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Beyond a Confessional Paradigm? Richard Simon and the Vernacular Bible
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2024
Abstract
This article presents a new account of Richard Simon's work as a biblical translator. Having first contextualised Simon's views on the vernacular Bible in the contested world of late seventeenth-century French Catholic biblical translation, it then examines how they were engaged with and disputed by contemporaries (in particular, Antoine Arnauld). It contends that Simon's novelty did not consist in applying history and philology to the Bible in order to reach a confessionally neutral version, but rather in reconceptualising the relationship between multiple legitimate biblical translations to craft a new form of Catholic vernacular Bible.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2024
Footnotes
This research was made possible by the funding of the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen as part of the project ‘Richard Simon and Vernacular Biblical Translation in Early Modern France’ (1215023N). I should also like to thank Wim François, Christa Lundberg, Kirsten Macfarlane, John Robertson and the anonymous reader for this Journal for their helpful advice.
References
1 Gow, Andrew, ‘Challenging the Protestant paradigm: Bible reading in lay and urban contexts of the later Middle Ages’, in Heffernan, Thomas J. and Burman, Thomas E. (eds), Scripture and pluralism: reading the Bible in the religiously plural worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Leiden 2005, 161–91Google Scholar.
2 Corbellini, Sabrina, van Duijn, Mart, Folkerts, Suzan and Hoogvliet, Margriet, ‘Challenging the paradigms: holy writ and lay readers in late medieval Europe’, Church History and Religious Culture xciii (2013), 171–88 at p. 173Google Scholar.
3 Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Unclasping the book? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the vernacular Bible’, Journal of British Studies xlii (2003), 141–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 143.
4 See, for example, Lake, Peter, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, Cambridge 1982, 36–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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8 Chédozeau, Bernard, ‘Bossuet et les Protestants: “La voie de charité” et les distributions de livres aux nouveaux convertis (1685–1687)’, Liame: Bulletin du Centre d'Histoire moderne et contemporaine de l'Europe méditerranéenne et de ses périphéries x (2002), 7–131Google Scholar, esp. pp. 17–26, 49–70.
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10 See, especially, Chédozeau, Bernard, La Bible et la liturgie en Français: l’Église tridentine et les traductions bibliques et liturgiques (1600–1789), Paris 1990Google Scholar; Port-Royal et la Bible: un siècle d'or de la Bible en France, 1650–1708, Paris 2007; and Le Nouveau Testament autour de Port-Royal: traductions, commentaires et études (1697–fin du XVIIIe siècle), Paris 2012.
11 For a recent statement of this position see idem, ‘Bibles in French from 1520 to 1750’, in Euan Cameron (ed.), The new Cambridge history of the Bible, III: From 1450 to 1750, Cambridge 2016, 285–304 at pp. 291–304. For additional commentary on Chédozeau's work, and suggested modifications to his schema, see Agten, Els, The Catholic Church and the Dutch Bible: from the Council of Trent to the Jansenist controversy (1564–1733), Leiden 2020CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Auvray, Paul and Monfort, François, ‘Richard Simon d'après des documents inédits ou peu connus’, Oratoriana 1 (1960), 46–69Google Scholar at p. 50: ‘divers ouvrages pleins d’érudition’.
13 A brief summary of these events is provided in Patrick J. Lambe, ‘Biblical criticism and censorship in ancien régime France: the case of Richard Simon’, Harvard Theological Review lxxviii (1985), 149–77.
14 Richard Simon, Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament, Rotterdam 1689; Histoire critique des versions du Nouveau Testament, Rotterdam 1690; and Histoire critique des principaux commentateurs du Nouveau Testament, Rotterdam 1693.
15 For a classic formulation of this view, subsequently widely repeated, see Hazard, Paul, La Crise de la conscience européenne (1680–1715), Paris 1935, 184–202Google Scholar.
16 Twining, T., ‘Richard Simon and the remaking of seventeenth-century biblical criticism’, Erudition and the Republic of Letters iii (2018), 421–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 See, respectively, Dmitri Levitin, ‘European scholarship on the formation of the New Testament canon, c.1700’, in Dmitri Levitin and Ian Maclean (eds), The worlds of knowledge and the classical tradition in the early modern age: comparative approaches, Leiden 2021, 366–433, and ‘From Palestine to Göttingen (via India): Hebrew Matthew and the origins of the synoptic problem’, Erudition and the Republic of Letters vii (2022), 196–247; Kirsten Macfarlane, ‘Christianity as Jewish allegory? Guilielmus Surenhusius, rabbinic hermeneutics, and the Reformed study of the New Testament in the early eighteenth century’, in Piet van Boxel, Kirsten Macfarlane and Joanna Weinberg (eds), The Mishnaic moment: Jewish law among Jews and Christians in early modern Europe, Oxford 2022, 378–400.
