Dr Elizabeth Solopova has been awarded a major grant for her project Medieval Vernacular Bibles as Unity, Diversity and Conflict by the the UK-German Funding Initiative in the Humanities (UK Arts and Humanities Research Council—Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). The project will be led by Dr Elizabeth Solopova (University of Oxford) and Prof. Freimut Löser (University of Augsburg).
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 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.
Medieval Vernacular Bibles as Unity, Diversity and Conflict will study polemical and religious 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.
