Our history
The British and Foreign Bible Society (SBBF)
March 8, 1804 in London, 300 people met to form an association whose goal was to spread the Bible. They were people that came from all walks of life (middle and high class people such as merchants, military officers, administrative functionaries, parliamentarians and diplomats) and from various churches. Immediately received with great interest in their own country, the British and Foreign Bible Society has enlarged its presence even in many countries tied to the British Empire, beside promoting the foundation of Bible Societies in other nations, (Germany,Wurttemberg 1812, Russia 1813, Holland 1814, Sweden 1815, Greece 1819….). The initial intent was to offer a service and a collaboration for the “biblical apostolate” to all the churches. The people actively involved, above all lay persons, came from various churches, but without being explicitly nominated or delegated by their churches. So as not to generate contrasts of a denominational nature, the Bible Societies (=SB) decided to publish the Bible without notes or comments. This situation lasted only a short time, because various tensions within the Protestant Churches – for the presence of the deuterocanonical books of the Bible – as well as the complaint by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches that the SB were instruments of a polemical Protestant proselytism, a complaint also followed by severe papal condemnations throughout the XIX century. These complaints have blocked the birth and growth of a systematic collaboration for the spreading of the Bible, leaving the SB close to only Protestant circles. In this “cold war” situation it was not strange that the turbulent political and social events of Europe played a part as well.
In the XX century the ecumenical movement takes form and, especially after World War II, the “biblical” collaboration among the churches begins anew and increases noticeably, as even the II Vatican Council states with the promulgation of “Dei Verbum”. In fact the Bible Societies, united in the the Universal Bible Alliance (ABU) association initiates specific relationships for collaboration with the Ecumenical Council of Churches at the end of the 1940’s, with the Catholic Church in the 60’s and in the 90’s with the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, reaching an ever greater effective and full cooperation in every aspect of its work (translations, printing and distribution of the Bible). Until today they are committed together with the Churches in about 600 projects of translations or revisions of the Bible in the languages of the whole world and distributing annually about 500 million biblical t4exts (Bibles, New Testaments, single books of the Bible or selections from them).
In Italy the Diodati version and its revisions made by Luzzi (Riveduta) and later revisions (New Revised) for the Protestant Churches; the Interdenominational Translation in Modern Language (TILC) in a co-edition with the Library of Christian Doctrine (Elledici): over ten million copies since 1976. In 2014 the revision of the whole Bible was published. The Ecumenical Literary Translation (TLE) of the New Testament is being planned. A new Protestant translation has been started, for which the printing of the New Testament took place in 2017, the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.,
The SBBF in Italy: 1807 – 1847
As was said above, in 1804 in London, England, the BFBS was formed, in Italian the “Società Biblica Britannica e Forestieri” (SBBF). Already in 1808 the SBBF printed the Bible in Italian in the version of the Protestant Diodati (2nd ed. 1646) and in the Catholic version by Mons. Martini (1781), and initiated its distribution. In Sicily in 1812 the bishop of Messina authorized the importation of Bibles coming from the island of Malta. With the fall of Napoleon, Europe found itself with two opposing political positions: between ”moderates” and “conservatives” who found in England the principle supports of the first and in Austria that of the second position. Such tensions determined in our country different ways of looking at the work of the SBBF, considered by Metternich one of the factors of “disorder” in the Europe of the Restoration. The Bibles of the SBBF started to filter secretly into Italy from London and from the English dominions of Malta and Gibraltar, from Basel in Switzerland, until the time that they were being printed in Turin, in Naples and then above all in Livorno (Leghorn), future headquarters for the activities of the SBBF in Italy. From here the Bibles were sent by ship to the English consulate of Nice, Genoa, Messina and as far as Trieste. With the repression of the Carbonari Rebellion of 1820-21, there followed difficult years for the SBBF with the perquisition and destruction of Bibles, with papal condemnations of 1824 and 1846. Any possibility for an activity together for the spreading of the Bible disappeared and furthermore the SBBF no longer printed the deuterocanonical books that until that time were published as an appendix to the Diodati. People that worked for the spread of the Bible found that they had to move within the limits of legality or had to resort to secrecy in their activity.
