The Protestant Latin Bible of the Sixteenth Century 1516-1600

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It is widely recognised that the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages was a central part of the European Reformation of the sixteenth century. Latin had been the language of the Medieval Church and the preserve of scholars and the clergy, and the Latin Bible, known as the Vulgate, was regarded as the standard. Erasmus of Rotterdam created a storm of controversy with his unmasking of the inaccuracies of the Vulgate. Catholic scholars, following Erasmus, undertook revisions of the Vulgate according to the principles of humanist linguistic and text criticism. Protestants, however, did something rather extraordinary. Instead of revising the Vulgate, or even abandoning it, they undertook new translations of the Old and New Testaments from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. During the sixteenth century five complete translations of the Bible, as well as individual books and Testaments, into Latin were undertaken by Lutheran and Reformed scholars. Why? This is the principal research question of this project. These massive Latin Bibles produced by Protestant scholars have received virtually no attention from scholars. This project will remind us that Latin remained the language of the Protestant reformers and that we need to understand more fully the place of Latin in the Reformation. The need for Latin Bibles reflected various dimensions of the new Reformation movement: an accurate Latin Bible was thought to be the necessary basis for translations into the vernacular languages as few among the clergy (their primary readership) were capable of using either Hebrew or Greek; the Latin Bible was also viewed as a means of promoting and propagating particular religious ideas in foreign lands as Latin remained the interactional language of Protestantism; there was also a degree of confessional rivalry as the Protestant churches sought to demonstrate that their scholarship and learning was superior not only to the Catholics, but also to that of other Protestants. Latin Bibles were regarded as symbols of intellectual sophistication and the source of considerable pride to those cities capable of producing them. Thus, they were simultaneously tools of learning, cultural ornaments, and pieces of religious propaganda. This project will set these Bibles in their historical, religious, and linguistic contexts through comparative examinations of the texts, a study of the networks of scholars involved, and an investigation of the purposes for which these Bibles were intended.