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Subject: TMR 13.03.08 von Habsburg, Catholic and Protestant Translations of
the Imitatio Christi (Wranovix)
von Habsburg, Maximilian. <i>Catholic and Protestant Translations of
the Imitatio Christi, 1425-1650: From Late Medieval Classic to Early
Modern Bestseller</i>. Series: St. Andrews Studies in Reformation
History. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011. Pp. x, 365.
$134.95. ISBN-13: 9780754667650.
Reviewed by Matthew Wranovix
University of New Haven
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The <i>Imitatio Christi</i>'s claim to be a classic of western
religious literature is well founded. With over 800 surviving
manuscripts dating to within a century of its composition, at least
639 printed editions between 1500 and 1650, and translation into
languages both predictable (English, French, Dutch, German) and exotic
(Ukrainian, Chinese), the text was easily the most widespread work of
late medieval devotion (2, 184). That Pope Sixtus V (d. 1590) offered
an indulgence to anyone who read the work in Japanese translation is a
further testament to its ubiquity (194).
Given this success, one would be tempted to identify the
<i>Imitatio</i> as a universal work of literature, one that was and is
able to transcend the temporal and cultural confines of its origins.
And indeed some historians have done so. How else could a text that
emerged from the late medieval <i>devotio moderna</i> appeal to
monastic reformers, both Catholic and Protestant lay readers, and the
Jesuits? But the author of the work under review, Maximilian von
Habsburg, warns against just such a view. He argues that "The success
of the <i>Imitatio</i> cannot be explained by separating it from its
contemporary culture...One can only fully appreciate the
<i>Imitatio</i>'s appeal by relating different editions to the
religious cultures from which they emerged" (2).
Influenced by historians such as Caroline Walker Bynum, John van Engen,
Brad Gregory, R. N. Swanson, and Eamon Duffy, von Habsburg is more
interested in piety than doctrine and attempts to situate devotional
forms, in this case the printing and translation of the
<i>Imitatio</i>, in their social contexts. This emphasis on piety
allows von Habsburg to reveal something often obscured by the dust of
doctrinal scuffles--the strong parallels between late medieval and
early modern spirituality (247).
To do this von Habsburg focuses on the history of the text itself--
when, where, and by whom the text was printed and translated. Aside
from the raw data provided by this survey (usefully summarized in a
short title catalogue at the end of the book), he also takes as his
evidence editorial prefaces and careful comparisons of different Latin
editions as well as translations of the text into English and French.
Such an approach allows von Habsburg to gain much more nuanced insight
into the history of the text than the mere counting of editions would
allow. Using this method, von Habsburg advances four main arguments:
that the origins of the text in the <i>devotio moderna</i> aided its
rapid diffusion; that early translators adapted the text for a lay
audience; that Protestant editors and translators removed overtly
Catholic language to make the text palatable to Protestant readers;
and that previous historians have underestimated the parallels between
the piety of the <i>Imitatio</i> and that of the Jesuits.
von Habsburg agrees with the general consensus that Thomas á Kempis
was the author of the <i>Imitatio</i>, but he is ultimately not much
interested in the author debate (2-4). Of greater importance for von
Habsburg is that the text clearly emerged from the <i>devotio
moderna</i>, a late medieval reform movement that under the early
leadership of Gerard Groote (d. 1384) promoted the idea that lay men
and women could live communal lives of reading, prayer, and
contemplation without monastic vows. The men and women in these
communities became known as the Brothers and Sisters of the Common
Life. After Groote's death, part of the movement did form a monastic
wing under the rule of St. Augustine, the Windesheim Congregation.
Thomas spent time with the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer and
later became an Augustinian canon in the monastery of Mount St. Agnes
where he supervised the novices (37).
Far from a unified work, the <i>Imitatio</i> was a compilation of four
books. The first lamented the depths of human depravity and weakness
and taught the reader contempt for worldly values; the second gave
instructions for developing an interior spiritual life; the third was
an extended dialogue between a disciple and Jesus; and the fourth
helped prepare the reader for worthy reception of the Eucharist.
