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Transom—Transvaal
(made through the French) which owes most of its vogue during the Restoration rather to its reckless indecency than to its intrinsic merit. Dryden’s free translations of Juvenal (1693) and Virgil (1697) treat the original authors with a cavalier freedom, but at least they preserve the meaning, if not the conciseness and point, of the Latin.
Among the multitudinous English translations of the 18th century it is only necessary to mention Pope’s versions of the Iliad (1715–1720) and the Odyssey (1725–1726), and Cowper’s rendering of Homer, issued in 1791. These neat translations necessarily fail to convey any impression of Homer’s epical grandeur, and they set a mischievous fashion of artificial “elegance” which has been too often adopted by their successors; but both Pope and Cowper conform faithfully to the mistaken canon of their age, and both have fugitive moments of felicity. A posthumous translation of Don Quixote bearing the name of Charles Jarvis appeared in 1742, has been reprinted times innumerable ever since, and has helped to make Cervantes’s masterpiece known to generations of English-speaking people. Defective in point of exact scholarship, it has the merit of agreeable perspicuity, and there seems no reason to believe the remark, ascribed by Warburton to Pope, that Jarvis “translated Don Quixote without knowing Spanish”: the available evidence is strongly against this malicious theory. The most remarkable translations of the 18th century, however, appeared in Germany: these are the versions of the Odyssey (1781) and Iliad (1793) by Voss, and A. W. von Schlegel’s rendering of Shakespeare (1797–1810), which gave a powerful impulse to the romantic movement on the Continent.
Byron’s version of a Spanish ballad and Shelley’s renderings of Calderón are interesting exhibitions of original genius voluntarily accepting a subordinate role. More importance attaches to Carlyle’s translation of Wilhelm Meister (1824), a faithful rendering free from the intolerable mannerisms and tricks which the translator developed subsequently in his original writings. William Taylor had long before translated Bürger’s Lenore, Lessing’s Nathan and Goethe’s Iphigenia; but such interest as the English nation has been induced to take in German literature dates from the appearance of Carlyle’s translation. If he did nothing more, he compelled recognition of the fact that Germany had at last produced an original genius of the highest class. Calderón found accomplished translators in Denis Florence MacCarthy (1848–1873) and in Edward FitzGerald (1853), who also attempted to render Sophocles into English; but these are on a much lower plane than the translation of the Rubaiyát (1859) of Omar Khayyam, in which, by a miracle of intrepid dexterity, a half-forgotten Persian poet is transfigured into a pessimistic English genius of the 19th century. Versions of Dante by Longfellow (whose translations of poems by minor authors are often admirable), of Latin or Greek classics by Conington, Munro, Jowett and Jebb, maintain the best traditions of the best translators. William Morris was less happy in his poetical versions of Virgil (1875) and the Odyssey (1887) than in his prose translations of The Story of Grettir the Strong (1869) and The Volsunga Saga (1870)—both made in collaboration with Magnússon—and in his rendering of Beowulf (1895). In his Lays of France (1872) Arthur O’Shaughnessy skirts the borders of translation without quite entering into the field; he elaborates, paraphrases and embroiders rather than translates the lais of Marie de France.
Most versions of modern foreign writers are mere hackwork carelessly executed by incompetent hands, and this is even more true of England than of France and Germany. But, with the development of literature in countries whose languages are unfamiliar, the function of the translator increases in importance, and in some few cases he has risen to his opportunity. Through translations the works of the great Russian novelists have become known to the rest of Europe, and through translations of Ibsen the dramatic methods of the modern stage have undergone a revolution. (J. F.-K.)
Transom (probably a corruption of Lat. transtrum, athwart, in a boat; equivalents are Fr. traverse, croisillon, Ger. Losholz), the architectural term given to the horizontal lintel or beam which is framed across a window, dividing it into stages or heights. In early Gothic ecclesiastical work transoms are only found in belfry unglazed windows or spire lights, where they were deemed necessary to strengthen the mullions in the absence of the iron stay bars, which in glazed windows served a similar purpose. In domestic work, on account of the opening casements, they are more frequently found. In the later Gothic, and more especially the Perpendicular period, the introduction of transoms became very general in windows of all kinds.
Transubstantiation, the term adopted by the Roman Catholic Church to express her teaching on the subject of the conversion of the Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Its signification was authoritatively defined by the Council of Trent in the following words: “If any one shall say that, in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist there remains, together with the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the substance of the Bread and Wine, and shall deny that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the Bread into (His) Body and of the Wine into (His) Blood, the species only of the Bread and Wine remaining—which conversion the Catholic Church most fittingly calls Transubstantiation—let him be anathema.”[1] The word Transubstantiation is not found earlier than the 12th century. But in the Eucharistic controversies of the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries the views which the term embodies were clearly expressed; as, for example, by Radbertus Paschasius (d. 865), who wrote that “the substance of the Bread and Wine is efficaciously changed interiorly into the Flesh and Blood of Christ,” and that after the consecration what is there is “nothing else but Christ the Bread of Heaven.”[2] The words “substantially converted” appear in the formula which Berengarius was compelled to sign in 1079. Assuming that the Expositio canonis missae ascribed to St Pietro Damiani (d. 1072) is doubtful, we may take it that the first use of the word is in a passage of Hildebert de Savardin[3] (d. 1133), who brings it into an exhortation quite informally, as if it were in common use.[4] It is met with in a Decretal of Innocent III.[5] The fourth Council of Lateran fully adopted it (1215). It is clear from the treatise of Radbertus Paschasius already quoted that the word “substance” was used for reality as distinguished from outward appearance, and that the word “species” meant outward appearance as opposed to reality. The terms, therefore, were not invented by St Thomas Aquinas, and are not mere scholastic subtlety. The definition of the Council of Trent was intended both to enforce the accepted Catholic position and to exclude the teaching of Luther, who, whilst not professing to be certain whether the “substance” of the Bread and Wine could or could not be said to remain, exclaimed against the intolerance of the Roman Catholic Church in defining the question.[6]
For a full and recent exposition of the Catholic teaching on Transubstantiation the reader may consult De ecclesiae sacramentis, auctore Ludovico Billot, SJ. (Rome, Propaganda Press, 1896). The Abbé Pierre Batifol, in his Études d’histoire et de théologie positive, 2me série (Elaboration de la notion de conversion, and Conversion et transubstantiation) treats it from the point of view of development (V. Lecoffre, Paris, 1905).
Transvaal, an inland province of the Union of South Africa between the Vaal and Limpopo rivers. It lies, roughly, between 22½° and 27½° S. and 25° and 32° E., and is bounded S. by the Orange Free State and Natal, W. by the Cape province and the Bechuanaland Protectorate, N. by Rhodesia, E. by Portuguese East Africa and Swaziland. Save on the south-west the frontiers, for the main part, are well defined natural features. From the south-west to the north-east corners of the colony is 570 m.; east
- ↑ Concil trident. Sess. XIII. Can. 2.
- ↑ P. L. Migne. CXX. De corpore et sanguine Domini, cap. viii. 2, cf. xv. 2.
- ↑ Sometimes called of Tours, or of Le Mans.
- ↑ See Batifol, Études d'histoire et de théologie positive, 2me série.
- ↑ Lib. III. Decretalium, tit. 41, n. 6.
- ↑ De captivitate babylonika ecclesiae. De coenâ Domini. But Luther elsewhere professed Consubstantiation; that is, in modern Lutheran phraseology, the “presence of our Lord's Body” in, with and under the bread.
