Polyglot (book) London, 1669), a monument of industry and erudition even when allowance is made for the fact that for the Arabic he had the great manuscript lexicon compiled and left to the University of Cambridge by William Bedwell. The liberality of Cardinal Ximenes, who is said to have spent half a million ducats on it, removed the "Complutensian" polyglot from the risks of commerce. The other three editions all brought their promoters to the verge of ruin. Subsequent polyglots are of little scholarly importance, the best recent texts having been confined to a single language; but at least into the early
Polyglot (book) 20th century many biblical students still used Walton and, if it was available, Le Jay. The numerous polyglot editions of parts of the Bible include the Genoa psalter of 1516, edited by Agostino Giustiniani, bishop of Nebbio. This is in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and Arabic, and is interesting from the character of the Chaldee text, being the first specimen of Western printing in the Arabic writing system, and from a curious note on Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America on the margin of Psalm xix. Polyglot (book) A polyglot is a book that contains side-by-side versions of the