Note 153 — Chapter II

Nisard, Histoire de la littérature française, i. 275. The only printed work in favor of which the claim of Lefèvre's translation to be the oldest in the French language could be disputed is the "Bible" of Guyars des Moulins, finished in 1297, and printed by order of Charles VIII. in 1487; but the greater part of this is a free translation, not of the Scriptures themselves, but of a summary—the "Historia scholastica" of Pierre le Mengeur (latinized "Comestor")—and is consequently no bible at all. See M. Charles Read, in Bulletin, i. 76, who remarks that, "everything considered, it may therefore be asserted that the translations of Lefèvre d'Étaples and of Olivetanus are the first versions without embellishment or gloss (non historiées et non glossées), and that thus the first two versions of the Bible into the language of the people are Protestant."