410 CONTINENTAL VERSIONS CONTINENTAL VERSIONS
need of a translation based on the Hebrew and Greek began to be felt, and in 1807 Charles Iv. ordered such a one. This was the work of Felix Torres y Amat, afterwards bishop of Astorga, and was published 1823-1825. Though very successful and often reprinted, it did not supplant the translation of Scio, of which numerous editions still appear. There are no recent Protestant translations. The copies circulated in large numbers by the British and Foreign Bible Society are practically only reprints of the early Protestant translations of Enzinas, Cassiodore .de Reina, and Cyprian de Valera already mentioned, and of the later Catho- lic versions of Scio and Torres Amat.
8. Besides the Castilian versions of the Bible of which we have hitherto spoken, the translation into Catalan, the language of Catalonia, also demands attention in connexion with the history of the Bible in Spain. Both by language and by political ties the district of Catalonia was in the early Middle Ages closely connected with southern France, and we are not surprised there- fore to find a close resemblance between the Catalan version and those of France. According to Berger (Romania, xix. 523), the version ‘is not older than the 14th cent., and was made in all probability by a native of Catalonia, educated at the University of Paris.’ Its dependence on the French version is shown by the way in which it reproduces the most characteristic glosses of the French Bible.
The oldest MS of the version is a Marmoutier MS of the NT now at Paris (Bibl. Nat. Fonds esp. 486) of the 14th century. We have also later MSS —(1) Bibl. Nat. Fonds esp. 2-4; (2) Bibl. Nat. Fonds esp. 5; (3) Brit. Mus. Egerton 1526, all of the 15th cent., and all containing the same portions of the Bible,—which enable us to trace the history of the text to some extent. These later MSS pre- serve the same general text as that contained in the 14th cent. MS, but the glosses of the French Bible have been removed. ‘The foundation of the version is the same: the phrases of the 15th cent. MSS from end to end are modelled on those of the 14th, and a number of characteristic expressions attest the original identity of the translation.’ Of MSS of the Psalter in this language Berger men- tions ten, and in them he distinguishes three in- dependent versions. One is found in Bibl. Nat. Fonds esp. 5, another is contained in Bibl. Nat. Fonds esp. 2, and Egerton 1526, and a third in Bibl. Nat. Fonds fr. 2434. The first, like the other Catalan Psalters, is based on the Gallican Psalter ; the second seems to rest on the Hebrew Psalter, but this is really not the case; the third represents the most ancient form of the text, and this last is based on a French version, for ‘all the peculiarities of the Catalan text are explained by the French, and several are only explained by it.’ The Sapiential books show evidence of the use of French and Latin as bases for translation. In the Book of Proverbs both French and Latin influences are clear, in Wisdom there is no evidence of French, in Sirach the two alternate. There is a similar want of uniformity in regard to the Prophets. The translation of Isaiah is made from the Vul- gate, but shows French influence. In Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel there is no trace of such influence. Nor is the underlying Latin text the same ; for, whilej Isaiah and Daniel rest on the ordinary Paris text of the 13th cent., there is no sign in Jeremiah and Ezekiel of the characteristic readings of that text. Of the Gospels we have three Catalan versions—one very inexact and para- phrased, the others literal. Two of these have many points of resemblance to the Provencal, by the help of which they were made, viz. those con- tained in the Marmoutier MS and Bibl. Nat.
Fonds esp. 2; the third contained in a Barce- lona MS does not appear to have anything in common with the Provencal text. In regard to St. Pauls Epistles, there is ‘no doubt but that the Catalan Bible of the 15th cent. is dependent on that of the 14th, and the latter on the Bible in the language of France’ (langue doil). The Apocalypse was based not on the French, but on the Vulgate; but in the middle of this translation made from the Latin we find reminiscences of the French. Berger sums up as follows in regard to the NT: ‘I conclude by saying that the Catalan version of the NT was made at the latest in the 14th cent. in some places from a French text, in others from a Latin text very similar to those in use at Paris. The writer probably incorpor- ated into his work an earlier translation of the Gospels.’
The names of two translators are met with in writings on this version. The one is Boniface Ferrer, to whom is aseribed the translation printed near Valencia in 1477-1478 ; but, while the version belongs to the 14th cent., Ferrer lived in the 15th. A more important name is that of Sabruguera, a Dominican of the beginning of the 14th century. He studied at Paris about the year 1307, and this would agree with the character of the version, as indicated by the MSS. Further than this, one MS attributes to him a version of the Psalter.