Caput vicesimumsecundum

At last, then, wishing to condemn the rashness that has made a vernacular translation out of the Latin Bible, we ask first of all: what necessity demands that this translation be made? Someone will say: so that unlettered people and silly women¹ who know no Latin may be able to know Holy Scripture, and so that Scripture itself, which was handed down for the salvation of all, may be more fully spread abroad and understood by all. A fine answer, to be sure! As if knowledge of the whole Bible were necessary to all for salvation, or as if it even belonged to everyone to know the mysteries of Holy Scripture, or, lastly, as if the divine letters could be handled everywhere by everyone without danger. For these things are false. To refute them in order, I have resolved to show first that understanding of the Bible is not necessary for all; next, that its vulgar translation² is exceedingly rash; after that, that it is also most dangerous; and finally, that it is altogether useless.

1. Mulierculae, a contemptuous diminutive of mulier, "woman"; cf. 2 Tim 3:6 (Vulgate mulierculas). ↩
2. "Vulgar" (vulgaris) here means "common, of the people", not "coarse". ↩

First, the crowd at large is not bound to know the whole Bible. Indeed, it cannot. As a rule it is enough for the simple common folk to know the Lord's Prayer, the articles of the faith, the commandments of the Decalogue, the precepts of the Church which are set forth everywhere, and finally what pertains to their own state of life. It is therefore foolish to say that knowledge of the whole of Scripture is necessary for all. For almost everyone would then be bound to the impossible, since most people, whether from slowness of wit, or because of the occupations and cares of this life, or for some other reason, could not know the Bible itself.

But someone will say: granted that not everyone at large is bound to it, still it is useful and wholesome for all without distinction to be occupied in the study of the Bible, and therefore the Bible itself may be set openly before all in a language they can understand. But this answer is frivolous, and it too will be refuted in what follows. Let us pass on, then, to the second point, and prove that translating the Bible into the mother tongue is exceedingly rash.

Moreover, how dangerous it is to entrust the divine Scripture itself to the unlearned and the unlettered for reading is clear from the harms and dangers that can easily come of it in practice. These can be shown partly by authorities and partly by reasons. First of all, the husk of divine Scripture itself kills those who read it. Paul understood this when he said, in the third chapter of Second Corinthians: "For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life."¹ This passage may be understood in various ways: by letter and spirit may be taken the Old and New Testaments, or by letter and spirit may be understood the law and grace. Yet by the letter is also understood the husk of the letter itself, that is, the grammatical sense that the words present at first sight. This sense often kills the reader, since it is frequently false and also gives occasion for sin. By the spirit, however, is understood the true sense of Scripture itself, intended by the Holy Spirit. Though this sense gives life, it is not evident at first sight but must be sought with much labour.

1. 2 Cor 3:6. ↩

But you will say: the simple people will take care to learn the passages that are obscure to them from someone. I ask you, first, how will the unlearned rabble be able to tell which passages are to be taken otherwise than as the words sound, and which are not? Next, where at large will enough learned men be found to teach all the unlearned? These are ravings worse than an old woman's.

But let us go on to other harms. The letter, or the plain word of divine Scripture, does more than kill spiritually, especially through the histories it relates, that is, give a handle for sinning, as we have said. It also commonly supplies an occasion of going astray and falling into heresy. Indeed, almost all the errors against the Catholic faith have come forth from the husk of Holy Scripture wrongly husked. Some heresies, I admit, set out from the muddy springs of the philosophers. But by far the greater part is thought to have sprung from the letter of the sacred page badly understood. The devil, that most cunning inventor of errors, long ago so deluded men outstanding in both talent and learning that he drove them into the most absurd heresies. What, then, pray, do we think he will do among the unlearned rabble, who are swayed by every breath of temptation? Will he not deceive very many by occasion of this sort of vernacular translation? But I beg you: since the apparent discrepancies in the sacred letters are almost countless, how can the simple read them without stumbling? If someone reads of Christ's passion in Mark, "And it was the third hour, and they crucified him,"¹ and reads also what we have in Luke, "And it was about the sixth hour," etc.,² how will he not at once say that the evangelists disagree among themselves, as some said long ago?

