The Bible in the Renaissance: Essays on Biblical Commentary and Translation in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. .

Richard Griffiths, ed. The Bible in the Renaissance: Essays on Biblical Commentary and Translation in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.

(St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, 31.) Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgare Publishing Company, 2001. xvi+ 204 pp. index. illus. $84.95. ISBN: 0-7546-0394-6.

The nine well-chosen essays in this book--the result of conferences held in 1998 under the aegis of the Institute of Romance Studies--offer a broad range of perceptions concerning the place of the Bible in the changing political structures of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Specifically, the essays are concerned with translations of the Bible (English, German, and Welsh); biblical commentaries; biblical allusion in important public texts; and laws concerning the reading and printing of the Bible.

Many of those issues ate addressed in Vincent Strudwick's essay, "English Fears of Disintegration and Modes of Control, 1533-1611." That essay considers both the increased availability of documents from eastern countries, despite the failure of Western and Eastern Christianity to reunite, and the slow arrival of and limited access to English translations of the Bible despite the invention of printing and the Increasing general interest in biblical scholarship. The hesitation to make the English Bible available, the essay argues, was a result not of theological conservatism but of social conservatism--fear that reading the Bible would result in political upheaval.

Three of the other essays are concerned with the proliferation and printing of vernacular translations. John L. Flood's "Martin Luther's Bible Translation in its German and European Context" lists the pre-Reformation Bibles printed in German; discusses the translation's importance in the history of the book; comments on the significance of Luther's language--both the aesthetic quality of the translation and his choice of idiom; and describes the conditions that called for and shaped Luther's work. Henry Wansbrough's essay, "Tyndale," begins by explaining why the Bible in English appeared later than many other vernacular translations and ends with a discussion of its importance in relation to Renaissance theology and all modern translations. Similarly, Ceri Davies' essay, "The Welsh Bible and Renaissance Learning," discusses the relation between Renaissance humanism and two Welsh translations--William Salesbury's and William Morgan's--as well as the 1620 revision by Richard Parry and John Davies.

Two of the essays concern biblical commentaries. Michael J. Heath's "Erasmus and the Psalms" considers the differences between two groups of commentaries: Erasmus' Paraphrases on the New Testament, which succeeded so well as pastoral material, and his much freer and more varied paraphrases of the first four Psalms. The essay offers also an analysis of Erasmus' exegetical method--particularly his abandonment of classical philosophy and his distrust of the literal meaning of Old Testament texts. Michael O'Connor's "A Neglected Facet of Cardinal Cajetan: Biblical Reform in High Renaissance Rome" argues against the idea that the rationale for all Cajetan's biblical commentaries was to support Catholic doctrine. Rather, he says, despite the political pressure resulting from Luther's growing success, Cajeran's work intends to reform "liturgical and devotional life" as well as theology and "patterns of leadership" (80) rather than to defend the church against heretics.

A third group of essays are concerned with the use of the Bible as a source. "Strategies of Biblical Exemplarity in Gil Vicente" by Paulo Cardoso Pereira argues, mainly through numerous quotations, the influence of the Bible on Vicente's early Portuguese drama, especially by way of the medieval tradition of allegory. In a quite different context Luc Borot in "The Bible and Protestant Inculturation" argues that while the Certaine Sermons or Homilies--required reading from every pulpit--are intended to teach English congregations how to be Protestants, the texts are themselves heavily influenced by medieval thought. Another group of sermons--those preached by Savonarola in the two months before he became the leader of the new government in Florence--are analyzed in Michael O'Connor's article, "The Ark and the Temple in Savonarola's Teaching (Winter 1494)." Those sermons, the article argues, mirror Savonarola's discomfort in his roles as both friar and politician as he struggles with prophecy as both a l iterary and a political device.

Taken together, these essays offer an impressively broad view of the way in which many political arguments were located in biblical commentary and translation during the Renaissance. The collection will be valuable to both historians and literary scholars.