LITERATURE. — Dobrofsky, Geschichte der Bohm. Sprache; Vondrak, Die Spuren der altkirchenslavischen Evangelien- iiberseteung in der altbihmischen Literatur; Morfill, Slavonic Literature; numerous articles in the Archiv fiir Slavische Philologie [see especially Supplementband, pp. 145, 146] and
in the Centralblatt fiir Bibliothekswesen, 1897; Leskien in Herzog, RE iii. 161 ff.
xi. PoLisH VERSIONS.—l. The earliest specimen of the Polish language which has survived is the well-known Florian Psalter, so called because it was discovered at the monastery of St. Florian near to Linz in Austria. This MS (St. Florian iii. 206) is trilingual, richly illuminated, in two columns. The versions represented are Latin, Polish, and German, a verse in Latin being fol- lowed first by a Polish and then by a German rendering of the same verse. It is uncertain whether the letter M and the arms of Anjou found in the MS signify that it belonged to Margaret the first wife of Louis king of Hungary and Poland, and daughter of Charles Iv., or refer to Mary the sister of the Polish queen Hedwig of Anjou, and daughter of king Louis. In either case the date would be about the same, viz. the middle of the 14th century. It is asserted by Leciejewski that it is a copy of a much older text, and the version may well be referred to the 13th cent., to the end of which Macieowski assigns a version of Ps 50. The St. Florian Psalter shows a very close adherence to the Latin, and also a use of the Bohemian version. It is sometimes called the Psalter of queen Margaret, and has been care- fully edited by Nehring. :
2. Another important MS is the so-called Bible of queen Sophia, now in the library at Saros Patak in Hungary. According to a 16th cent. statement it was written for Sophia, the fourth wife of Jagello, about the year 1455. Other authorities date it a century earlier. This MS was edited by Malecki in 1872. It is perhaps copied from a complete Polish Bible, but is itself very incom- plete, containing only the earlier books of the OT (according to Morfill, the whole Pentateuch ; ac- cording to Leskien, Genesis only), Joshua, Ruth, Kings (and, according to Leskien, also Chronicles), and fragments of other books of the OT. The writing of five different scribes is traceable in the MS. The translation it contains is based on the Bohemian version, with occasional reference to the Vulgate.
3. Various other Polish translations were made after the beginning of the 16th cent., ‘ the classical age of Polish literature,’ as it has been called. The first was a translation of the NT, the work of a Lutheran, Seklucyan, a competent Greek scholar, whose translation was ‘made from the Greek, with the use of the Latin and other versions.’ This was printed at Konigsberg in 1551. The first
CONTINENTAL VERSIONS
CONTINENTAL VERSIONS 419
version of the whole Bible was published at
Cracow ten years later. This, the ‘Old Cracow’ Bible, was intended for Roman Catholic use; but the Pope refused to sanction it, because of the use made in it of the Bohemian Bible. The next im-
ortant edition is the so-called Radzivil or Brest
ible, published at Brest for the Calvinists in 1563, at the expense of Prince Nicholas Radzivil. The son of this prince, who was a Roman Catholic, on his father’s death bought up and burnt all copies of this translation. This version claimed to be based on the original texts, Hebrew and Greek, but was regarded as Socinian in places. It did not, however, satisfy this sect, for whom a ver- sion was made by Budny in 1570 ‘from Hebrew, Greek, and Latin,’ and this was reprinted, with certain changes, in 1572. Another Socinian trans- lation appeared in 1577.
4. Another important translation made from the original language was that published at Dantzig in 1632, and afterwards reprinted. A large number of copies of this edition were bought up and burnt by the Jesuits. At the beginning of the 19th cent. the text of the Dantzig Bible was adopted by the Berlin Bible Society for the edition circu- lated by that Society.
5. Of Catholic translations the first to be noticed is the Leopolita Bible, the translation of John of Lemberg, based on the Vulgate, and published in 1561. But the most important of the Catholic versions is that made by Jacob Wuyck, and pub- lished at Cracow in 1599. This was based on the Vulgate; but use was made by the translator of the original text, and also of previously existing Polish translations. It was sanctioned by Pope Clement vill., and has been often reprinted. ‘At the beginning of the 19th cent. the text of this edition was used by the St. Petersburg Bible Society in 1813, and it has since been reprinted and widely circulated.
LITERATURE. — Herzog, RH3 iii. 165ff.; numerous articles in the Archiv fiir Slavische Philologie; Morfill, Slavonic Literature.
xii. RusstAN VERSIONS.—The early history of the Bible in Russia is dealt with, in regard to its origin, and the MSS in which the version is pre- served, in vol. iv. p. 863f. In the present article the history may be taken up with the first edition of the Bible, and continued to the present day.
1. The first Russian book was an Apostol (the name given to the MS or volume which con- tained the Acts, Cath. Epp., and St. Paul’s Epistles), printed at Moscow in 1564, The inno- vation of printing was not well received, and the printers, Theodorof and Mstislavetz, had to flee from Moscow into Lithuania. Here editions of the Gospels (1569), the Apostol (1574), and, finally (1581), of the whole Bible appeared.