One of the most significant developments in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century intellectual history was the increase in critical study of the text and history of the Bible. This began with the work of Lorenzo Valla, Desiderius Erasmus and the scholars who produced the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, and culminated in the ‘critical histories’ of the Old and New Testaments by Richard Simon. In charting a new narrative of this development my research goes beyond the history of scholarship strictly considered, setting each scholar in the context of their work's production and analysing the print culture that underpinned their work, the confessional divisions that deepened the significance of the philological arguments, and the intellectual cooperation, exchange and disagreement that determined how contemporaries understood it. Recognizing the importance of confession has a particular importance in the context of Catholic scholarship. Where historians have become increasingly familiar with the contributions to early modern biblical scholarship made by Protestant scholars, the achievements of their Catholic contemporaries have been systematically underestimated by the assumption that in the era of the Council of Trent Catholic scholars were for the most part engaged in establishing and defending the text of the Vulgate. Yet, in the same period, Catholic scholars were responsible for a series of the most important editions of the Bible in languages other than Latin, influential general treatments of the biblical text, and a series of the most significant contributions to the text-critical study of the Bible.
Within the broad terms of this project, I used my time as a holder of a Rome Award at the British School at Rome to pursue three lines of enquiry. The first was to begin research on biblical criticism in late sixteenth-century Rome. Chiefly using the holdings of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, I began work on framing the precise intellectual context that led to the two great editions of post-Tridentine Roman scholarship, the 1587 Septuagint and 1592 Sixto-Clementine Vulgate. This included an extensive study of the papers and correspondence of one of the moving forces behind both these editions, Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto. I also began work reconstructing the mechanics and text-critical practice behind these editions, using the volumes and working notes of Petrus Morinus now held by the Biblioteca Vallicelliana. This work also yielded some unexpected discoveries, such as some previously unknown letters by Franciscus Lucas of Bruges.
The second line of enquiry focused on the place of biblical scholarship in mid-seventeenth-century Rome. Although this period did not see Roman scholars produce any new editions or studies of the biblical text, it did, none the less, witness a more important set of interrelationships between Roman and northern European scholars than hitherto has been appreciated. Crucial here was the circle of Francesco Barberini, most notably including Leo Allatius, Lucas Holstenius and Jean Morin, and I was able to make extensive use of their correspondence and other papers held by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the Biblioteca Vallicelliana.
The third line of enquiry focused on considering the framework for the acceptable study of biblical criticism within the Catholic world. This was set by Rome, where the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index defined the parameters within which scholarship could take place. Using the archives of the Index, now held by the Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede in the Vatican, I pursued two distinct objectives. First, a survey of the relationship between biblical criticism and censorship in the longue durée, from the late sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries, and secondly a focus on how the Index treated the works of the leading late seventeenth-century biblical critic, Richard Simon.
The progress of my work during my time at the BSR leads me only to reflect, in closing, on its undimming value as an institution. The help and support provided by its dedicated staff was matched only by the companionship provided by my fellow borsisti, the architects, scholars and artists, whose expertise in areas and fields so different to mine provided a series of alternative ways of seeing and thinking that allowed me to reinterpret, refine and reframe my own intellectual positions.
