The Reformation in Europe did not only affect political and ecclesiastical changes in society, but it also influenced various parts of cultural life, including the written languages, not least in some areas in the Baltic Sea region where no written text in the vernacular existed before the sixteenth century. The relation between the Lutheran reformation and languages stands in the foreground in an anthology based on presentations at an international seminar in Turku, Finland, arranged by Turku Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies and held in October 2015.
It is not a coincidence that such an anthology is produced by Finnish scholars. The Finnish written language, just like written Estonian, was established under the clear influence of the Lutheran Reformation. However, in the anthology it is also emphasised that languages with a long literary tradition, such as German and Scandinavian as well as the Slavic languages, were influenced by the Reformation. This anthology thereby makes an important contribution to the renewed interest in early modern European mobility and dissemination of ideas through textual networks.
The anthology is divided in three parts. In the first part the reception of Luther's ideas and influence on the development of written languages is discussed through studies of various pathways, for example book markets, linguistic innovations and literary language, not least in in England, Estonia and Poland. The British linguist John L. Flood gives a new perspective on the influence of Luther's German translation on William Tyndale translation of the New Testament, which has largely been ignored in earlier research. According to Flood it is not only probable that Tyndale spent some time in Wittenberg, where he learnt German, his translation is also influenced by Luther's ambition to render the language in a natural idiomatic way in order to ease ordinary people's understanding.
In the anthology the Reformation is discussed as the primary cause behind the process of making Finnish, Estonian and Latvian into literary languages. The Estonian linguist Kristiina Ross demonstrates that literary Estonian was actually born with the Reformation, in the process of creating catechisms, hymns and a Bible in the vernacular. Ross describes this process in terms of ‘colonial linguistics’, governed by the German-speaking elite, especially the pastors, and not by Estonians themselves.
In part ii the perspective is directed toward both short- and long-term effects of Bible translations on the evolution of written languages. Here we find a dynamic perspective on the Reformation and the Bible translations which in some ways complicate traditional Reformation narratives. It is noticeable that in some places the Lutheran Reformation had a very limited role in Bible translations. As the Czech linguist Robert Dittmann points out, due to the Hussite movement in the fifteenth century, many proto-Protestant ideas were already known in the Bohemian Lands: the Bible had been translated into Czech in the mid-fourteenth century, the third complete translation in Europe after the French and Italian versions.
Linguistic continuity is also discussed in relation to the Scandinavian Reformation. While in older linguistic research it is claimed that the translation of the New Testament into Swedish (1526) was independent of its precursors in the matter of word choices, the Swedish linguist Jonathan Pettersson observes that the vocabulary used in the translation of the New Testament reflects a language that had been developed in the late Middle Ages, especially in the towns that were more exposed to German influences than for example the monastic milieux where much earlier translation work had been performed.
In part iii, which discusses the re-use of Catholic texts after the Reformation, we also find various connections to discussions on the so-called long Reformation. The Nordic linguists Elise Kleivane and Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir give an interesting perspective on apocryphal stories of the infant Jesus and Mother Mary in late medieval and early modern Nordic literature. Despite their presumed ‘Catholic’ content, with its roots in non-biblical legends and with its devotional portrayal of St Anne and St Mary, these stories seem to have increased in popularity in the centuries following the Reformation. It would have been interesting to deepen this discussion with an analysis of what was really theologically problematical with these stories since reading saints’ legends and non-biblical texts was not necessarily a problem for Lutheran theologians.
In the final part of the book, the perspective is more linguistic, with discussions on language contacts and loanwords, for example the traces left by Low German on early Finnish translations, the influence of Luther's texts on sixteenth-century Dutch bible translations, and the influence of German on early written Latvian.
As might be noticed, the material used by most of the authors is mainly bible translations. It would have been interesting to have had more examples taken from liturgical sources not least since the relation between the vernacular and Latin in Reformation liturgies is not always clear. In her study of early Finnish translations of the ‘Te Deum’, the Finnish linguist Tanja Toropainen emphasises that initially the liturgies retained much text sung in Latin. In Finnish manuscripts the translations in Finnish and Swedish often are written side by side, sometimes also with the Latin text. Furthermore, in Robert Dittman's interesting discussion of the penetration of the vernacular language into the mass in the Czech Lands already in the fifteenth century, some parts of the liturgy remained in Latin and even the sixteenth-century Utraquists were bilingual in their liturgy with some congregations celebrating mass in Latin, some in Czech and others using a mixture.
Current Reformation research emphasises that the Reformation is not to be seen as a theological revolution but rather as an intensification of an ongoing process. In a similar manner does its linguistic significance seem not to have been as revolutionary as was previously assumed? When Jonathan Pettersson describes the linguistic transition in early Swedish bible translations as ‘the expansion of a late medieval linguistic variety rather than as a sharp break between the two’ (p. 129), this is a perspective that could also be applied to theological developments. In this regard, the various contributions to this anthology provide many exciting perspectives on future interdisciplinary Reformation research.