Previous historians, notably Regnerius Post, have argued that the
<i>Imitatio</i> was written exclusively for monks. Obedience, humility,
patience, suffering, silence, and a contempt for worldly values are
held up as the essential virtues of a good Christian, while Book Four
is addressed explicitly to priests. Although von Habsburg admits that
the text contains scattered references to the monastic life, he argues
that the <i>Imitatio</i> was intended for all members of the
<i>devotio moderna</i>, the Augustinian canons, the Brothers and
Sisters of the Common Life, and even the lay men and women drawn to
the movement. According to von Habsburg, the values identified by Post
as monastic had equal relevance to lay men and women drawn to the
spiritual life (43-47).
von Habsburg in my opinion understates the amount of explicitly
monastic language in the <i>Imitatio</i>. Book One is littered with
explicit references to monasticism (I. 9, 17, 18, 19, 25) and several
passages in Book Three imply that the disciple engaged in dialogue
with Christ is in fact a monk (III. 10). For example, towards the end
of Book Three, when the disciple accepts his cross, he states, "I have
received the cross, yes, I have accepted it from Your hands. You have
placed it upon me and I will support and sustain it until I die. The
life of a good monk is indeed a cross, but it is also his guide to
paradise. Now that we are on our way, we must not go backward nor
abandon our purpose" (III. 56) [1].
Any effort to identify the originally intended audience for the work
as a whole, however, is doomed by the text's heterogeneous origins. As
von Habsburg himself notes, the <i>Imitatio</i> is not a unified work,
but rather a collection of four books each of which once existed
independently and which are themselves composed of loosely connected
aphoristic expressions, short commentaries, or dialogues. The
flexibility of the <i>Imitatio</i>, a text that simultaneously
appealed to both monastic and lay audiences, is at least partially due
to the fact that different passages were originally written for
different audiences and only later collected together.
In Chapter Four, von Habsburg traces the spread of the <i>Imitatio</i>
in Europe up to 1530. The emergence of the <i>devotio moderna</i> in
the Netherlands gave the text easy access to Dutch, German, and French
markets, while the movement's emphasis on the spiritual benefits of
copying devotional works ensured the steady production of new copies.
The rapid expansion of the Windesheim Congregation helped bring the
text to large areas of Belgium, the Netherlands, and northwestern
Germany (53). The <i>Imitatio</i> was well-positioned, therefore, to
benefit from the printing press. Early printers were quite
conservative and tended to print what they knew would sell. First
printed in 1472 in Augsburg, the <i>Imitatio</i> was printed more than
100 times, in both Latin and the vernacular, before 1530 (62-63). In
addition to love of profit, personal feelings of piety among printers
and patronage from the wealthy and powerful also helped to ensure a
steady stream of printed editions.
In Chapter Five, a close examination of English and French
translations of the <i>Imitatio</i> reveal that translators were not
entirely faithful to the original text. In both England and France, an
early translation that was relatively faithful to the Latin was
superseded by a later translation that catered more directly to a lay
audience. von Habsburg notes that translators adapted the text for lay
consumption by removing monastic terminology, moderating some of the
more severe passages in order to emphasize God as a God of love, and
adding both emotional reflections on Christ's suffering and short
explanatory phrases.
Chapters Six–Eight are perhaps the most fascinating portion of the
book. Here, von Habsburg turns to the fate of the <i>Imitatio</i> in
the Protestant world. How could a book so steeped in late medieval
spirituality succeed among Protestants? In Lutheran and Calvinist
areas, it did not. Luther was supposedly unaware of the work, but the
<i>Imitatio</i>'s consistent references to human merit and the value
of suffering would have smacked of works righteousness to Lutheran
readers. In southwestern Germany, Zurich, and England, however, the
text found a readier reception. Amazingly, 15 of the 16 German
editions of the <i>Imitatio</i> between 1531 and 1559 were printed in
Protestant centers (113). The first Protestant translation, most
likely the work of Caspar Schwenckfeld, was printed in 1531. Leo Jud,
a prominent Zurich reformer, undertook a translation of his own that
was printed for the first time in 1539. Sebastian Castellio, a
Protestant humanist, translated the <i>Imitatio</i> into classical
Latin in 1563; his edition became the source text for Edward Hake's
translation into English in 1567. Hake's printer, Henry Denham, would
later commission another English translation from Thomas Rogers (111-
118).
Just as Catholic translators adapted the text to a lay audience,
Protestant translators adapted the text to theirs. Predictably none of
them included Book Four, but they also modified the text in the first
three books. "Fidelity to a specific author was replaced by the
necessity of being faithful to the Bible" (127). Protestant
translators removed anything that did not conform to Protestant
doctrine such as references to monasticism, intercessory prayers to
saints, purgatory, and human merit. They also intensified the
Christocentricity of the text by adding in the word "Christ" wherever
possible. Suitably purged of its "papist" elements, the accessibility
of the text, its emphasis on silent contemplation, its criticism of
human depravity, its call for repentance and humility, and its
Christocentric spirituality were attractive to a Protestant audience
(146). Remarkably, however, the Protestant translators did not add
explicitly Protestant elements to the text; what was left was a book
that was neither explicitly Catholic nor Protestant. Some copies of
Schwenckfeld's translations have provenances from Jesuit colleges
(144).