18 Antoine-Augustin Bruzen de La Martinière, ‘Éloge historique de Richard Simon prêtre’, in his Lettres choisies de M. Simon, Amsterdam 1730, i. 44.
19 See, for example, Hazard, La Crise, 199; Michel de Certeau, ‘L'Idée de traduction de la Bible au xviième siècle: Sacy et Simon’, Recherches de Science Religieuse lxvi (1978), 73–92; and Chédozeau, Le Nouveau Testament, 67, and ‘Bibles in French’, 303.
20 John Woodbridge, ‘Richard Simon and the Charenton Bible project: the quest for “perfect neutrality” in interpreting Scripture’, in Martin Mulsow and Asaph Ben-Tov (eds), Knowledge and profanation: transgressing the boundaries of religion in premodern scholarship, Leiden 2019, 253–72; Mithen, Nicholas, ‘Richard Simon and the tiers parti’, Church History and Religious Culture cii (2022), 60–82 at p. 80Google Scholar.
21 Richard Simon, Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, Rotterdam 1685, 352.
22 Ibid. sig. ****3r, pp. 8–11, 269–70.
23 Twining, ‘Richard Simon’, 446–60.
24 Simon, Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, 352–3.
25 Ibid. 353–71.
26 Ibid. 354–7.
27 Idem, ‘Lettre à Monsieur l'Abbé P. D. & P. en Th. touchant l'inspiration des Livres Sacrés’, in his De l'Inspiration des livres sacrés: avec une réponse au livre intitulé, defense des sentimens de quelques theologiens de Hollande sur l'histoire critique du Vieux Testament, Rotterdam 1687; Histoire critique des versions du Nouveau Testament; Nouvelles Observations sur le texte et les versions du Nouveau Testament, Paris 1695; and Le Nouveau Testament de nôtre seigneur Jesus-Christ, Trevoux 1702.
28 Idem, ‘Lettre à Monsieur l'Abbé P.’, 14; Histoire critique des versions, 410–14; and Le Nouveau Testament, i, sigs a2r–a3r.
29 See, for example, idem, Histoire critique des versions, 376, 410–14, and Nouvelles Observations, 189–90.
30 Idem, Réponse au livre intitulé, defense des sentimens, 77.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid. 77–8.
34 See the account provided in Jacques Le Brun and John D. Woodbridge, ‘Introduction’, to their Additions aux recherches curieuses sur la diversité des langues et religions d'Edward Brerewood, Paris 1983, 27.
35 Twining, ‘Richard Simon’, 473–84.
36 Claude Nicaise to Jean Le Clerc, 26 Nov. 1691, in Maria Grazia and Mario Sina (eds), Epistolario, II: 1690–1705, Florence 1991, 60.
37 Richard Simon, Bibliothèque critique, Paris [=Trevoux] 1708–10, ii. 464–6.
38 Richard Simon to Jean-Alphonse Turrettini, 14 Nov. 1694, in Paul Auvray, Richard Simon (1638–1712): étude bio-bibliographique, Paris 1974, 217. For a dismissive characterisation of the Nouvelles Observations see ibid. 109.
39 Simon, Nouvelles Observations, sig. a2r–v.
40 Ibid. sigs a3v–a4r.
41 Auvray, Richard Simon, 74–5.
42 Simon, Nouvelle Observations, sigs a2v–a3r.
43 Ibid. sig. a3r.
44 Idem, ‘Lettre à Monsieur l'Abbé P.’, 14.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 See the discussion in idem, Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, 198–9.
48 Idem, Le Nouveau Testament, i, sig. a2r.
49 ‘cette regle qui est vraye dans sa generalité, souffre quelque exception dans les traductions de la Bible en langue vulgaire, qui sont destinées aux usages du peuple’: ibid.
50 Ibid. sigs a2r–a3v.
51 Ibid.
52 On the publication of the ‘Mons’ New Testament, the first edition of which was almost certainly published in Amsterdam, see n. 9 above.
53 For surveys of these works see Chédozeau, Port-Royal et la Bible.
54 Mochizuki, Yuka, ‘Un Prélude à la “guerre civile de la langue Française”: la polémique littéraire autour du Nouveau Testament de Mons’, Chroniques de Port-Royal li (2002), 429–65Google Scholar.
