# The Complutensian Polyglot Bible > Arnao Guillen de Brocar - 1514-1517 (printed); papal license 1520; first sale c. 1521-1522 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/arnao-guillen-de-brocar/complutensian-polyglot-bible-ucm-madrid/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-27 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Arnao Guillen de Brocar - **Date:** 1514-1517 (printed); papal license 1520; first sale c. 1521-1522 - **Medium:** Letterpress printing on paper, gothic and roman and Greek and Hebrew type, six volumes bound in pasteboard with gilt tooling and the superlibro of Cardinal Cisneros - **Dimensions:** Six volumes, folio format (approx. 36 x 25 cm per volume, untrimmed) - **Object type:** Printed book - **Period:** Spanish Renaissance, early sixteenth century - **Current location:** Biblioteca Historica Marques de Valdecilla, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary This is one specific surviving set of the first printed polyglot Bible: six folio volumes produced at Alcala de Henares between 1514 and 1517 under the patronage of Cardinal Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros, printed by Arnao Guillen de Brocar, and held without interruption by the library of the University Cisneros himself founded. All six volumes carry his own gilt-stamped superlibro on their bindings. That university became, after an 1836 royal order moved it to the capital, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, whose Biblioteca Historica still catalogues this set today under the shelfmarks BH FOA 194 and 102-106.The edition set Hebrew, Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate and, in the Pentateuch, Aramaic Targum Onkelos side by side on the page for the first time in print, on the strength of manuscripts Cisneros bought, borrowed from the Vatican Library and the library of St Mark's in Venice, and commissioned from his own scholars. Cisneros died in November 1517, five months after the printing was finished, without ever seeing a copy sold: a papal license and a four-year rival privilege granted to Erasmus's rushed Greek New Testament held the edition off the market until around 1521-1522.This record treats the widely repeated print-run and survival figures with the caution the evidence supports, separates a documented university tradition from a later scholar's disputed correction of it, and keeps this one library's five-century custody of its own set distinct from what is true only of a different institution's copy. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1514-1517-1517** Printed at the press of Arnao Guillen de Brocar, Alcala de Henares, for the library of the University of Alcala `[documented]` (origin) This six-volume set was printed for, and bound for, the public library of the University Cisneros founded in Alcala de Henares in 1499. All six volumes are bound uniformly in pasteboard with gilt tooling and the personal heraldic superlibro of Cardinal Cisneros, which the holding library's own catalogue records volume by volume: BH FOA 194 (vol. I, Pentateuch, 1517), BH FOA 102 (vol. II, 1517), BH FOA 103 (vol. III, 1517), BH FOA 104 (vol. IV, 1517), BH FOA 105 (vol. V, New Testament, 1514) and BH FOA 106 (vol. VI, vocabulary and grammar, 1515). - **1517-1836** Library of the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso, University of Alcala de Henares `[documented]` (institutional custody) Cisneros's own prologue describes depositing the project's working copies in 'the Public Library of our University Complutense', and the printed Bible was produced for that same library. The holding institution states that some of the manuscripts Cisneros assembled for the edition remain there today, which corroborates continuous institutional custody of the University's own core collection through this period, though no item-by-item register naming this exact six-volume set in every intervening decade has been located in the sources consulted. - **1836-1841** Universidad Central, Madrid (the University of Alcala under its new name and location) `[documented]` (institutional transfer) A Royal Order of 29 October 1836, issued during the regency of Maria Cristina de Borbon, ordered the progressive transfer of the University of Alcala's faculties to Madrid; the University's library followed in 1841. The old library was first housed in a room at the Salesas Nuevas convent, since the Alcala collection had by then been reduced to some 3,000 surviving volumes of Cisneros's original foundation. - **1841-1999** Universidad Central, later (from 1970) Universidad Complutense de Madrid `[documented]` (institutional custody) The University's old holdings moved again to the former Jesuit Novitiate building on Calle San Bernardo in Madrid between 1842 and 1848-1849, and the institution took the name Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 1970. The Bible remained part of the University's historic fondo antiguo (old holdings) throughout, administered as part of the general library rather than as a separately tracked treasure until the modern Biblioteca Historica was organised. - **1999-present** Biblioteca Historica Marques de Valdecilla, Universidad Complutense de Madrid `[documented]` (consolidation and current custody) In 1999 the University's dispersed old holdings were consolidated into the remodelled Valdecilla pavilion, forming the Biblioteca Historica Marques de Valdecilla, which now catalogues and digitises this set under BH FOA 194 and 102-106 and states its provenance from the University's own Cisneros-era foundation. