Grammar

Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac

Interest in Hebrew grammar was anticipated by the Massoretes, whose unremitting care for the preservation of the Hebrew text and of the most delicate shades of Hebrew pronunciation issued in serious grammatical work among Jewish scholars of the tenth century (mainly concerned with Arabic). The influence of Arabic grammar is to be seen in the work of Ben Asher, the Massorete of Tiberias. His contemporary, the Gaon of Saadia (892–942) may be credited with transforming Hebrew grammar into something like a scientific discipline, and Judah ben David Hayyug, in eleventh-century Spain, put Hebrew grammar on a permanent basis, particularly by the recognition of the tri-literal root. Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092–1167) carried this grammatical knowledge from Spain to other European countries. Joseph Kimhi's grammar, Sefer Zihkaron (c. 1150), was the first exposition of Hebrew grammar in Hebrew. His son, David Kimhi (d. 1235), produced the Hebrew grammar which was to be the main source of the classical Jewish philology of the Middle Ages. Until the sixteenth century, grammatical aids to enable the Christian student to study the Hebrew text of the Old Testament hardly existed.

There is no extant Syriac grammar before the eleventh century, then that of Elias, Bishop of Tirhan (d. 049), ed. F. W. A. Baethgen (1880), and The Net of Points of Joseph bar Malkon, Bishop of Nisibis, and, most important of all, the K'taba Semhe of Barhebraeus (the Jacobite Syrian bishop bu-l-Farag, 1226–86).

German Versions

Protestant Versions

It is plain from the history of the Bible that every age has attempted to come to fresh terms with it, to form its own image of it. This is also true of Luther's version of the Bible, which has been the one most commonly printed and by far the most widely accepted in Germany during the period under review.

The linguistic superiority of Luther's Bible had moved Calvinists such as Tossanus and Pareus—especially in the Palatinate and Frankfurt am Main—to print the text and to add, instead of Luther's, prefaces and glosses of their own which had an entirely different spirit. Lutherans protested against this, particularly in Württemberg. But Johannes Piscator went even further, for he also dispensed with Luther's translation, and produced a most uneven one of his own in 1602–3. It was still being printed in Berne in the nineteenth century.

The Thirty Years War both hampered and helped the dissemination of the Bible. The losses were enormous, and the subsequent general poverty made it hard to replace them. The more handy and cheaper formats came into common use as well as the folios. Bible printing ceased entirely in Wittenberg, and the most important printing towns were now Lüneburg, Nürnberg and Frankfurt am Main. In the very middle of the war Sigismund Evenius promoted the production of one of the most important German bibles. The first printing of this ‘Weimar Bible’, with its many notes, accessories and pictures, was commissioned by Duke Ernst the Pious of Gotha in 1640 at Nürnberg. Though not cheap, it went through more than a dozen editions in 150 years.

The invention of printing was as important for the Bible as it was for all literature; but its significance has often been misinterpreted, largely because modern conceptions and preoccupations have been imported into the context of early printing. The earliest observers went to the heart of the matter, as they saw it. ‘He prints as much in a day as was formerly written in a year’ said Campano, bishop of Teramo, of the fifteenth-century printer Ulrich Han. Printing was a means of speedy, and soon of cheap production. Speaking of the Bible, a French translator added that there was now no excuse for the literate believer if he was not familiar with the Word of God.

Writers nearer our own time, but before modern bibliographers had made their systematic investigations, found a deeper significance, which is still advanced. The concept of the edition, a scholar's concept which has taken five hundred years to elaborate, is projected backwards into the first years of printing as if it were the perfect outcome of a sudden transformation. Where once the scribe had produced his single copy— perhaps inaccurately transcribed, interpolated or tendentiously altered, and taken from another single copy subject to the same vicissitudes, and so on back through innumerable stages—there was now supposed to be the modern succession of accurately printed editions, each an improvement on the last if not faithful to it. Within each edition all copies were supposed to be identical.

The Council of Trent

The first task of the Council of Trent was to delimit the spheres of Scripture and Tradition in the transmission of Catholic doctrine. For centuries the Church had been content with a rough-and-ready arrangement whereby Tradition (in the shape of the baptismal catechesis) introduced a believer to the doctrines of the faith, while Scripture was used at a later stage to test, to amplify and to collate those doctrines. Thus it was that St Thomas had said, in a much-abused phrase, sola canonica scriptura est regula fidei: only canonical Scripture—as distinct from apocryphal writings—is the (or a) rule of faith (lectio VI in John XXI). But doctrines which were accepted alone or mainly on the authority of Tradition were not unfamiliar. It was these doctrines which were the main objects of reforming attacks: purgatory, the invocation of saints, the conversion of the bread into the Body of Christ, infant baptism and the sacramental character of marriage. Hence the Council had to start by making its position clear on the value of Tradition as contrasted with Scripture.

