The Translation Policies of Protestant Reformers in the Early Eighteenth Century. Projects, Aims, and Communication Networks

Zusammenfassung

This article examines the aims and motivations underlying the numerous translation projects initiated or supported by two Protestant organizations—the Anglican Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in London and the Pietist Halle orphanage—in the early eighteenth century. These projects included translations of the Bible, catechisms, and devotional literature into over twenty-five languages, carried out for the benefit of Protestants abroad as well as for missionary activities among non-Protestant Christians and “heathens”. We survey a broad range of these endeavours and offer a case study of one specific project, the printing of an Arabic Psalter and New Testament for the use of Eastern Christians in London from 1720 onwards. We show that these translation projects were aimed at spreading Protestant piety, particularly in vernacular languages, and at creating a counterweight to the missionary activities of the Roman Catholic Church. However, the two societies did not follow a preconceived strategy; rather, these initiatives were the brainchildren of individual members and often relied on the availability of skilled translators in London and Halle. While many of the projects had limited success, they served as a means of religious self-affirmation for their initiators, who believed they were contributing to building God’s kingdom on earth by spreading the Christian message.

13.1 Introduction

In the Holy Roman Empire and the British Isles, the years around 1700 mark a watershed in the history of Protestant reform. In 1698, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), a professor of theology at the University of Halle and protagonist of the religious movement known as Pietism, founded an orphanage in Glaucha, just outside the gates of Halle, which became the nucleus of a complex of charitable, educational, and missionary institutions.¹ A year later, a circle of reform-minded Anglicans in London around the clergyman Thomas Bray (1656–1730) set up the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), which sought to expand Christian education, spread moral values, and support persecuted Protestants abroad.² Finally, in 1701, Bray and some of his associates formed the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), a missionary organization that sent clergymen overseas and supported Anglican congregations in Britain’s colonies.

These initiatives were significant in several respects. First, whereas both the Halle Pietists and the London reformers remained within the fold of their respective state churches—Lutheranism in Brandenburg-Prussia and the Church of England—their institutions rested on the principle of voluntarism. Although the Glaucha orphanage and the SPG (but not the SPCK) held royal privileges or charters, they were mainly supported by private donations, collections, and, particularly in the case of Halle, tuition fees and commercial activities. Second, the founding of these institutions marks an important stage in what Alexander Pyrges has termed “Protestant expansion”³ and Ulrike Gleixner has called “expansive piety”:⁴ Protestant missionary efforts, which in the seventeenth century had been sporadic and largely dependent on individual efforts,⁵ now took on a more sustained and cohesive character as they could increasingly rely on transnational communication networks. Third, the German and British reform projects were closely connected. August Hermann Francke was the SPCK’s first corresponding member abroad,⁶ while men like the scholar and traveller Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf (1655–1712)⁷ and the Lutheran court preacher Anton Wilhelm Boehme (1673–1722)⁸ were involved in both Halle’s and the London societies’ activities. Moreover, Halle cooperated with the SPCK on various projects: students and parcels of books were sent from London to Francke’s orphanage, reports about the English voluntary societies were circulated in Halle newspapers, and SPCK members visited the Glaucha institutions.⁹ The most prominent instances of collaboration between religious reformers in Halle and London were the recruitment of missionaries for the East India Company posts at Madras and Cuddalore and the resettlement of religious exiles from the Archbishopric of Salzburg to the North American colony of Georgia.¹⁰ Protestant reform in the early eighteenth century thus had a transconfessional and transnational character.

A key feature of the Halle orphanage’s and London societies’ activities was their involvement in numerous translation projects. In the first half of the eighteenth century they printed texts in more than twenty-five languages, many of them translations undertaken at the behest of their members. Apart from translations of the Bible (or parts thereof), these included foundational Protestant and Pietist texts, especially catechisms and devotional works, as well as grammars and language manuals to support the work of missionaries. These translations were aimed at various audiences, from like-minded Protestants abroad to non-Protestant Christians and “heathens”. By the early eighteenth century, Catholic clergymen had already accumulated a vast amount of experience regarding the collection and compilation of materials on non-European peoples as well as the translation of Christian texts into Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and American languages.¹¹ For Protestant reformers, this body of linguistic work provided a model but also posed the challenge to match—and ideally surpass—the efforts of their competitors in the missionary field.¹² At the same time, the presence of Catholic missionaries in the communities in which the Protestants were hoping to gain a foothold often represented a major obstacle to the distribution of translations.¹³

Given the close ties between Halle and London reformers and their overlapping goals, it makes sense to examine their translation activities in relation to one another and explore parallels as well as differences between their respective efforts. Our main questions concern the overall nature of the Protestant reformers’ translation activities: did they follow a specific translation programme, e.g. in terms of the texts chosen for translation and the languages translated into, or should we regard them as a string of loosely related projects and initiatives? What aims did the reformers pursue with these translations and how did they adapt them to their target audiences? To answer these questions, we explore a range of translation activities undertaken in Halle and London or aimed at enabling communication between both places. We also consider some of the difficulties encountered and strategies adopted while printing in foreign scripts—i.e. the “translation” of manuscripts into printed works. In general, our contribution takes an actor-centred approach that pays close attention to the initiatives and activities of historical individuals, their ties with other actors and missionary institutions, and the communication networks they formed. In the following sections, we first provide background information on the Glaucha institutions and the SPCK with regard to their major fields of activity and their leading protagonists. We then examine communication processes between Halle and London and the translation activities that were necessary to maintain this Anglo-German connection. Subsequently, we survey a number of the Halle and SPCK translation projects and offer an assessment of their overall character.¹⁴ Lastly, we take a closer look at one specific project: the printing of an Arabic Psalter and New Testament for the use of Eastern Christians in London from 1720 onwards.

13.2 Background: The Glaucha Institutions and the SPCK

From humble beginnings, August Hermann Francke’s orphanage in Glaucha evolved into a formidable complex of educational and charitable institutions housing thousands of pupils and hundreds of teachers at the time of the founder’s death in 1727. The school system comprised a German and a Latin school offering free education for talented poor children as well as a Paedagogium Regium for tuition-paying pupils from wealthy families.¹⁵ Moreover, the orphanage housed several business enterprises—a printing press, a bookshop, a pharmacy, and a commercial distributor of pharmaceutical products—which together generated much of the institution’s revenues.¹⁶ From 1706 onwards, Francke and his associates engaged in missionary endeavours in southern India, recruiting missionaries for Danish (and later English) settlements there. Starting in the late 1720s, missionary activities targeting Jews were pursued more systematically. The Halle Pietists also took an interest in reforming the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches and supported Protestant communities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Beginning in the 1730s, Halle moreover sent pastors to German-speaking settlements in North America.¹⁷ These projects were all sustained by an “image policy” that popularized Francke’s work in a range of contemporary media (newspapers, journals, pamphlets, correspondence, engravings) and mobilized support from pious noblemen and -women, clergy, bureaucrats, and merchants.¹⁸ Although Francke ventilated ideas for a universal reform of Christianity and saw his orphanage as a means of spreading God’s kingdom on earth,¹⁹ Martin Brecht has emphasized that Halle’s global impact did not derive from a single preconceived plan but took shape gradually in response to a variety of impulses from associates and correspondents.²⁰ As we will see below, this also applies to the translation projects carried out in Halle.

