"Nothing relating to it was done in secret; everybody knew that the New Testament was being printed in Spanish. Many praised the project; many waited for it with eagerness; my rooms were never closed, every one who wished came in and out: and yet I doubt not that some who came and beforehand praised my book, when they were behind my back, and with their own parties, sung another song; well perceiving that the reading of the Scriptures by the people is not very likely to profit their avaricious stomachs. I care little, however, for such opinions and selfish passions, confiding in God alone, who directed and would protect an undertaking devoted solely to His own glory."
It were too long for the "NOTES AND QUERIES" to tell how he was induced to cancel the first leaf of his New Testament after it was printed, because it had one word which savoured of Lutheranism; of his presenting the finished volume to the Emperor Charles V. at Brussels; how he received him, and what he said of his being entrapped by his confessor, and cast into prison for fifteen months, escaping and being let down by a rope over the city wall, until he found repose and security again at Wittemberg with Melancthon.
Few of the early translations of the New Testament into the vulgar languages of Europe are so little known as the Spanish of Francisco de Enzinas, or Dryander; and yet, perhaps, of no one of them are there such minute particulars of the printing and publication to be found upon record as that published by him in 1543, and of his imprisonment in consequence of it.
Every reader of Ariosto, of Boiardo, or of Berri, is acquainted with the character of Turpin, as an historian. John Turpin's _History of the Life of Charles the Great and Roland_ has long since been regarded as a collection of fables; as a romance written under a feigned name. Its real character is, however, best described by Ferrario, when he says that it is not to be considered as "the mere invention of any one impostor, but rather as a compilation of ancient tales and ballads that had been circulating amongst the people from the ninth century." (_Storia ed Analisi degli Antichi Romanzi di Cavalleria_, vol. i. pp. 21, 22.) In such a work we must not calculate upon meeting with facts, but we may hope to be able to obtain an insight into ancient practices, and an acquaintance with ancient customs. It is for this reason I would desire to draw the attention of the reader to a curious mode of preserving the bodies of the dead, stated by Turpin. He says that the Christians, being without a sufficient supply of aromatic drugs wherewith to embalm the dead, disembowelled them, and filled them up with salt. The passage thus stands in the original: