During the Middle Ages Western and Central Europe were united by a common Christian faith and common use of the Latin Bible. 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 and values, and even the common origin of several of their languages.
This international movement, however, brought with it not only a 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, were deliberated. The project 'Medieval Vernacular Bibles as Unity, Diversity and Conflict' studies these texts and the movement that gave rise to them, focussing on the German and English late-medieval traditions. Our aim is to research and compare the traditions of biblical translation, and surrounding theological and political debates, as foundational to the development of national languages, literatures and academies, and as a common European process.
'Medieval Vernacular Bibles as Unity, Diversity and Conflict' is a result of collaboration between the universities of Oxford and Augsburg. It is funded for three years by the UK-German Funding Initiative in the Humanities (Arts and Humanities Research Council and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).The Oxford team comprises the Principal Investigator, Dr Elizabeth Solopova, and the Post-Doctoral Researcher, Dr Hannah Schühle-Lewis. The German team comprises the Principal Investigator, Professor Freimut Löser, and doctoral students, Stefanie Katzameyer and Domenic Peter.
The project will produce scholarly editions of several German and English texts, widely regarded as essential for understanding the work of medieval translators of the Bible and its background, and publish them in print and online.
The Oxford team are currently editing two polemical treatises, The Thirty-Seven Conclusions of the Lollards and The Bishop’s Oath. The Thirty-Seven Conclusions, surviving in Latin and English versions, consists of statements on a wide range of matters and is clearly affiliated with Lollardy, a proto-Protestant movement, initially inspired by the Oxford theologian John Wyclif (c. 1328-84). The overriding interest of the treatise is the relation of civil and ecclesiastical power, and the relation of moral virtue or vice to the outward governance of each. Only transcripts of the two versions, without commentary, translation or identification of sources, have been published previously.
The Bishop’s Oath is a Lollard commentary on the oath given by a bishop on taking office, probably written by an academic author. It attempts to demonstrate that the oath is incompatible with allegiance to the king of England, and to the law of God, since it demands far-reaching and unquestioning obedience to papal law. It is found in a single manuscript, has never been edited, and is therefore almost entirely unknown to scholars.
The treatises may have originated from the same academic environment as the Wycliffite Bible, with which they share a number of features. The Bible is the first complete translation of the Vulgate in English, produced at the end of the 14th century, around the time when the treatises were written, by the followers of John Wyclif. As part of our work, we will explore the treatises' relationship to the Bible, as well as their wider intellectual context, including Lollard attitudes to priesthood, secular and ecclesiastical power and oath-taking.
The German team are examining a series of texts written by an anonymous layman who worked somewhere on the boundary between the dioceses of Salzburg and Passau, in what is now Austria, between the 1320s and 1350s. Known to modern scholars as the ‘Austrian Bible Translator’ (‘Österreichischer Bibelübersetzer’), his work was only discovered in the 1930s and attracted interest from the 1980s. It is considered to be an important landmark in the history of German vernacular Bibles before Martin Luther. Biblical translations and commentaries of the Austrian Bible Translator are currently studied and published by an ‘interakademisches Projekt’ led by Freimut Löser. It is a joint project of the Bavarian and Berlin-Brandenburg Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and the University of Augsburg. As part of 'Medieval Vernacular Bibles as Unity, Diversity and Conflict', the German team are editing the Translator’s anti-heretical and anti-clerical treatises, which have never been edited or studied in detail.
In addition to the edited texts, we will publish a volume of studies dedicated to broader comparative research into the medieval English and German traditions of biblical translation and religious debate, attempting to position our authors and texts within a wider European intellectual, social and political context. We will also organize conferences in Augsburg and Oxford, inviting the participation of a wider circle of European researchers. We see this work as a step towards integrating the studies of different European cultural and religious traditions.
