Monday 21 January 2019

How old is "Seigneur" in French?

Le Seigneur a quel âge?

This is an interesting question I was destined to stumble over at some point. I arrived at it following my decision to enlargen my quest for a publisher to the French-speaking market.

End November 2018, I already needed to know the history of "Lord" in English and shared my findings on the blog hereWhen did this "Lord" business begin?

I concluded that there was a shift at some point between the early 1000s and the late 1300s from Drihten to Lord in English.

There are some very old translations into French, the most famous and allegedly initial large-scale version was conducted by Guyart des Moulins in 1297. That is a hundred years before Wycliffe (used Lord). I don't know if the beautiful presentation of des Moulin's work is thanks to him or a scribe working under him, but it's well worth a look.

Guyard des Moulins uses Seigneur. Here's a passage I located in Proverbs 9:10 (which you can view online in full here):




In short, both Lord and Seigneur really do date back to the medieval times and demonstrate the sticking power of these sacred terms once translated, even in the face of contemporary redundancy.

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