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Rudolf, by the Grace of God Bishop of Würzburg and Eastern Franconia

[...]

says the following: Berthold by the Grace of God Archbishop of the See of Mainz,
Archchancellor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and Elector: Although
one can easily and abundantly arrive at human learning and gain access to the books
of the individual sciences thanks to the divine art of printing, we also know
for certain that some men have been induced by vain ambition or greed for money
to abuse of this art, and through something that was originally given [by God] for
the education of mankind have been led into ruin and disgrace. For we have seen
how Christ's books containing [details of the] celebration of divine services, as
well as works on divine matters and the most important principles of our religion,
have been translated from Latin into German to be handled by the common people,
which must inevitably be considered an offence to religion. Would such translators
claim, assuming that they care about the truth - irrespective of whether they
carry out their translations in good faith or with evil designs - that the German
language is capable of containing all that Greek and Latin writers have written,
in the most careful and distinct way, about the highest ideas of Christian
religion and matters of science?! One must confess the poverty of our language,
its inability to suffice these writers in the least,and that if these [translators]
fabricate unknown words out of their entrails, or even if they do make use of some
ancient [texts], they will inevitably corrupt the sense of the truth - something
that we have reason to fear most in the case of holy Scripture because of the
magnitude of the danger posed by this. For what is there to enable the ignorant
and unlearned men and women, into whose hands the books of holy Scripture might
then fall, to pick out the true meanings? Having seen the text of the holy
Gospel or the Epistles of St Paul, no one with good sense will deny that they
are the result of combining and supplementing many different writings. Some of
these are generally accepted. But what is one to make of those which are the
subject of the most bitter disputes amongst scholars of our universal Church? We
could cite many more things, but for the purposes of our argument the few points
we have put forward will suffice. Since it is true that the art of printing
books had its origin in an office here in our splendid Mainz, for us to be able
to make use [i.e. pride ourselves on] of this title [of being its inventors],
for it to fully deserve to be called divine, and so that it continues to
be highly refined and faultless, it is only fair that the honour of this art
should be defended by us. It is most certainly important for us to preserve the
immaculate purity of holy Scripture, and for this purpose [...] we decree that
no works whatsoever, of whatever science, art or [fame?] they may happen to be,
whether they are composed in Greek, Latin, or any other language, may be translated
into German; nor may any such translated books be sold or purchased anywhere -
publicly or secretly, directly or indirectly - unless they have been examined -
before printing, in the case of works which are to be printed, or before their
sale, in the case of books that have already been printed - by [...] the Doctors
and Masters of the University in our city of Mainz, or by Doctors and Masters
in our city of Erfurt whom we have selected for this purpose, and have been
approved for printing or selling by an honest testimony.

[...]



Translation by: Luis Sundkvist using a German translation by Hans Widmann