The Eve of the Reformation

Moreover, Sir Thomas More’s contention that there was no prohibition is borne out by other evidence. The great canonist Lyndwood undoubtedly understood the Constitution of Oxford on the Scriptures in the same sense as Sir Thomas More. In fact, as it has been pointed out already, to his explanation Sir Thomas More successfully appealed in proof of his assertion that there was no such condemnation of the English Scriptures, as had been, and is still, asserted by some. It has, of course, been often said that Sir Thomas More, and of course Lyndwood, were wrong in supposing that there were any translations previous to that of the version now known as Wycliffite. This is by no means so clear; and even supposing they were in error as to the date of the version, it is impossible that they could have been wrong as to the meaning and interpretation of the law itself, and as to the fact that versions were certainly in circulation which were presumed by those who used them to be Catholic and orthodox. Archbishop Cranmer himself may also be cited as a witness to the free circulation of manuscript copies of the English Scriptures in pre-Reformation times, since the whole of his argument for allowing a new version, in the preface to the Bishops’ Bible, rests on the well-known custom of the Church to allow vernacular versions, and on the fact that copies of the English Scriptures had previously been in daily use with ecclesiastical sanction.

The same conclusion must be deduced from books printed by men of authority and unquestionable piety. In them we find the reading of the Scriptures strongly recommended. To take an example: Thomas Lupset, the friend and protégé of Colet and Lilly, gives the following advice to his sisters, two of whom were nuns: “Give thee much to reading; take heed in meditation of the Scripture, busy thee in the law of God; have a customable use in divine books.”243 The same pious scholar has much the same advice for a youth in the world who had been his pupil. After urging him to avoid “meddling in any point of faith otherwise than as the Church shall instruct and teach,” he adds, “more particularly in writings you shall learn this lesson, if you would sometimes take in your hand the New Testament and read it with a due reverence”; and again: “in reading the Gospels, I would you had at hand Chrysostom and Jerome, by whom you might surely be brought to a perfect understanding of the text.”244

Moreover, the testimony of Sir Thomas More that translations were allowed by the Church, and that these, men considered rightly or wrongly, had been made prior to the time of Wycliffe, is confirmed by Archdeacon John Standish in Queen Mary’s reign. When the question of the advisability of a vernacular translation was then seriously debated, he says: “To the intent that none should have occasion to misconstrue the true meaning thereof, it is to be thought that, if all men were good and Catholic, then were it lawful, yea, and very profitable also, that the Scripture should be in English, as long as the translations were true and faithful… And that is the cause that the clergy did agree (as it is in the Constitution Provincial) that the Bibles that were translated into English before Wycliffe’s days might be suffered; so that only such as had them in handling were allowed by the ordinary and approved as proper to read them, and so that their reading should be only for the setting forth of God’s glory.”245

Sir Thomas More, in his Apology, points out that although, in his opinion, it would be a good thing to have a proper English translation, still it was obviously not necessary for the salvation of man’s soul. “If the having of the Scripture in English,” he writes, “be a thing so requisite of precise necessity, that the people’s souls must needs perish unless they have it translated into their own tongue, then the greater part of them must indeed perish, unless the preacher further provide that all people shall be able to read it when they have it. For of the whole people, far more than four-tenths could never read English yet, and many are now too old to begin to go to school… Many, indeed, have thought it a good and profitable thing to have the Scripture well and truly translated into English, and although many equally wise and learned and also very virtuous folk have been and are of a very different mind; yet, for my own part, I have been and am still of the same opinion as I expressed in my Dyalogue, if the people were amended, and the time meet for it.”246

The truth is, that there was then no such clamour for the translated Bible as it has suited the purposes of some writers to represent. In view of all that is known about the circumstances of those times, it does not appear at all likely that the popular mind would be really stirred by any desire for Bible reading. The late Mr. Brewer may be allowed to speak with authority on this matter when he writes: “Nor, indeed, is it possible that Tyndale’s writings and translations could at this early period have produced any such impressions as is generally surmised, or have fallen into the hands of many readers. His works were printed abroad; their circulation was strictly forbidden; the price of them was beyond the means of the poorer classes, even supposing that the knowledge of letters at that time was more generally diffused than it was for centuries afterwards. To imagine that ploughmen and shepherds in the country read the New Testament in English by stealth, or that smiths and carpenters in towns pored over its pages in the corners of their masters’ workshops, is to mistake the character and acquirements of the age.”247

