»OUR PHILOSOPHY«: ’S PREFACE TO THE 1539 LATIN

Bruce Gordon

1.Introduction

The recent growth in scholarship on Heinrich Bullinger that emerged around the four hundredth anniversary of his birth in 2004 owes much to the leadership of Emidio Campi, who during his tenure as director of the Institute for Swiss History in has overseen a series of outstanding projects, including the ongoing publication of the Bullinger correspondence and a critical edition of the »Decades« by Peter Opitz.1 Over the past years it has been my pleasure to work with Professor Campi on a number of projects as part of an agreement between Zurich and the Institute for Reformation Studies in St And- rews, Scotland, including a jointly-edited volume on Bullinger.2 Most recently, this relationship has extended to the study of Protestant Latin of the sixteenth century, a project begun in 2006 with the sup- port of the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the United King- dom. Zurich was a leading centre in creating these hitherto little-stu- died works, which were of enormous importance to the development of biblical culture in the Reformation, and I wish in this short paper to address one aspect of the bond between the Protestant Latin Bible and Zurich.

1 Heinrich Bullinger, Sermonum Decades quinque de potissimis Christianae reli- gionis capitibus (1552), ed. by Peter Opitz, 2 vols, Zurich 2008 (Heinrich Bullinger Werke III/3). See also Peter Opitz, Heinrich Bullinger als Theologe: Eine Studie zu den »Dekaden«, Zurich 2004. 2 Bruce Gordon and Emidio Campi (eds), Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504–1575, Grand Rapids 2004. 284 bruce gordon

2.The »Biblia Sacra utriusque Testamenti«(1539)

In 1539 the press of Christoph Froschauer in Zurich produced a Latin Bible entitled »Biblia Sacra utriusque Testamenti«.3 The work was not a direct product of Zurich scholarship for it was a composite of Se- bastian Münster’s Old Testament, first printed in 1534/35 in Basle, and ’ New Testament. This 1539 Bible marked a new direction in Zurich: not only was it the first Latin Bible to be produced in the city, but it signalled a decisive turn away from the Vulgate, which had remained in use following the Reformation. Münster’s Old Testament was one of the most influential scholarly works of the Swiss reforma- tion.4 With its extensive use of rabbinical material and detailed phi- lological notes, Münster’s translation was intended to provide scholars with the most up-to-date learning. His favourable engagement with the rabbinical sources was highly controversial, earning him the ire of both , who, although he admired Münster’s work was deeply suspicious of his »Judiazing« tendencies, and of his teacher Konrad Pellikan.5 During the 1530s, Pellikan, one of the leading Hebraists of his day, produced in Zurich an extensive commentary on the books of the Old and New Testament.6 In the preface to his commentary on the Pentateuch he declared himself entirely satisfied with ’s Bible, though he felt there was need to correct those errors which had ac- cumulated over time.7

3 Biblia Sacra utriusque testamenti et vetus quidem post omnes omnium hactenus aeditiones, opera D. Sebast. Munsteri evulgatum et ad Hebraicam veritatem […] redditum […] Novum vero non solum ad Graecam veritatem […] opera D. Eras. Rot. ultimo recognitum et aeditum […] Additi sunt ex LXX. versione et Apocryphi libri sive Ecclesiastici, qui habentur extra Canonem, Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, 1539. 4 On Münster, see Karl Heinz Burmeister, Sebastian Münster: Versuch eines bio- graphischen Gesamtbildes, 1963. More recently, Matthew McLean, The Cos- mographia of Sebastian Münster: Describing the World in the Reformation, Aldershot 2007 (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History). 5 See Stephen Burnett, Reassesing the Basel-Wittenberg Conflict: Dimensions of the Reformation-era Discussion of Hebrew Scholarship, in: Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Allison P. Cou- dert and Jeffrey S. Shoulsen, Philadelphia 2004, 181–210. On Münster’s view towards Judaism, see Stephen Burnett, Dialogue of the Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy and Anti-Jewish Polemic in Sebastian Munster’s Messiahs of the Christians and the (1529/39), in: Archive for Reformation History 91 (2000), 168–190. 6 On Pellikan, see Christoph Zürcher, Konrad Pellikans Wirken in Zürich, 1526– 1556, Zurich 1975 (Zürcher Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte 4), 85–152. 7 Konrad Pellikan, In Pentateuchum sive libros quinque libros Mosis, nempe Ge- nesim, Exodum, Leuiticum, Numeros, Deuteronomium Conradi Pellicani sacrarum