Yesterday marked the start of a new teaching term for me, and because last term I spend so much time in my Gospel of Matthew class talking about differences between Jerome’s Latin and Sebastian Castellio’s, this term I decided to teach a class just on Castellio.
I often joke that Castellio should be the patron saint of adjunct professors. Because despite being personally selected by Erasmus to carry on his legacy, and one of the most learned men of his age, he opposed Calvin over the execution of Michael Servetus, and was reduced to begging house to house to support his family. There are precious few books about Castellio, and it’s amazing that his works have survived at all.
Castellio produced both a Latin and a French translation of the Bible. And his Latin version exceptional. If I could summarise its distinct features, it would be that he has a style that is more ‘Latinate’ than Jerome, more elegant, and for all that more engaging and often more faithful - rendering the source text in a way that makes for intelligent and intelligible Latin.1
We began with Genesis 3, in which Castellio’s serpent is versutissimus. Why this word? I think he made an excellent choice here, because while it means ‘crafty’, it echoes πολύτροπος (many-faceted/turned/twists), of Odysseus, and so it captures more elegantly and accurately the serpent’s twisted and twisty ploys, in a way that Jerome’s callidior does not.
My only other observation that I want to throw up today is how almost all translations start to use ‘Adam’ as a proper name in late chapter 2, and throughout chapter 3, which loses the paradigmatic nature of “the Man” and “the Woman”, given a personal characterisation to ‘Adam’, and retaining a depersonalised persona to “the woman”; this only normally changes when she is named Eve at the end of chapter 3. Castellio does no different, but I think this is a missed opportunity. The archetypal/prototypical dimension of the narrative, and the play of words in the Hebrew, can be preserved by referring to Adam just as ‘the man’ throughout chapter 2.
Castellio’s Bible, as far as I know, never found a wide reception, though it tends to be beloved of Latin devotees, and with good reason.
Jerome’s translation often adheres to the overly literal, often resulting in expressions that are difficult, if not barbarous.