The Cologne Fragment of Tyndale’s New Testament (1525)
The surviving sheets of the quarto New Testament that Tyndale began to print at Cologne in 1525 before the city stopped the work: a prologue and the Gospel of Matthew as far as chapter 22.
Read the text at archive.org ↗Opening of the prologue in modern spelling (Parker Society edition, pp. 7–8) ↗
The fragment is all that remains of William Tyndale’s first attempt to print his translation. It begins with a prologue addressed to “brethren and sisters” in which he says that he has translated the New Testament for their spiritual edifying and asks those with better knowledge of the tongues to amend what he has not rendered rightly. The text has printed notes in the margins.
Arber’s facsimile is cited for the fragment itself and for the documents gathered in its introduction. The quarto was abandoned at Cologne; the complete book that followed is the New Testament in English (Worms, 1526).
Cited in
- 1526, firm date