Petrus Sutor et son plaidoyer contre les traductions de la Bible en langue populaire (1525)

Abstract

In 1525 the Parisian theologian and Carthusian Petrus Sutor published De tralatione Bibliae. In this work heexplained in detail why the lay people’s reading of the Bible (and also of commentaries, annotationes, paraphrases...) was completely unnecessary for their salvation, was anything but advantageous, and was probably even harmful. Simple lay people, illiterate and consumed by their day-to-day worries, were intellectually incapable of understanding the Scriptures. The Bible was better reserved for people who had the time and space for study, who led a spiritual life, and who preferably were disposed toward contemplation. After all, It was Christ Himself who had wanted it in this way (Matt 7,6; Luke 4,20). Only the latter group was able to pierce the Bible’s literal layer and grasp its deeper allegorical sense. Lay people, who lacked the proper theological background, could well become mired in the «cortex», i.e. the external words of Scripture, something which, in turn, made it likely that they would fall in errors and even heresies. This was undoubtedly Sutor’s main argument. Next to the difficulty and obscurity of Scripture itself, reading the Bible in the vernacular evoked different vices among lay people: an improper curiosity regarding things that are none of their business, a lack of care for the natural duties belonging to their lay status, the arrogance to think that they could take part in debating the mysteries of faith contained in Scripture, even at the occasion of illegal conventicles, and, finally, a lack of reverence for the divine book itself. Sutor argued that Bible translations, like those that had been recently published, had to be avoided. The Church would do better to keep to the Vulgate. The «termini» in the Vulgate had been permanently fixed by the Fathers after profound assessment, and signified the Catholic faith in a perfect way. These fixed theological-technical formulations should never be altered by recently-devised arguments and new translations; not least because they were often the vehicle for erroneous teachings.