Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/370

362 It was in the thirteenth century, when all Europe was arousing from the torpor of the Dark Ages, that translations of the Bible into several vernacular languages first appeared. In this great movement Spain was a leader. King Alphonso the Wise caused a Spanish translation of the Bible to be made in 1260 "for the improvement of the Castilian language;" this manuscript may be seen in the library of the Escorial. In 1478, fourteen years before Columbus discovered America, we hear of a Spanish Bible published in the city of Valencia. The feeling of the priesthood over this enterprise is shown by the fact that the work was suppressed and the impression burned. Scarcely a copy escaped.

But little seems to have been known, however, of these translations by the common people, who most needed them; for when Francis de Enzinas, a pious Spaniard, desired for his countrymen the treasure of God's word in their mother-tongue, he went to Wittenberg to be, as he supposed, a pioneer translator of the New Testament into Spanish. He did the work under the eye of Melanchthon. The first edition, dedicated to Charles V., was published in the year 1544. De Soto, the confessor of the emperor, warned him of the dangerous tendencies of this book, and poor Enzinas, though he had been promised the royal patronage, was arrested and thrown into prison. The printing of one verse of his translation in capital letters nearly cost the bold man his life. It was Romans iii. 28: "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."

"For what reason," said the inquisitors, when they tormented him with questions, "have you had this