The SPCK was founded by the Anglican clergyman Thomas Bray and four associates in 1699 with the aim of promoting Protestant missions, supporting charity schools for poor children, distributing religious literature to parish libraries, and extending aid to needy foreign Protestants.²¹ It quickly “became the impulse and the clearinghouse for voluntaristic renewal and reformation in Britain”.²² Its membership grew to 37 at the end of 1699, 106 in 1705, and 232 in 1720. The core members were also involved in the founding of the SPG in 1701, and membership in both societies continued to overlap to a significant degree. While the SPG focused on sending Anglican clergymen abroad, the SPCK concentrated on educational and charitable activities. As a voluntary association that recruited members by co-optation and developed a distinct organizational pattern of general meetings, board meetings, and sub-committees, the SPCK was detached from the hierarchy of the Church of England; at the same time, the participation of several bishops indicates close ties to the official church. Although clergymen formed the largest professional group (36 out of 106 members in 1705), the majority were laymen—gentlemen, lawyers, merchants, and physicians, along with a few peers. While most members attended meetings infrequently (if at all), “a devoted core of working members” emerged in both the SPCK and the SPG. According to William and Phyllis Bultmann, these were “often the lesser-known men who, through consistent participation in meetings, or by means of letters or deputies sent to the meetings to express their views, shaped the policies and development of the societies”. A salaried secretary kept the records, handled financial transactions, and conducted the societies’ extensive correspondence. In the SPCK, this post was initially held by the multilingual John Chamberlayne (1668/9–1723) and was taken over by Henry Newman (1670–1743) in 1708.²³

Brent Sirota has noted an “improvisational” quality in the early work of the SPCK, which pursued various projects “though they had formed no part of its original programming”. For example, it reached out to mobile sectors of the British population (soldiers, sailors, merchants) and became involved in ecumenical initiatives.²⁴ While it forged a network of contacts across the British Isles, the SPCK also expanded its roster of corresponding foreign members. The latter group included Jean-Frédéric Ostervald (1663–1747), a Reformed pastor and influential religious author in Neuchâtel, and Samuel Urlsperger (1685–1772), the court preacher in Württemberg and later senior of the Lutheran pastors in Augsburg. As a result of the interactions between English and corresponding members, the SPCK became involved in a range of initiatives supporting German, Swiss, and French Protestants. These transnational activities also highlighted tensions between the society’s ecumenical stance and its role as a vehicle of Anglican confessionalism.²⁵ In general, the SPCK’s “dual institutional structure of a vast network and a tightly organized headquarters”²⁶ had a significant impact on its practices of communication and translation, providing the framework for a number of fruitful exchanges and “joint ventures” between London and Halle.

13.3 Communicating and Translating Between Halle and London

As August Hermann Francke did not know English—a language that few Germans learned in the years around 1700²⁷—and few SPCK members spoke German, a handful of multilingual individuals translated between Halle and London. According to Daniel Brunner, Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf “assisted” the SPCK secretary John Chamberlayne “in drafting some of the Society’s letters to Francke”.²⁸ In the opposite direction, Francke and other corresponding members enclosed “manuscripts and printed material not readily accessible in the British Isles” in their letters, e.g. “on continental Protestant minorities or Danish missionary efforts”. As Pyrges points out, “[t]he society’s London secretary and clerk […] had the documents translated from German, French, or Latin, if needed, and then laid them before the committees in charge”.²⁹

It was above all Anton Wilhelm Boehme who, in the words of Chamberlayne’s successor Henry Newman, was “the life and soul of our Correspondence in religious affairs with Germany and Denmark”.³⁰ Although he was never ordained, the Pietist Boehme became a chaplain at the German Lutheran Court Chapel in St James’s Palace, which had been established for Princess (later Queen) Anne’s consort Prince George of Denmark in 1700. He held this post from 1705 until his death in 1722 and was co-opted into the SPCK in 1709.³¹ Boehme translated August Hermann Francke’s account of the Halle orphanage, Segens-volle Fußstapfen des noch lebenden und waltenden liebreichen und getreuen Gottes, into English. While this translation, titled Pietas Hallensis, may have been suggested by the physician and SPCK member Frederick Slare (1648–1727), Boehme undertook it on his own initiative, not as an official society project.³² In Brunner’s words, Pietas Hallensis “contained a narrative of the origins and growth of the undertaking from its rudimentary beginnings and stressed Francke’s dependence on the special Providence of God, which was detailed in a long list of miraculous particulars focusing on the private donations of individuals”.³³

Despite the fact that SPCK member Josiah Woodward (1657–1712) suggested the distribution of Boehme’s translation, “the Society voted against reprinting the whole book”, asking the Lutheran court chaplain for an abridgement instead. The SPCK acquired 500 copies of this short version in 1706 and had several revised editions printed in subsequent years. Part III, published in 1716, also contained Boehme’s English translation of a Latin letter Francke had sent to Cotton Mather (1663–1728) in Boston.³⁴ Pietas Hallensis attracted considerable attention in Britain and helped solicit financial contributions for the Glaucha institutions. Among other projects, an “English house” was constructed for the education of youths from the British Isles and an “English table” where German pupils could engage in conversation with the institution’s English-speaking guests was set up in the orphanage’s dining hall with the help of such donations.³⁵ These successes were in turn reported in the Hallische Correspondentz, a handwritten newspaper produced in the Glaucha orphanage.³⁶ Boehme also sent English tracts and pamphlets in praise of the Halle orphanage to Francke and his associates and suggested they be translated into German.³⁷

In addition to popularizing Francke’s works on the British Isles,³⁸ Boehme prepared an English and a Latin translation of Johann Arndt’s (1555–1621) Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (quoted hereafter as Of True Christianity), which was published by the SPCK. Of True Christianity was a devotional work that became a foundational text of continental European Pietism and a true “bestseller” of which ninety-five editions and twenty-eight translations had been printed by 1740.³⁹ Many of these translations were produced and printed in Halle.⁴⁰ Brunner notes that Boehme “worked hard to propagate” Arndt’s book, “including it in every shipment of books to America, giving Latin copies to the SPCK’s library project in Wales, helping to bring out a French edition, sending copies of the Dutch edition to East India, and supporting the publication of an English edition in Scotland”.⁴¹