55 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, ms Français 12618, 1–8; Anne Sauvy, Livres saisis à Paris entre 1678 et 1701, The Hague 1972, 5; Daniel Roche, Les Républicains des lettres: gens de culture et lumières au XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1988, 29–46; Raymond Birn, ‘Book production and censorship in France, 1700–1715’, in Kenneth E. Carpenter (ed.), Books and society in history, New York 1983, 145–71.
56 See, for example, Al-Faradzh, Elizaveta, ‘Salvation in the vernacular: the New Testament of Mons and post-Tridentine piety’, Early Modern French Studies xlii (2020), 38–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
57 See Antoine Arnauld, De la lecture de l'Écriture Sainte contre les paradoxes extravagans & impies de Mr. Mallet, Antwerp 1680, at sigs A1r–[A7r] for the terms of this aspect of the debate.
58 Émile Jacques, Les Années d'exil d'Antoine Arnauld (1679–1694), Louvain 1976, 546–66, 667–76.
59 Ibid. 668–9. For more on debates concerning lay biblical reading in the Southern Low Countries in this period see Agten, The Catholic Church and the Dutch Bible.
60 John D. Woodbridge, ‘La “Grande Chasse aux manuscrits”, la controverse eucharistique et Richard Simon’, in Ouzi Elyada and Jacques Le Brun (eds), Conflits politiques, controverses religieuses: essais d'histoire européenne aux 16e-18e siècles, Paris 2002, 143–75.
61 Simon, Histoire critique des versions, 396–434.
62 Ibid. 413–14, and Nouvelles Observations, 300.
63 ‘qui unist en quelque sorte la Version Vulgate & le texte Grec’: Le Nouveau Testament de nostre seigneur Jesus Christ, Mons [=Amsterdam] 1667, sigs [**8v]–***1r, at sig. [**8v].
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 For an account of de Muis's views, closely followed by de Flavigny, see Timothy Twining, The limits of erudition: the Old Testament in post-Reformation Europe, Cambridge 2024 (forthcoming). For de Muis and de Flavigny's potential links to Port-Royal see Jean Lesaulnier, ‘Les Hébraïsants de Port-Royal’, in his Images de Port-Royal, Paris 2002–22, ii. 125–44 at pp. 128–9, and ‘La “Seconde Renaissance” d'un théologien, Antoine Arnauld’, in his Images de Port-Royal, i. 339–59 at p. 356.
68 Arnauld, Antoine, Septiéme Partie des difficultez proposées à Mr. Steyaert, Cologne 1692, 85Google Scholar.
69 Ibid. 95–6.
70 ‘La plus considerable perfection d'une version du Nouveau Testament est de representer autant qu'il se peut quant au sens le premier Original dicté par le Saint Esprit’: ibid. 143–4 at p. 144.
71 Ibid. 126.
72 Ibid. 95–6.
73 Twining, The limits of erudition.
74 Jacques Le Long, Bibliotheca sacra, Paris 1709, ii. 21.
75 Idem, Bibliotheca sacra, ed. Pierre-Nicolas Desmolets, Paris 1723, i. 322.
76 For notice of the auction at which the manuscript was offered see Johann Wilhelm Theodor Leichner to Mathurin Veyssière de La Croze, 26 Feb. 1723, in Johann Ludwig Uhl (ed.), Thesauri epistolici Lacroziani, Leipzig 1742–6, i. 237. Baumgarten was born in 1706 and it consequently seems improbable that he purchased it at this auction.
77 Siegm. Jac. Baumgarten, Nachrichten von merkwürdigen Büchern, Halle 1752–8, lx. 471–6.
78 J. G. Schmid, Bibliothecae Baumgartenianae, Halle 1765–7, iii, appendix p. 34. See, for example, Aug. Bernus, Notice bibliographique sur Richard Simon, Basle 1882, 40, and Jean Steinmann, Richard Simon et les origines de l'exégèse biblique, Paris 1960, 396. The manuscript was identified and briefly described in Le Page Renouf, P., ‘Notice of an unpublished translation of the Pentateuch, by Father Richard Simon of the Oratory’, The Atlantis iv (1863), 259–67Google Scholar, but this was not noted by subsequent scholarship on Simon.
