1 In April 1738 Jacques Pérard, a French Huguenot pastor in the provincial town of Grambzow in Brandenburg-Prussia, had just finished translating a sermon from German into French. In a letter to his friend and colleague Samuel Formey, pastor in Berlin, he explained the efforts that this work had required of him and the frustrations that he had felt while translating:

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J’ai eu tant affaire depuis quelque tems, la traduction du sermon de Mr. R. est venu les augmenter tellement […] Je suis venu à bout de cet ennuyeux travail & nôtre patron doit l’avoir reçu mercredi passé, je le prie de vous le communiquer et de vous engager à le corriger, il m’a été impossible de varier heureusement deux expressions qui reviennent très souvent dans ce Discours qui sont les mots de trost et de geburt; vous me direz vôtre sentiment sur ce petit ouvrage, c’est la seconde fois que je m’y suis froté et je vous avouë que je n’y trouve guéres du goût [1].

3 Besides emphasising the practical difficulties of the act of translating – the monotony of the work and the search for appropriate wording – Pérard’s letter provides an interesting insight into the complex network of actors involved in the process of producing a translation. First and foremost, Pérard referred to the author of the text that he had translated, Johann Gustav Reinbeck (“Mr. R.”), who was one of the most influential German Lutheran theologians in Prussia at that time: he was pastor and councillor of the Lutheran Church consistory in Berlin and a close confidant of King Frederick William I. Reinbeck was the main representative of so-called theological Wolffianism, a version of Protestantism that was inspired by the teachings of the rationalist philosopher Christian Wolff and that assumed the compatibility of dogma and natural reason [2]. At Christmas 1737, Reinbeck pronounced two sermons which reflected this influence of Wolffian philosophy in their content and form [3]. It was one of these sermons that Pérard had translated in Spring 1738.

4 The initiator of this translation project was Ernst Christoph Manteuffel, to whom Pérard referred as his “patron” in his letter. Manteuffel was a wealthy Saxon count and former diplomat who had founded in 1736, together with Reinbeck, the so-called Société des Aléthophiles, the society of the friends of the truth. This loose association of learned men and women had the goal of generally promoting and disseminating the ideas of Christian Wolff in Prussia – ideas that they considered as “the truth” – and more particularly to support Wolff’s rehabilitation to the chair of philosophy at the Prussian University of Halle [4].

5 The philosophy of Wolff and his professorship had presumably been one of the most controversial and famous issues of the German learned world during almost the entire first half of the 18^th century. During this period, Wolff had developed an integral philosophical system which was indebted to the core principles of Leibniz’ metaphysics and was based on the premise that human reason was able to account for every truth, the biblical dogma included [5]. It had been precisely this rational approach to religious doctrine and its potential consequences on the religiosity and morality of the people which had caused the opposition of more orthodox Lutheran theologians, particularly those with a Pietist background. In 1723 the Pietists, more precisely the theological faculty of Halle, led by Joachim Lange, had succeeded in prompting the Prussian King to ban Wolff from Prussia [6]. After his banishment Wolff went to Marburg to teach philosophy, while the debate on his ideas continued and was increasingly animated by his disciples and friends. In 1736, after the Prussian King had agreed to reconsider Wolff’s case, this philosophical drama reached its peak.

6 This moment gave birth to Manteuffel’s and Reinbeck’s Société des Aléthophiles, which, during the first years of its existence served the primary purpose of campaigning for Wolff’s rehabilitation to the University of Halle. This campaign was based on a variety of texts that should not only rectify the criticised aspects of Wolff’s philosophy but also reach potential new partisans of Wolff [7]. The French translation of Reinbeck’s sermons by Pérard was one of these publications in favour of Wolff: it has to be considered as a means of the Aléthophiles’ position-taking in the recently renovated controversy between Wolff and his adversaries. The reason for Manteuffel’s engagement in this philosophical controversy was presumably not only an ideological one. Instead, it had also significant political implications, in the sense that a successful promotion of Wolff at the Prussian court potentially enhanced also Manteuffel’s influence on the King. In this regard it has to be mentioned that Manteuffel, together with his two allies, the Prussian ministers Podewils and Grumbkow, was part of a faction at the Prussian court that supported Austrian and Saxon interests against those groups that were in favour of English and French interests. In diplomatic affairs, like the struggle over the Polish crown after 1733, Manteuffel’s position-taking for Wolffian philosophy very likely overlapped with his diplomatic aims at the Prussian court [8].