1. Mark 15:25. ↩
2. Luke 23:44. ↩

Moreover, reading the divine Scripture itself will easily lead the crowd to despise it. For many will not be able to understand it, at least not properly, and so it will be despised. What is least understood is usually despised easily. So the emperor Julian (whom everyone calls the Apostate), when he had read the sacred letters sent to him and had not understood them piously, foolishly despised them, saying: "I saw, I read, I despised." Basil answered him wisely: "You saw, you read, you did not understand. If you had understood, you would not have despised."¹ So what happened to Julian will easily happen to the unlearned rabble too: they will hold as worthless the Holy Scripture that they can neither understand nor reconcile where its statements seem to conflict with one another.

1. The exchange (in Greek, anegnōn, egnōn, kategnōn) is reported by Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 5.18, who attributes the reply to the bishops and says that some credit it to Basil. ↩

Further, what else (I ask) can come from a vulgar translation of this kind but curiosity, neglect and arrogance? Is it not the vice of curiosity to read things that do the reader more harm than good? Is it not also curious to keep reading things that are beyond one's powers and do not concern one's own station? And what need is there for the simple people to know the great many things in divine Scripture that everywhere rebuke the prelates of the Church and the rulers of the commonwealth? Will such knowledge not lightly drive them to grumbling and contempt?

From spreading abroad a Bible translated into the mother tongue, great irreverence for divine things will easily follow.¹ For the divine books themselves will be handled everywhere, indecently, in profane houses, by silly women, cobblers, tailors, smiths, masons, wool-workers, fullers, and finally by other craftsmen and little men of that sort. Indeed, they will often be put away in unseemly places, when the divine books ought to be handled with great reverence. For even the Jews keep this custom: they never sit next to the sacred books, but place them in a higher place. By this example those Christians ought surely to be covered with deep shame who sometimes handle the sacred books less decently than the books of the heathen.

1. traductae, from traducere. Sutor uses traductio as a synonym of tralatio; both are rendered "translation". ↩

Finally, the Bible translated into vernacular speech will bring no benefit, since nothing that is not understood can produce any use. But it will not be understood by the simple people. Indeed, it cannot even be understood. For what is required for a sound understanding of divine Scripture can hardly ever be ⸢found⸣ among the common folk. For a teacher is needed for a sound understanding of the divine letters. Hence Jerome, writing to Paulinus, says: "I have touched on these things briefly so that you might understand that you cannot enter the ⸢sacred⸣ Scriptures ⸢without a guide⸣ going before you and showing the path."¹ And ⸢elsewhere⸣: "⸢No⸣ art," he says, "is learned without a teacher."² And again in the letters […] ⸢[…] yourself […]⸣ teach.³ And in truth those who ⸢strive⸣ to master any art must ⸢use a teacher⸣. Otherwise they cannot be what they desire to be.

1. Jerome, Letter 53 (to Paulinus), 6. ↩
2. Probably Jerome, Letter 125 (to Rusticus), 15: nulla ars absque magistro discitur. ↩
3. Text lost in this copy (paper damage). ↩

Next, assiduous and diligent labour is needed. For letters, and divine letters above all, are companions of sweat and labour. Moreover, pious study is needed. However assiduous and intense the study may be, unless it is pious it will never be enough for gaining an understanding of Holy Scripture. It will rather hurl the student himself into various errors, as happened to Faustus. The divine Augustine, censuring him, says that he erred about the narrative of the Gospels because he did not have a pious zeal for reading the Gospel.¹ For if he had read the Gospels piously, he would have chosen to inquire piously into the meaning of what was hidden, and into the sense of what seemed contradictory, rather than to condemn them rashly. But since he did not bring pious study, he barked at them, censured them, attacked them. On account of this rashness, a true understanding of the Gospel teaching itself was rightly denied him, the understanding that is given to those who ask, found by those who seek, and opened to those who knock.²

1. Faustus of Milevis, the Manichaean, answered by Augustine in Contra Faustum. The exact place of the words paraphrased here is not identified. ↩
2. Cf. Matt 7:7–8. ↩

Further, if this business is indeed to be carried on profitably and piously, holiness of life is needed. The wise man bears witness to this when he says: "Wisdom will not enter a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins. For the Holy Spirit will flee from deceit, and will withdraw from thoughts that are without understanding."¹ The divine letters too, as Jerome says, are companions of fasting, not of fullness; of continence, not of luxury.

