A Daring Game: George Borrow's Sales in Spain (1837-1839) of the Scio New Testament (Madrid 1837) [Paperback]

In 1837 George Borrow, the brilliant polyglot and future author of best-sellers, arrived in Madrid as agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society with the assignment to print and distribute a Protestant version of the New Testament in a staunchly Catholic land. In the first months of the year he saw through to press an edition of no fewer than 5,000 copies. Then he spent the next three years selling the book, against tremendous opposition from the Catholic Church and hostile conservative authorities, in all the nooks and corners of the land, to all classes of Spanish society, in big cities and in tiny villages. Thrice imprisoned, a dozen times nearly killed by bandits, firing-squad, disease or accident, Borrow persisted where saner men would soon have yielded. When at last he returned to England, the greater part of his 'Scio New Testament' had been duly sold to noblemen, donkey-drivers and jailbirds, to 'muleteers, carmen, and contrabandistas', to city bourgeois and intellectuals craving for a look at Europe's most fundamental text. A Daring Game does not repeat the whole story of Borrow's adventures as told in his sensational 1843 travelogue 'The Bible in Spain'. Instead, it investigates the conditions and circumstances under which Borrow's New Testament was produced and distributed, and for the first time in two centuries calculates the exact numbers of sales attained by a bookseller of genius in a land plagued by war, pestilence, ignorance and hatred.

Early in 1836, George Borrow was sent to Spain by the British and
Foreign Bible Society to see what might be done there in the way of
distribution of Bible texts printed in a vernacular translation. Spain had
recently passed through profound socio-political changes, which made
such an initiative feasible for the first time in centuries. A new liberal
regime, which followed on the archaic absolutist system kept in place
for 20 years by the late king Fernando VII, had granted the country
a - still limited - freedom of the press, which might perhaps be stretched
just enough to allow for the distribution and sale of Spanish language,
Protestant Scripture.
Borrow looked around and made inquiries, and soon after he had
reported back his findings, it was decided that, rather than import - illegally - large stocks of books from abroad at high costs and high risks,
it would be better to print a fresh edition of a Spanish language New
Testament in the country itself. To this purpose, the Bible Society agent
sought formal permission from the Madrid government first to print
and then to distribute such an edition. The Spanish government was
most unwilling to grant this, because there were two rather formidable
obstacles to such a project. First of all: the law quite simply forbade this
kind of publication, unless the publisher received a formal licence from
the all-powerful Catholic church. And secondly: the Catholic church
was rigorously opposed to any such vernacular edition of Holy Writ,
unless it answered to the conditions formulated by the Holy See in 1756, namely: that all the books considered canonical by the Catholic Church
be included, and that the text be accompanied by the copious explicatory notes which guided the reader towards the correct theological
interpretation of each and every delicate passage. Since this latter addition would necessarily have turned the New Testament into a Catholic
publication, the Bible Society, a Protestant organisation at heart, refused
to do so. Its projected New Testament had to be published `without note
or comment', according to the Society's fundamental law; and would
consequently be incomplete in Catholic eyes.
This ought to have been the end of it. Except that Borrow had the
backing of Sir George Villiers, the British Ambassador to Spain, and
that Villiers had tremendous leverage over the Spanish government,
because Britain lent the liberal regime essential diplomatic and military
aid in its civil war against the Carlist rebellion in the north - a rebellion
which throughout these years always stood on the verge of winning and
of replacing the liberal experiment with a repetition of Fernando VII's
anachronistic autocracy. Thus, caught between a rock and a hard place,
the Spanish government first stalled, then wavered, and finally caved in.
They could not, of course, grant an illegal formal permission; but they
went so far as to give a covert verbal go-ahead to the printing of the New
Testament, under the condition that it would be done in a most private,
discreet and unobtrusive manner; in other words: completely on the sly
and in such a way that the offence could never be laid at the government's doorstep. This astonishing, not to say absurd, policy already contained
the doom of Borrow's mission; but the prospective Bible-salesman nevertheless jumped at the chance. Much as he always derided and ridiculed
Spain's lawlessness and the blatant ease with which even the authorities
themselves ignored their own most rigorous legislation, he gladly made
use of this practical `flexibility' when it was convenient for his purpose.