7 Finally, Pérard referred in his letter to a third group of actors involved in this undertaking, namely himself and his colleague and addressee of his letter, Jean Henri Samuel Formey who were both entrusted by Manteuffel with the translation and correction of the sermons [9]. Growing up as second-generation confessional refugees from France in Prussia, the young Huguenot pastors had been well acquainted with the Wolffian philosophy since their study days due to the above-mentioned ongoing public debate on it [10]. Moreover, in the Berlin of the 1730s they were involved in the social and intellectual circles around Manteuffel who became their mentor and patron and helped them to build their careers in the Prussian state and public sphere [11]. It was not only Manteuffel’s network at court that was potentially beneficial to them [12], also his economic possibilities and his contacts to the intellectual and literary world were important factors given these Huguenots’ inclination towards scholarly occupations. Publications of various kinds, enabled and organised by Manteuffel, were an important means for them to get known outside of the confined space of their parishes and to gain rank in the Republic of Letters. With their linguistic capacity as French native speakers who knew German they possessed the right prerequisites for gaining ground in the European learned world which was dominated by the French language.

8 The translation of Reinbeck’s sermons – as all other translations – consisted thus of an extremely dense network of persons, texts, philosophical-political as well as theological positions and intentions that Pérard’s letter mentions only in passing. It is this network which is at the centre of my article. In 2010 Johannes Bronisch offered a large study of the Wolffian network with Manteuffel at its core. In it he has embedded the translations which I will discuss in this article – Reinbeck’s Christmas sermons – into a narrative of strategical dissemination of Wolffian ideas in the Prussian learned world and beyond, highlighting the political power that these translations, among other texts, bore with respect of Wolff’s recognition by the Prussian court. Through this, Bronisch has contributed to the fundamental understanding of the purpose and activity of the Aléthophiles. However, Bronisch has provided only one part of the picture: with his macro-narrative of the strategical dissemination of Wolffianism he veiled the procedures of the act of translating and, more than anything else, the agency of the Huguenots in this whole process. In the present article I will shed light on these neglected aspects. While basically acknowledging Bronisch’s findings, I will shift the perspective of investigation and focus on one particular area of this network, namely that of the Huguenot translators and their relation to their patron and commissioner of the translations, Manteuffel. As we will see, this relation was one of mutual dependence but likewise of inequality in the sense that the different actors had different degrees of power and, even more importantly, had different intentions in translating the texts in question.

9My aim in this article is, hence, also to uncover an additional power-relation that was at play in the act of translating Reinbeck’s works, besides the large-scale political issue of Wolff’s rehabilitation, and by doing so to add another layer to our understanding of the complexity of early modern translations.

The Huguenot translators [13]

10To start with we have to ask ourselves who these Huguenot writers and translators in the service of Manteuffel and the Aléthophiles’ cause were and what role they perceived for themselves in this network. Pérard and Formey were only two of a quite substantial group of young Huguenots who in the 1730s had started or were about to start their careers as pastors and hommes des lettres. In the correspondence of Formey, who, thanks to his position in the Prussian capital Berlin, had a geographically and politically central role in the network of young Huguenots, the voices of these various actors converged. There was Jean Deschamps who had studied under Wolff in Marburg and was, like Formey, among the first members of Manteuffel’s Société des Aléthophiles. From early on Deschamps published largely for the sake of promoting Wolff: in 1736 a translation of Wolff’s Logik appeared that Deschamps and his brother had undertaken as an exercise during their study days [14]. In 1739 Deschamps was working on an abbreviated, popularised version of Wolff’s entire philosophy, that eventually appeared between 1743 and 1747 as Cours abrégé de la Philosophie Wolfienne. Deschamps’ largely autonomous engagement in publishing Wolff’s philosophical oeuvre, however, seems to have sometimes interfered with the translation works commissioned by his patron Manteuffel. As one of Deschamps’ letters to Formey reveals, these commissions were not always convenient for him and he saw himself forced to delegate them to others:

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M. le comte de Manteuffel m’a envoïé un sermon de M. Reinbeck nouvellement imprimé, pour que je le traduisisse; mais come je travaille actuellement à mon Abrégé de la philosophie wolfienne, je n’ai pû me charger de ce soin. Cependant, j’ai fait traduire ce sermon ici par un page de madame la Princesse, nommé Backhoff, qui y a passablement réussi. Je l’ai revû, corrigé et un peu façonné; c’est dans cet état que je l’ai envoïé à son Excellence. Je ne sais ce que l’on en fera puisque Monsieur Bocquet a entrepris la même traduction. Je souhaite qu’il fasse meilleur; non invideo [15].

12Deschamps was thus apparently happy that he did not have to carry the burden of translating alone but that one of his fellow Huguenots, Abraham Bocquet, was also entrusted with this task.

13Indeed Abraham Bocquet, who was also part of the Huguenot circle, reported to Formey in May 1739 that he was translating another one of Reinbeck’s sermons, yet, for him, who had been recently transferred to the parish of the provincial town of Angermünde, this task was an appreciated occupation in the monotony of his provincial life [16]. Although Bocquet was not officially affiliated to the Aléthophiles, Manteuffel had requested a translation from him that eventually appeared in another collection of Reinbeck’s sermons of 1741 [17]. Bocquet, however, when translating the above-mentioned sermon in 1739 had not expected, nor wished to be mentioned by name in a future publication of the translation. In another letter to Formey, after the sermon collection with his translation had been published, he complained about the “unauthorized” publication of his piece through Manteuffel. Bocquet’s reason for objecting to his public appearance in this enterprise was his concern about his reputation in the Republic of Letters; he feared that other hommes des lettres would mock him, a simple pastor, for aspiring to fame through the translation of a sermon [18]. It seems that Bocquet was animated by a different moral philosophy and a different perception of his role in society than Deschamps or Formey: he saw his duty in his parish and his confessional community in general and not in becoming a learned man who engaged in philosophical controversies.

14The same might have been true for Isaac Cabrit, a pastoral candidate in the French church of Cottbus who had studied in Geneva. He was also part of the Huguenot network around Formey without being directly involved in the Société des Aléthophiles and was (unwillingly) published in the above-mentioned sermon collection of 1741. His collaboration in this project had been mediated through Formey to whom Cabrit had sent a sample of his translation work in September 1738. For Cabrit, the potential political function of his translation seemingly mattered little or not at all. Instead, he seems to have been predominantly animated by religious and philological concerns in his translation of Reinbeck’s sermons. As he explained to Formey, he had added footnotes to his work in order to guarantee the accuracy of his translation from German into French. His main focus hereby was on the translation of the Bible passages quoted in the sermons. Since for the French text Cabrit had used the Calvinist Bible translation by David Martin, while Reinbeck had relied on Luther’s Bible, Cabrit had put the original German Bible quotes in his footnotes. Besides accuracy, his aim with this was to inspire the French-speaking Reformed theologians, who were also able to understand German, for a potential revision of the French Bible [19]. Hence, for Cabrit translating religious and theological texts meant translating from one culture to another and by pursuing this task he sought particularly to benefit the cultural and religious community to which he belonged.

15 This short account of the circle of Huguenot translators involved in the publications of Reinbeck’s sermons shows how manifold their individual intentions were. It was presumably their different career plans and professional situations which affected the personal perception that every one of them had of his role as translator of Wolffian texts. What they all had in common, however, was that they apparently disliked being pushed by Manteuffel. Their letters show that it was problematic for them to be a mere instrument in Manteuffel’s strategy, as it must have been difficult to escape their assigned function and to object to their patron. This becomes clear in Deschamps’ effort to find a substitute for himself or in Bocquet’s trouble in voicing his discontent towards such a powerful person as Manteuffel who was superior in age and social status and, as we have said, functioned as the young men’s patron: “Je réve actuëllement aux moyens de temoigner mon mécontentement à Son excellence [Manteuffel], en gardant cependant tous les ménagemens qui lui sont dûs [20].” The strongest contempt for Manteuffel’s behaviour, however, had been voiced by Formey, although retrospectively: In 1755 – Manteuffel had died six years before – he published a “Notice sur mes ouvrages” where he commented on the genesis of each of his, by this time already quite numerous, publications. There he described Manteuffel’s strategy of publishing abundantly against Wolff’s adversaries as ridiculous; Formey declared that he therefore, after having done his duty in contributing to Reinbeck’s Christmas sermons, had decided to not collaborate any more to “ces bizarres contributions” [21].