1. Wis 1:4–5. Sutor omits the Vulgate's disciplinae ("the Holy Spirit of discipline"). ↩

In addition, the grace and revelation of the Holy Spirit are needed. "Open (revela) my eyes," says the Psalmist, "and I will consider the wonders of your law."¹ Jerome himself agrees with this in his letter to Paulinus, where he says: "For the law is spiritual, and revelation is needed for it to be understood, so that with unveiled face we may contemplate the glory of God."² And in his commentary on the prophet Hosea: "In the ⸢explanations⸣ of all the prophets," he says, "we need the coming of the Holy Spirit, so that they may be opened by the revelation of him by whose prompting they were written."³ And on Micah, chapter 1: "In expounding the Scriptures we always need the coming of the Holy Spirit of God."

1. Ps 119:18 (Vulgate 118:18). ↩
2. Jerome, Letter 53 (to Paulinus), drawing on Rom 7:14 and 2 Cor 3:18. ↩
3. The print has In epla.na-tionibus, apparently an abbreviated In explanationibus, "in the explanations". ↩

Moreover, the things that belong to the contemplative life are needed: namely prayer, meditation, and leisure or quiet, above all away from the whirlwinds of this world. For whoever longs to make progress in the sacred letters must pour out frequent prayers to God, in the manner of the Psalmist, who often begs God to teach him his statutes.¹ Accordingly Jerome says to Paulinus: "To the one who asks it is given, to the one who knocks it is opened, the one who seeks finds."² He must, I say, meditate continually on the law of the Lord, like the righteous man of whom the psalmist says: "But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he will meditate day and night."³ Jerome also urges ⸢Paulinus⸣ to this when he says: "I beg you, dearest brother, live among these things, meditate on them, ⸢know nothing⸣ else, seek nothing else." He must also enjoy holy leisure and […], above all intraria (so the print; perhaps "inward [quiet]").⁴ For ⸢whoever⸣ wants to give himself fittingly to theological leisure must be stripped of ⸢worldly⸣ cares and business, and of the disturbances that distract the mind.

1. doceat iustificationes suas: the refrain of Ps 119 (Vulgate 118), e.g. vv. 12, 26, 64. ↩
2. Jerome, Letter 53 (to Paulinus), echoing Matt 7:8. ↩
3. Ps 1:2. ↩
4. Text lost in this copy (paper damage). ↩

Finally, a simple heart and a sincere intention are needed. A simple and humble breast is needed so that everything contained in the sacred letters is believed to be true, even if not everything is understood. "We must therefore see to it," says Augustine in a certain letter to Jerome, "that the man who comes to the knowledge of the divine Scriptures is one who thinks of the holy books so holily and truthfully that he would not wish to take pleasure in any part of them for the sake of helpful lies (officiosa mendacia), and would rather pass over what he does not understand than prefer his own heart to that truth."¹ Likewise a sincere intention is needed, so that the sacred letters are learned not for the sake of benefices, not for passing honours, nor, finally, to acquire bare knowledge, but so that one gains a sound, savoury and fruitful understanding of them that leads to right living.

1. Augustine, probably Letter 28 (to Jerome), where the usual text reads per officiosa mendacia. ↩

But when, I ask, will these things I have described be found among the simple and unlearned rabble? How, I say, can the crowd itself readily and generally possess what is scarcely to be found in a few candidates in theology? So, all things carefully considered, it is utterly inept to set out the Bible in the vernacular to be read, since this is neither sound nor necessary, but on the contrary rash, dangerous, and wholly useless and inept, as we have now proved enough and more than enough.

But someone will say: "Granted that the simple people cannot give continual attention to the study of Holy Scripture, they can still do so on feast days, when they are free from work. For there seems to be nothing to which they could apply themselves at such a time better or more fittingly than sacred reading." The answer is, first, that study so broken up and snatched in spare moments carries no weight, since it is not enough for attaining an understanding of Holy Scripture, which demands the whole of one's time and the whole man. Indeed, those who apply themselves continually and vigorously to this business of businesses can scarcely, in the end, gather the rich fruits of a labour that is relentless, but pious.¹ What fruit, then, can be hoped for from study so slack that it seems to have lapsed rather than slackened?