After sharp discussion the Council came to the decision that it received and held in honour pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia, with equal devotion and veneration, the books of Scripture and the divine and apostolic traditions (that is, those coming from Christ or the apostles) which concerned faith or morals. It did not mean that each book of Scripture was inspired in exactly the same way, as some modern theologians have claimed, for the Council was not comparing book with book but the body of Scripture with the body of apostolic tradition.

The Circulation of the Bible

In A.D. 303 the emperor Diocletian decided to attack Christianity. Unwilling at first to have individual Christians put to death simply ‘for the name’, he devised means of sapping at the foundations of their corporate life in the Church; he forbade them to meet for worship and ordered that all church buildings should be destroyed, all church plate confiscated, and all liturgical books and copies of the Scriptures burned. Though the deacon Hermes of Heraclea might be confident that even if all copies of the Scriptures should disappear, Christians would be able to rewrite them from memory and to compose even more books to the honour of Christ, the more reflective must have been aware that the preservation of the authentic Bible text was necessary to the life and faith of the Church. Bibles were not quite like sacred vessels, which the generosity of the faithful could easily provide when peace came. Hence the moral problem of surrendering them was a difficult one, and in some parts of the Church, notably in Latin Africa, to hand over (tradere, betray) the Scriptures was regarded as an offence almost equivalent to the more obvious forms of apostasy. It is from Africa that we have a little—tantalizingly little—evidence about procedure. Magistrates were looking for corporate church property, not for private possessions. At Cirta, for example, when the Curator of the city went to the cathedral church and demanded the books, one very large codex was produced.

‘Sola Scriptura’

The reformers dethroned the pope and enthroned the Bible. This is the common assertion; but when so stated it is not valid, because a book cannot replace a man. A book has to be interpreted. This was the main reason why authority had come to be ascribed to the pope in faith and morals. Catholics argued that if there were no infallible interpreter, there could be no infallible revelation. Scripture at many points is not clear, and when a difference of opinion arises as to the meaning, unless there be some authoritative way of knowing which is right, the inevitable result will be uncertainty. If then God desired to make a revelation of himself in Jesus Christ, and the record of that revelation is a document in some respects obscure, God must have ensured the revealing quality of the revelation by establishing an inerrant interpreter, who is able to declare the truth partly because he is the custodian of the tradition and partly because he is guarded from error by the Holy Spirit. This role was assigned by God to the bishop of the church of Rome, founded by the two martyr apostles, Peter and Paul. Her bishop is the successor of Peter to whom were given the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

Such claims Luther roundly denied. In his Address to the Nobility of the German Nation, in the summer of 1520, the reformer prayed that he might be given the trumpet of Joshua with which to tumble down the three walls of the modern Jericho.

The Rise of Modern Biblical Scholarship

During the century and a half in which modern methods of study have been applied to the task of biblical research the achievement of scholarship has been positive and immense. Inscriptions and documents contemporaneous with the biblical writings have been discovered; ancient languages can now be read whose existence was unknown or barely suspected by scholars a hundred years ago. It is today possible to compare biblical religious and social ideas and practices with those of other ancient peoples who lived alongside Israel and who influenced and were influenced by the development of Jewish and Christian thought and worship. Modern archaeological, philological and ‘history-of-religion’ methods have resulted in the accumulation of a mass of knowledge which illuminates every page of the Bible, while at the same time the development of the critical, literary and historical study of the biblical books themselves has brought about a complete revision of traditional notions about their relation to one another. It is impossible here to catalogue the results of these researches, but it is necessary to say something about their rise in the nineteenth century and their consequences both for biblical interpretation and for Christian theology in general in the twentieth. One thing has happened as a result of the rise of modern biblical research in the nineteenth century, and it affects every school of biblical interpretation in the western world today: it is no longer possible to ignore the discoveries of the scientific investigators, the archaeologists, philologists and workers in the sphere of the history of religion (loosely called ‘comparative religion’).

