La ‘magna e salutiffera utilità’. Appunti sulla Bibbia in italiano fra Quattro e Seicento

The Bible in Italian underwent the typographic presses in as early as 1471, just two years after the introduction of the press in Venice. The author of the translation (based on the Latin), or at least responsible for the work, was the Camaldolese Niccolò Malerbi. His long introduction allows us to follow the reasons of his endeavour. Sixty years later, still in Venice, a translation from the Hebrew and Greek texts was published: the Florentine Antonio Brucioli published the New Testament in 1530, the Psalms in 1931 and the entire Bible in 1932. In this case too, the ample letter of dedication to Francis, King of France, allows us to understand his motives, based essentially on Erasmian cultural initiatives. After the experiment by Filippo Rustici published in Geneva in 1562, it was necessary to wait until the beginning of the 17th century to have the first Protestant Bible translated by Giovanni Diodati in Geneva. Meanwhile, the Catholic world promoted a series of introductory tools for the understanding of biblical events in the vernacular; this was to make up for the prohibition of reading the Bible in the vernacular as supported by the inquisitorial bodies.