1. improbi, sed pii laboris: cf. Virgil, Georgics 1.145–6, labor omnia vicit improbus. Improbus ("relentless", but also "wicked") is set against pius. ↩

Indeed, in the end they will get as much fruit as schoolboys usually get who go to school only once a week. "Then what," you ask, "will the people do on feast days?" First, of course, they will give more careful attention to examining their conscience, thinking over how they have lived in the time past. Likewise they will attend the divine sacrifice¹ and spiritual things reverently and devoutly the whole morning; they will pour out prayers, turn over God's benefits with an attentive mind, and give thanks to God the giver. After that they will go to the sermon or preaching, to learn how they should live. For they will learn more from an hour's preaching than if they spent the whole day in study or reading. "What," you say, "if there is no preaching?" Let the simpler folk apply themselves to other pious works: let them visit the sick, comfort the desolate, give alms. "What," you say, "if none of these comes their way at the time?" That is very rare. If it does happen, however, they must turn to pious meditations. And it would be far more tolerable to take some honest recreation, fittingly and at a suitable time and place, both to avoid idle leisure, the parent of evil thoughts, and to refresh limbs wearied by the week's labour, than to apply themselves to presumptuous business of this kind. Pious stories may also be read by those who are fonder of reading. For the deeds of the saints, piously read, kindle devotion and are wonderfully good for the simple people.

1. That is, the Mass. ↩

But some little devout person who does not know Latin says: "I too would like to draw something on holy days from the purest spring of the sacred letters, but I cannot unless they are poured into the mother tongue." We answer that the Bible must not be translated into the vernacular for his sake, since there are enough other pious occupations with which illiterate and devout people can occupy themselves on feast days. Nevertheless, to answer his wishes more fully, we say that the Epistles and Gospels¹ that are usually chanted publicly in church and set out and expounded by preachers may be poured into the vernacular with a fitting and faithful explanation. With this translation the simple people ought to be fully content, and they should not desire a vernacular translation (traductio) of the whole Bible. The whole Bible could not everywhere be set out with a fitting exposition, and without explanation it would do more harm than good. For many injuries and dangers would come of it, as has been proved at sufficient length.

1. The lectionary readings of the Mass. ↩

But someone says: "The same evils, or at any rate a great many dangers, can come from the Latin Bible too. Why then do you grant that the Bible may soundly be turned into Latin rather than into the vernacular?" Because, of course, the Latin Bible is reasonable, useful and necessary to the Christian Church, whereas the Bible poured into the vernacular is, on the contrary, rash, useless, dangerous and superfluous. Yet I would not deny that many injuries can come from the Latin Bible incidentally (per accidens). But the Bible itself does not cause this of itself (per se); the abuse of its readers does. There are, I admit, petty grammarians, little rhetoricians, Greeklings, sophists, philosophasters, pettifoggers, theologisers and other smatterers of that kind, vain and presumptuous men, who handle the sacred letters arrogantly and unworthily, interpret them perversely, and teach and flaunt what they have never learned. So great is their rashness that they think it lawful for them, as it is for true theologians who have spent their whole lives in theological study, to dispute about the lofty mysteries of the Bible itself, and finally that the Bible and divine theology befit everyone, just as the catholic faith does. They do not understand that there is a great difference between the faith itself and theology, and that it does not immediately follow that because someone is a believer he is therefore a theologian. I admit, then, that very many injuries befall such presumers and a great many spiritual dangers threaten them, though they themselves do not know it, or even suspect it. Nevertheless, because of their abuse the Latin Bible must be neither picked at nor withheld from public use, since it is useful to many and necessary to the Christian Church as well. But it is not so with the Bible published in the vernacular, as we have sufficiently proved. But enough of this now.

In closing, we would gladly warn the translationists themselves to come to their senses and sing a palinode. We would warn them to remove their translations from circulation, and either to suppress their paraphrases or at least hand them over to learned men for correction, so that they might at last look to their own salvation and to Christendom, which has been thrown into turmoil by new inventions of this kind. But the lyre is played to little asses in vain.¹ For they seem so stupid, so perverse, and in short so blinded, that they refuse to take anything in good part. They refuse, I say, to listen to the wisest men; thinking themselves by far the most learned of all, they set little value on others' advice. So, dismissing these men at last as hopeless, I warn the pious reader to be wholly content with the common Bible, long since approved by the Church. He should neither desire nor admit any other, but drive out utterly those new ones, produced by a hellish spirit. Nor should he in any way read or touch the annotations or commentaries, or more truly paraphrases, of the theologasters themselves, unless he is so steeped in theological letters that he can tell heresies from catholic truths. Learned theologians, I admit, who know how to separate gold from mud, may also read through heretical books, since no danger threatens them from reading of this kind.

