David Blamires, ed. Theologia Deutsch--Theologia Germanica: The Book of the Perfect Life. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2003. viii + 103 pp. $19.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7591-0519-5.

Reviewed by R. Emmet McLaughlin (Department of History, Villanova University)
Published on H-German (November, 2004)

A Tale of Two Translations

The Theologia Deutsch (or Theologia Germanica) is known by name to most historians of early modern Europe, though few have actually read it. An anonymous fourteenth-century mystical tract, it owes its notoriety to Martin Luther's publication of it in 1516 and 1518. 190 editions in German, English, Dutch, Latin, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese followed by 1961. It was a staple of the Radical Reformation and Pietism. In the sixteenth century, Ludwig Haetzer republished it in 1528 along with interpretive "Propositions" by Hans Denck that were often found in later editions. Sebastian Franck produced a Latin paraphrase of the Haetzer version at the end of his life (1541-42). In the wake of his clash with Calvin over the execution of Michael Servetus (1553), Sebastian Castellio published Latin (1557) and French (1558) translations. A little more than a decade later, Valentin Weigel, long under the influence of medieval mysticism, provided a "Short Account and Introduction to the German Theology" (1571). Johannes Arndt published an edition and Philip Jakob Spener recommended it. Given a cloud of such witnesses, Luther may have come to regret making the book available to a larger public. Nonetheless, his 1518 edition remained the standard version until the nineteenth century.

Catholic scholars welcomed the discovery of another complete text in 1843, the so-called Wuerzburg or Bronnbach manuscript from 1497. Although the Theologia Deutsch remained on the Index of Prohibited Books into the second half of the twentieth century, they had feared that Luther had "corrupted" the text. Later finds, especially the 1477 Dessau manuscript of the complete text, proved the reliability of Luther's 1518 edition and revealed that Bronnbach included extensive additions designed to "monasticize" it. The Dessau copy formed the basis of the 1982 critical edition by Wolfgang von Hinten. Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century English translations were based upon Bronnbach. In 1980, however, Bengt Hoffman brought out an English translation of Luther's 1518 edition in the series Classics of Western Spirituality.[1] The Hoffman version long remained the most widely available. The present translation by David Blamires, sometime professor of German at the University of Manchester, uses the von Hinten critical edition and is for most purposes superior to Hoffman's.

Blamires's introduction offers a simple, well-informed retelling of the history of mysticism in the later middle ages. It is pitched at the right level for undergraduates and for other readers with no background in mysticism. Hoffman's introduction, on the other hand, had been caught up in inner-Lutheran debates about medieval mysticism's influence on Luther. Hoffman followed the twentieth-century school of Lutheran theology that credits Luther with an ontological understanding of righteousness rather than the purely alien forensic righteousness favored by most Luther scholars. Raising this issue would not have been a bad thing had Hoffman been explicit and explained the opposing school more fully. His general historical background is also misleading and unhelpful since he relied on textbooks that were already dated when he wrote. The two introductions clearly address different audiences and purposes. Although Blamires's book appears in a series devoted to contemporary understanding among the world's religious communities, he is interested in the Theologia Deutsch for its historical significance. Hoffman, perhaps truer to the intention of his series, presents the text as a resource for contemporary spirituality.

The translations reflect these differences. Blamires chose to use the critical edition. Because of its place in the Lutheran tradition, Hoffman translated the Luther text. Students of the Reformation may well prefer the 1518 edition for precisely that reason, as well as for Luther's short prologue. For those interested in historical impact, the Luther text is clearly the more important. It was Luther's Theologia Deutsch that was usually reprinted, translated, and paraphrased. However, Hoffman's translation of that text is problematic. His Theologia Deutsch has subtle Lutheran resonances. For one thing, the original's impersonal references to the Perfect Being are sometimes personalized where there is no basis in the text. This is especially misleading in those passages where the medieval author is making the point that the Perfect Being is beyond knowledge and cannot be described. It is not "this or that." It is not "He." Hoffman also has the unfortunate habit, as here, of capitalizing words, for example "Word" (p. 64), again with no basis in the text. Perhaps most intrusive is his choice of vocabulary that reflects Lutheran theology more than medieval mysticism, e.g. "acting unrighteousnessly" (p. 64) for "thut unrecht." Luther may have understood the Theologia Deutsch in this way, but it is doubtful that the original author would have understood or appreciated such an interpretation. Blamires translates the same phrase simply as "acts unjustly" (p. 34).

Hoffmann's title reflects the ambiguity of his enterprise: "The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther." If Luther made no emendations to the text, it is unclear in what sense the text is "of Martin Luther." The medieval manuscripts actually bore no title. The designation Theologia Deutsch derives from an early edition (a pirated version of Luther's 1518 edition) and Theologia Germanica from the first English translation (1648). Interestingly, the von Hinten critical edition made use of a superscription from the unreliable Bronnbach manuscript referring to the author: "Der Franckforter." Blamires uses both of the traditional titles as well as one that he takes from earlier modern German editions. As he makes clear, the latter is simply descriptive of the treatise's contents. Also, his translation scrupulously avoids anachronistic language. It adheres very closely to the text. Like the original, it is blunt, simple, and prosaic. The result is a difficult text that requires the reader to acknowledge its "otherness" in order to penetrate its meaning. Insofar as any translation can accurately convert one language into another, one is reading the medieval text, the text that Luther read and that he made available to later generations. This is the translation that historians will wish to consult.

Note

[1]. Martin Luther, The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther, trans. Bengt Hoffman (New York: Paulist Press, 1980).

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Citation: R. Emmet McLaughlin. Review of Blamires, David, ed., Theologia Deutsch--Theologia Germanica: The Book of the Perfect Life. H-German, H-Net Reviews. November, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10009

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