Document Type:
Article
Author/editor:
Marvyn Roy Harris
 
Standard: Harris, Marvyn Roy
Title:
The Occitan New Testament in ms. Bibl. mun. de Lyon, PA 36 : a cathar or waldensian translation?

Standard:

Periodical:
Heresis
Issue:
n° 44-45
Date of Publication:
2006
Pages:
167-185
Subjects:
Bible - Occitan translations
Bible - Waldensian translations - Middle Ages
Cathars and Waldenses
Waldensian manuscripts - Lyon - Bibliothèque municipale - Ms. PA 36

Summary/Notes:

The Occitan New Testament to which a Cathar ritual is appended (Bibl. mun. de Lyon, PA 36) does not have its origins among the Cathars. It is the work of a Waldensian translator. The translation of latin presbyteros as preveires provides strong evidence that the original translation in the dialect of southern Languedoc was done for Waldensian proselytization. A community of Languedocian Cathars would have subsequently appropriated for their use the text of that Waldensian New testament. Flagrant Piedmontisms in the Ritual, written in the same hand that copied the New Testament, support the thesis that our manuscript comes from one of the villages in the Italian Piedmont where the Languedocian Cathars took refuge after 1310 (pp. 321-322).