The fidus interpres and the fact of slavery: Rethinking classical and patristic models of translation

Abstract

ABSTRACTCicero and St Jerome are often thought to belong to opposite schools of translation theory. This assumption neglects an important continuity between the two translators, namely their understanding of translation as a master–slave relationship. A far more important discursive break occurred in the work of St Augustine, who was the first to project onto translation the religious role of a fidus servus (faithful slave) in relationship to the divine word. His theorization of how truth could be revealed in both original and translated texts is radically different from our received ideas about the hierarchy of source and target. It also initiated an epistemological shift that would have a profound effect on later Christian translators. The scholar Boethius was the first to use Augustine’s model of translation with secular texts, paving the way for this eschatological theory to take precedence throughout early medieval Europe.