“So far from England then being a ‘Bible-thirsty land,’” says a well-informed writer, “there was no anxiety whatever for an English version at that time, excepting among a small minority of the people,”248 and these desired it not for the thing in itself so much as a means of bringing about the changes in doctrine and practice which they desired. “Who is there among us,” says one preacher of the period, “that will have a Bible, but he must be compelled thereto.” And the single fact that the same edition of the Bible was often reissued with new titles, &c., is sufficient proof that there was no such general demand for Bibles as is pretended by Foxe when he writes: “It was wonderful to see with what joy this book of God was received, not only among the learneder sort, and those that were noted for lovers of the Reformation, but generally all England over among all the vulgar common people.” “For,” says the writer above quoted, “if the people all England over were so anxious to possess the new translation, what need was there of so many penal enactments to force it into circulation, and of royal proclamations threatening with the king’s displeasure those who neglected to purchase copies.”249

There can be little doubt that the condemnation of the first printed English Testament, and the destruction, by order of the ecclesiastical authority, of all copies which Tyndale had sent over to England for sale, have tended, more than anything else, to confirm in their opinion those who held that the Church in pre-Reformation England would not tolerate the vernacular Scriptures at all. It is of interest, therefore, and importance, if we would determine the real attitude of churchmen in the sixteenth century to the English Bible, to understand the grounds of this condemnation. As the question was keenly debated at the time, there is little need to seek for information beyond the pages of Sir Thomas More’s works.

The history of Tyndale’s translation is not of such importance in this respect, as a knowledge of the chief points objected against it. Some brief account of this history, however, is almost necessary if we would fully understand the character and purpose of the translation. William Tyndale was born about the year 1484, and was in turn at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and professed among the Friars Observant at Greenwich. In 1524 he passed over to Hamburg, and then, about the middle of the year, to Wittenberg, where he attached himself to Luther. Under the direction at least, of the German reformer, and very possibly also with his actual assistance, he commenced his translation of the New Testament. The royal almoner, Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York, being on a journey to Spain, wrote on December 2, 1525, from Bordeaux, warning Henry VIII. of the preparation of this book. “I am certainly informed,” he says, “that an Englishman, your subject, at the solicitation and instance of Luther, with whom he is, hath translated the New Testament into English; and within a few days intendeth to return with the same imprinted into England. I need not to advertise your Grace what infection and danger may ensue hereby if it be not withstanded. This is the way to fill your realm with Lutherans. For all Luther’s perverse opinions be grounded upon bare words of Scripture not well taken nor understood, which your Grace hath opened (i. e. pointed out) in sundry places of your royal book.”250

Luther’s direct influence may be detected on almost every page of the printed edition issued by Tyndale, and there can be no doubt that it was prepared with Luther’s version of 1522 as a guide. From the general introduction of this German Bible, nearly half, or some sixty lines, are transferred by Tyndale almost bodily to his prologue, whilst he adopted and printed over against the same chapters and verses, placing them in the same position in the inner margins, some 190 of the German reformer’s marginal references. Besides this, the marginal notes on the outer margin of the English Testament are all Luther’s glosses, translated from the German. In view of this, it can hardly be a matter of surprise that Tyndale’s Testament was very commonly known at the time as “Luther’s Testament in English.”

In this work of translation or adaptation, Tyndale was assisted by another ex-friar, named Joye, with whom, however, he subsequently quarrelled, and about whom he then spoke in abusive and violent terms. At first it was intended to print the edition at Cologne, but being disturbed by the authorities there, Tyndale fled to Worms, and at once commenced printing at the press of Peter Schœffer, the octavo volume which is known as the first edition of Tyndale’s New Testament. Although the author is supposed to have been a good Greek scholar, there is evidence to show that the copy he used for the work of translation was the Latin version of Erasmus, printed by Fisher in 1519, with some alterations taken from the edition of 1522, and some other corrections from the Vulgate.

John Cochlæus, who had a full and personal knowledge of all the Lutheran movements at the time, writing in 1533, says: “Eight years previously, two apostates from England, knowing the German language, came to Wittenberg, and translated Luther’s New Testament into English. They then came to Cologne, as to a city nearer to England, with a more established trade, and more adapted for the despatch of merchandise. Here … they secretly agreed with printers to print at first three thousand copies, and printers and publishers pushed on the work with the firm expectation of success, boasting that whether the king and cardinal liked it or not, England would shortly ‘be Lutheran.’”251

It was this scheme that Cochlæus was instrumental in frustrating, his representations forcing Tyndale to remove the centre of his operations to Worms. For the benefit of the Scotch king, to whom his account was addressed, Cochlæus adds, that Luther’s German translation of the New Testament was intended of set purpose to spread his errors; that the people had bought up thousands, and that thereby “they have not been made better but rather the worse, artificers who were able to read neglecting their shops and the work by which they ought to gain the bread of their wives and children.” For this reason, he says, magistrates in Germany have had to forbid the reading of Luther’s Testament, and many have been put in prison for reading it. In his opinion the translation of the Testament into the vernacular had become an idol and a fetish to the German Lutherans, although in Germany there were many vernacular translations of both the Old and the New Testaments, before the rise of Lutheranism.252