Moreover, Boehme played an essential role in introducing English readers to Halle’s missionary activities in India. In 1709, he and Joseph Downing (1676–1734), a London printer who regularly worked for the SPCK, published an English translation of letters by Halle’s pioneer missionaries Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) and Heinrich Plütschau (1676/77–1752) under the title Propagation of the Gospel in the East. The work was dedicated to the SPCK’s sister organization, the SPG, and its president, Archbishop Thomas Tenison (1636–1715). The SPG promptly ordered 500 copies for distribution. In subsequent years, the SPCK became deeply involved in the work of Halle-trained missionaries in the Danish settlement of Tranquebar in southern India, for which it raised funds, lobbied with the East India Company, and commissioned the printing of the New Testament in Portuguese. In 1711, the SPCK recruited Jonas Fincke (1683–1711), a German schoolmaster in London, as a printer for Tranquebar—he died during the voyage there, however—and sent a printing press, sets of fonts, and paper to India along with money, three hundred Portuguese New Testaments, and other books. As the London society proved unable to recruit Anglican missionaries for India, it took the singular step of supporting the missionary work of another Protestant denomination.⁴² In 1714 and 1718, Boehme prepared two sequels to the Propagation of the Gospel in the East. His indispensability to this enterprise can be gleaned from the fact that a fourth volume remained unpublished after Boehme’s death in 1722, as his successor Friedrich Michael Ziegenhagen (1694–1776) “was unable to find someone qualified to translate” it.⁴³

The expulsion of Protestants from the Archbishopric of Salzburg in the early 1730s prompted a close collaboration between Halle, Pastor Samuel Urlsperger in Augsburg, and the SPCK secretary Henry Newman. Urlsperger and Newman jointly organized the resettlement of several hundred Salzburgers to the British American colony of Georgia, which had been founded not long before. As Urlsperger usually wrote in German, a language Newman did not read, his correspondence had to be translated for the SPCK. Until his death in 1733, this task was performed by Johann Christoph Martini, an assistant of Ziegenhagen. George Fenwick Jones, who has edited Henry Newman’s letterbooks, shows that Martini used “a few Germanisms […] such as ‘upper servant’ for Oberknecht (foreman) or ‘Country folks’ for Landsleute (compatriots)”. But in general, he finds that “Martini’s translations, while very free, usually render the precise meaning of the originals”. When Newman’s clerks could not read Martini’s handwriting, they left blank spaces in the letterbooks. Jones argues that “[m]ost of the mistakes in spelling German names must have been due to the copyists, who apparently wrote from dictation”. This observation is based on “their complete disregard for the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization of the original letters, to say nothing of such phonetically correct but graphically wrong renditions as ‘the wholly Roman Empire.’”⁴⁴

In sum, translation processes between Halle and London served several purposes: they enabled communication between the Glaucha institutions and the SPCK, promoted the reception of Pietist writings among Anglicans and vice versa, thus calling attention to shared concepts of Protestant piety, and helped garner support for missionary activities. Even if Halle accounted for only a fraction of the English religious literature published in German translation between 1690 and 1740, as Alexander Schunka has recently suggested, August Hermann Francke’s collaborators and successors definitely played an active role in that expanding market.⁴⁵

13.4 Translation Projects in Halle and London

Francke’s Glaucha institutions are renowned for numerous pioneering linguistic and translational activities. Carl Hildebrand von Canstein (1667–1719), who co-founded the Halle Bible Institute with Francke in 1710, famously announced his intention “to print the Bible, and above all the New Testament, in all languages”.⁴⁶ The best-known linguistic work undertaken by Halle missionaries was probably that in India. According to Matthias Frenz, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg—one of the two missionaries who started the Tranquebar mission in 1706—had been alerted to the importance of language as the foundation of divine knowledge and human existence by his teachers Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) and August Hermann Francke. Ziegenbalg considered his proficiency in ancient languages essential for comparative linguistic work. In their efforts to come to terms with the foreign linguistic and cultural world of southern India, the Halle missionaries adopted a pragmatic strategy, initially learning Portuguese and conversing with the local population through interpreters, then gradually integrating Tamil into their practices of communication and conversion. Those activities involved collecting and copying Tamil texts, extracting word lists, compiling dictionaries, and recruiting native assistants. The efforts culminated in Ziegenbalg’s translation of the New Testament from the Greek original into Tamil, for which he also consulted Latin, German, Danish, Dutch, and Portuguese versions. The Tamil New Testament was printed in Tranquebar in 1714. Ziegenbalg’s grammar of the Tamil language (Grammatica Damulica), printed in Halle in 1716, and Plütschau’s language instruction in Halle, which he conducted with the assistance of an Indian convert, helped prepare future missionaries for their work in India.⁴⁷ Some of the two scholars’ successors, among them Benjamin Schultze (1689–1760), expanded their linguistic work to include spoken Tamil and other Indian languages such as Telugu and Hindustani. Schultze translated Martin Luther’s Der kleine Katechismus (Small Catechism) into Telugu and Arndt’s Of True Christianity into both Tamil and Telugu. With the help of a native speaker, he moreover translated the entire Bible into Telugu.⁴⁸ Despite the proficiency several missionaries achieved in South Asian languages, however, their practices of learning and studying these idioms were largely devised on the spot; they did not proceed from an overall programme conceived in Halle. Furthermore, Halle missionaries did not learn languages or translate texts for their own sake, but always in the context of their overarching goal of spreading the Christian message and contributing to building God’s kingdom on earth.⁴⁹