One publication, several contexts

16The potential tension between Manteuffel and the Huguenots in the collaborative undertaking of translating Reinbeck’s sermons is also reflected at the level of the text: in the publication of Reinbeck’s Christmas sermons, the Sermons sur lemystère de la naissance de J.C., it was particularly clear that for Manteuffel the predominant focus lay on the paratext whereas the Huguenots – translators as well as audience – were more interested in the actual text. The paratext, which had been added to the translation of Reinbeck’s two sermons, was, at 32 pages, rather substantial compared to what was common in this genre [22]. It was divided into two parts. The first was a polemical dedication to Joachim Lange, Wolff’s Pietist opponent, written by Manteuffel himself who signed it with “Un Anonyme.” First and foremost it was a demonstration of the superiority of the Wolffian philosophical party over Lange and his Pietist allies; a superiority that, according to Manteuffel, stemmed from both the acceptance of Reinbeck’s “Wolffian” preaching by the public and, even more importantly, its recognition by the King via his wish to see Reinbeck’s sermons printed. In addition to this testimony of the success of Wolffian philosophy against Lange’s defamations, the dedication ironically praised Lange for having contributed to the spread of Wolffian ideas through his continuous attacks against it. More precisely, Manteuffel portrayed Reinbeck’s sermons as having been inspired by the wish to disprove and to refute Lange’s various criticisms of Wolff [23]. The dedication thus gives the impression that the only reason for publishing Reinbeck’s sermons was the aim to defend Wolff. In contrast, throughout the whole dedication, there was no mention at all about their content or the circumstances of their first oral presentation.

17The publication’s main focus on the political context of Wolff’s rehabilitation to Halle was also very strongly emphasised in the second part of the publication’s paratext, the Avertissement du Libraire, which is by Ambrosius Haude, who was also a member of the Aléthophiles: Haude pointed in his presentation to the rather unusual (and perhaps even unprofitable) undertaking of translating German Lutheran sermons into French:

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Comme il y a jusqu’icy trés peu d’ouvrages allemans, qui aient eté traduits en françois, & que personne ne s’avisa peutêtre jamais de traduire en cette Langue un Sermon allemand, prononcé par un Predicateur Lutherien, il ne faut pas douter, que le public ne soit curieux d’apprendre, qui sont les auteurs de la traduction que j’ai l’honneur de lui presenter aujourd’huy, & les motifs qui les ont portez à y travailler? En effet, cette traduction ressemble à ces Meteores extraordinaires, qui surprennent non seulement par leur nouveauté; mais aussi par les circonstances qui les accompagnent [24].

19 Haude used the emphasis on the novelty of translating German sermons into French to guide the readers’ interest to the persons and events around the texts, mainly to the barely hidden anonymous translator. Hence, the bookseller, like Manteuffel, ascribed more importance to the politico-philosophical context of the translation than to the text itself. Considering the dedication and the bookseller’s comment, it seems that the only reason for translating the sermons into French, was to be able to transport the message of the paratext.

