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A Brief Treatise of Doctrine Useful for Every Christian | Breve tratado de doctrina útil para todo cristiano

Luis de Vargas, “Saint John the Evangelist,” ca. 1561; Pen and ink and wash on paper; Collection of the Hispanic Society of America

Introduction to the Text

This Prologue to A Brief Treatise of Doctrine (1560) is attributed to Dr. Juan Perez de Piñeda—a Spanish scholar, theologian, priest, and condemned heretic. Perez published in Spanish while in exile in Francophone nations, collaborated with Jean Calvin, read Lutheran texts, and was in communication with other Spanish Reformers through clandestine networks. A Brief Treatise of Doctrine is representative of these intercultural and interdenominational influences in Perez’s own thought, and consequently resists established dichotomies between Spain and Europe, Catholicism and Protestantism, Calvinism and Lutheranism.

Scholarship on Perez’s life and works is archetypical of scholarship on the Spanish Reformers in general. Catholic critic Marcelino Menedez y Pelayo aptly described the state of the field with the biblical appropriation: “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” (“Historia de Los Heterodoxos Españoles, v.1.” 18). Extensive bibliographic work on the Spanish Reformation has preserved and organized a plethora of primary sources pertenint to the field. Consequently, the few modern scholars who have worked on the Spanish Reformation have approached it in broad terms, producing long histories and general studies. While a handful of anglophone scholars have begun studying the reformers individually, much work remains. As such, A Brief Treatise of Doctrine is the perfect text to introduce into Anglophone consideration of the Spanish Reformation. With increased access to Perez’s writings, interdisciplinary studies on Perez can shed new light on the intricate web of theological developments sprawling onto the international stage of 16th-century Europe.

Introduction to the Source

The first edition of A Brief Treatise of Doctrine was published in 1560 in Geneva by Jean Crespin, a printer with known Calvinist leanings. Along with the other works of Perez, this text was banned in Spain and would only have circulated through clandestine networks of Reformation sympathizers. By 1560, those networks were collapsing as more arrests were made in Spain by the Inquisition. Consequently, it is improbable that this text had a wide circulation. It likely would have disappeared were it not for the dedicated efforts of Luis de Usoz y Rio and his partner Benjamin B. Wiffen to collect and preserve reformist texts in the 19th Century. The two men worked cross-continentally to find rare books in small bookstores around the world. They re-bound and re-printed the works they found in the Reformistas Antiguos Españoles (Old Spanish Reformers), the oldest editions of which are held today in the National Library of Spain.

About this Edition

For the transcription and translation of this work, I consulted various editions of the Reformistas Antiguos Españoles collection as early editions have non-standardized orthography and make generous use of abbreviations. In the transcription, I generally standardize the orthography in cases where there is no ambiguity in meaning between the variations. For example, e, i, í, and y were used interchangeably for the modern y (meaning “and”); the transcription will use the modern y. In the translation, I interpret fidelity to be alignment with the author’s purpose in writing rather than with the formal elements of style. While not always the appropriate metric of fidelity, the explicitness of Perez’s reasons for writing within the text itself justifies this approach. Accordingly, the goal of the translation is to parallel Perez’s style and tone, and I accordingly modify formal characteristics such as syntax and segmentation. Most commonly, hypotactic sentences that read fluidly and persuasively in Spanish become bulky and poorly constructed in English. Consequently, I cut would-be run-on sentences to better communicate Perez’s erudite tone. Similar logic guides the introduction of paragraph breaks. All in all, Perez’s writing seeks to be clear, accessible and persuasive; the translation seeks to do the same.

Further Reading

Boehmer, Edward, editor. Bibliotheca Wiffeniana. Burt Franklin, 1883.

  • An introduction to the collection of reformist texts to which A Brief Treatise of Doctrine belongs.

Kinder, A. Gordon. Spanish Protestants and Reformers in the Sixteenth Century: A Bibliography. Grant & Cutler, 1983.

  • A bibliography of primary sources and secondary sources from both Catholic and Protestant perspectives.

Kinder, A. Gordon. “Juan Pérez de Pineda (Pierius): A Spanish Calvinist Minister of the Gospel in Sixteenth-Century Geneva.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Liverpool); Liverpool, vol. 53, no. 4, Oct. 1976, pp. 283–300.

  • Introductory article on the author.

Luttikhuizen, Frances. Underground Protestantism in Sixteenth Century Spain: A Much Ignored Side of Spanish History. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017.

  • A detailed introduction to key figures of the Spanish Reformation.

Credits

Transcription based on Pérez, Juan. Breve Tratado De Doctrina. Barcelona: Librería de D. Gómez Flores, 1982.Translation by Kathryn PhippsEncoded in TEI P5 XML by Danny Smith

Suggested citation: Juan Perez de Piñeda. "A Brief Treatise of Doctrine Useful for Every Christian." Trans. Kathryn Phipps. Global Medieval Sourcebook. http://sourcebook.stanford.edu/text/brief-treatise-doctrine-useful-every.... Retrieved on March 28, 2024.