By and large, these observations also apply to Halle’s pathbreaking work with Eastern European and Oriental languages. Interest in Slavic languages was initially promoted by Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf, who authored the first grammar of contemporary Russian after his return from the Tsardom in 1694 and sparked Francke’s interest in missionary activities there. At Ludolf’s suggestion, Francke sent his former student Justus Samuel Scharschmid (1664–1724) from Livonia to Moscow. Although Scharschmid found the language exceedingly hard to learn, other Halle theologians in Russia as well as Russian visitors to the Glaucha institutions initiated processes of linguistic and cultural transfer. For a while, Francke himself took lessons with his Russian guests, and Ludolf facilitated the acquisition of Cyrillic font types for the Halle printing press in 1703. This enabled the orphanage to produce original religious and devotional texts and translations for export to Eastern Europe.⁵⁰ A key figure for the Russian translations was the Ukrainian Simeon Todorskij (c. 1700–1754), who spent six years in Halle as a student and translated numerous works of Pietist literature from German into Russian, among them several texts by Francke, a catechism and hymns by Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen (1670–1739), and Arndt’s Of True Christianity (printed in 1735). Swetlana Mengel has pointed out that Todorskij faced a linguistic dilemma. The Halle Pietists wanted to spread religious texts in vernacular languages, but in Russia, Church Slavonic was not only the liturgical language but also the language of culture. In the end, he opted for a hybrid between Church Slavonic and his native Little Russian, i.e. Ukrainian, dialect.⁵¹ According to Stefan Reichelt, Todorskij remained close to the original in his translation of Arndt but adapted the text to an audience of Russian Orthodox readers, e.g. through the “orthodoxization” of some of the terminology, omissions, and additional comments.⁵²

Halle also developed close ties with Protestant circles in Bohemia and Poland. In 1715, a Czech translation of Arndt’s Of True Christianity was printed at the Glaucha institutions, and a Polish translation followed. Czech and Polish translations of the Bible were printed in 1722 and 1726, respectively. The main linguistic mediator between German and Slavic languages in Halle was Heinrich Milde (1676–1739), who headed a group of Czech and Slovak translators and language experts. Milde’s team supplied numerous clandestine Protestants in the Habsburg Empire and Poland-Lithuania with religious literature.⁵³ Another initiative aimed at Protestants in Eastern Europe was Gotthilf August Francke’s (1696–1769) founding of a Lithuanian Seminary in 1727 for the training of Pietist Lutheran emissaries to the Baltic region.⁵⁴

Halle’s early activities in the field of Oriental languages are equally remarkable. While initially the study of Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic was closely linked to Biblical exegesis, these languages became increasingly important for missionary purposes over the years as well.⁵⁵ After his return from a journey to the Levant in 1700, the indefatigable Ludolf promoted the learning of Modern Greek and Arabic in order to further the renewal of the Greek Church. Ludolf also forged links between the Collegium Orientale Theologicum, founded by August Hermann Francke in Halle in 1702, and the SPCK, suggesting that young Englishmen should study in Halle in preparation for missionary work in the Levant.⁵⁶ It was on his initiative that the Damascene Solomon Negri (c. 1665–1727) spent a year in Halle teaching Arabic in 1701; he would return to the city in 1715 at Boehme’s behest. A Melkite Christian, Negri had been educated in Syria by Jesuit missionaries who had sent him to Paris for his studies. He later played a vital role in the SPCK’s effort to print the New Testament and Psalter in Arabic.⁵⁷ One of Negri’s students, Johann Heinrich Callenberg (1694–1760), founded the Institutum Judaicum (et Muhammedicum) in 1728 for missionary work among Jews and Muslims.⁵⁸ He established a printing press that produced texts in numerous languages, including Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Hindustani, and Syriac. Christoph Bochinger has pointed out that most texts in Oriental languages were issued in two editions—one with a Latin title page and preface, the other anonymously, without indication of the author or place of printing—mainly to avoid drawing the attention of Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries in the Levant. As was the case with most foreign language works printed in Halle, Callenberg chose basic religious texts such as the New Testament, foundational Protestant texts, apologetic tracts, and key writings of Halle Pietists as well as grammars and manuals for language instruction.⁵⁹

The Arabic texts printed by Callenberg for missionary activities among Muslims are a case in point. Apart from a brief primer of Arabic grammar, dialogues in Levantine Arabic dialect composed with Solomon Negri,⁶⁰ and translations of the New Testament,⁶¹ Callenberg printed several fundamental Protestant and Pietist texts. Between 1729 and 1731, he published Luther’s Small Catechism in a translation carried out by (or with the help of) Negri as well as Arabic translations of a catechism written by Francke and Freylinghausen’s Via salutis. The two last-named editions were prepared with the help of Carolus (Theocharis) Dadichi (c. 1693–1734), a Syrian Christian from Aleppo who, like Negri, taught Arabic in Halle and later worked for the SPCK.⁶² Callenberg also reprinted parts of Edward Pococke’s (1604–1691) Arabic translation of Hugo Grotius’s (1583–1645) famous apologetic work De veritate religionis christianae⁶³ as well as an Arabic translation of Thomas à Kempis’s fifteenth-century devotional book De imitatione Christi. The latter translation had been issued by the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in Rome in 1663; in keeping with Protestant convictions, the Halle version omitted references to the veneration of saints and the purgatory.⁶⁴

Callenberg’s efforts to print Yiddish and Hebrew works for missionary activities among Jews far surpassed his publication activities in other Oriental languages. In 1732 he formulated a programme for the institute’s printing press, giving centre stage to the New Testament and tracts about it in Yiddish. The Yiddish publications once again included Arndt’s and Freylinghausen’s works.⁶⁵ Heike Tröger has highlighted some of the strategies adopted to facilitate the dissemination of these publications among Jews. The layout was designed in such a way as to make the texts indistinguishable from Jewish prints, at least at first sight; authors’ names were either Hebraized or omitted and the place of printing was not mentioned. While the copies printed for distribution among Jews were exclusively in Yiddish and Hebrew, those for the missionaries contained a Latin title page and sometimes a Latin preface.⁶⁶ In terms of the number of conversions they inspired, however, the impact of Callenberg’s publishing offensives was very modest.⁶⁷

Despite the Pietists’ pioneering efforts in studying and translating languages that were not widely taught in early modern central Europe, it should not be overlooked that many of these activities were rather short-lived and depended on the initiative of devoted individuals like Milde and Callenberg as well as the occasional presence in Halle of skilled translators like Negri and Todorskij. The languages taught in the Halle schools on a regular basis were the standard languages of eighteenth-century education and conversation—Latin, Greek, and French.⁶⁸ The circle of men who learned and translated Russian, Lithuanian, Arabic, or Tamil, by contrast, was always very small. Even the Lutheran pastors whom Halle sent to North America in the eighteenth century did not learn English at the orphanage; in fact, they did not begin acquiring the basics of the language until they were en route from Halle to the New World via London.⁶⁹

In England, men like John Chamberlayne and Anton Wilhelm Boehme were obviously fluent in a variety of languages and easily acquired linguistic skills. Most of the SPCK’s translation projects can be directly traced to these multilingual individuals.⁷⁰ In addition, Robert Hales, an Anglican who avidly promoted a union between the Church of England and the Swiss Reformed Church,⁷¹ initiated translations of two of Josiah Woodward’s moral tracts “into both German and French for refugee Huguenots and the embattled Protestants of Orange and the Vaudois”. Johann Jakob Scherer (1653–1733), a reformed pastor in St Gall and corresponding member of the SPCK, translated several English devotional and liturgical works and stated that he was “willing to translate into German or Latin any good book that comes from England”.⁷² Meanwhile, other projects languished when translators worked slowly or negligently. When the SPCK commissioned its clerk Humphrey Wanley (1672–1726) to translate a French work by Jean-Frédéric Ostervald (1663–1747), the Reformed pastor in Neuchâtel, “years went by and the job remained unfinished”.⁷³ Wanley eventually completed his English translation of Ostervald’s Catéchisme ou instruction dans la religion chrétienne with the help of George Stanhope (1660–1728) in 1703,⁷⁴ entitling the English version The Grounds and Principles of the Christian Religion.