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **2016-12-05** Sotheby's, The Bible Collection of Dr. Charles Caldwell Ryrie, New York (N09539), lot 148, lot 148 - Estimate: USD 80,000 - 120,000 - Hammer: Not established in the sources consulted - With premium: Not established in the sources consulted - This is NOT the set described in this record. It is a different, privately owned six-volume Complutensian Polyglot (five volumes in eighteenth-century tree calf, the Vocabularium in eighteenth-century mottled calf, with an inscription tracing the Vocabularium volume to the College of Saint Ambrose, Valladolid), included here only as market comparanda for the edition as a whole. The UCM set has never been sold: it has been institutional property since it left Brocar's press. - **2018** Sotheby's, Fine Books and Manuscripts Including Americana, online sale (N09885), lot 176, lot 176 - Estimate: USD 70,000 - 100,000 - Hammer: Not established in the sources consulted - With premium: Not established in the sources consulted - Same provenance description (College of Saint Ambrose, Valladolid, Vocabularium volume) and matching binding and condition notes as the 2016 Ryrie-sale lot above, indicating this is very probably the same physical set re-offered rather than a second example. Included as further market comparanda only; it is not the UCM set and not evidence of any sale of the object described in this record. ## Exhibitions - V Centenario de la Biblia Poliglota Complutense: La Universidad del Renacimiento y el Renacimiento de la Universidad, Biblioteca Historica Marques de Valdecilla, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (29 October 2014 - 27 March 2015, curated by Elisa Ruiz Garcia), 2014-2015 ## Open questions - How many complete sets of the Complutensian Polyglot actually survive today. Figures of about 120, 123 and up to 150 all circulate, but no source consulted for this record cites a named, checkable modern census of holding institutions; the frequently repeated figure of 123 has no traceable footnote in the version of its most common source consulted here. - Whether any of the manuscripts sold to the fireworks-maker Torija in 1746 were genuinely part of the Hebrew and Greek working library assembled for this edition, as the contemporary description claimed, or were unrelated Arabic manuscripts, as Vicente de la Fuente's later examination of the library's own inventories argued. - Whether this exact six-volume set can be traced through a continuous, item-level custody record between 1517 and the modern library's own published account, rather than only through the documented institutional history of the University as a whole. - Which manuscript, or manuscript family, actually underlay the Complutensian Greek New Testament text: the library's own account states that the presumed principal codex, later apparently used again for the Antwerp Polyglot, is believed to have perished in the 1671 Escorial fire, which forecloses direct re-examination. - Whether any documentary record survives of an actual buyer paying the stated six-and-a-half-gold-ducat price for a set at the 1521-1522 first sale, as opposed to the price simply being recorded as the asking price. - How many copies were genuinely lost in the shipwreck en route to Italy around 1521 referenced in King Philip II's later letter; no source consulted gives a specific, sourced number, and a widely circulated figure of 450 could not be traced to any citable source. ## Sources - [1] Biblioteca Historica Marques de Valdecilla, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 'Biblia Poliglota Complutense' (Tesoros de la Biblioteca Historica). - [2] Biblioteca Historica Marques de Valdecilla, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 'La Biblia Poliglota Complutense: un monumento cultural y tipografico' (volume-by-volume catalogue entries giving shelfmarks BH FOA 194 and 102-106, binding description, papal license text and manuscript-source discussion, signed JLGS-M). - [3] Biblioteca Historica Marques de Valdecilla, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 'Manuscritos hebreos' (describes the 21 surviving Hebrew codices assembled by Cisneros for the Polyglot project, still held by the library). - [4] Biblioteca Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Folio Complutense blog, on the 1746 sale of old Hebrew and Greek papers and parchments from the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso library to the Alcala fireworks-maker Torija, the rescue attempt by Antonio Martinez de Quesada, and Vicente de la Fuente's later argument that the codices actually sold were Arabic, not Hebrew or Greek. - [5] Biblioteca Historica Marques de Valdecilla, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 'Traslado de la Universidad Complutense a Madrid' (institutional history of the 1836 Royal Order and the library's move). - [6] Wikipedia, 'Complutensian Polyglot Bible'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the scholarly literature it itself cites, principally Ignacio Garcia Pinilla, Reconsidering the Relationship between the Complutensian Polyglot Bible and Erasmus' Novum Testamentum (Basel: Mohr Siebeck, 2017) and Erika Rummel, Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Brill, 2008). - [7] Wikipedia, 'Novum Instrumentum omne'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with Erika Rummel's and Andrew Brown's scholarly editions of Erasmus. - [8] Dream Alcala / Espana en la Historia, on the date and place of Cardinal Cisneros's death (Roa, 8 November 1517), corroborated by multiple independent Spanish institutional and historical sources consulted. - [9] Sotheby's, 'The Bible Collection of Dr. Charles Caldwell Ryrie', New York, 5 December 2016, lot 148. - [10] Sotheby's, 'Fine Books and Manuscripts Including Americana', online sale, 2018, lot 176. - [11] Wikimedia Commons, File:Biblia Poliglota Complutense.jpg (photograph of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid's own copy, CC0, uploaded by Aella87). - [12] Wikimedia Commons, File:Biblia poliglota complutense - Biblioteca Lazaro Galdiano.jpg (CC0, photographed during the exhibition 'Thirty Masterpieces from the Lazaro Galdiano Library', uploaded by Laci3). - [13] Wikimedia Commons, File:Cisneros' original complutensian polyglot Bible -1.jpg (depicts the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana's copy, per BNE digital reference bdh0000013439; Public Domain Mark). - [14] Wikimedia Commons, File:Biblia Poliglota Complutense (Catedral de Siguenza).jpg (depicts the Siguenza Cathedral copy, CC BY-SA 4.0, photographed by Tiberioclaudio99). - [15] Wikimedia Commons, File:Cardenal cisneros.jpg (fresco portrait of Cisneros by Juan de Borgona, c. 1514, Chapter House, Toledo Cathedral; Public Domain Mark). - [16] Wikimedia Commons, File:Erasmus 1516 title page.JPG (title page of Erasmus's Novum Instrumentum omne, Basel 1516, John Work Garrett Library copy; CC BY-SA 3.0, photographed by Wikimedia Commons user Concord). - [17] Wikipedia (Spanish), 'Biblia poliglota complutense'. Tertiary source, used only for corroborating detail already sourced elsewhere and flagged for replacement with the primary scholarly literature. - [18] Wikipedia (Spanish), 'Arnao Guillen de Brocar', for the printer's biography. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with Julian Martin Abad, La imprenta en Alcala de Henares (1502-1600) (Madrid: Arco Libros, 1991). --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.