Biblical Humanism and its Resources

Near the time when Lefèvre issued his version of the Epistles of St Paul with commentaries from the press of Henri Estienne at Paris in 1512, he said to the young Guillaume Farel, ‘My son, God will renew the world and you will be a witness of it.’ Ten years later, he gave as one ground for this hope that, amid the discovery of new lands and the wider diffusion of the name of Christ, ‘the knowledge of languages and especially of Greek and Latin (for it was only later that the study of Hebrew letters was reanimated by Johann Reuchlin), began to return about the time when Constantinople was captured by the enemies of Christ…’. Here is confident enthusiasm for the potent renewal, spiritual and intellectual, to be found in a clearer understanding of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. This is something new and fundamental to the cultural world of the early sixteenth century: it cannot be set down as merely a further stage in the development of humanist studies which had begun in the fourteenth century or earlier. There was a preparatio evangelica in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, for it was then, and not before, that there appeared in combination the achievements of the humanist scholar-printers; the fruits of intensive study in the grammar and syntax of the three languages; and the energy provided by the economic development and regional patriotism of the cities where bonae litterae flourished—Basle, Wittenberg, Zurich, Paris, Strassburg, Geneva.

Criticism of the Traditional Use by Rationalists

It is not unjust to trace the origins of biblical criticism in the modern sense back to the Renaissance. The liberation of men's minds from the dead weight of authority and tradition made it inevitable that, sooner or later, the Bible would cease to be treated, as it had been throughout the Middle Ages, as a supernaturally guaranteed revelation beyond the scope of rational inquiry. The Reformation, in the sense that it was a by-product of the Renaissance, assisted rather than hindered the process, for in their critical approach to the Bible, as in other matters, Luther and Calvin ranged themselves on the side of those who upheld the right of private judgment against an externally imposed authority. ‘The Protestant writers against Rome were forging the weapons which were soon to be used against themselves.’

The attempt of their successors to invest the Bible with the authority that the Church had lost was therefore bound to be little more than an ineffective effort to turn back the clock. A new spirit had come into western life and thought which was prepared to challenge every assumption and question every assertion. Men were no longer prepared to limit their inquiries to the narrow confines prescribed by traditional orthodoxy and ecclesiastical protocol. Whether they accepted Reason or the Spirit as their guide they acknowledged as their ultimate criterion nothing but the establishment of the truth.

Introduction

Writing in the year 1805, David Macpherson summed up his reflections on the economic legislation of later medieval England in the following words: ‘From the perusal … of most … ancient statutes relating to commerce, manufactures, fisheries and navigation, it is evident that the legislators knew nothing of the affairs which they undertook to regulate, and also that most of their ordinances, either from want of precision, or from ordering what was impossible to be obeyed,… must have been inefficient. No judicious commercial regulations could be drawn up by ecclesiastical or military men (the only classes who possessed any authority or influence) who despised trade and consequently could know nothing of it.’

This judgment upon the incapacity of medieval governments to deal with economic problems still has a certain validity. The ‘inefficiency’ and lack of grasp which Macpherson stigmatizes are not, perhaps, peculiar to the actions of medieval governments in the economic field alone; but they are as characteristic of that field as any other. It is, however, of greater significance that the very concepts of government responsibility in economic matters, either of our own day or even of Macpherson's, are anachronistic when applied to the Middle Ages. Even in most of the ‘under-developed’ parts of the modern world, it can be regarded as proper or obligatory for the central authority, apart from maintaining law and order and conducting national defence, to sustain expenditures yielding indiscriminate benefits, to issue money, to provide minimum health and education services, to aid the victims of catastrophes, and so forth.

Early Fairs and Markets

It is no longer possible nowadays to take the view that the Germanic invasions put an end to the commercial life which still characterized the last centuries of the Roman Empire. The new states which arose on all sides upon the ruins of Romania were still the scene of relatively intensive trading operations. Foreigners as well as natives took part in this economic activity. Among the former the Syrians especially attract attention. They were already to be found everywhere during the Imperial period: from Egypt to the Danube, from Spain to England. M. P. Charlesworth, among others, has fully demonstrated this point. In the fifth century Salvianus speaks of the negociatorum et Syricorum omnium turbas quae majorem ferme civitatum universarum partem occupant. These ‘Syrians’ are, however, at least in part, Greeks, and in their ranks should no doubt be included those Greek merchants of Orléans mentioned by Gregory of Tours who received a visiting Merovingian sovereign to their town with songs.