As these examples show, the SPCK never developed a cohesive translation programme, but its core members did become involved in a number of specific projects.⁷⁵ This dependence on personal initiative becomes even more evident when the focus shifts from French and German to more “exotic” languages. In late 1700, Ludolf presented his “Proposals relating to the Instruction of the Greek Christians” to the society, proposing the preparation of a work that would introduce the “elements of the Christian Religion” to Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Levant. A few months later, a committee had prepared a short catechism “for the use of the Greek Christians” which a society member “promised shall be translated into the vulgar Greek by some Greeks at Oxford, and may be then printed and sent accordingly”.⁷⁶ In 1703, with support from several SPCK members, Ludolf published a Modern Greek translation of the New Testament he had prepared with the help of Papa Seraphim of Mytilene, an unfrocked Greek priest whom he had brought to England and who also spent time in Halle. However, the translation was poorly received in the Levant, probably on account of a preface written by Seraphim.⁷⁷ In 1710, a revised version containing both the Modern and Ancient Greek text was printed in Halle.⁷⁸ In 1707, the SPCK decided to grant aid in the amount of ten guineas to the Archbishop of Pochtan, who planned to print religious works in Armenian. The following year, “the society made a vote towards a reprint of the Armenian Bible, besides supplying a version of the Book of Common Prayer in the same language, together with other Christian literature”.⁷⁹

The SPCK’s efforts to promote religious instruction in Celtic languages likewise depended on individual initiative. As the majority of the Welsh population was Anglican by the early eighteenth century, the aim of the society’s work there was not conversion but rather education and the promotion of piety.⁸⁰ In 1701, the society asked Dr John Evans (c. 1652–1724), the Bishop of Bangor, to “bring to the next meeting a List of such Welsh Books as are proper to be sent to the Correspondents in Wales”; Evans accordingly submitted a list of thirty-seven works. The SPCK decided to start with four moral tracts and called upon Evans “to find out a fitt person who may translate [them] into Welch”.⁸¹ By 1740, the society had initiated or supported translations of more than thirty devotional works, sermons, and moral tracts into Welsh. While most translations were from the English, Grotius’s De Veritate was translated from the Latin original. These efforts culminated in a new edition of the Welsh Bible, published in 1718 after five years of preparation. This edition, which was mainly the work of the translator and editor Moses Williams (1685–1742), proved very popular, as 10,000 copies were reportedly sold, and a second edition came out in 1727. By the 1730s, however, “demand for new Welsh translations became less marked, and, with occasional exceptions, books already translated now satisfied its members”.⁸²

Two years earlier, the society had supported the printing of a Book of Common Prayer in Gaelic.⁸³ This project was instigated by John Richardson (1664–1747), an Anglican rector in County Cavan who also commissioned the printing of Irish versions of the Bible, several sermons, and a catechism. As Andrew Sneddon points out, however, “the vast majority of the print-run remained unsold” and the SPCK stopped supporting efforts to convert the Catholic Irish after 1715. “Individuals worried about the state of Protestantism in Ireland had concluded that their money would be better spent on supporting charity schools. In these schools, Catholic children were to be made Protestant through slow linguistic and cultural assimilation.”⁸⁴ When Bishop Francis Hutchinson (1660–1739) sought to proselytize Irish Catholics by means of a bilingual catechism in orthographically simplified Gaelic and English in the early 1720s, the SPCK declined to support the initiative.⁸⁵

Overall, the translation projects carried out by the SPCK and the Halle Pietists did not emerge from a preconceived translation programme but were undertaken at the initiative of individuals who managed to convince these organizations of the benefits and feasibility of their plans. Some of these projects were rather short-lived or of limited success. The SPCK directed its efforts mainly towards commissioning translations for Protestants and Catholics, particularly in Wales and Ireland. Especially from 1730 onwards, the society narrowed its focus to Britain and the Empire at the price of marginalizing continental Europe and the non-British world.⁸⁶ In contrast, the Halle Pietists and their missionaries devoted much of their energy to translations intended for Jews, Muslims, and the native population of southern India. Some of these ventures were supported by the SPCK.⁸⁷ One group in which the SPCK and Halle shared an interest were Greek- and Arabic-speaking Eastern Christians; here, Ludolf and Boehme, and to some degree Negri and Dadichi, were the protagonists who connected Halle and London. It was in this context that, in 1720, the SPCK began considering plans to print the Psalter and New Testament in Arabic. In the following, we will examine the rationale, goals, and complexities of that project—which Brunner has rightly called “the largest venture of its type which the SPCK attempted”⁸⁸—in some detail.

13.5 Printing the Psalter and New Testament in Arabic

The observation that Protestant missionary endeavours became more organized and better coordinated in the wake of the founding of the SPCK and the Glaucha institutions also holds true for efforts to translate and print religious texts in Arabic. Such projects had been sporadic in the seventeenth century, when they were mainly undertaken by individual scholars and funded privately. A prominent example in the English context was the Orientalist Edward Pococke, who had served as chaplain of the Levant Company in Aleppo and later became the first professor of Arabic at Oxford.⁸⁹ He produced Arabic translations of an English catechism, of Chief parts of the English Liturgy, and Grotius’s De Veritate, and printed them either at his own expense or with support from individuals, or in one case from Oxford University. The distribution of these texts in the Levant seems to have taken place rather haphazardly.⁹⁰ The efforts undertaken by Halle and the SPCK to translate, print, and disseminate Arabic texts in the early eighteenth century still depended largely on individual initiatives and fortuitous circumstances. Yet these projects could now rely on the financial and ideological support of the societies’ well-oiled fundraising machines. Close ties to Levant Company merchants and chaplains or existing missionary ventures in the East increased the prospect of disseminating the texts. The societies also had access to large networks of experts and supporters, among them corresponding members, university professors, and bishops. As a result, their Arabic printing projects, in particular the edition of the Psalter and New Testament, were of a decidedly collaborative nature.

