Vernacular Bible Translations and the Roman Inquisition in Italian History between the xvi and xviii Centuries

Abstract

Recent studies highlight the methods by which inquisitorial censorship permanently modified the production and diffusion of Italian culture, as well as knowledge and circulation of the Bible in Italy. The present article intends to analyze these studies, which consider the impact of the Bible’s disappearance from Catholics’ spiritual and cultural horizons, particularly those of Italian-speaking Catholics. Reconstruction of the circumstances that resulted in the decision approved in the Index of 1596, which prohibited even partial translations of the Bible, has sparked a lively debate. Those choices were partially corrected during Benedict XIV - Lambertini’s pontificate (1740-58). The Index of 1758 rendered the translation of all, or part, of the Scripture possible but this change, as the caution and ambiguity highlighted by the decision- making process show, was introduced to encourage the highest possible fidelity to the 1596 Index, in line with the concrete conditions of the censorship operation of the 18th century. The article is divided into three parts: the first addresses the current debate; the second analyzes the reasons and context that led to the decision to ban all vernacular translations of the Bible, from the 1559 Index to the 1596 Index; and the third analyzes the reasons and context for the elimination of the Rule IV on Bible translation in the 1758 Index.