7. Showcasing Salvation; Prayer, Sermon, and Song
4 items in collection

As the official language of the Roman Church, Latin dominated the production of liturgical manuscripts. However, a hallmark of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century popular piety was the increasing prevalence of texts, preachers’ sermons, and songs delivered in vernacular languages. Books of Hours were predominantly (though not exclusively) rendered in Latin, but certain portions of them, including calendars, accessory prayers, and the didactic captions known as rubrics, were frequently written in the local language, suggesting that their users were unfamiliar with Latin. The sermons of Dominican and Franciscan preachers were crucial to the spread of commonly spoken languages for communicating aspirational religious ideals. Authorized biographies that had been set down in Latin in the thirteenth century were routinely retranslated into the popular tongue. The innumerable variations found in surviving copies of these texts point to a multitude of independent efforts at translation, a grassroots approach to spreading the word. While the wholesale translation of biblical and liturgical texts into the vernacular remained controversial, other nonliturgical religious texts had broad popular appeal. Efforts to systematically transpose scripture for the purposes of educating the masses were suppressed, but the appreciation of the Bible as literature was permitted, especially for aristocratic audiences. Court translators working in France, England, and Spain took up the challenge of paraphrasing the Old and New Testaments; the versified Tuscan translation of the Psalms shown here capitalizes on the lyrical nature of the biblical book but adapts it to a poetic rhyming scheme developed by Dante.