79 J. Hofmann and H. Thurn, Die Handschriften der Hofbibliothek Aschaffenburg, Aschaffenburg 1978, 117. The manuscript's existence was brought to the attention of scholars of Simon's work by Rudolf Smend at a conference in 1985, and briefly referred to in John D. Woodbridge, ‘German responses to the biblical critic Richard Simon: from Leibniz to J. S. Semler’, in Henning Graf Reventlow, Walter Sparn and John Woodbridge (eds), Historische Kritik und biblischer Kanon in der deutschen Aufklärung, Wiesbaden 1988, 65–87 at pp. 79–80. See Bertram Eugene Schwarzbach, ‘Les Sources rabbiniques de la critique biblique de Richard Simon’, in Jean-Robert Armogathe (ed.), Le Grande Siècle et la Bible, Paris 1989, 207–31 at p. 211; Le Brun, Jacques, ‘Conférence de M. Jacques Le Brun’, Annuaire de l’École pratique des hautes études, section des sciences religieuses cv (1996–7), 443–6Google Scholar; and Rudolf Smend, Kritiker und Exegeten: Porträtskizzen zu vier Jahrhunderten alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Göttingen 2017, 69–70 n. 9.
80 Woodbridge, ‘Richard Simon and the Charenton Bible project’.
81 Hofmann and Thurn detail the manuscript's earlier shelfmarks in the library: Die Handschriften, 117.
82 Woodbridge, ‘Richard Simon and the Charenton Bible project’, 256.
83 Ibid. 266–70.
84 Referring to ‘sa Version & ses Notes sur la meilleure partie du Pentateuque’: Simon, Réponse au livre intitulé, defense des sentimens, 78.
85 Simon to Jean-Baptiste du Hamel[?], [s.d.] 1699, in Lettres choisies, iii. 288–9.
86 Woodbridge, ‘Richard Simon and the Charenton Bible project’, 269
87 This point was also made by Adolphe Lods on the basis of Baumgarten's printed extracts. See his ‘Les Parrains de la “Bible du Centenaire” au xviie siècle’, Revue d'histoire et de philosophie religieuses i (1921), 409–27 at pp. 425–7. A full study of the manuscript is currently in progress.
88 Compare Simon, Le Nouveau Testament, i, sig. [i6v], and Hofbibliothek Aschaffenburg, ms 48, fos 1r–3r.
89 On this plan, and these reasons for breaking off the work, see Bruzen de La Martinière, ‘Éloge historique’, 97. This, it is thus contended, is more plausible than Lods's claim that the work might post-date 1702, as suggested in Lods, ‘Les Parrains de la “Bible du Centenaire”’, 426. On the prohibition of Simon's New Testament see Woodbridge, John D., ‘Censure royale et censure épiscopale: le conflit de 1702’, Dix-huitième siècle viii (1976), 333–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
90 See, for example, Simon, Histoire critique des versions, 446–7 (criticising the ‘Mons’ New Testament). On the notion of the literal sense see the discussion in Cummings, Brian, ‘Literally speaking, or, the literal sense from Augustine to Lacan’, Paragraph xxi (1998), 200–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
91 From many such examples see Simon, Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, 386; Histoire critique des versions, 361; Histoire critique des principaux commentateurs, sig. *2r, 46, 244; and Le Nouveau Testament, i, sigs [a6r–a7r].
92 Simon to ‘Monsieur ***’, 1691, in Lettres choisies, iii. 172.
93 See Simon, Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, sigs [***4v]–****1r.
94 Ibid. sigs [***4v]–****1r, 97–101.
95 Idem, Histoire critique du texte du Nouveaux Testament, 244–53; Macfarlane, ‘Christianity as Jewish allegory?’
96 ‘ce qui forme une espece de petite Polyglotte’: Simon, Le Nouveau Testament, i, sig. a5v.
97 ‘ce qui produira le même effet, que si on traduisoit toute l'Ecriture sur les originaux’: ibid. i, sig. a3r.
98 Ibid. i, sig. a3v.
99 ‘entre les mains du peuple la veritable parole de Dieu’: ibid. i, sig. a5r.
100 Ibid. i, sig. a2r.
101 For a brief summary of this scheme see Twining, ‘Richard Simon’, 481–4.
102 Woodbridge, ‘Censure royale’, 333–55.
103 Sheehan, Jonathan, The Enlightenment Bible: translation, scholarship, culture, Princeton 2007, p. xiiiGoogle Scholar; Legapsi, Michael C., The death of Scripture and the rise of biblical studies, Oxford 2010, pp. vii–ixGoogle Scholar; and, generally, Watkins, Daniel J., Berruyer's Bible: public opinion and the politics of enlightenment Catholicism in France, Montreal 2021Google Scholar.