Cordelia Heß

The Christian concepts of justice and justification were deeply influenced by the Latin Vulgate, which coined a specific interpretation of the Hebrew concept of justice, contained in the root ›sdq‹. In the four Middle Low German Bible translations printed before the Reformation (1478–1522), these specific problems of translation became visible and led to an unsystematic use of the terms available in secular law: ›(ge)rechticheyt‹ and ›rechtferticheyt‹. This article analyzes the different translations of the Latin ›iustitia‹ and its synonyms and antonyms in the Middle Low German Bibles. They contain a concept of justice which adopts several aspects from the Hebrew Bible that differ from the Vulgate: the close connection of justice and mercy, the strong orientation towards the legal community, and justice as a mutual duty of God and humans rather than a hierarchic virtue. But most striking is the lack of a codification of the content of the different available variants in Middle Low German: a sign of the ongoing semantic mobility of a central religious concept, and consequently of the lack of control the Church had over religious discourses in the vernacular.