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Croatian Translation of Biblical Passages in Medieval Performative Texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2017

Andrea Radošević*
Affiliation:
Old Church Slavonic Institute, Zagreb
*
*Old Church Slavonic Institute, Demetrova 11, Zagreb 10000, Croatia. E-mail: [email protected].

Abstract

This article will examine the Croatian translations of the biblical parts of medieval Latin performative texts (sermons, dialogues) which were translated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and written in Glagolitic script. The Croatian translators were acquainted with the parts of Scripture which were read during the liturgy. Their knowledge of the Bible was evident in the addition of archaisms typical for Glagolitic liturgical books written in Croatian Church Slavonic. Often the quotations from Scripture were adjusted to the narrator's (or preacher's) voice in different ways, by changing the grammar of the Latin text as well as by shortening or expanding the quotations. Research has shown that one of the main goals of the translators in changing biblical quotations was to improve the performative characteristics of translation, so that the translated text could be orally performed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2017 

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References

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5 Croatian literature was also influenced by the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition, and it thus represents a bridge between Western and Eastern literature: see Petrović, Ivanka, ‘Hagiografsko-legendarna književnost hrvatskog srednjovjekovlja i senjski Marijini mirakuli. Izvori, žanrovske, tematske i tipološke karakteristike’, Slovo 34 (1984), 181201;Google Scholar eadem, ‘Croats’, in Vauchez, André, ed., Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, 2 vols (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar, 1: 384–6, at 385.

6 From the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, Croatian Church Slavonic, a Croatian redaction of Old Church Slavonic, was used as a liturgical language in littoral parts of Croatia. Mihaljević observes that it ‘was never a spoken language since it was constructed in order to support the Christianization of the Slavs. For that purpose two Slavic scripts were created: Glagolitic and Cyrillic’: Milan Mihaljević, ‘Verba dicendi in Croatian Church Slavonic’, Zbornik Matice srpske za filologiju i lingvistiku 54 (2011), 63–77, at 64. In the mid-thirteenth century, Pope Innocent IV gave permission to the Benedictine monks in Omišalj, on the island of Krk, to use a vernacular liturgy and books copied in the Glagolitic script, provided that they also knew Latin. A few years earlier, Benedictines in the Senj diocese had received similar permission: Bratulić, Josip, Sjaj baštine (Split, 1990), 98Google Scholar.

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17 In sermons and other texts about key events from the gospels, the Bible is generally the most frequently cited source: Ocker, Christopher, ‘The Bible in the Fifteenth Century’, in Rubin, Miri and Simons, Walter, eds, CHC, 4: Christianity in Western Europe c.1100–c.1500 (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar, 472–93, at 490–2; Minnis, Alastair, ‘Late Medieval Discussions of compilatio and the Role of the compilator’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 101 (1979), 385421CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 389.

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20 Kienzle, Beverly Mayne, ‘Medieval Sermons and their Performance: Theory and Record’, in Muessig, Carolyn, ed., Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages (Leiden, Boston, MA, and Cologne, 2002), 89124;Google Scholar Kienzle, ‘Introduction’, 155.

21 Carlo Delcorno, ‘Medieval Preaching in Italy (1200–1500)’, in Kienzle, ed., The Sermon, 449–560, at 474.

22 Kienzle, ‘Introduction’, 152.

23 It must not be forgotten that the reader plays an important part in receiving written communication, and this is important in translation: Kelly, Luis G., The True Interpreter: A History of Translation Theory and Practice in the West (Oxford, 1979), 47.Google Scholar

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26 Herolt, Johannes, Sermones Discipuli de tempore et de sanctis cum Promptuario exemplorum et de miraculis Beatae Mariae Virginis (Strasbourg, 1488), 32rGoogle Scholar.

27 Zagreb, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, VIII 126, ‘Disipul B’, fol. 7c.

28 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 32r.

29 ‘Disipul B’, fol. 7c.

30 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 36r.

