(3.) Editions of the great printer and scholar Robert Stephens (Stephanus, Estienne, 1503-59), published at Paris in 1546 and 1549, 16mo (called, from the first words of the preface, the O mirificam editions); 1550, in folio; and at Geneva in 1551, 16mo. His son Henry (1528-98) collated the MSS. employed for these editions, which were greatly admired for their excellent type, cast at the expense of the French government.
Stephens's "royal edition" (editio regia) of 1550 is the most celebrated, and the nearest source of the Textus Receptus.* The text was mainly taken from Erasmus (the editions of 1527 and 1535), with marginal readings from the Complutensian edition, and fifteen MSS. of the Paris library, two of them valuable (D and L), but least used. It was republished by F. H. Scrivener, 1859; new edition 1877, with the variations of Beza (1565), Elzevir (1624), Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles.
The edition of 1551, which was published at Geneva (where Robert Stephens spent his last years as a professed Protestant), though chiefly a reprint of the Royal edition of 1550 in inferior style, is remarkable for the versicular division which here appears for the first time, and which Robert Stephens is said to have made on horseback on a journey from Paris to Lyons. The edition contains the Greek text in the middle of the page, with the Latin Vulgate on the inner side, and the Erasmian version on the outer. The versicular division is injudicious, and breaks
tion. Leander Van Ess published an editio Compluto-Erasmica, Tub. 1827. See Reuss, p. 45.
- Reuss (p. 53): "Est haec ipsa editio ex qua derivatur quem nostri textum receptum vulgo vocant, nomine rei minus bene aptato."