1. Proverbial: the ass and the lyre (cf. Erasmus, Adagia, "Asinus ad lyram"). ↩

But alas, in this wretched age the boundaries set by the fathers have for the most part been moved.¹ Indeed, if you survey everything carefully, you will see that the boundaries of the Catholic faith have in large part been moved. You will see that the boundaries of Holy Scripture have been shifted. And you will see, finally, that the boundaries of the Christian religion and of uprightness have been all but displaced. How far the boundaries of the Catholic faith have been moved, there is hardly anyone who does not know. For in the last ten years more heresies have been stirred up than in the five hundred years before. Almost all the old heresies, which were thought dead, have been revived in this age, and new ones have been devised as well.

1. translati: the same verb that gives tralatio / translatio, "translation". Sutor is playing on Prov 22:28, "Do not move the ancient boundaries", quoted just above. ↩

Alas, many people of this age, such is their madness, put more faith in these than in the old, sound and everywhere approved rudiments of the faith that our forebears handed down. I cannot wonder enough at this: why do people believe two or three forerunners of Antichrist rather than the ancient doctors, the holy popes, the general councils, the universal Church and the whole world? Let those who are like this tell me, I beg them: by what authority, by what reason, by what right, in the end, do they do it? Are they, with their utterly lost heresiarchs, wiser than all who are now alive or who have gone before us? O madness utterly to be loathed! Yet most of them follow these heresiarchs not for their beautiful eyes, so to speak,¹ but because the heresiarchs indulge their vices and freely lay down as true whatever suits them.

1. The idiom (cf. French pour ses beaux yeux) means "out of disinterested admiration". ↩

That the boundaries of Holy Scripture have been moved in this age is already clear enough from what was said above. And yet I wonder how so many utterly frivolous people have dared to throw aside the common Bible and follow the ravings and hellish renderings of these translationists. Are these sacrilegious translations divine? Are they authentic? Are they approved? Are they more certain or sounder than the common translation approved by the Church? And who is so mad as to think that the judgement of two or three fools and masters should be preferred to the ⸢examination⸣ of all the doctors who are and who have been, and indeed to the ⸢verdict⸣ of the whole world? Let them look to it, then, those very people who have become such beasts that they are not afraid to give their assent not only to such trifles but to horrible impieties as well. What in the end will they say, what will they do, what account, finally, will they render before God?

Finally, experience itself declares how wretchedly the boundaries of the Christian religion and of uprightness have been moved everywhere. For ceremonies are rejected as useless, and ceremonies are spoken of with contempt. Prayers are despised, and the undevout even call them "little prayers". Fasts are counted for nothing. Continence is rejected. The secular state is made equal to the religious life or even put above it. Good monks are carped at by runaways,¹ and good morals are everywhere made a laughing-stock. Almost everything sound is despised. Theologians are set at nought by little rhetoricians and smatterers. Solid disciplines are looked down on, and almost the only things held in esteem are the arts of futility, which these petty grammarians call the humanities and good letters.

1. refugi: monks and friars who had left their orders. ↩

Not only are good things cast away and spurned. O the outrage! Unheard-of crimes are committed as well. Unprecedented exactions bear witness to it, and floods: not floods of water, which the vanity of the astrologers had foretold,¹ but floods of purses and money, and to suck these up no device of cunning is left untried. The burning of cities and towns, set off by more than hellish tricks, also shows clearly how unhappily and perversely the boundaries of uprightness and humanity have been moved.

1. Astrologers had widely predicted a universal flood for February 1524, from the conjunction of the planets in Pisces. It did not come. ↩