It was Anton Wilhelm Boehme who brought the proposal to print the New Testament in Arabic for use by the Christian communities in the Middle East before the SPCK in the spring of 1720; the idea of publishing the Psalter was born later.⁹¹ As far back as 1715, he had suggested to August Hermann Francke that Solomon Negri might be asked to prepare a revised edition of the New Testament in Arabic and Turkish. Boehme thought these editions would prove useful not only in the Ottoman Empire but among the Muslims of India as well.⁹² Brunner has argued that “the vision of the Hallensians” was “[t]he driving force behind this particular venture”,⁹³ and some of its protagonists were indeed closely connected with Halle. However, Simon Mills’s recent detailed account of the SPCK’s endeavour suggests that Englishmen with commercial or missionary experience in the Levant played a much more decisive role in moving the project forward. The most important of these was Rowland Sherman (1662–1747), an English merchant in Aleppo who was introduced to the society by Samuel Lisle (1683–1749), a former chaplain of the Levant Company in the Syrian city. Sherman had lived in Syria for thirty years and, according to Lisle, had a perfect command of Arabic.⁹⁴ In fact, he had already been working on a revised Arabic translation of the New Testament on his own initiative. By comparing Thomas Erpenius’s (1584–1624) edition, the London Polyglot Bible published in the 1650s,⁹⁵ and the original Greek text, as well as using the commentary tradition, Sherman had “perfected such a Translation of the New Testament as, I believe has never yet been seen in Arabick”.⁹⁶ Sherman enlisted the help of the Greek patriarch of Antioch, Athanasius III Dabbās (1647–1724) as well as a local Maronite priest to compare the Arabic text with the Greek text and the Latin Vulgate, rectifying “mistakes” and translating some parts anew. As Sherman pointed out in a letter to Henry Newman, this approach ensured that local clergymen would “look upon the Work as their own when it should become Publick”.⁹⁷ For the Psalter, he used an Arabic translation printed by Athanasius in 1706.⁹⁸ Sherman sent his manuscript copies and the printed Psalter to London, where they were to serve as the basis of the SPCK edition.⁹⁹ In the British capital, the SPCK commissioned the cutting of a new set of Arabic fonts by the type-founder William Caslon (1692–1766). Caslon worked under the close supervision of Solomon Negri, who regularly visited his workshop to correct the types.¹⁰⁰ In order to save paper and keep the binding costs down, these types were smaller than the ones used for the London Polyglot.¹⁰¹

In contrast to earlier private initiatives, the SPCK project had a far-flung financial support network to rely on. The society received contributions from subscribing members and even succeeded in securing £500 from King George I in 1724.¹⁰² However, the costs kept mounting, and the minutes of the SPCK Bible Committee meetings show that money was a constant concern, prompting the committee to devise various strategies for reducing expenditures.¹⁰³ The Psalter finally appeared in 1725, and the New Testament followed in 1727. The SPCK printed 6,000 copies of the former and 10,000 of the latter¹⁰⁴ as well as several other texts in Arabic, such as a catechism and Jean-Frédéric Ostervald’s Abrégé de l’histoire sainte, both translated by Carolus (Theocharis) Dadichi.¹⁰⁵

To raise funds for the Arabic editions, the SPCK published and circulated a collection of letters it had solicited from clergymen and scholars—particularly those who had spent time in the East—in response to its initial proposal. Entitled An Extract of Several Letters Relating to the Great Charity and Usefulness of Printing the New Testament and Psalter in the Arabick Language, the collection came out in 1721 and was reprinted in 1725. A comparison with the original letters reveals that the SPCK had edited and shortened the letters in such a way as to emphasize the usefulness and feasibility of the project for potential donors, while omitting the concerns of some collaborators. It was no doubt a deliberate decision to begin the collection with a particularly long and enthusiastic letter written by Negri, an Eastern Christian himself and thus a member of the community the SPCK was hoping to target. In his letter, Negri criticized existing editions of the Bible in Arabic undertaken by Catholics and Protestants as either too scarce, too expensive, badly translated, or of an inconvenient size. He also offered information on the different Christian communities in the Levant and on the best ways to distribute the SPCK edition.¹⁰⁶

Overall, the collection of letters portrayed the project as “a Work of great Charity” towards the poor Christians of the Middle East.¹⁰⁷ An expression of support signed by Anglican bishops and archbishops appeared on the first pages of the 1725 reprint and declared that the dissemination of the New Testament and Psalter in Arabic would help to “preserve and propagate the Christian Faith among our Brethren in Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and other Eastern Countries from whence We first received it”.¹⁰⁸ Although Christianity originated in Palestine, most Christians there were now “without the Scriptures, and know no further thereof than what they hear read in their publick Assemblies”.¹⁰⁹ The letters explained this alleged lack of access to their own sacred texts, “their unhappy Darkness for Want of Copies of the New Testament”,¹¹⁰ by pointing out that manuscripts were expensive and the local Christians very poor. Moreover, printing had been forbidden by the Ottoman authorities.¹¹¹ According to Lisle, the results were “Ignorance, and Corruptions, and Superstitions” among the Eastern Christians. Without assistance they would be unable “to have the Scripture in their Hands”.¹¹² Reverend Edmund Chishull (1671–1733), a former Levant Company chaplain in Smyrna, offered yet another angle on the matter: “It would […] be an Act highly worthy the Care and Piety of the Society, if where the Alcoran reigns in Arabick, the Gospel, by their Charity, might be spread in the same Language.”¹¹³

The letters also stressed the widespread use of Arabic among Christians in the Middle East and pointed out that reading was widely taught. After all, a translation of the New Testament and Psalter would have been of little use otherwise.¹¹⁴ Reverend Henry Bridges (d. 1728), the Archdeacon of Rochester who had served as a Levant Company chaplain in Aleppo, wrote: “I assure you […] that when I liv’d in those Parts, there were publick Schools not only at Aleppo, Antioch, Damascus, Tripoly, Sidon, Jerusalem, &c. but in most of the considerable Villages thereabouts, where Children were taught both to read and write Arabick”. ¹¹⁵ Lisle, who had lamented the Eastern Christians’ ignorance, conceded that “the Christian Clergy in those Parts have not so abandoned the Care of their Flocks, as not to teach them to read”.¹¹⁶