In the Midi towns especially the population was a cosmopolitan one. At Narbonne, in 589, it comprised Goths, Romans, Jews, Greeks and Syrians; certainly these three last groups lived primarily by trade. The Jews, who were numerous throughout Gaul and in Spain, were frequently forbidden to possess and to traffic in Christian slaves, a fact which is proof that they did play an important role in this trade.

Port organization continued to follow the Roman pattern, witness the catabolus or cataplus of Marseilles found in Gregory of Tours and in a document of Clovis III dated 692. Further evidence is to be found in the thelonearii who welcomed to Visigothic Spain the transmarini negociatores

Introductory

Is it proper to speak of the economic policies of medieval towns? The answer must depend on the definition. If this is overexacting, if we demand both explicit statements by medieval townsmen of their aims and methods, and proof that these were then applied in practice, we strike at the roots of the whole subject; study would then be restricted to such rare congruences as that between the industrial protectionism advocated by Lippo Brandolini in his De comparatione reipublicae and the policy of fifteenth-century Florence. A more liberal and more realistic attitude will allow far greater scope. There is abundant evidence in the preambles to municipal statutes, in the reports of chroniclers, in the arguments used by interested bodies in economic disputes, that principles informed practice. Sometimes the aims and ideas made public were those which really gave coherence to economic activity, sometimes they were a dishonest façade hiding a shabby structure of selfishness and opportunism. Yet the most disingenuous statements of policy have their value; they argue a need to indulge popular belief that certain patterns and principles of economic behaviour were good and useful.

It is reasonable to use another type of evidence—indirect evidence. This consists of the elements of regularity and consistency in urban economic practice. Where there are such regular trends the policy of a town may be considered as less or more ‘conscious’, but policy it is so long as the regularities are genuine and can be referred to probable motives. Medieval townsfolk did not always expound the aims and ideas which underlay their activities—they did not trouble, they would not, they could not; when they did their words may have been lost. Common sense suggests that hidden motives may properly be deduced from known practice.

Introductory: Main Features and Phases

Scholars have been inclined in the past to regard the entire medieval period as a primitive stage in the development of public credit. In part this was the legacy of views expressed most clearly in the second half of the nineteenth century by Bruno Hildebrand (1864) and his followers who treated the Middle Ages as a time when credit could play at best only a minor part. These basic assumptions are today discarded by historians. But one particular argument much used in the past deserves more detailed comment. Some older scholars had attached great importance to the fact that the debts of medieval rulers were, almost invariably, regarded as the personal obligations of the reigning sovereigns. They maintained that it is, therefore, impossible to speak of a true national or state debt under medieval conditions. Continuity, it was stressed, could only come with the introduction of modern funded debt. Only the municipalities have been exempted from this charge of backwardness, because they sold annuities, and they have even been hailed as the true creators of public credit.

It is quite legitimate and valuable to stress the contrasts between the medieval and the modern forms of public borrowing. But it would be misleading to apply to the medieval public credit this particular test. The presence or absence of the funded debt cannot be a valid criterion of the importance of the credit transactions of the territorial rulers at any time or place in medieval Europe. The treatment of the debts of medieval rulers as personal obligations of the princes who contracted them was an inevitable consequence of the prevailing, purely personal, conception of sovereign power. But the practical consequences of this must not be exaggerated.

A General Picture

From the point of view of business organization, the Middle Ages present no uniform picture either in time or in space. During the so-called Dark Ages, the manorial economy was dominant and most landed estates were relatively self-sufficient. Exchange, at any rate, was reduced to a minimum, and trade, while it did not disappear altogether, fell to a low ebb. What little survived was carried on by groups of travelling merchants who catered for the rich by selling them luxuries or who exploited the poor by charging high prices for necessities in times of famine or distress. A real revival did not occur until the eleventh century with the cessation of the Norman invasions and the decline of feudal anarchy. In Italy urban life regained vigour; in Flanders it sprang up anew. From these two centres, the movement spread and gained momentum. The Crusades gave it further impetus. Latin merchant colonies were established all over the Levant. Soon the Venetians, the Genoese and the Pisans controlled the foreign trade of the Byzantine Empire. Methods of business organization made steady progress, but the merchants continued to be peregrinators, moving constantly about in unending pursuit of profit. They and their servants still accompanied their goods either by land or by sea. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the travelling trade of western Europe gravitated to the fairs of Champagne, and their rhythm regulated the coming and going of the merchant caravans from Italy, Flanders, Germany and all corners of France.