For we have seen how Christ\u2019s books containing especially [material of] 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 offense to religion …<\/p>\n
Would such translators claim, assuming that they care about the truth \u2013 irrespective of whether they carry out their translations in good faith or with evil designs \u2013 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 thinking 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 bowels, or even if they do make use of some ancient [texts], they will inevitably corrupt the sense of the truth \u2013 something that we have reason to fear most in the case of holy Scripture because of the magnitude of the danger posed by this.<\/p>\n
— Berthold, Archbishop of Mainz, 1485<\/p>\n
(Vidimus enim Christi libros missarum afficia continentes et praeterea de diuinis rebus et apicibus nostrae religionis scriptos, e latina in germanicam linguam traductos nec sine religionis dedecore versari per manus vulgi …<\/p>\n
Dicant translatores tales, si verum colunt, bono etiam siue malo id faciant animo, an ne lingua germanica capax sit eorum, que tum greci tum et Latini egregij scriptores de summis speculationibus religionis christiane et rerum scientia accuratissime argutissimeque scripserunt? Fateri oportet ydeomatis nostri inopiam minime sifficere necesse que fore, eos ex suis ceruicibus nomina fingere incognita, aut, si veteribus quibusdam vtantur, veritatis sensum corrumpere, quod propter magnitudinem periculi in literis sacris magis veremur.)<\/p>\n