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Neo-Latin Verse-Translations of the Bible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

W. Leonard Grant
W. Leonard Grant
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
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Extract

Johannes Gaertner recently published an article on Latin verse-translations of Psalms in which he described at length the history of a “buried and forgotten literary genre” that reached the height of its popularity during the sixteenth century. Psalms, however, was not the only book of the Bible to find itself arrayed in this curious dress, and one may accordingly add a bibliographical footnote to Professor Gaertner's article by noting some of the most important Latin verse-translations of individual books and also of large portions of the Bible, almost invariably written by Germans or Dutchmen: the practice seems to have been largely a phenomenon of the northern Protestant reformation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , July 1959 , pp. 205 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1959

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References

1 Harvard Theological Review XLIX (1956), 271–305. Of course these “translations” were not based on the original Hebrew or Greek texts but on the Latin prose of the Vulgate; for true Latin verse-translation from a different language, cf. Piastra, C. M. “Nota sulle versioni latine della Divina Commedia” Aevum XXX (1956), 267–271, and for Latin prose- and verse-translations from many European vernaculars cf. the present writer's articles in Phoenix VIII (1954), 64–70 and Studies in the Renaissance (Publications of the Renaissance Society of America) I (1954), 120–156.Google Scholar

2 This note will ignore individual brief Neo-Latin poems (like Peter de Fransz's first three eclogues) that are merely poetic modifications of brief, well-known passages of Scripture (in these three instances, the Song of Moses, Psalm 118, and the Nativity-story).

3 A complete version of the Bible in Ciceronian Latin prose was published at Basel in 1551 by Sébastien Châteillon; presumably this translation would have commended itself to Pietro Bembo, who advised Giacopo Sadoleto against the rubbish (nugae) of St. Jerome's Vulgate.

4 One might instance Mantuanus (Giovanni Battista Spagnuoli) and Antonio Geraldini, both religious poets and both noted for the extreme rapidity of their composition of Latin verse: Mantuan, probably the most voluminous Neo-Latin poet who ever put pen to paper, wrote the 2102 lines of part II of the Parthenicae — on St. Catherine of Alexandria — in forty days, merely to pass the time during an enforced summer vacation; Geraldini wrote the 1155 lines of his twelve devotional eclogues in 45 days.

5 We may cite further such outlines, variously entitled, by Rudolf Walter (Zürich, 1543), Johannes Vulteius (Marburg, 1587), Andreas Margiletus (Schmalkalden, 1599), Sébastien Chély (Brunswick, 1603), and Caspar Eurymachaera (Breitschwert; Leipzig, 1615), as well as an unpublished outline of most books by the indefatigable Petrus de Riga mentioned by Friedrich Christian Lesser in his Epistula gratulatoria de poetis latinis Biblicis (Göttingen, 1752).

6 The Historiae primi mundi libri sex ([Brunswick?] 1589) of Melchior Neofanius (Neukirchen) is more Ovidian than Virgilian in tone, diction, and rhythm; the first book in particular (on the Creation) owes much to the Metamorphoses.

7 Also called Drischarus and a Trituribus.

8 Adamson's briefer poems are published (as are those of Johnston, mentioned later) in volume one of Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (Amsterdam, 1637); Hog is best known for his Latin versions of Milton: Paraphrasis poetica in tria Johannis Miltoni … poemata, viz. Paradisum amissum, Paradisum recuperatum, et Samson Agonistem (London, 1690); Comoedia (i.e., Comus) Joannis Miltoni … paraphrastice reddita (London, 1698); Paraphrasis latina in duo poemata, quorum alterum a Miltono (i.e., Lycidas), alterum a Clievelando anglice scriptum fuit (London, 1694). There is an amusing anecdote about Hog's translation of Paradise Lost in the introduction to T. R. Glover's Latin translation (Cambridge [Heffer], 1922) of A Child's Garden of Verses, pp. ix–xi.

9 Leipzig, 1546, 1557, 1562, 1567, 1575, 1578, 1584, 1591, 1597, and 1600; Paris, 1549.

10 Christian Egenolf published a lyric version not only of Psalms but also of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon in his Epodon libri (Frankfurt, 1565).

11 Strassburg, 1566, Antwerp, 1567, Morsee (Morges), 1581, Antwerp, 1582, Herborn, 1588, Geneva, 1590, etc.

12 The choice of metre is unusual, but not nearly so astonishing as its use in a light-hearted epitaph (sixteenth-century) in the church at Burford in Oxfordshire.

13 For example, versions (usually entitled Proverbia Solomonis) by Hartmann Schopper (Dillingen, 1565), Friedrich Dedekind (Magdeburg, 1574), Fridericus Papa (Magdeburg, 1578), Pantaleon Candidus (Weiss; Strassburg, 1598), Radulphus Lemannus (Ethica Christiana; Zürich, 1608), Martin Nessel (Bremen, 1653), and Joachim Breithaupt (Magdeburg, 1717).

