Hereditas Antikvárium

17. árverés – Miscellanea ex libris Borda Lajos

Amstelodámban, 1687. M. Tótfalusi Kis Miklós által. 640p. With engraved title page.
The production history of this New Testament, entrusted to Misztótfalusi, mirrored the shifting Transylvanian political situation. In August 1681, the estates resolved to print the Bible at home, not in the Low Countries. On hearing this, Tótfalusi began printing the Psalter and the New Testament. Funding later collapsed, so he suspended the smaller jobs and printed the “Aranyas Biblia”. Only after that did he return to the Psalter (in two formats) and, as he himself writes, “not content with that, I printed the New Testament as well, to the number of four thousand two hundred.” This final Dutch-printed, “small-format” edition matches the Bible for beauty and accuracy. Despite the stated large press run, copies are markedly scarcer today than his Bible – something likely went awry in distribution – and it ranks among the rarest Hungarian New Testaments.
Gilt and painted contemporary leather. Boards divided by gilt fillets, outer compartments with palmette tools in gilt on a red ground, central panel within double gilt fillet, the interspace blackened, the panel tooled with gilt vegetal tools arranged in coloured (red, light and dark green) fields in an oriental, medallion-like scheme. Spine with four raised bands, compartments (except the second, with title) marbled in black and red and gilt-tooled. Starch-marbled endpapers, edges gilt and gauffered with dotted tooling. In modern cloth case.
RMK I 1359., Erdős: 9.