Intervernacular Translation in the Early Decades of Print: Chivalric Romance and the Marvelous in the Spanish Melusine (1489-1526)

This chapter examines the evolution of Raymond Martini’s approach to language over the course of his career as a Dominican from the 1250s to the 1280s, specifically looking at his use of translation, transliteration, and transcription as part of his understanding of “authentic” textual authorities. It analyses that Martini’s use of language formed part of a new rhetoric of authenticity in Christian apologetics in which writers aimed to move ever closer to an elusive affirmation of theological identity through the terms of non-Christian difference. The chapter explains Martini’s practices of transcription and transliteration with the help of his own comments about language within the Capistrum and Pugio. The Explanatio and the De Seta, and possibly the Vocabulista lexicon, represent the output of an early stage in Martini’s career. In the De Seta, by contrast, Martini regularly follows the title with a brief, explanatory translation.