1848 -1870
During the first war for independence in 1848, when the Republic was proclaimed (Rome, Venice, Tuscany), the SBBF spread thousands of Bibles and New Testaments in the versions of Martini and Diodati, published in Florence, Rome and Pisa, or shipped from deposits in Switzerland to Turin and to Milan and from Malta to Messina. But with the defeat of the “rebellions” for independence many Bibles were confiscated and destroyed. Only the Kingdom of Sardegna, even though defeated, remained independent and sovriegn. Here thanks to the Statue promulgated by King Carlo Aberto in 1848, to the new King, Vittorio Emanuele II and above all to the Legislative activity of the subalpine parliament, elected in part by the people and guided by the moderate and capable hand of Cavour, there is erected, even with its limits, a situation of stability and freedom. The SBBF was able then to establish its first official agent, lieutenant Graydon (1851-1860), once an officer in the British navy, responsible for the work in Switzerland and in the Kingdom of Sardegna,, where he established in various cities Bible deposits for their distribution through “colporteurs”, traveling salesmen of religious literature. Even with some difficulties in the years 1854-58 the SBBF sold 25,000 biblical texts, while in the rest of Italy the circulation of Bibles was forbidden by law.
In the years of the second war for independence (1859-60) the SBBF expanded its services to the rest of the peninsula. In 1861, with the proclamation of the unification of Italy, the direction of the SBBF in Italy was assumed by T. H. Bruce (1868-1881), a scotch resident in Livorno. New deposits were established and the Bible was printed directly in Italy, in Florence and in Turin. The distribution (some tens of thousands of Bibles a year) was made in every corner of Italy by the humble and constant work of colporteurs, present even on the 20th of September , 1870, when Rome was conquered by the Italian army.
1871-1920
Together with the Protestant Churches the presence of the SBBF in Rome became stable through the setting up of an agency and Bruce opened immediately a deposit in Via del Corso and in 1871 p0ublished a booklet with the Gospel of Luke and the Letters of Peter. Even in the presence of religious freedom, assured by law, Italy remained Catholic. The SBBF certainly reached a much more vast public than that of the Protestant Churches to which it was tied, as indicated by the statistics of the distribution in those years, but often the Bibles were viewed with suspicion and refused. The commitment of Bruce was non the less noteworthy: from 1860 – 1880 more than 800,000 copies, from Bibles to single biblical texts, were distributed.
The new agent in Italy for the SBBF was Augusto Meille (1881 – 19906), a Waldensian pastor, responsible for thirty colporteurs and seven main deposits. The last twenty years of the century, with the dimming of the enthusasm of the Risorgimento, there was a period for consolidating the work with the ever present moments of tension, both soocial as well as with the Catholic Ghurch, but also with the possible hopes for cooperation. In 1894 Meille entrusted Prof. Giovanni Luzzi, Waldensian pastor, with the linguistic revision of the Diodati version of the Bible, a fundamental choice in the history of the Bible and of the SBBF in Italy. In the years of Meille the SBBF, through a balanced plan, silent and continuous, in the midst of various difficulties, with a series of initiatives and revisions, distributed over 2 million and a half of copies between Bibles and single biblical books.
While Meille presided over the revision of the Diodati, he was succeeded as director of the SBBF bu two Englishmen, The Rev. R.O. Walker (1907 – 1916) and the Rev. E.W. Smith (1917 – 1920), who then became European head of the Society. During the First World War many colporteurs were present at the front among the soldiers and prisoners, in support of the Protestant chaplains (six Waldensians) and tens pf thousands of copies of Bibles and New Testaments were distributed. With the rise of Fascism, the SBBF again found itself in a difficult situation. It was considered by the authorities as a Protestant organization, and even if this position has never been taken officially by the SBBF, its ideals and real connections with the Protestant Churches were known to all; and the ties with Great Britain generated perplexity since its directors were English.
1921 – 1967
For this reason an Italian, Enrico Pons, Waldensian pastor, became the new person responsible for the SBBF in Italy (1921 – 1936). In 1924 the Revised Version of the Bible was published (a new revision of the Diodati for which the New Testament had already been printed in1916), prepared by the committee presided over by Luzzi. It became in time, for over seventy years, the principle version of the Bible for all Italian Protestants.
