Printed First, Published Second

History does not always reward the team that finishes first. Cardinal Cisneros's scholars completed the printing of the Complutensian Polyglot's New Testament volume, the first Greek New Testament ever set in type, in 1514, a full two years before Erasmus's rival edition appeared in Basel. But finishing the print run was not the same as publishing the book. Cisneros, a careful and institutionally minded churchman, held the completed volumes back to seek formal papal approval before releasing them for sale and circulation, a process that dragged on for years and did not conclude until 1520, with the full six-volume Bible not actually reaching booksellers and scholars until 1522.

Erasmus and his publisher Johann Froben felt no such obligation to wait, and their comparatively rushed, cheaper edition reached the market in 1516, four years before the Complutensian New Testament its makers had finished printing years earlier. That gap let Erasmus's edition establish itself first among reformers and translators across Europe, becoming the working Greek text behind Luther's and Tyndale's vernacular Bibles before Cisneros's more carefully prepared edition had even been released for sale. The Complutensian Polyglot remains, by any technical measure, the more meticulous scholarly achievement of the two; it simply lost the race that mattered for influence, a race its own patron's caution helped it lose.