Patronage of the Bible in Sixteenth-Century Spain: A Defence of the Faith or an Attack on Heresy?

Abstract

The last decades of Middle Age and first decades of Early Modern Age in the Iberian Peninsula are offering an exceptional field to analyse the main reasons to understand the promotion of the study of the Bible from a new perspective, leaded by the kings of the Spanish Monarchy. This perspective was essentially different from those one developed until that moment. The study of the original texts in their original languages, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin or Syriac, as well as the participation of specialists in all languages supposed a turning point in the field of biblical studies. The main reasons for that new approach will be analysed in this contribution as well as the two main enterprises emerged during this period: the Complutensian and the Antwerp Polyglots and its connections with the new European humanistic trends.