14 For instance, those of Caspar Schütz (Wittenberg, 1540), Helius Eobanus Hessus (published with his Psalter; cf. footnote 8 above), Radulphus Lemannus (Basel, 1560), Johannes Vivianus (Antwerp, 1580), Johann Klaj the Elder (Leipzig, 1583), Georgius Remius or Remus in his Spicilegia (Siegen, 1596), Marcus Hassaeus (Rostock, 1589), Jacques Lect in his Sylvae (Zürich, 1609), Laurent Lebrun (Paris, 1653), and Johannes Maurus (Theatrum universale vanitatis; Paris, 1668). The version by Lebrun is particularly skilful; this Jesuit was an excellent Neo-Latin minor poet: his best work appears in his eclogues and his descriptions (modelled on Ovid's Epistulae ex Ponto) of Canada and the Hurons.

15 For instance, those of Willeram, Abbot of Eberg (Hagenau, 1528), Nicholas Henning ([n.p.], 1571), anonymous (Frankfurt, 1574), Théodore de Bèze (Geneva, 1584), François de Monceaux in his Bucolica sacra (Paris, 1587), Petrus Bellaeus (Geneva, 1590), Tobias Trachelius in his Poemata (Leipzig, 1596), another anonymous writer (Zürich, 1598), Paulus Merula (Leyden, 1598), Adam Sieber (Wittenberg, 1609), Johann Burmeister (Goslar, 1614), Arthur Johnston in his excellent version of Psalms (Mittelburg, 1642), and Martin Nessel (Bremen, 1658).

16 Those, for example, by Johannes Cornerus (elegiac; Tübingen, 1572), Joachim Camerarius (Leipzig, 1573), Abraham Loescher (Basel, 1581), Jacobus Latomus the Younger (Antwerp, 1587), Jean Jacquemot (lyric; Geneva, 1591), Otto Henricus Moenius (Hamburg, 1616), Caspar Sanctius (Sanchez, of Cienpoçuelos; Leyden, 1618), and Patrick Adamson (London, 1619).

17 Iacobi Augusti Thuani As fatidicus (Amberg, 1604).

18 Historiae sui temporis in 138 books (Frankfurt, 1628): for some concise critical comment, cf. La grande encyclopédic vol. 30, p. 40. Scholars are not so ready nowadays to regard the Neo-Latin historians as Livian pedants: see Ullman, B. L. “Leonardo Bruni and Humanistic Historiography” in Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Rome, 1955), pp. 321–344Google Scholar; cf. also Reynolds, Beatrice R. “Latin Historiography: A Survey, 1400–1600” Studies in the Renaissance II (1955), 7–66.Google Scholar

19 Elegiac Latin plays were no new thing; earlier examples are discussed in Cohen, Gustave, La comédie latine du moyen âge (Paris, 1931).Google Scholar

20 This does not mean “comic” or “burlesqued”: on the meanings that comicus and comoedia had already acquired in mediaeval Latin cf. Atkins, J. W. H., English Literary Criticism: The Medieval Phase (Cambridge, 1943), p. 106. Other, and more conventional, versions of Tobias are by Matthias Vindocinensis, Louis IX's prime minister (elegiac; Lyon, 1505) and Johann Zorn (Erfurt, 1565).Google Scholar

21 Conventional translations of Judith are by Nicolaus Ludwig (Leipzig, 1569), Michael Hempel (elegiac; Wittenberg, 1594), and Jacobus Cauphillus (James Calfhill, floruit 1560; Altdorf, 1699).

22 A conventional version of Susanna is by Nicholas Henning (elegiac; [n.p.], 1571), published with his version of the Song of Solomon.

23 Cf. Bradner, Leicester, “The Latin Drama of the Renaissance,” Studies in the Renaissance IV (1957), 31–70Google Scholar, in which this branch of the literature is traced from 1314 to 1640.

24 Those by Johann Lorich (elegiac; Ingolstadt, 1544), Johannes Seccervitius (elegiac; Basel, 1556), Heinrich Hermann (Leipzig, 1586), and Nicolaus Siegfried (elegiac; Jena, 1604).

25 The reader will gain some idea of the remarkable extent of the vogue of Neo-Latin pastoral from five essays of mine in Phoenix IX (1955), 19–26; Studies in Philology LIII (1956), 429–451 and LIV (1957), 481–497; Studies in the Renaissance IV (1957), 71–100; and Medievalia et Humanistica XI (1957), 94–98. In addition to these and to the surveys referred to above in footnotes 1 (last article mentioned), 16, and 21 that bring to our attention three other aspects of the now gradually emerging history of Neo-Latin literature, note further Bradner, Leicester, “Neo-Latin Epigram in Italy in the Fifteenth Century,” Medievalia et Humanistica VIII (1954), 62–70Google Scholar and Thomson, D. F. S., “The Latin Epigram in Scotland: The Sixteenth Century,” Phoenix XI (1957), 63–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar