel printer-publisher Johann Froben issued the first edition of the New Testament prepared by Desiderius Erasmus.

The exact retail-release day is less secure than the conventional date. A scholarly study says Froben published it on "one of the first days of March," and 1 March marks the end of the printed annotations.

Basel University Library's surviving copy identifies Erasmus as author-editor, Basel as the place of publication, Froben as printer and 1516 as the year.

Greek on one side, Erasmus's own Latin on the other

The folio combined Erasmus's new Latin translation, his recension of the Greek text, and extensive annotations explaining where he departed from the Vulgate and why. He dedicated it to Pope Leo X.

It ran to 1,027 printed pages in a run of about 1,200 copies — a large number for a book that required readers trained in Greek and Latin.

It was not a modern critical edition. The Greek recension rested on a narrow group of available manuscripts and contained errors, and where Erasmus's manuscript evidence ran out some Greek wording was reconstructed from the Latin Vulgate.

First published, not first printed

This was the first complete Greek New Testament ever published. The Greek New Testament of the Complutensian Polyglot had already been printed in Spain but had not been released to readers.

Erasmus went on to prepare four revised editions, issued in 1519, 1522, 1527 and 1535.