Sixteenth Century Society Conference 2016 (Bruges, 18-20 August 2016)
Reading the Vernacular Bible during the Early Reformation:
Continuities and Discontinuities
Panel code:
Organiser:
Sponsor:
Moderator:
P41F1093
Suzan Folkerts, University of Groningen, Dept. of History ([email protected])
Society for Reformation Research
David van der Linden, University of Groningen, Dept. of History
Panel Abstract This panel contributes to our knowledge of the uses of vernacular Bibles in the
transitional period of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Reformation. Mainstream thinking
about Bible translations and Bible reading in this period is still dominated by the Protestant (and
Catholic) paradigm, which considers the vernacular Bible and its accessibility to lay readers as
achievements of sixteenth-century reform-minded movements, such as Lutheranism. Specialized
scholars develop more nuanced views on this matter. One the one hand, scholars working on
sixteenth-century Bibles question the revolutionary character of the Reformation with regard to
the popularity of the vernacular Bible and the ‘liberation’ of the Bible for laypeople. On the other
hand, scholars working on the ‘long fifteenth century’ investigate the transmission of already
existing medieval vernacular Bible translations and stress the role of laypeople in the process of
transmission. How should we evaluate the Reformation with regard to laypeople’s vernacular
Bible reading and how should we evaluate the role of laypeople? The three speakers in this
panel approach the vernacular Bible through the activities and readership of laypeople
themselves. By analysing traces of readers, such as ex libris, marginalia, notes, and other traces
of use, they contribute to the debate with a sources-based bottom-up approach, challenging the
traditional top-down perspective.
Paper 1:
Margriet Hoogvliet, University of Groningen ([email protected])
Shared Bibles and Confessionally Undefined Bible Translations into French in the Early
Sixteenth Century
Abstract After 1520 the Bible translated into the French vernacular was one of the most
controversial subjects in the polemics between the theologians of the Sorbonne and the
followers of l’Évangélisme and later the Protestants. Modern research has often taken the
confessional polarization at face value and has generally accepted a simple binary division with
regard to biblical reading practices by lay people: Roman Catholics/no vernacular Bibles vs
Protestants/vernacular Bibles with a specific Protestant translation into French. In my paper I
will challenge this idea by discussing textual, codicological, and archival evidence showing that
several Bibles and bible-based texts in French were in circulation that were read by both Roman
Catholic and Protestant lay people. In spite of the controversies, lay people from Roman Catholic
and Protestants backgrounds shared in many aspects a very similar religious reading culture.
Moreover, and in line with Thierry Wanegffelen’s book Ni Rome, ni Genève (1997) I will argue
that many lay people were highly interested in the religious debates of their times and that they
not always made a clear confessional choice.
Bio Margriet Hoogvliet is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen in the
Netherlands, working on a collaborative research project (externally funded) “Cities of Readers:
Religious Literacies in the Long Fifteenth Century” (2015-2020). She specializes in the religious,
cultural, and social history of late medieval and early modern France. Her publications cover a
broad scope of topics and include “Artisans and Religious Reading in Late Medieval Italy and
Northern France (c. 1400 – c. 1520)”, Journal for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43/3 (2013),
pp. 521-544 (with Sabrina Corbellini) and “Encouraging Lay People to Read the Bible in the
French Vernaculars: New Groups of Readers and Textual Communities”, Journal for Church
History and Religious Culture 93 (2013), pp. 239-274.
Paper 2:
Mack P. Holt, George Mason University ([email protected])
From Spoken to Written Word?: Evidence from French and English Vernacular Bibles
Abstract One of the commonplace assumptions about the Reformation is that vernacular
translations of the Bible liberated Scripture from clerical control and gave the laity much greater
direct access to God’s Word. Vernacular translations, in other words, transformed the Bible for
most Europeans from an oral discourse they heard read aloud into a written text that they could
read for themselves. Thus, this paper asks one basic question: Are these common assumptions
about lay Bible reading actually true? An examination of several hundred surviving copies of
sixteenth-century French vernacular Bibles, as well as an analysis of a smaller number of English
Bibles of the period, leads to a very different conclusion. An analysis of readers’ marks,
underlinings, and marginalia of these Bibles suggests strongly that it took a very long time, not
until the seventeenth century, for lay Bible reading at home to achieve the kind of lay reading
popularity that so many histories of the Reformation continue to perpetuate. Indeed, it would
seem that for both Protestants and Catholics of the sixteenth century, the Bible remained for
most of them primarily an oral discourse they heard read aloud to them in church.
Bio Mack P. Holt is Professor of History and received his Ph.D in History from Emory University
in 1982. Before coming to George Mason in 1989 he taught at Harvard and Vanderbilt
universities. His current research includes 1) Branches of the Vine: Reformation and Culture in
Early Modern Burgundy, 1477-1630 (monograph forthcoming), a study of popular religion and
popular politics in the French province of Burgundy during the Reformation and Wars of
Religion; and 2) Reading the Bible in Reformation France (monograph in progress), a study of
how French lay Protestants and Catholics read their Bibles in the sixteenth century, and how we
can use their textual markings, underlinings, marginalia, etc. to understand what they made of
the texts they read. Other publications are The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629 (Cambridge
University Press, 1995; 2nd edition 2005) and (as editor) Adaptations of Calvinism in
Reformation Europe (Ashgate Publishers, 2007).
Paper 3:
Suzan Folkerts, University of Groningen
Dutch Printed Bibles around 1522: The Case of Adriaen van Bergen’s and Jacob van
Liesvelt’s Editions of the New Testament of the Devotio Moderna
Abstract During the 1520s, several new Dutch Bible translations were published, including
Dutch editions of Erasmus’s and Luther’s translations. These new editions have gained lots of
attention from scholars. The existing Middle Dutch translations, which were printed
continuously since 1477, have not received full attention yet, especially editions of complete
Bible books of the New Testament translation of the Devotio Moderna (c. 1390). They play,
however, an important role in the transitional period around 1522, which is the date Luther’s
translation appeared in Dutch. Research has mainly focused on the new elements in printed
Bibles in this transitional period, such as the use of the Greek source text and Lutheran
interpretations. By analysing the 1523 editions of the long existing medieval New Testament by
Adriaen van Bergen and Jacob van Liesvelt, I will show the interaction between old and new.
Moreover, traces of use (readers’ notes, etc.) in existing copies reveal continuities as well.
Medieval reading habits and preferences lived on in the early sixteenth century, and must have
influenced printers’ choices. How should continuities and discontinuities in Dutch printed Bibles
around 1522 be evaluated?
Bio Suzan Folkerts is postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Medieval History at the Dept. of
History of the University of Groningen. In July 2013 she was awarded a NWO Veni research grant
for her project ‘From monastery to market place. Towards a new history of New Testament
translations and urban religious culture in the Low Countries (c. 1450-1540)’. She received her
PhD in 2010 at the University of Groningen for her dissertation Voorbeeld op schrift. De
overlevering en toe-eigening van de vita van Christina Mirabilis in de late middeleeuwen
(Hilversum: Verloren, 2010); translation of title: Written Example. The Transmission and
Appropriation of the Vita of Christina Mirabilis in the Late Middle Ages. Another key publication is
‘Reading the Bible Lessons at Home. Holy Writ and Lay Readers in the Low Countries’, Church
History and Religious Culture, 93 (2013), 215-235.