Article in:
Tangible translation: Migration and materiality
Edited by Andrea Ciribuco and Anne O’Connor
[Translation and Interpreting Studies 17:1] 2022
► pp. 14–41

‘Hospitality to this German stranger’

Printed translations and German-speaking exiles in mid-seventeenth-century Britain

| Université de Montréal
The article examines religious translations associated with communities of German-speaking refugees in mid-seventeenth-century Britain, namely: a mystical treatise circulating among the non-conformist Family of Love, and the writings of Jacob Böhme, which enjoyed a surprisingly wide reception in English print. The discussion focuses on the textual-material features of these texts, as they represent tangible traces of the activities of seventeenth-century networks connecting German-speaking exiles, English translators, and their many intermediaries. The printed books record the circulation of those texts across dissident communities, but also their passage from clandestine manuscripts to widely-distributed printed texts, and the transformations that accompany their dissemination on the English book market. By examining together the discursive, textual, and material features of these translations, this essay foregrounds the importance of combining descriptive translation studies and book studies as complementary approaches when documenting early modern histories of cultural transfer, displacement and exile.
Keywords: translation history, book history, paratexts, religious translation, hospitality, exile
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Translation as hospitality: The case of Theologia Deutsch (1646–48)
  • Tangible transfers: The Teutonicus Philosophus in English print
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 05 May 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.21037.bel
References

Primary sources

Anon
1557 Theologia Germanica. Libellus aureus: hoc est, brevis & pregnans: quomodo sit exuendus vetus homo, induendusque novus. Ex Germanico translatus. Basel: Johann Oporinus.Google Scholar
1558 Theologia Germanica. Libellus aureus: hoc est, brevis & praegnans: quomodo sit exuendus vetus homo, induendusque novus. Antwerp: Christophe Plantin.Google Scholar
1558 La théologie germanique ; livret auquel est traité comment il faut dépouiller le vieil homme et vestir le nouveau. Antwerp: Christophe Plantin.Google Scholar
1590 Theologia Germanica: een gulden handtboecxken inhoudende hoemen den ouden mensche moet uutdoen, ende den nieuwen aendoen. Antwerp: at the shop of Christophe Plantin, by widow Van Moerentow.Google Scholar
1632 Theologia Germanica. Libellus aureus: hoc est, brevis & prægnans: quomodo sit exuendus vetus homo, induendusque novus. Ex Germanico translatus, Ioanne Theophilo interprete. London: Thomas Harper.Google Scholar
1648 Theologia Germanica. Or, Mysticall divinitie : a little golden manuall briefly discovering the mysteries, sublimity, perfection and simplicity of Christianity, in belief and practise. Written above 250 years since in high Dutch, & for its worth translated into Latine, and printed at Antwarp, 1558. Whereto is added definitions theologicall and philosophicall. Also a treatise of the soul, and other additions not before printed. London: for John Sweeting.Google Scholar
1714 Bibliotheca Furliana, sive Catalogus Librorum Benjamin Furli, inter quos excellunt Bibliorum Editiones, Myftici Libri proprii cujuscumque Sectæ Chriſtianæ, & Manuſcripti membranei. Rotterdam: apud Fritsch et Bohm.Google Scholar
Böhme, Jacob
1647 XL. questions concerning the soule· Propounded by Dr. Balthasar Walter· And answered, by Jacob Behmen. Aliàs Teutonicus Philosophus. And in his answer to the first question is the turned eye, or, philosophick globe. (Which in it selfe containeth all mysteries) with an exposition of it. VVritten in the Germane language. Anno. 1620. London: Matthew Simmons for Humphrey Blunden.Google Scholar
1649a Mercurius Teutonicus; or A Christian information concerning the last times. Being divers propheticall passages of the fall of Babel, and the new building in Zion. / Gathered out of the mysticall writings of that famous Germane author, Jacob Behmen, aliàs, Teutonicus Phylosophus. London: Matthew Simmons for Humphrey Blunden.Google Scholar
1649b The epistles of Jacob Behman, aliter, Teutonicus philosophus very usefull and necessary for those that read his writings, and are very full of excellent and plaine instructions how to attaine to the life of Christ / translated out of the German. London: Matthew Simmons.Google Scholar
1650 The third booke of the authour, being The high and deepe searching out of the threefold life of man through (or according to) the three principles by Jacob Behmen, aliàs Teutonicus Philosophus ; written in the Germane language, anno 1620; Englished by J. Sparrovv. London: Matthew Simmons for Humphrey Blunden.Google Scholar
1652 Of Christs testaments, viz. baptisme and the Supper written in two bookes … : set forth from the true theosophicall ground through the three principles of the divine revelation, and presented to the children of God for the information of their understandings / written in the yeare of Christ 1624, by Jacob Behm …, alias, Teutonicus Philosophus ; and Englished by John Sparrovv. London: Matthew Simmons.Google Scholar
1654 A consolatory treatise of the four complexions, that is, an instruction in the time of temptation for a sad and assaulted heart shewing where-from sadness naturally ariseth, and how the assaulting happeneth : hereto are annexed some consolatory speeches exceeding profitable for the assaulted hearts & souls, written … March 1621 / by the Teutonicall philosopher, Jacob Behmen. London: T. W. for Humphrey Blunden.Google Scholar
1656 Aurora, that is, the day-spring, or dawning of the day in the Orient, or morning-rednesse in the rising of the sun, that is, the root or mother of philosophie, astrologie, & theologie from the true ground, or a description of nature … all this set down diligently from a true ground in the knowledge of the spirit, and in the impulse of God / by Jacob Behme, Teutonick philosopher … London: John Streater for Giles Calvert.Google Scholar
Croese, Gerard
1696 The general history of the Quakers containing the lives, tenents, sufferings, tryals, speeches and letters of the most eminent Quakers, both men and women : from the first rise of that sect down to this present time / being written originally in Latin by Gerard Croese ; to which is added a letter writ by George Keith … London: Printed for John Dunton.Google Scholar
Luther, Martin
1652 Dris Martini Lutheri colloquia mensalia, or, Dr. Martin Luther’s divine discourses at his table, etc. which in his life time hee held with divers learned men (…) collected first together by Dr. Antonius Lauterbach, and afterward disposed into certain common places by John Aurifaber … ; translated out of the high Germane into the English tongue, by Capt. Henrie Bell. London: Martin du Gard.Google Scholar