The <i>Imitatio</i> attracted readers otherwise separated by deep
confessional divides. Schwenckfeld, a spiritualist who broke with
Luther over the doctrine of the Real Presence and <i>sola
scriptura</i>, was attracted by the text's interiority. He found
appealing the <i>Imitatio</i>'s claim that external rites and even the
Gospel itself were of no effect unless the believer was moved by the
spirit (149-150). Hake and Rogers, on the other hand, were interested
in establishing a devotional core for the newly established
Elizabethan Church. To adapt the <i>Imitatio</i> to this purpose, Hake
dropped Book 4 and instead substituted his own <i>The perpetuall
reioyce of the Godly</i>, which dwelt on the Protestant sacraments,
the Lord's Supper and Baptism. Hake saw the <i>Imitatio</i> as a way
to "nurture a piety which was to be professed in a Church
distinguished by a Protestant sacramental framework" (161). It is a
testament to the <i>Imitatio</i>'s flexibility that it attracted both
spiritualists like Schwenckfeld, whose "conception of the church
excluded the need for sacraments," and Hake and Rogers, who both
promoted an institutional, sacramental Church.
As remarkable is the adoption of the text by the Jesuits, a topic
discussed in Chapters Nine-Eleven. Ignatius discovered the
<i>Imitatio</i> at Manresa during a difficult period of his life when
he was devoted to extreme and punishing forms of outward piety. The
<i>Imitatio</i> helped Ignatius overcome a spiritual crisis through
its emphasis on inward rather than external piety and its insistence
that believers should attribute merit to Christ rather than themselves.
Convinced of the book's value, Ignatius recommended it as appropriate
reading for the second week of the <i>Exercises</i> (181). Thanks to
reverence for Ignatius and the <i>Exercises</i>, the <i>Imitatio</i>
enjoyed a wide readership among Jesuits. The text was read at Jesuit
colleges, printed by presses associated with the order, and translated
into numerous languages (182-196).
von Habsburg criticizes previous historians, most notably John
O'Malley, who saw a contradiction between the monastic values, dim
Augustinian view of human nature, and emphasis on passive
contemplation in the <i>Imitatio</i> and the active, missionary piety
of the Jesuits. von Habsburg, in contrast, sees deep similarities
between the <i>Exercises</i> and the <i>Imitatio</i>; both texts
stress the need for solitary self-examination and share an emphasis on
the suffering and Passion of Christ. The <i>Imitatio</i>, according to
von Habsburg, was important to Jesuits because it reminded them that
"the active life had to be rooted in contemplation" (214); the
<i>Imitatio</i> provided the "inward preparation" necessary to
minister successfully in the world (216). Although it is true that
O'Malley saw the adoption of the text by the Jesuits as odd in some
respects, he too acknowledged the importance of "the call to
inwardness" to Jesuit spirituality: "It [the <i>Imitatio</i>] and
works like it that the Jesuits cultivated were not, therefore,
extrinsic to their theological enterprise, but helped undergird it."
[2]
The <i>Imitatio</i> flourished because of its simplicity, its
flexibility, and, not least, the willingness of editors and
translators to alter the original text. That a text born of the
<i>devotio moderna</i> with clear monastic overtones could, with only
a few modifications, be read by devout laypersons, Protestant
spiritualists, moderate Anglicans, and Jesuit missionaries reveals the
devotional similarities among communities riven by doctrinal
differences.
von Habsburg's book began as a doctoral thesis at the Reformation
Studies Institute at the University of St. Andrews (vii), and it is
clear from this book that he is a very promising scholar. The study
does have two limitations that he acknowledges. First, the study of
editions and translations is limited primarily to the German, French
and English-speaking worlds. Second, the lack of annotations in the
copies he examined also prevented discussion of the text's reception
by its readers (246). There are a few instances of repetition (53, 59,
212) and some puzzling organizational choices. I am not sure, for
example, why his argument that John O'Malley underestimated the
parallels between the piety of the <i>Imitatio</i> and the Jesuits
begins in Chapter Ten, but concludes at the beginning of Chapter
Eleven. But these are minor quibbles. This is an important book that
will be read with interest by historians of medieval and early modern
religion.
--------
Notes:
1. Translation that of Joseph Tylenda, <i>The Imitation of Christ in
Four Books</i> (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1984), 216.
2. John O'Malley, <i>The First Jesuits</i> (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1993), 266.
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