The papal bull “Ineffabilis Deus” (1854) translated: a parallel corpus of 55 versions in European languages and varieties
In 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the bull “Ineffabilis Deus” about the immaculate conception of the virgin Mary, a Latin document of theological and philosophical argumentation with an extension of 4385 tokens in the original version. During the following years, the French priest Marie-Dominique Sire collected translations of the text into the languages of the world. He compiled more than 200 translations, among which more than 100 into European languages and varieties. Several of these languages did not count on elaborated written traditions in the 19th century: therefore, in these cases, the text is a pioneering piece of elaborated prose. The whole collection of manuscripts was donated by Sire to the Pope and has been part of the Vatican library for more than 150 years without ever having been studied linguistically. The overall aim of the project is to make the corpus Sire accessible. In the first step, we want to digitize 55 translations (European varieties and languages). The focus will be mainly on Romance in this first phase.