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The Trilingual College of San Ildefonso and the Making of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Basil Hall
Basil Hall*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

Perhaps the earliest use of trilinguis, to refer to the biblical tongues and the claim to proficiency in them, is in Jerome, Apology against Rufinus, 401 A.D., where Jerome reminded Rufinus of his own status as a scholar, ‘Ego philosophus, rhetor, grammaticus, dialecticus, Hebraeus, Latinus trilinguis’. Erasmus who owed so much to Jerome in biblical studies and in his conception of renewal for the life of the Church and Christian society by such studies, would have omitted ‘dialecticus’ from Jerome’s roll-call of his own attainments. For Erasmus the ‘philosophia Christi’ based on trilingual learning was the ground of renewal in personal and public Christian life, of renewal in the Church, and of renewal in the respublica litterarum. As he saw it, disaster came upon the Church’s thinking when dialectics were introduced into theology, mastered it, and produced ‘some of the pseudo-theologians of our time whose brains are rotten, their language barbarous, their intellects dull, their learning a bed of thorns, their manners rough, their life hypocritical, their talk full of venom, and their hearts as black as ink’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 5: The Church and Academic Learning , 1969 , pp. 114 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1969

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References

Page 114 of note 1 Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, Allen, P. S. and Allen, H. M. (ed.), Oxford, 1906, I, 192–193 Google Scholar.

Page 115 of note 1 op. cit., 412. The reference to the Goths is on 409.

Page 115 of note 2 The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, Cambridge 1963, 38ff.

Page 115 of note 3 Henry, de Vocht, Jerome de Busleyden: His life and Writings, Turnhout 1950, 194 Google Scholar.

Page 116 of note 1 Lefranc, A., Histoire du Collège de France, Paris 1873, 40 Google Scholar.

Page 117 of note 1 Henry, de Vocht, The History of the Collegium Trilingue Lovamense: 1517-1550, Louvain 1951, 20ffGoogle Scholar.

Page 118 of note 1 op. cit., 241.

Page 118 of note 2 op. cit., 379. One witness observed that Wakefield taught Hebrew:’ ... tarn infideliter, ut omnibus crepent esse nauseae’. H. de Vocht states that Adrianus provided the first systematic teaching of Hebrew at Louvain and that therefore, Louvain led the way in establishing stable teaching in Hebrew (375). Later he states that lectures in Hebrew were only given systematically at Alcalá from 1528, and that this teaching may therefore have profited from the Louvain experience. But it will be shown below that Alfonso de Zamora was appointed Professor of Hebrew at Alcalá in 1512 and drew his salary for work well done.

Page 118 of note 3 op. cit., I, 506.

Page 119 of note 1 op. cit., 326. This book was entitled De Trium Linguarum et Studii Theologici Ratione Dialogus, 1518.

Page 119 of note 2 op. cit., II, 287.

Page 119 of note 3 Eusebio Martinez, de Velasco, El Cardenal Ximenes de Cimeros, Madrid, 1883, 164 Google Scholar.

Page 121 of note 1 Lefranc, op. cit., 122 and 146.

Page 121 of note 2 Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos (cited hereafter as RABM), XXXIX, 311.

Page 122 of note 1 RABM, 323, and XX, 415.

Page 122 of note 2 A full account of the establishing of these chairs is in RABM, XXI, 50.

Page 123 of note 1 RABM, XXI, 51.

Page 124 of note 1 de Toro, J. Lopez, Perfiles Humanos de Cisneros, Madrid 1958, 20 Google Scholar.

Page 125 of note 1 Alvar de Gomez, De Rebus gestis a Francisco Ximenio Cisnerio (Spanish translation in MS in the National Library of Madrid, fol. 3, V): si le fuera posibile, de buen grado vomitaria todo lo que de tales materias babia aprendido’.

Page 127 of note 1 When I visited the College of San Bernardo in Madrid, in 1966, which had been closed and its library moved to the College of Law in the University City, there were still available to view among some other books and manuscripts, brought there over a century ago from the disbanded University of Alcalá, three of the seven codices and manuscripts which had survived until the Spanish Civil War. The description I give is from my own observation. The ‘signatura refers to the catalogue number in the Catalogo de los manuscritos existentes en la Bibliotheca del Noviciado de la Universidad Central, ed. de Castro, G. Villa-Amil, Madrid 1878 Google Scholar.

Page 129 of note 1 It is possible that some of these manuscripts or codices for the New Testament still survive at the Vatican Library: it is not known which of them were used at Alcalá. The copy of the Septuagint make from Cardinal Bessarion’s original is among the four lost during the Civil War. Against its catalogue number in San Bernardo is written ‘Quemado’ (burned).

Page 130 of note 1 I could not find these at San Bernardo. It is possible that some of the manuscripts and codices used in the making of the Polyglot of Alcalá may be found in the library of the monastery of El Escorial.

Page 130 of note 2 Juan, de Vallejo, Memorial de la Vida de Fr. J. de Cimeros (ed. by Cerro, A. de la Torre y del), Madrid 1913, 56 Google Scholar.

Page 131 of note 1 There is an excellent account of Alfonso de Zamora in Castro, F. Perez, El Manuscrito Apologetico de Alfonso de Zamora, Madrid, 1950 Google Scholar.

Page 132 of note 1 Castro, , op. cit., LVII Google Scholar.

Page 132 of note 2 Antonio de Nebrija, Tertia Quinquagena.

Page 133 of note 1 Cited in Bataillon, M., Erasme et l’Espagne, Paris 1937, 21 Google Scholar.

Page 134 of note 1 Cf. Glosa sobre las obras de Juan de Mena, Seville, 1512, fol. LIX.

Page 135 of note 1 Cf. his Interpretacion de las palabras castellanos en lengua latina, Salamanca 1492/3?

Page 135 of note 2 Garda Villoslada, R. S. J., and Llorca, B. S. J., Historia de la Iglesia Catolica, Madrid 1967, III, (2nd. edit.), 633, n. 77 Google Scholar.

Page 136 of note 1 Epistola del Maestro de Lebrija al Cardenal. Reprinted in RABM, VIII, 493ff.

Page 137 of note 1 ibid., 495.

Page 138 of note 1 The Spanish version of De Rebus gestis of Alvar de Gomez, fol. 214.

Page 139 of note 1 At the end of MS. 118-Z-21 in the University Library, Madrid. Trans. by P. Castro, El Manoscrito Apologetico, 267.

Page 140 of note 1 Cited by P. Castro, xxiv.

Page 141 of note 1 MS. G-l-4 in the Library of El Escorial, cited by P. Castro, xxviii.

Page 143 of note 1 Victor, Schulderer, Greek Printing Types, 1465-1927, 1927, 10 Google Scholar.

Page 144 of note 1 Alvar de Gomez, De Rebus gestis a Francisco Ximenio Cisnerio, Alcalá de Henares 1561.

Page 145 of note 1 Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of Holy Scripture on the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1903, Part II, Division I, Polyglots, 3. The editors suggest, reasonably, that the date 1520, printed in the papal sanction, is a mistake for 1521, since the Bible was not presented to the Pope until 1521.