Restoring a Deleted Note in Valdesso's Considerations

In 1632, at the request of Nicholas Ferrar, Herbert read the never-published Ciento y Diez Consideraciones by Juán de Valdés (Valdesso) in Italian and French translations. It certainly recommended Valdés to Herbert, as it had to earlier Protestants, that all copies of the Spanish originals had been suppressed by the Inquisition. And given that in his final years Valdés turned to vernacular translation and annotation of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures – having established his reputation as a philologist upon publication of his scholarly Diálogo de la Lengua (c. 1535) – it is hardly surprising that Herbert's Word-centered confessional sensibility was attracted to the Considerations. Much of Valdés's treatise, after all, is concerned with the proper interpretation of Scripture and its importance relative to other aspects of Christian devotion. Yet it is with the Spanish reformer's views on scriptural inspiration and authority that Herbert disagrees most vehemently.¹

Consistent with Herbert's apparent aversion to Valdés's "too slight a regard of the Scriptures" (NV C63) is the note on Consideration 65. This and the note on C37 are omitted in the second English edition (1646), and are accompanied in the first edition of the Hundred and Ten Considerations (1638) by a marginal note declaring them to be "the French Translators" (see fig. 1). It is for these reasons that Hutchinson declined to include NV C37 and NV C65 in his edition.² Yet it seems fair to wonder why Herbert/Ferrar decided to include the French editor's notes at all. That they did suggests a kind of authorial gesture in the sense of authorizing and tacitly agreeing with the French edition's commentary on the contents of these two Considerations.

But there are other reasons for questioning Hutchinson's decision, particularly with respect to NV C65. For while the English note on C37 is a fairly straightforward translation of the French original, the same cannot be said for the note on C65. Here is the English note on C65 from the 1638 edition, followed by the corresponding marginal notes in the French original, together with my translations:

Figure 1.

Valdesso, Considerations (1638), f. **2v.

This comparison is infinitely too base, there is none of the references, which we have had with our Lord Iesus Christ, dissolved but infinitely perfected, and he shall ever continue our glorious head, and all the influences of our happinesse shall ever descend from him, and the chief our glory, shall (as I conceive) consist in that which he saith amongst the last words that he spake in the 17. Iohn. v. 24. Father I will that they also whom thou hast given me bee with me, where I am, that they also may behold the glory which thou hast given me before the foundation of the world. To which agreeth that which S. Paul writes, 2. Thes. 1. chap. v. 9.

(Considerations [1638], f. **2v)

Le Regne de Christ demeure jusques àlae resurestion universelle l'Empire de Dieu commencera á lors, & dure â perpetuité. ["The sovereignty of Christ remains until the Universal Resurrection, and then the Empire of God begins and will endure forever."]

Ceste comparaison est trop basse, & semble asses malsortable. ["This comparison is too low, and seems rather inappropriate."] (Consydérations [1565], f. y6r)³

While the first of the French notes is a gloss largely duplicating part of the main French text – sainct Paul demeurara iusque … continuera â perpetuité – the second is a critical assessment similar to Herbert's more negative notes elsewhere in NV, as when he condemns as "unsufferable" Valdés's denigration of civil order in NV C62 and scriptural authority in NV C63 (see fig. 2).

The English version of the note on C65, though capturing some of the French gloss, expands on the French to an extent that exceeds translation and is more in the realm of additional commentary. For example, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, to which the 1638 note refers as "agree[ing]" with John 17:24, is in fact the latter's...