The first fruits of the printing press are understood to be the undated “forty-two line Bible,” usually called the _Mazarin_ Bible, seeing that it was the copy in the library of Cardinal Mazarin that first attracted the attention of bibliographers. The first dated Bible is of the year 1462. Copinger estimates that 124 editions were printed before the close of the fifteenth century, and over 400 during the sixteenth. The first edition in octavo, “for the poor man,” was issued at Basel in 1491 from the Press of Froben, the same printer who prompted Erasmus to prepare the first Greek New Testament. The first edition in Latin with various readings was printed in 1504. In the following year Erasmus published the _Annotationes_ which Laurentius Valla had prepared for the Latin Bible as early as 1444. The year 1528 saw the first really critical edition. It was brought out by Stephen, who used in its preparation three good Paris manuscripts—the Bible of Charles the Bald already referred to, that of St. Denis, and another of the ninth century, the New Testament portion of which has now disappeared. He afterwards published in 1538-40 another edition, for which he employed seventeen manuscripts, and which became the foundation of the present authorised Vulgate. [Sidenote: Henten.] About the same time John =Henten= published a very valuable edition [1547] on the basis of thirty-one manuscripts, in the preparation of which he was assisted by the theologians of Louvain. This was followed in 1573 and 1580 by two further editions containing important annotations by Lucas of Brügge. [Sidenote: Authorised Vulgate.] In the year previous to that in which Henten’s edition appeared, the Council of Trent, in its fourth sitting of the 8th April 1546, decided “ut haec vetus et vulgata editio in publicis lectionibus, disputationibus, praedicationibus et expositionibus pro authentica habeatur,” and at the same time ordained “posthac sacra scriptura, potissimum vero haec ipsa vetus et vulgata editio quam emendatissime imprimatur.” [Sidenote: Sixtine.]