How did a movement that originated on the Continent translate and transform on English soil? What are the European roots of English biblicism? How much of the bible trade – and the commerce in ideas – was pan-European rather than insular? This essay, part of a general introduction to the bibles of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, investigates the European background behind the English context. Bibles and ideas flowed across national boundaries, and the Latin replacements of the Vulgate – starting with Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum of 1516 – were a vital resource for educated readers. Erasmus’s annotated New Testament, produced the year before the Luther’s famous incident at the church door, was a source of emulation for subsequent Protestant scholars. These scholars, such as Beza and Tremmelius, continue to improve the Greek and Hebrew sources and worked to refine the Latin translation and its annotations. The Latin bibles profoundly influenced English readers and vernacular translators.