31 Zagreb, Croatian State Archives, Archdiocese of Krk, G–55 (ZM 57/16), ‘Disipul A’, fol. 14c.

32 Sioned Davies, ‘He was the best Teller of Tales in the World’, in Evelyn Birge Vitz; Nancy Freeman Regalado and Marilyn Lawrence, eds, Performing Medieval Narrative (Woodbridge, 2005), 15–26, at 22.

33 Berardini, Valentina, ‘Performance Indicators in Late Medieval Sermons’, Medieval Sermon Studies 54 (2000), 7586CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 85.

34 Anselmus Cantuariensis, Dialogus beatae Mariae et Anselmi de Passione Domini, PL 159, cols 271–90, at 283c.

35 Zagreb, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, VII 30, ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 95v.

36 PL 159, 281b.

37 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 93v.

38 PL 159, 277a.

39 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 89v.

40 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 31v.

41 ‘Disipul B’, fol. 6d.

42 PL 159, 273c.

43 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 86v.

44 PL 159, 282c.

45 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 95r.

46 PL 159, 284a.

47 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 96r.

48 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 211r.

49 Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, VIa 95, ‘Disipul C’, fol. 51v.

50 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 35v.

51 ‘Disipul B’, fol. 8d.

52 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 89r.

53 ‘Disipul A’, fol. 52d.

54 PL 159, 278d.

55 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 91v.

56 PL 159, 285c.

57 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 97v.

58 PL 159, 277a.

59 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 89v.

60 PL 159, 274a.

61 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 87r.

62 PL 159, 283d.

63 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 95v.

64 PL 159, 275b.

65 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 88r.

66 PL 159, 280c.

67 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 93r.

68 Tandarić, Josip Leonard, Hrvatskoglagoljska liturgijska književnost (Zagreb, 1993), 307–9Google Scholar.

69 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 86r.

70 ‘Disipul B’, fol. 71b.

71 Peregrinus of Oppeln, Sermones Peregrini de tempore [et] de sanctis (Strasbourg, 1493), ‘De sancto Stephano’.

72 Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, IVa 99, ‘Blagdanar popa Andrije’, fol. 10v.

73 Peregrinus, Sermones, ‘De Innocentibus’.

74 ‘Blagdanar popa Andrije’, fol. 14r.

75 In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts, az is most often used when God is speaking. Otherwise, most of the time, ê or ja are used: Damjanović, Stjepan, Tragom jezika hrvatskih glagoljaša (Zagreb, 1984), 126;Google Scholar Hercigonja, Eduard, Nad iskonom hrvatske knjige (Zagreb, 1983), 405.Google Scholar This means that, as Mihaljević observed: ‘God speaks Croatian Church Slavonic, while human beings speak Croatian’: ‘Položaj crkvenoslavenskga jezika’, 232.

76 A parallel for this conclusion is found in Vitz's description of biblical quotation in liturgical texts and sermons: Birge Vitz, Evelyn, ‘Liturgical versus Biblical Citation in Medieval Vernacular Literature’, in Tribute to Jonathan J. G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Art and Architecture, ed. L'Engle, Susan and Huest, Gerlad B. (London 2006), 443–9Google Scholar, at 447.

77 Peregrinus, Sermones, ‘De sancto Thoma’.

78 ‘Blagdanar popa Andrije’, fol. 6r.

79 Ibid., fol. 8v.

80 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 87v.

81 ‘Disipul C’, fol. 172r.

82 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 263v.

83 ‘Disipul B’, fol. 139a.

84 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 49v.

85 ‘Disipul B’, fol. 180a.

86 Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, 179r.

87 ‘Disipul B’, fol. 100c.

88 Fuentes, Amelia Fraga, ‘A Study of the Virgin Mary in the Thirteenth-and Fourteenth-Century English Crucifixion Lyrics’ (Part II), Atlantis 3 (1981), 1623Google Scholar, at 17.

89 PL 159, 286a.

90 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 97v.

91 PL 159, 281b.

92 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 93v.

93 PL 159, 280a.

94 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fol. 92v.

95 PL 159, 285c.

96 ‘Žgombićev zbornik’, fols 96v–97r.