Scope and argument

The principal aim of this chapter is to characterise the medieval translations of the Bible into French and to describe their purpose and function. To do this, a survey will be undertaken, presented in chronological order, which will show considerable stability in translation types over many centuries. The number of translations, with over 240 known from the tenth century to 1450 (and well over 300 before the Council of Trent), precludes description of individual texts, whose production peaks in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. These peaks belong respectively to the Old French (c. 800–1300), and the Middle French (c. 1300–1550) periods, and reflect only Christian translation activity, since Jewish writers in their Hebrew texts supply occasional French glosses but do not produce extended translations. A secondary aim is to contextualise Bible translation within the kingdom of France, a kingdom in which, at its creation as western Francia in 843, Latin was the language of government and religion, Germanic and Romance varieties were spoken by the dominant families, and more than one of these varieties had, or would have in the future, a written form. This put these languages in a relation of diglossia, such that Latin was used for the so-called High functions – including religion, administration and education (hereafter H-function) – and a vernacular, Romance or Germanic or both, was used for the so-called Low functions – including conversation with family and friends (hereafter L-function). The vernaculars were, by 843, beginning to be used in writing, with the potential of competing with Latin for H-function uses.

The two earliest French Bible translations, both dating to the tenth century, a bilingual sermon on Jonah now in Valenciennes and a verse Passion now in Clermont-Ferrand, show, first, that competition with H-function Latin as the language of religion was beginning experimentally on the frontier with Germanic (Jonah) and with Occitan (Passion) and, second, a focus on the message of individual salvation through interpreting source texts, allowing their detail to be treated more freely than a literal approach to translation would allow.