Even if the SBBF declared itself to be non partisan, it found always greater difficulty with the Fascist authorities, because it was always an organization with British origins and direction, connected with Protestant circles. In 1929 with the signing of the Lateran Treaty a new relationship was established between Italy and the Vatican, which determined a prominent role of Catholicism with respect to the the other churches which were guaranteed freedom of worship thanks to the legislation on admitted religions. None the less the Protestants found themselves in growing difficulty and were subject to repressive actions from 1934/35 by government authorities, even if at the same time there were sanctions against Italy by the League of Nations under British influence. The SBBF remained isolated and in 1936 the government closed its activity for six months, blocking the selling of Bibles and the activities of the colporteurs. Waldensian pastor Guido Miegge, the new director (1936-1967), reached, in December 1936, an agreement with the authorities, clarifying the legal status (as a moral body for non-Catholic worship) and the goals of the SBBF. Thus the spread of the biblical texts could resume again, subject however to great limitations. The situation gets worse with the declaration of war against Great Britain in 1941. In those years Mieggi was able however to continue the activity of the SBBF as head of the “Sacred Scripture Book Store”.
In the reconstruction period after the war, in 1946 the Universal Bile Alliance (ABU) was founded, an international association of the Bible Societies, in which the SBBF of London, with all of its agencies, became a part of. With the return of freedom in Italy, the SBBF began once more its full activity of spreading biblical literature throughout the nation, with tens of thousands of Bibles sold annually, thanks also to new techniques of modern and capillary distribution used by about a hundred volunteer colporteurs. In the 1960’s with the II Vatican Council, the Catholic Church opened itself to an ecumenical dialogue and giving a renewed central role of the Bible in the life of the Church, thus creating new opportunities for biblical cooperation on an interdenominational level.
1968 – 2018
In this new ecumenical climate the SBBF developed its activity in an interdenominational dimension with a new director for Italy, the Waldensian pastor Renzo Bertalot (1968 – 1988). In light of the “Directive guidelines for the interdenominational cooperation for the translation of the Bible” signed by the ABU and the Pontifical Secretariat for Christian Unity in 1968 (revised in 1987), the SBBF started a project for the version TILC (Interdenominational Translation in Modern Language) together with the Catholic publisher elledici, printing a New Testament in 1976 and the entire Bible in 1985. Even if it is not used in the official liturgies, the edition has had a noteworthy acceptance (more than ten million copies between Bibles, New Testaments and portions), alongside the traditionally consolidated versions used in Protestant circles (Revised version) and the Catholic version (CEI). Meanwhile in 1968, with the constitution of a European Region of the ABU, the Italian agency of the SBBF became a part of it as a “member” to represent Italy.
The age of volunteer colporteurs ended (the majori8ty of which came from Pentecostal circles), the central headquarters in Rome was strengthened (offices, library, book deposits) rendering the various sectors of activity better equipped for its tasks. Along side the traditional relationship with the Protestant Churches, new relations with the catholic church were started as well as with the religious book stores. Following these developments the birth of the Bible Society in Italy (SBI) was promoted, an association dedicated to the promotion and distribution of the Bible (1983). The SBI and the SBBF represent two branches of the same activity: the job of the first is above all that of promoting the distribution of the Bible through the collection of necessary funds, while the second continues the editorial work of translation, printing and distributing the sacred texts.
Pastor Bertalot was succeeded by his son Valdo Bertalot as director of the SBBF (1988 – 2018), a lay Waldensian, also nominated as General Secretary of the SBI. The ecumenical collaboration was extended to the scientific sector as well, publishing a series of grammars and dictionaries of the original biblical languages. In 1995 the SBBF, in collaboration with the Bible Society of Geneva, published the revision of the Protestant version “Riveduta” and in 2000 in occasion of the Jubilee, the SBBF and the SBI collaborated in name of the ABU with the Catholic Church in a series of interdenominational projects for the spread of biblical literature in Rome and all of Italy, which saw the realization of 52 editions of biblical texts in 17 different languages, for a total of 5 million copies distributed and the organization of a great display of the Bible from its printing to the computer (from the XV to the XX century).
For various reasons the Italian agency of the SBBF was closed in 2018.
Now only the SBI continues the tradition of the Bible Societies in our country with an interdenominational administrative Council which has recently been renewed. The SBI, with an ecumenical slant and a real commitment, works with the old and always new goals of spreading the Bible and making it known.
Bibliography:
The Word that changed the World, edited by M. Cignoni, A. Jesson, Rome 1000, pp.27-50
Great themes on biblical pastoral care, edited by C.Bissoli, Leumann 2002, pp. 216-226
The British and Foreign Bible Society, 200 years of history, edited by Domenico Maselli and Carlo Ghidelli,Rome 2004