Secondary sources

Adams, Matthew
2016 Teaching Classics in English Schools, 1500–1840. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Guyda
2015 “Coding continental: Information design in sixteenth-century English vernacular language manuals and translations.” Renaissance Studies 29(1): 78–102. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Margaret Lewis
1914 Milton and Jacob Boehme. A Study of German Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Batchelor, Kathryn
2018 Translation and Paratexts. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Belle, Marie-Alice
2021 “Domestication revisited. Hospitality and the foreign in early modern English translation discourse.” In Early Modern Cultures of Hospitality, ed. by David B. Goldstein and Marco Piana, 207–240. Toronto: CRRS Publications.Google Scholar
Belle, Marie-Alice and Brenda M. Hosington
2017 “Translation, history and print: A model for the study of printed translations in early modern Britain.” Translation Studies 10(7): 2–21. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
eds. 2018 Thresholds of Translation. Paratexts, Print, and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Boutcher, Warren
2018 “Translation and the book trade c. 1640–1660: The cases of Humphrey Moseley and William London.” Thresholds of Translation. Paratexts, Print, and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Britain, ed. by Marie-Alice Belle and Brenda M. Hosington, 251–78. London: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brückner, J.
ed. 1971 A Bibliographical Catalogue of Seventeenth-Century German Books Published in Holland. Paris: Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clucas, Stephen
1994 “In search of “The True Logick’: Methodological eclectism among the ‘Baconian reformers’.” In Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication, ed. by Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, and Timothy Raylor, 51–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Coldiron, Anne E. B.
2010 “Commonplaces and Metaphors.” In The Oxford History of Literary Translation into English, Volume 21: 1550–1660, ed. by Gordon Braden, Robert Cummings and Stuart Gillespie, 109–117. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 “Visibility now: Historicizing foreign presences in translation.” Translation Studies 5(2): 189–200. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 Printers Without Borders. Translation and Textuality in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 “The translator’s visibility in early printed portrait-images and the ambiguous example of Margaret Roper More.” In Thresholds of Translation: Paratexts, Print, and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Britain, ed. by Marie-Alice Belle and Brenda M. Hosington, 51–74. London: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019 “Translation and transformission; or, early modernity in motion.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 46(2): 205–216. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Como, David
2004 Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England. Stanford: Stanford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Durnbaugh, D. F.
2009 “Communication networks as one aspect of pietist definition. The example of radical pietist connections between colonial North America and Europe.” In Pietism in Germany and North America, 1680–1820, ed. by Jonathan Strom, Hartmut Lehman, and James Van Horn Melton, 33–50. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Greengrass, Mark
2007 “Hartlib, Samuel (1600–1662).” The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hessayon, Ariel
2007 “ ‘The Teutonicks Writings’: Translating Jacob Boehme into English and Welsh.” Esoterica 91: 129–160.Google Scholar
2014a “Boehme’s life and times.” In An Introduction to Jacob Boehme: Four Centuries of Thought and Reception, ed. by Ariel Hessayon and Sarah Apetrei, 13–37. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014b “Jacob Boehme’s writings during the English Revolution and afterwards. Their publication, dissemination, and influence.” In An Introduction to Jacob Boehme: Four Centuries of Thought and Reception, ed. by Ariel Hessayon and Sarah Apetrei, 77–97. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2016 “Jane Lead, her life and times: The Philadelphian Society.” In Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy, ed. Ariel Hessayon, 71–90. London: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 “Jacob Böhme’s foremost seventeenth-century English translator: John Sparrow (1615–1670) of Essex.” In Jacob Böhme and His World, ed. by Bo Andersson, Lucinda Martin, Leigh Peighman, and Andrew Weeks, 329–357. Leiden: Brill. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2020 “Jane Lead and the Philadelphians.” In Early Modern Prophecies in Transnational, National and Regional Contexts, ed. Lionel Laborie and Ariel Hessayon, 31–157. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Lindeboom, J.
1950 Austin Friars: History of the Dutch Reformed Church in London 1550–1950. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Littau, Karin
2016 “Translation and the materialities of communication.” Translation Studies 9(1): 82–96. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Moss, Jean Dietz
1981 “Godded with God: Hendrik Niclaes and his Family of Love.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 71(8): 1–89. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pumfrey, Stephen
1994 “ ‘These 2 hundred years not the like published as Gellibrand has done de Magnete’: the Hartlib Circle and magnetic philosophy.” In Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication, ed. by Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, and Timothy Raylor, 247–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Nigel
1989 Perfection Proclaimed. Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640–1660. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
2014 “Did anyone understand Boehme?” In An Introduction to Jacob Boehme: Four Centuries of Thought and Reception, by Ariel Hessayon and Sarah Apetrei, 98–119. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Strasser, Gerhard
1994 “Closed and open languages. Samuel Hartlib’s involvement with cryptology and universal languages.” In Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication, ed. by Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, and Timothy Raylor, 162–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Terpstra, Nicholas
2015 Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World. An Alternative History of the Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
2017[1995] The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar