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The Family of Love revisited: A study of Hendrick Niclaes' "Evangelium Regni" and its translations

Vanderhelst, An; (2003) The Family of Love revisited: A study of Hendrick Niclaes' "Evangelium Regni" and its translations. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

This thesis studies the written tradition of the sixteenth-century religious movement known as the Family of Love. It examines both the Low German writings of the movement's founder Hendrick Niclaes and their contemporary translations in English and Latin. The first part of this study demonstrates, through detailed textual analysis of the theological tract Evangelium Regni, the conscious deliberation of Hendrick Niclaes' writings and their functioning in the propagation of his spiritual beliefs. It documents Niclaes' painstaking efforts to communicate his visionary experiences through a literary medium and re-evaluates the importance of the written word in the movement. The second part of this thesis closely examines the English and Latin renditions of the Evangelium Regni that were produced in the mid and late sixteenth century. In doing so, it not only sheds new light on the Family of Love's literary history but also contributes to the current state of research on the movement, in that it reconsiders, through analyses of this same primary text material, the various extant descriptions of the Family of Love. Through descriptive comparisons of the translations with their source text, this thesis considers the extent to which the translations of Niclaes' works were both products of and factors in the spread and consolidation of the Familist movement, while also highlighting the meticulous organisation behind their creation. The findings of this study entail a reassessment of the significance and role of the translated word in the Family of Love and, more generally, show how translation becomes instrumental in the building of a religious organisation in post-Reformation Europe.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification: Ph.D
Title: The Family of Love revisited: A study of Hendrick Niclaes' "Evangelium Regni" and its translations
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Thesis digitised by ProQuest.
Keywords: Language, literature and linguistics; Philosophy, religion and theology; Niclaes, Hendrick
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10100970
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