Basel
City on the Rhine where Johann Froben printed Erasmus’s Greek and Latin New Testament in 1516. The university library there keeps a copy.
Basel lies on the Rhine in the north of modern Switzerland. The title page of Erasmus’s New Testament of 1516 gives the place of printing in Latin as apud inclytam Germaniae Basilaeam, at the renowned Basel of Germany, and the colophon names the house of Johann Froben (Erasmus, Novum Instrumentum (1516) title page and colophon). See Erasmus Publishes the Greek New Testament.
What happened here
- 1419 to 1436, firm dateThe Hussites and the Compacts of Basel
After the burning of Jan Hus, Praguers and Taborites defend the lay chalice in arms. A crusade proclaimed by Martin V fails before Prague in 1420, the city states its demands in Four Articles, and in 1436 legates of the Council of Basel concede the chalice at Jihlava.
- 1516, firm dateErasmus Publishes the Greek New Testament
In 1516 the Basel printer Johann Froben issues Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum, the New Testament in Greek with a revised Latin version and notes, dedicated to Pope Leo X. Its preface wishes Scripture translated into every language.
- 1536 to 1541, firm dateCalvin’s Institutes and the Reform of Geneva
John Calvin, a French exile, publishes the Institutes of the Christian Religion at Basel in 1536 and is kept in Geneva by Guillaume Farel. Banished in 1538, he returns in 1541, and the city adopts the church ordinances he asked for.