20Also the Huguenot public of the Sermons was to a certain extent curious about the polemics between Lange and Manteuffel [25]. Nevertheless, contrary to Haude’s apparently ambivalent opinion on the utility of translating German sermons into French, the individuals of the above-mentioned Huguenot circle – all pastors by profession – also saw a need to transport Reinbeck’s preaching practice into their own culture. This genuine interest in Reinbeck’s homiletics can be observed in the extrait of the Sermons sur le mystère de la naissance de J.C. that Formey, one of the translators involved, wrote for the Bibliothèque Germanique, a review journal made by Huguenots in Germany for a French-speaking international (largely Huguenot?) public. In this extrait, Formey referred only in passing to the issues raised in the dedication of the translation; he justified his refusal to report in more detail on the polemics against Lange with journalistic impartiality [26]. Instead, Formey dedicated the main part of his extrait to a summary of the first of the two sermons, in which Reinbeck had demonstrated that the mystery of Christ’s half-human, half-divine nature was a true and comprehensible element of the Christian doctrine. Besides the important message that this sermon bore for believers, Formey particularly underlined the methodological excellence of Reinbeck’s sermon which, according to Formey, enabled him to convince his listeners much better than common preachers [27]. In order to illustrate and to divulge Reinbeck’s method even more to his audience, Formey added to his journal article an extract of Reinbeck’s own theoretical considerations on his preaching style, the so-called “philosophische Predigt” [28]. As Formey reported, the core element of this homiletic style was the clarity and comprehensibility of the presented contents. For this reason it was necessary to apply a deductive method in which facts where established on sufficient reasons [29]. Formey’s insistence on this particular preaching style, inspired by Wolffian Logics, shows that his interest in translating Reinbeck lay presumably in the instructive effect that this could have on the French Huguenot pastors: the translated sermons should serve as a role model.

21 The need for such a role model for the theology students and pastoral candidates was relatively urgent at that time as we can see in the discussions of the French Church’s supreme consistory in the 1730s. These discussions began with concerns about the morality and intellectual maturity of the pastoral candidates and at a first stage resulted in a regulation that prescribed three years of theological studies and continuous examination of their preaching capacities to the future pastors [30]. Finally the discussions resulted into the adoption of an order by the Prussian ministry that had been originally issued to the German Reformed Church and was meant to introduce a better method of preaching [31]. More precisely, this order aimed at clear, edifying and well-organised sermons and hence, advised the teachers responsible to instruct the future pastors in a reasonable and pure style:

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On […] accoutumera [les candidats] à parler d’une maniere raisonnable, distincte & convaincante; de sorte que ce qu’ils proposeront ne soit ni bas ou grossier, ni ampoulé, fleuri, recherché ou forcé. Ainsi ils doivent se former à un stile pur, distinct & concis, & etre plus soigneux à produire dans l’Entendement de leurs auditeurs des idées claires, & dans leur volonté de bonnes inclinations, qu’à faire voir leur propre art & leur Erudition [32].

23 In this part of the new regulation we find the same emphasis on the comprehensibility and clarity of sermons as in Reinbeck’s homiletic considerations, which is not surprising given the fact that Reinbeck also had played a role in the genesis of this regulation [33]. The advertisement of Reinbeck’s sermons that Formey and his friends pursued by translating them, thus served both the confirmation of the new homiletic and educational regulations of the Church and the very practical inspiration for (future) pastors.

24 These purposes did not contradict the views of the translations’ commissioner Manteuffel – he also was a defender and promoter of the new preaching method – but they differed from his personal main purpose for the publication as we have observed in the paratext. Basically, each of the publication’s two parts, the paratext and the text, emerged from a specific political and cultural context and addressed a particular audience. Manteuffel’s paratext wanted to reach the King and the Pietist enemies of Wolff, whereas Formey wanted to reach the Huguenot pastors. This was not necessarily a problem per se and there was certainly also an overlap between the two different target audiences. However, this imbalance in the evaluation of the different parts of the text might account for the potential tensions in the relationship between Manteuffel and his commissioned translators.

25 In place of a conclusion I want to stress the complexity of the early modern practices of translating and the need to pay more attention to the variety of actors involved in these practices. Hopefully, my article has shown that already a slight shift of focus can alter the picture that we have of a particular translation. The dominance of Manteuffel in the previous narratives of the French translation of Reinbeck’s sermons has slightly distorted our picture of its contexts and purposes. Instead, I hope to have shown that the publication of the Sermons sur le mystère de la naissance de J.C. was not only a strategical act in the rehabilitation of Christian Wolff but also an answer to the very practical questions of the community of Huguenot pastors in Prussia, namely how to preach and convince their parishes. Closely linked to this, an almost forgotten – because less obvious – power relation in the process of translating the works of Johann Gustav Reinbeck has been uncovered, namely the relation between the commissioner of these translations and those who carried them out.