Introduction In the middle of the 15th century, the Florentine humanist Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) authored a new Latin translation of the New Testament. The trans- lation was written at the Vatican court, and encouraged and facilitated by Pope Nicholas v (1447–1455). It was never published and survives in only two manuscripts, Pal.lat.45 and Urb.lat.6, which are both kept in the Vatican Library today.1 Manetti’s version is the first Latin translation of the New Testament since Jerome produced the Vulgate around 400, and it predates Erasmus’Novum Instrumentum by half a century.2 The translation was discussed in passing in several studies on humanist Bib- lical scholarship, including Charles Trinkaus’s In our Image and Likeness and Jerry Bentley’s Humanists and Holy Writ.3 Yet it has not received the atten- tion it deserves, mainly for two reasons: unlike other works on the Bible pro- duced by humanists, such as Lorenzo Valla’s Annotationes and Erasmus’Novum Instrumentum, Manetti’s translation did not influence later generations of Bible scholars.4 In addition, evaluating Manetti’s version on its own merits is com- plicated by the fact that the author, unlike Valla and Erasmus, left no notes to explain his deliberations. Yet Manetti’s translation project is too important to be overlooked, and a thorough study on the subject is long overdue. The central role of its author in 1 Pal.lat.45 has been digitized, and is available online at http://digi.vatlib.it/view/bav_pal_lat _45. 2 For convenience’s sake, I use the name ‘Vulgate’ for the Latin translation of the Old and New Testament predominant in the West since the late Middle Ages, traditionally ascribed to Jerome. In the 15th century, this name was not yet in use; it was adopted only in the sixteenth. See: Pierre-Maurice Bogaert, “The Latin Bible,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to 600, (eds.) James Carleton Paget and Joachim Schaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 505–526, there 510–511. 3 Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought (London: Constable, 1970); Jerry Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 4 In his edition of Erasmus’ translation of the New Testament, Andrew Brown referred to readings in Manetti’s translation, mainly in order to determine to what degree Erasmus depended on the scholarship of Lefèvre d’Étaples. Andrew Brown (ed.), Novum Testamentum abErasmorecognitumiii:EpistolaeApostolicae(primapars) (Amsterdam, etc.: Elsevier, 2004), 15. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/9789004324374_002 2 introduction the humanist movement alone would be reason enough. Manetti is less well- known today than contemporaries such as Leonardo Bruni and Lorenzo Valla, but he was considered as one of the most prominent intellectuals of his time. Over the past decades, his works have received increasing scholarly attention. Editions of his works began appearing in the 1970s, and most of his oeuvre is now available in print.5 Recently, an academic conference was organized around Manetti’s life and other works.6 Manetti’s translations in particular were discussed in Paul Botley’s work on Renaissance translation, which also dedicates several pages to the New Testament.7 This growing interest in Manetti makes a comprehensive study of his New Testament version worthwhile: much more is now known about the context in which it was produced, and conversely, the translation is a relevant source of information for students of Manetti’s life and works. Especially the connection between Manetti’s translation and Valla’s Annotationes, written in the same environment, is worth exploring. The first purpose of this book is therefore to make Manetti’s translation accessible to Renaissance scholars. But Manetti’s translation is not only important because of the status of its author; it also represents a stage in the history of (humanist) Biblical scholar- ship. Admittedly, Manetti’s work played only a modest role compared to Valla’s Annotationes: discovered and published by Erasmus, Valla’s work profoundly influenced sixteenth-century Biblical scholarship, whereas Manetti’s version never circulated. Yet, his translation project is a unique example of humanist ideals of language and translation applied to the sacred text. In the scholarly literature, the study of the Bible in the 15th century is discussed in roughly two ways. Most commonly, it is presented as a radical breach with medieval practice and as a prelude to sixteenth-century Bibli- cal scholarship. The emergence of humanism in the late fourteenth-century, 5 Editions of Manetti’s works include: Heinz Wittschier, Giannozzo Manetti: Das Korpus der Orationes (Köln-Graz: Böhlau, 1968); Giannozzo Manetti, De dignitate et excellentia hominis, (ed.) Elisabeth Riley Leonard (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1975); Giannozzo Manetti, Vita Socratis et Senecae, (ed.) Alfonso De Petris (Florence: Olschki, 1979); Giannozzo Manetti, Apologeticus, (ed.) Alfonso De Petris (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1981); Giannozzo Manetti, Dialogus consolatorius, (ed.) Alfonso De Petris (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1983). 6 The proceedings came out in 2008: Baldassarri; Stefano, (ed.), Dignitas et excellentia hominis: Atti del convegno internazionale di ‘Studi su Giannozzo Manetti’ (Florence: Le Lettere, 2008). 7 Paul Botley, Latin Translation in the Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Leonardo Bruni, Giannozzo Manetti and Desiderius Erasmus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)..