235 Rules for Reading Scripture: The Reception of Francisco Ruiz de Valladolid's Work in 17th-Century Louvain

In the sixteenth century, the call for a reform of biblical studies emerged from the observance that the Scriptures were not being properly taught and preached to the people, because of the poor theological formation of the clergy. The issue was tackled during the fourth and fifth sessions of the Council of Trent in the spring of 1546. That same year, just a few months before the conciliar sessions, the Spanish theologian Francisco Ruiz de Valladolid published a treatise entitled Regulae intelligendi scripturam sacram, or Rules to understand the Holy Scriptures, that contained 235 rules as a guideline to facilitate the reading of the Holy Bible. The work was a valid tool, witness the fact that it was reprinted several times, in printing house all over Europe. Still in 1693, the Leuven theologian Martinus Steyaert integrated a literal copy of the Regulae in his tripartite work on the reading of the Bible, and also added a compendium in which he proposed a reinterpretation of the aforementioned 235 rules and some additional explanations. In this contribution, we aim at shedding a light on the ideas of a sixteenth century humanist-minded Spanish monk and on how his rules of reading the Scriptures were recontextualised in the seventeenth century Louvain Jansenist controversy.status: publishe