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[GEORGIAN]
Alphabetum Ibericum… Pater Noster…
Rome; Propaganda Fide, 1629.
£3950.00
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FIRST EDITION 8vo, ff. [xvi]. Mostly Georgian letter, some Roman. Woodcut printer's device to t-p showing the spreading of the Word, woodcut tailpieces. Light foxing and age browning in places, many lower margins untrimmed. A very good copy for such an ephemeral work, in modern boards. The first work printed by the Vatican's celebrated Propaganda Fide press, and the first book printed in Georgian. The text begins with the thirty-six letters of the Iberian or Georgian alphabet, presented in four columns - formation, name (in both alphabets) and force. Some letters have additional italic comments to the side, referring to and giving the same phoneme in other languages including Arabic, Hebrew and Greek, entailing the use of type in 5 completely different alphabets on a single page. The second subsection explains the numerous ligatures when Georgian letters are combined. The third section exemplifies the use of Georgian by setting out the text in that language of The Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, Nicene and Apostle's Creeds, Corporal Works of Mercy, The Seven Sacraments, The Ten Commandments, concluding with the Canticle of the Virgin Mary, which of course the missionary priest would know in Latin and perhaps his own language. The missionaries were taught Georgian by Nicephorus Irbach, ambassador of the Georgian King Teimuraz I in Rome, who was responsible for the Georgian of this present work. Accordingly they provided a relatively easy first attempt at translation between the two.
The Sacred Congregation "De Propaganda Fide" is the department of the pontifical administration founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, with the double aim of spreading Christianity in those areas where the Christian message had still not arrived and of defending the faith in those places where heresy had caused it to be questioned. This is the first work printed by the extraordinaryPropaganda Fide press, an offshoot of Tipografia Vaticana, which went on to print texts for the missions in many other exotic alphabets, including most of those of the near, middle and far East. It was the first European press to publish extensively in non-European languages and the first which could claim a global market readership and influence.
BM STC Georgian. CLC R673.
L735
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