St. Jerome versus Sanctes Pagnino in the Reception and Inquisitorial Process of the Polyglot Bible of Antwerp (1568–1577)

Abstract

The controversial reception of the Polyglot Bible of Antwerp (1569–1573) was a result of the religious conflict of Post-Tridentine Europe between the rigorist defenders of the Vulgate of St. Jerome, who fiercely attacked this new Bible, and the Hebraists, who claimed the value of the sources even to correct the mistakes of the Vulgate. The Polyglot of Antwerp, edited by the most prominent Hebraists of the moment, was printed with the Latin column of St. Jerome. However, the editors also published the translation of the Hebraist Sanctes Pagnino, after revising it, within the Apparatus Sacer, the last three volumes of the Bible that included all sorts of instruments for studying the Sacred Text. This was one of the main reasons why the immediate reception of the most critical Bible of the 16th century stirred up so much controversy that it became subject to an inquisitorial process in 1577. In the present contribution, this polemic reception is studied mainly in light of what new texts recently published on that process tell about the philological and theological confrontation of different translations of the same biblical passages made by St. Jerome, on the one hand, and by Sanctes Pagnino, on the other one.