What the SPCK omitted from the printed extracts were the concerns voiced by some of the correspondents with experience in the Middle East. Their misgivings revolved around the alleged disposition of the target audience on the one hand and Roman Catholic missionary efforts among the same group on the other. Commenting on how the society might secure the support of the patriarch of Antioch, Athanasius, Lisle warned that the venture should “be conducted with as much Quiet and Reserve as may be, and that all Pomp and Ostentation be avoided”. Under no circumstances should the impression be given that the project was meant to be

an Assistance to the poor Greek Church; or an Endeavour to inform and enlighten Them […]. Whatsoever we may think of the Low and Afflicted State, in which (God knows) they are, they have very Magnificent Notions of themselves […]; and if Circumstances wou’d permit, the Patriarch of Antioch would soon give the World to understand that he is the Successor of St. Peter. The Astonishment likewise which they all affect to express when they speak of the Learning which flourishes in Great Britain, is, in my Apprehension, a sufficient Indication that they think they ought not to be taught by us, and that it is a Disgrace to the people of the East, those Antient Nations of the Earth, to learn any thing from so upstart a Race, as (in reality) they consider us in the Western parts of the World to be.¹¹⁷

In a letter to Henry Newman, the clergyman William Hallifax (c. 1655–1722)—likewise a former chaplain of the Levant Company in Aleppo—voiced a different kind of concern. He claimed to have observed that “the People of those Countries, as well Christians as others, while I was among them” were in “great want of Curiosity and Regard, to Knowledge, or rather an Aversion to and Contempt of it”. He doubted that “they would be at the pains to make Use of, or improve by any good Books that were put into their hands”.¹¹⁸

As Mills has pointed out, the “greatest challenge in distributing the books would be the resistance of the Roman Catholic missionaries”.¹¹⁹ And indeed, Hallifax wrote:

Next the Multitude of Romish Missionaries scatter’d up and down all those Countries of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia &ca. Who as they have done heretofore, will certainly use their utmost Endeavours to Obstruct, Frustrate and Disappoint, a Design, as in it’s Nature so Beneficial, so like to prove so much to the Honour of the English Reformation. For it is not their Business, whatsoever some may think, to propagate the Gospel of Christ, but to extend the Authority of the Pope.¹²⁰

Hallifax, who had already attempted to distribute Pococke’s Arabic translations in Aleppo, reported that the local Capuchins had launched “a concerted effort […] to warn the Eastern Christians away from the missionary entreaties of the English chaplains”.¹²¹ Sherman recommended that the SPCK undertake the printing of the New Testament and Psalter as quietly as possible in order to avoid raising the suspicions of Rome. As Newman told Sherman, however, this was impossible for the SPCK, as it relied on voluntary contributions and therefore had no choice but to make its plans public. As a solution, Newman suggested

to accomplish the Impression with so much truth and beauty as to silence them and by taking no notice of the place in the Title Page, they may if they please assume the Glory of having done the Work at Rome, provided they will let the copies be quietly dispers’d under such cautions as you and our Friends in Palestine shall prescribe.¹²²

As a result of these considerations, the SPCK Bible committee decided to omit the place of printing from the title page of its Arabic editions (see Figs. 13.1 and 13.2).¹²³ In contrast, the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in Rome had issued its 1671 bilingual Arabic-Latin Bible with a clear indication of its place of origin (see Fig. 13.3).¹²⁴ Concealing the provenance of translations into Oriental languages was, in fact, a strategy commonly used by Protestant publishers. Pococke had printed his Arabic edition of Grotius’s De Veritate “without any name or title of Persons or place whence they come” and had it bound “in imitation of the Easterne manner”.¹²⁵ He hoped that this would ensure a more favourable reception of the work among Eastern Christians and help avoid that “the good thereby intended might by some malitious men, under that pretence, be hindered”—most likely a reference to Roman Catholics.¹²⁶ As pointed out above, Callenberg adopted the same approach for his editions in Oriental languages.

Fig. 13.1

Title page of the SPCK’s Arabic Psalter: “Book of the Psalms of King and Prophet David, and also [crossreferences to] parallel passages of Scripture in the Old and New Testaments, then the Ten Commandments of God as they are found in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Exodus and the Lord’s prayer as it is found in the sixth chapter of Saint Matthew. Printed in the year 1725 of the Christian era.” Kitāb zabūr Dāwūd al-malik wa-l-nabī. London: SPCK 1725. Bonn, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Goussen 2052. https://digitale-sammlungen.ulb.uni-bonn.de/content/titleinfo/109545

Fig. 13.2

Title page of the SPCK’s Arabic New Testament: “The New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also the Ten Commandments of God as they are found in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Exodus. Printed in the year 1727 of the Christian era.” Al-ʿAhd al-jadīd li-rabbinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ. London: SPCK 1727. Bonn, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Goussen 2066. https://digitale-sammlungen.ulb.uni-bonn.de/content/titleinfo/110507

Fig. 13.3

Title page of the first volume of the Arabic-Latin Bible printed by the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. Biblia Sacra Arabica Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide. Rome: Typographia Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide 1671. Bonn, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Goussen 4′ 2045 (1). https://digitale-sammlungen.ulb.uni-bonn.de/content/titleinfo/211719

An issue that plagued the Arabic Bible Committee for several years was the addition or omission of “orthographical notes”, i.e. diacritics such as the shadda, tanwīn, and madda in their editions. In the Arabic script, only consonants and long vowels are represented by letters; supplementary diacritics (tashkīl) can be added to indicate consonant length and short vowels, e.g. when the meaning or grammatical case would otherwise remain ambiguous. For the SPCK, the main question was whether the use of diacritics would “render the text more intelligible to the Common People for whose use the Books are principally designed”.¹²⁷ At the same time, it was clear that the inclusion of diacritics would considerably increase the cost of printing.¹²⁸ The SPCK’s letters and minutes reveal that the participants in this discussion were Sherman at Aleppo, the Syrian Christians Negri and Dadichi, and the clergyman Arthur Bedford (1668–1745), a member of the SPCK who knew Arabic and was deeply involved in the publication project.¹²⁹ Further opinions on the subject were solicited from numerous other individuals, including the Orientalist George Sale (1697–1736), who was acting as one of the proof correctors, a professor in Utrecht, the patriarch of Antioch, and local informants in Aleppo.¹³⁰ Both Negri and Dadichi suggested a pragmatic approach, declaring that the diacritics “were not absolutely necessary to be us’d, […] and that the Smallness of ye Letter made it Impracticable to use them”.¹³¹

