Paulus Bombasius, or Paolo Bombace (1476–1527) was a prefect of the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library ( la, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, it, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally es ...

. He was born in

Bologne Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nati ...

in a noble family. In 1502 he delivered an oration to

Louis XII Louis XII (27 June 14621 January 1515), was King of France from 1498 to 1515 and King of Naples from 1501 to 1504. The son of Charles, Duke of Orléans, and Maria of Cleves, he succeeded his 2nd cousin once removed and brother in law at the tim ...

in the name of the Senate of Bologna. From 1505 to 1512 he was public reader in Rhetoric and Poetry. In 1513 Bombasius went to

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, and then to Rome. In Rome he became secretary to Cardinal Antonio Pucci. In 1518 he was made Chevalier of St. Peter.''Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami'', ed. P.S. Allen, tom. I-XII, 1484-1514, Oxonii, In Typographeo Clarendoniano, 1906, s. 443.Elpidio Mioni
BOMBACE (Bombasius), Paolo
– Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 11 (1969) Bombasius was in regular correspondence with

Desiderius Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' wa ...

. After Erasmus published his ''

Novum Instrumentum omne ''Novum Instrumentum omne'' was the first published New Testament in Greek (1516). It was prepared by Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) and printed by Johann Froben (1460–1527) of Basel. Although the first printed Greek New Testament was the ...

'' (1516), Bombasius criticised it because the Greek text departed from the common readings of the

Vulgate The Vulgate (; also called (Bible in common tongue), ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels u ...

. He informed Erasmus that the Vatican Library held an ancient copy of the Scriptures (i.e.

Codex Vaticanus The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), designated by siglum B or 03 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), δ 1 ( von Soden), is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old ...

). He sent two extracts from this manuscript containing 1 John 4:1-3 and 1 John 5:7-11 (it did not include ''

Comma Johanneum The Johannine Comma ( la, Comma Johanneum) is an interpolated phrase (comma) in verses of the First Epistle of John. The text (with the comma in italics and enclosed by square brackets) in the King James Bible reads: It became a touchpoint fo ...

''). S. P. Tregelles, ''An Introduction to the Critical study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures'', London 1856, p. 108. A number of unpublished letters of Bombasius are housed in the Vatican Library.

References

{{Authority control Prefects of the Vatican Library 1476 births 1527 deaths Nobility from Bologna

See also

References