Anna Lampadaridi: Translating the “Father of Translation”: new researches on the Greek versions of Jerome’s Vita Sancti Hilarionis (BHL 3879)

While the translation of Greek texts into Latin has been often studied, the opposite phenomenon, translations form Latin into Greek, has only rarely been the subject of a systematic approach. This paper tackles the issue of the Greek versions of a Late Antique hagiographical text, the Vita Sancti Hilarionis(BHL 3879), composed by Jerome, known as “the Father of Translation”, at the end of the 4th century. This dossier constitutes an interesting case study, which demonstrates that translations of a sole text could be produced in an independent way, in differentmilieux and by different people. There are three basic Greek versions of the VH, two literal (BHG751z, BHG 752) and one free (BHG 753). The paper focuses on the discovery of an only partially known Greek translation (BHG 752), which allows us to map out the different stages of the translation of this Latin text into Greek. We are currently preparing a critical edition of the Vita BHG 1752, which constitutes a Greek translation extremely closed to the Latin original. Some expressions in Greek are incomprehensible if we do not resort to the original, while many Greek words are tracings of the Latin ones. Such a translation from Latin into Greek is extremely rare and thus of a major importance for the history of the translations. The critical edition of this mostly unknown Greek translation of VH will make this text accessible to scholars and contribute to a better understanding of the translation procedure.