Matos Soares 1956

History

In the early twentieth century the Portuguese priest Manuel de Matos Soares (?-1957) set himself to translating Holy Scripture into Portuguese. His first complete published translation appeared in 1932 (the work having begun in 1927), based on the Latin Vulgate, then the official biblical text of the Catholic Church. He had the collaboration of the Jesuit Father Luís Gonzaga da Fonseca, professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.

The prologue to the first version says what it was made for, and the reason is not devotional. “Protestants have long accused the Catholic Church of forbidding the faithful to read the Bible in the vernacular,” it opens — and it is easy, it answers, to see that the accusation is false. What the Church forbids are the versions “in which the word of God is mutilated and its true sense falsified”, and among them are the ones the Protestant Bible societies were distributing in quantity, often with pamphlets attached. “To check such pernicious effects, this new version of the Vulgate in the Portuguese language is published, in a popular edition.”

Curiosities

On 23 September 1932 the Secretariat of State of the Holy See, at the Vatican, informed Father Manuel de Matos Soares that Pope Pius XI had received the volumes of his translation of the Bible and thanked him for the homage. The Portuguese version of the same communication is dated 25 September 1932. The letter is signed by the Secretary of State of the day, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII.

Sources

• Bíblia Sagrada, traduzido da Vulgata e Comentado pelo Pe. Matos Soares — scan of four volumes (1927, 1946, 1950), the source of the prologue and of the two letters reproduced above