Giannozzo Manetti's New Testament

Book excerpt: In Giannozzo Manetti’s New Testament Annet den Haan analyses the Latin translation of the Greek New Testament made by the fifteenth-century humanist Giannozzo Manetti (1396-1459). The book includes the first edition of Manetti’s text. Manetti’s translation was the first since Jerome’s Vulgate, and it predates Erasmus’ Novum Instrumentum by half a century. Written at the Vatican court in the 1450s, it is a unique example of humanist philology applied to the sacred text in the pre-Reformation era. Den Haan argues that Manetti’s translation was influenced by Valla’s Annotationes, and compares Manetti’s translation method with his treatise on correct translation, Apologeticus (1458).