Between identity and variation: notes on the translation of the Bible du XIIIe siècle (with regard also to other Romance language versions of the Bible)

Abstract

Corpus Masoreticum Working Papers 15

The article aims to verify the degree of translation homogeneity of a basket of selected lemmas from the Bible du XIII^e siècle. This should contribute to the resolution of one of the basic questions that have been raised about this important medieval translation of the Bible: namely, how was it achieved? Is it – as it is claimed – the result of collective work with a clearly visible breakdown? Our analysis will focus first on the music-related headwords (as they could be potentially problematic for a medieval translator), and then cross-reference the data with those of other special cases already highlighted by previous studies. As we shall show, the observation of all the different occurrences of these chosen lemmas makes it possible to identify precise stitches that might correspond to a change of hand (and thus of translator, or textual source).