Who would ever have believed that such fraud, treachery, malice and cruelty could be found in human hearts as we recently experienced in the burning of the city of Troyes?¹ O heaven, O earth! What is impious, what is execrable, what is diabolical, if not this: to want to destroy a commonwealth that deserved nothing of the kind, so wretchedly and so treacherously, with no law of war observed, by abominable and unheard-of fires and by treachery worse than an enemy's? Who will think there is anything of humanity or of Christianity in these barbarous hearts? Who would not rather believe them to be the cruellest of beasts, or at any rate the worst of demons lurking in human form? And certainly the monstrousness of the crime, the barbarous and unaccustomed way of acting, and the kind of death these incendiaries meet seem to show that those who attempted so atrocious a crime are not men but evil demons. For they are not put to an ordinary death, and they ⸢refuse⸣ either to ⸢confess⸣ anything or to look to their own salvation. What else ⸢can⸣ be thought than that, ⸢not⸣ truly penitent, they pass from the temporal fire by which they are ⸢burned⸣ alive ⸢into⸣ the fires of Vulcan? But ⸢leaving aside⸣ this most wretched ⸢calamity, which no one⸣ could properly grasp unless he had seen it with his own eyes, [let us show]² further how wretchedly the ⸢boundaries⸣ of piety ⸢and⸣ decency have been moved.

1. The great fire of Troyes in May 1524, which contemporaries blamed on hired incendiaries. ↩
2. Text lost in this copy (paper damage). ↩

Indeed, the soldiers or retainers, whom you might rightly call the most villainous of brigands (some of them, not without reason, called themselves devils), committed such impious, obscene and inhuman acts against heaven and against mortals, and in the years just past so harassed the commonwealth, above all the French one, with unaccustomed oppression, that even to tell of it strikes horror. No age is thought ever to have seen such abominations in the Christian commonwealth. Who would not shudder to hear that an utterly lost scoundrel, when he had grown tired of denying God, paid a comrade to deny him in his place? Who would not tremble to go over the blasphemies uttered with sacrilegious mouth against Christ and his blessed mother, which it is a crime even to repeat? Who would not turn pale on hearing that these brutes ran through holy and venerable images with swords and daggers? Who would not be amazed to turn over in his mind those obscenities which these most shameless dogs most foully committed to satisfy their lusts? Who, finally, would not be stunned to reflect on the unheard-of excesses with which these bloodthirsty beasts afflicted the simple people?

And because they lived like demons, many of them also died like demons. One of them had said that he wanted to die a devil, and after his death on the gallows he appeared all black and horned.

See how strangely and wretchedly the bounds of Christian uprightness have been moved!¹ And, what is the height of evils, ⸢these and⸣ very many other things of the kind, which it would be tedious to pursue, are committed so ⸢freely⸣ and with such impunity that they are not rebuked even with a word. Now no one dares to utter a murmur. There was a time when wise men and fools dared to speak the truth and to denounce vices. There was also a time in which only those who played the jester in masks were allowed to say what was true. But the time has come in which neither the wise nor ⸢fools⸣ dare speak out the truth.

1. Here fines, not termini. ↩

May the ⸢most merciful God⸣ deign to take thought for ⸢affairs⸣ so afflicted, and mercifully turn aside the vengeance ⸢he⸣ has already ⸢begun⸣, above all from [our realm, which]¹ is thought [to stand] in its condition as long as [it keeps the faith] ⸢sincere⸣, ⸢as⸣ [was revealed] from heaven to Saint Remigius when he washed Clovis, the first ⸢Christian⸣ king of our nation, in ⸢holy⸣ baptism.² May God grant, then, that it ⸢remain⸣ in the faith, and not be scattered and divided into pieces, as ⸢barbarous⸣ and neighbouring peoples, driven by envy and ambition, have tried to bring about. May he grant, I say, that the most Christian people³ be not led astray by new heresies and new rash acts. May he grant, finally, that piety be restored and uprightness mended.

1. Text lost in this copy (paper damage). Words in square brackets are conjectures. ↩
2. Remigius, bishop of Reims, baptised Clovis, probably in 496 or soon after. The prophecy about the kingdom enduring while it kept the faith goes back to the later Remigius legend (Hincmar's Life of Remigius). ↩
3. An echo of the French king's title, rex christianissimus. ↩

But now let this be the end of the whole business, in this twenty-second chapter. For we deliberately made twenty-two chapters in this work. The sacred letters were written first among the Hebrews, and last among the Latins, in twenty-two letters or characters (the Greeks, who come in between, have twenty-four letters).¹ In the same way, we would examine the translations of those divine letters in twenty-two chapters, and at the same time condemn the new recklessness of the versions, to the praise of almighty God, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

1. Cf. Jerome's preface to Samuel and Kings (the Prologus galeatus), which ties the twenty-two books of the Hebrew canon to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. ↩