BIBLE, GOSPELS, in Arabic and Latin. [Evangelium sanctum , Arabic text edited by Giovanni Battista Raimondi, Latin translation by ?Antonius Sionita]. Rome: Typographia Medicea Orientale, 1591.First edition of the Gospels in Arabic and Latin - a large and unsophisticated copy of a landmark cultural encounter. Evangelium sanctum printed in Arabic only, 1591, was the first book published by the Typographia Medicea Orientale, which had been established at the request of Pope Gregory XIII to print in oriental languages, with the particular purpose of the propagation of the Gospels in the East. This edition, featuring an interlinear Latin translation along the Arabic text, was issued shortly afterwards, in the same year: the first Gospels printed simultaneously in Arabic and in the lingua franca of the Christian West. The Arabic text is printed in Robert Granjon's famous large fount, regarded as the earliest satisfactory Arabic type, and is based on the Alexandrian Vulgate. The work begins with page 9, without a title page or any preliminary matter at all: the intended prefatory matter was apparently never published, and the ‘first’ eight pages were not supplied until the 1619 re-issue. The magnificent sequence of nearly 150 woodcut illustrations represents a remarkable virtual complement to the text. Although the majority of the blocks are unsigned, a number bear the monograms of the Italian painter, draughtsman and printmaker Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630) as artist, and Leonardo Parasole (c.1570-c.1630) as cutter. The woodcuts are remarkable examples of Tempesta's work, notable for their clarity of composition and their didactic narrative of the episodes depicted. Brunet II, 1122-1123; DMH 1637; cf. Harvard Italian 64 (Arabic edition).