The strongest proponent for including the diacritics was Bedford. In a long letter to Sherman, he rightly pointed out that manuscripts of the Quran used diacritical marks on all letters, as was also the case in the London Polyglot. He saw the advantage of this practice in the fact that it left no room for ambiguities. Bedford went on to explain in detail his theory that learning among the Muslims had declined as a direct result of the diacritics having fallen into disuse. Arabic translations without diacritical marks, he wrote, had been ineffective in converting Muslims to Christianity.¹³² For Bedford, the comparison to the aesthetics of Quranic manuscripts was particularly important. In 1726, he even suggested to the Bible committee that the SPCK refrain from printing the New Testament with the types used for the Psalter. In his view, they were too small and would risk making “the Edition contemptible to Turks and Papists in those Countries, where Books of Value, and especially the Alcoran, are always written in a larger Character”. He also voiced concerns that the edition could reflect negatively on King George I: “That his Majesty being a Benefactor, he [Bedford] fears it may occasion Reflections upon him, which may prove to his Disservice in those Parts, where the Books are to be sent.” However, the committee decided against his motion.¹³³ As for the question of the diacritics, it adopted the pragmatic but somewhat haphazard approach of printing some diacritical marks in the New Testament, while the Psalter had already been published without them (see Figs. 13.4 and 13.5).

Fig. 13.4

First psalm and the beginning of the second psalm in the SPCK’s Arabic Psalter. Kitāb zabūr Dāwūd al-malik wa-l-nabī. London: SPCK 1725. Bonn, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Goussen 2052. https://digitale-sammlungen.ulb.uni-bonn.de/content/titleinfo/109545

Fig. 13.5

Beginning of the Gospel according to Luke in the SPCK’s Arabic New Testament. Al-ʿAhd al-jadīd li-rabbinā Yasūʿ al-Masīḥ. London: SPCK 1727. Bonn, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Goussen 2066. https://digitale-sammlungen.ulb.uni-bonn.de/content/titleinfo/110507

Overall, the involvement of numerous actors in the project allowed for a pooling of expertise and resources but also created considerable discussion and disagreement. Negotiating editorial decisions between Aleppo and London proved difficult, and both Negri and Sherman were somewhat disappointed with the outcome.¹³⁴

The printed copies of the New Testament, Psalter, and other Arabic texts were sent to Sherman in Aleppo (on Levant Company ships), but their reception by the Eastern Christians was relatively limited. The books met with resistance from Roman Catholic missionaries and from within the Eastern Christian communities; in fact, many copies of the New Testament were reportedly burned.¹³⁵ The SPCK also sent copies to the missionaries in India as well as to Narva in Russia, where Kaspar Matthias Rodde (1689–1743), a Lutheran pastor who had studied under Negri in Halle and was a corresponding member of the SPCK, distributed them to Persian prisoners in Russian garrisons.¹³⁶

In its correspondence with benefactors and potential donors, the SPCK had always framed its Arabic Bible project as a “work of charity”. At the same time, however, the endeavour was clearly conceived in a missionary context, as the society attempted to gain a foothold among the Christians of the Middle East, where Roman Catholic missionaries had become ever more firmly established since the sixteenth century. Printing thousands of copies of the New Testament and Psalter in Arabic provided an opportunity to disseminate an alternative translation to the one published by the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. Back in England, the project was also a “performative act” of sorts, or, as Mills puts it, one of “self-affirmation of a religious identity”. The Arabic manuscripts had been shown to King George I, and presentation copies were sent to English college libraries and scholars.¹³⁷ At the outset of the project, Hallifax had declared that the undertaking was likely to “prove so much to the Honour of the English Reformation”.¹³⁸ In 1727, Sherman described it as a “good Work […] charitably begun for the Benefit of our poor Brethren in these Parts, and the Honour of our Country and Church”.¹³⁹

13.6 Conclusions

The Halle Pietists and the SPCK undoubtedly infused a new dynamism into Protestant missionary efforts by raising funds, creating networks, and cooperating across national and confessional boundaries. As a result, numerous translation projects were launched and promoted. Most translation projects discussed in this contribution were the brainchildren of individuals in pursuit of specific goals and visions. Neither Halle nor London had a preconceived programme for which works should be translated into which languages. Both often lacked the linguistic expertise to ensure that all translations satisfied a high standard. Although efforts were made to gather information on the prospects of distributing these translations, some met with only modest success, especially in terms of actual conversions to Protestantism. Still, we can observe the emergence of a common set of texts chosen for translation: the projects focused on biblical and liturgical texts, catechisms, and popular devotional works. In the last category, Arndt’s Of True Christianity was one of the books most frequently translated in Halle. Given its importance for Halle Pietists—Francke used it for his weekly sermons and it was a key text in the publishing programme of the printing press at Glaucha¹⁴⁰—its translation for fellow Protestants and missionary purposes would have seemed only logical. Likewise, Luther’s Small Catechism was translated on a regular basis, though apparently not with the specific aim of spreading Lutheranism, but rather because it explained foundational Christian teachings in an easily comprehensible way.¹⁴¹

In many cases, the Halle Pietists and the SPCK tried to adapt their translations and editions specifically to their respective audiences. In keeping with Francke’s aim to spread “true Christianity” in spoken languages, a targeted effort was made to translate religious texts into vernacular languages.¹⁴² In many cases, “native informants” were involved in the translation projects, and several of the translators were not themselves Protestants but “in-betweens” like Negri and Todorskij.

Further studies of the specific linguistic features of the translations undertaken in Halle and London remain a desideratum. Such investigations might provide valuable insights into the balance the translators struck between accommodating Protestant concerns on the one hand and catering to the tastes of non-Protestant audiences on the other (such as the “orthodoxization” that Reichelt has detected in the Russian Arndt translation). Finally, decisions regarding the layout of texts as well as the omission of the publisher and place of printing suggest that the Halle Pietists and the SPCK adopted a policy of obscuring the Protestant origins of their translations to the extent possible when printing texts for non-Protestant audiences.¹⁴³ This was done to ensure that the translations would be more easily accepted by their intended readership as well as to avoid the suspicions and censorship of Roman Catholic missionaries or local religious authorities.

Overall, the multiple translation projects realized in Halle and by the SPCK seem to have served both outward and inward ends. Above all, they had the practical goal of spreading Protestantism through the dissemination of texts (and thus building a missionary bulwark against the Catholic rivals). As Bochinger has argued in the context of Halle’s translational activities, the idea was to give people—be they Eastern Christians, Jews, or Muslims—access to the Bible and other texts in their own languages so that, through regular reading practices, they would experience an “awakening” and embrace “true Christianity” of their own accord.¹⁴⁴ At the same time, the translation projects also served as a kind of religious self-affirmation: the Halle Pietists as well as the members of the SPCK were convinced that, through them, they were contributing to building God’s kingdom on earth by spreading the Christian message.