Medieval Vernacular Bibles as Unity, Diversity and Conflict

在中世纪，西欧和中欧因共同的基督教信仰和拉丁圣经的普遍使用而团结在一起。将《伏尔盖特》翻译成白话的工作，在这一时期在欧洲各地都得到了证明，也是一个共同的欧洲项目。翻译者了解彼此的工作，尽管他们的语言和文化传统不同，但他们使用类似的论点来宣传他们的努力。他们指出，存在不同欧洲语言的圣经翻译，作为他们自己工作的先例，并通过提到共同的历史、文学和价值观，甚至是他们几种语言的共同起源来支持他们关于团结的主张。然而，这场国际运动不仅带来了对共同历史的共同使命感和利益，也带来了冲突和分歧。翻译者不得不在众多批评者面前为自己的工作辩护，辩论诸如谁应该获得白话圣经，如何理解它，以及它应该如何翻译以及由谁翻译等问题。这些辩论的参与者，包括门外汉和神职人员，不仅制作了圣经文本的翻译，而且还制作了注释、学术工具和争辩作品。他们写的论文中，圣经翻译问题，以及更广泛的宗教实践和宗教差异问题，奠定了获得知识和教育的机会，并审议了教会和社会的组织和政府。拟议的项目将研究这些文本及其产生的运动，重点是德国和英国中世纪晚期的传统。其目的是研究和比较圣经翻译的传统，以及围绕神学和政治辩论的传统，作为国家语言、文学和学术机构发展的基础，也作为一个共同的欧洲进程。由于一些被广泛认为对理解译者的工作及其背景至关重要的德文和英文文本从未经过编辑，我们将制作它们的学术版本，并在印刷和在线上发表。我们将根据我们以前编辑圣经翻译和争议性作品的经验，制定共同的编辑政策。我们将根据英国和德国这类工作的经验和我们最近开发的方法，使用共同的技术联合发布它们。我们还将出版一卷研究报告，报告我们对编辑文本的研究结果，并对圣经翻译的两种传统及其智力、社会和政治背景进行更广泛的比较研究。我们将在奥格斯堡和牛津组织研讨会，支持我们的合作工作，并使我们能够从我们研究所的同事和学生的参与以及更广泛的欧洲研究人员的参与中受益。我们认为，拟议的工作是朝着整合对几个欧洲国家传统的研究迈出的一步。

During the Middle Ages Western and Central Europe was united by the common Christian faith and the common use of the Latin Bible. The work on the translation of the Vulgate into the vernacular, attested everywhere in Europe in this period, was also a common European project. Translators were aware of each other's work and, despite the diversity of their languages and cultural traditions, used similar arguments to promote their endeavour. They pointed to the existence of biblical translations in different European languages as a precedent to their own work, and supported their claims to unity with references to shared history, literature and values, and even the common origin of several of their languages. Yet this international movement brought with it not only the sense of common purpose and interest in the common past, but also conflicts and divisions. Translators had to defend their work against numerous critics, debating such questions as who should have access to the vernacular Bible, how it should be understood, and how and by whom it should be translated. Participants in these debates, both laymen and clerics, produced not only the renderings of the biblical text, but also commentaries, scholarly tools and polemical works. They wrote treatises where issues of biblical translation, as well as much wider issues of religious practice and religious difference, lay access to knowledge and education, and the organisation and government of the church and society were deliberated. The proposed project will study these texts and the movement that gave rise to them, focussing on the German and English late medieval traditions. The aim is to study and compare the traditions of biblical translation, and surrounding theological and political debates, as foundational to the development of national languages, literatures and academies, but also as a common European process. Since several German and English texts, widely regarded as essential for understanding the translators' work and its background, have never been edited, we will produce their scholarly editions and publish them in print and online. We will develop a common editorial policy based on our previous experience of editing Bible translations and polemical works. We will publish them jointly, using common technologies, based on the experience of such work in the UK and Germany and methods recently developed by ourselves. We will also publish a volume of studies reporting the results of our research into the edited texts, and broader comparative research into the two traditions of biblical translation, and their intellectual, social and political background. We will organize workshops in Augsburg and Oxford that will support our collaborative work and allow us to benefit from the involvement of colleagues and students at our institutaions, and the participation of a broader circle of European researchers. We see the proposed work as a step towards integrating studies of several national European traditions.