With a full understanding of the purpose and tendency of Tyndale’s translation and of the evils which at least some hard-headed men had attributed to the spread of Luther’s German version, upon which almost admittedly the English was modelled, the ecclesiastical authorities of England approached the practical question – what was to be done in the matter? Copies of the printed edition must have reached England some time in 1526, for in October of that year Bishop Tunstall of London addressed a monition to the archdeacons on the subject. “Many children of iniquity,” he says, “maintainers of Luther’s sect, blinded through extreme wickedness, wandering from the way of truth and the Catholic faith, have craftily translated the New Testament into our English tongue, intermeddling therewith many heretical articles and erroneous opinions, pernicious and offensive, seducing the simple people; attempting by their wicked and perverse interpretations to profane the majesty of Scripture, which hitherto hath remained undefiled, and craftily to abuse the most holy Word of God, and the true sense of the same. Of this translation there are many books printed, some with glosses and some without, containing in the English tongue that pestiferous and pernicious poison, (and these are) dispersed in our diocese of London.” He consequently orders all such copies of the New Testament to be delivered up to his offices within thirty days.253

This was the first action of the English ecclesiastical authorities, and it was clearly taken not from distrust of what the same bishop calls “the most holy Word of God,” but because they looked on the version sent forth by Tyndale as a profanation of the Bible, and as intended to disseminate the errors of Lutheranism.

Of the Lutheran character of the translation the authorities, whether in Church or State, do not seem to have had from the first the least doubt. The king himself, in a rejoinder to Luther’s letter of apology, says that the German reformer “fell in device with one or two lewd persons, born in this our realm, for the translating of the New Testament into English, as well with many corruptions of that holy text, as certain prefaces and other pestilent glosses in the margins, for the advancement and setting forth of his abominable heresies, intending to abuse the good minds and devotion that you, our dearly beloved people, bear toward the Holy Scripture and infect you with the deadly corruption and contagious odour of his pestilent errors.”254

Bishop Tunstall, in 1529, whilst returning from an embassy abroad, purchased at Antwerp through one Packington, all copies of the English printed New Testament that were for sale, and, according to the chronicler Hall, burned them publicly at St. Paul’s in May 1530. For the same reason the confiscated volumes of the edition first sent over were committed to the flames some time in 1527,255 and Bishop Tunstall explained to the people at Paul’s Cross that the book was destroyed because in more than two thousand places wrong translations and corruptions had been detected. Tyndale made a great outcry at the iniquity of burning the Word of God; but in The Wicked Mammon he declares that, “in burning the New Testament they did none other thynge than I looked for.” Moreover, as he sold the books knowing the purpose for which they were purchased, he may be said to have been a participator in the act he blames. “The fact is,” says a modern authority, “the books were full of errors and unsaleable, and Tyndale wanted money to pay the expense of a revised version and to purchase Vastermann’s old Dutch blocks to illustrate his Pentateuch, and was glad to make capital in more ways than one by the translation. ‘I am glad,’ said he, ‘for these two benefits shall come thereof: I shall get money to bring myself out of debt, and the whole world will cry out against the burning of God’s Word, and the overplus of the money that shall remain to me shall make me more studious to correct the said New Testament, and so newly to imprint the same once again, and I trust the second you will much better like than you ever did the first.’”256

Tyndale allowed nine years to elapse before issuing a second edition of his Testament. Meantime, as his former assistant, Joye, says, foreigners looking upon the English Testament as a good commercial speculation, and seeing that the ecclesiastical authorities in England had given orders to purchase the entire first issue of Tyndale’s print, set to work to produce other reprints. Through ignorance of the language, the various editions they issued were naturally full of typographical errors, and, as Joye declared, “England hath enough and too many false Testaments, and is now likely to have many more.” He consequently set to work himself to see an edition through the press, in which, without Tyndale’s leave, he made substantial alterations in his translation. Joye’s version appeared in 1534, and immediately Tyndale attacked its editor in the most bitter, reproachful terms. In George Joye’s Apology, which appeared in 1535, he tried, as he says, “to defend himself against so many slanderous lies upon him in Tyndale’s uncharitable and unsober epistle.” In the course of the tract, Joye charges Tyndale with claiming as his own what in reality was Luther’s. “I have never,” he says, “heard a sober, wise man praise his own works as I have heard him praise his exposition of the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew, insomuch that mine ears glowed for shame to hear him; and yet it was Luther that made it, Tyndale only translating it and powdering it here and there with his own fantasies.”

In a second publication Joye declares Tyndale’s incompetence to judge of the original Greek. “I wonder,” he says, “how he could compare it with the Greek, since he himself is not so exquisitely seen therein… I know well (he) was not able to do it without such a helper as he hath ever had hitherto.”257 Tyndale, however, continued his work of revision in spite of opposition, and further, with the aid of Miles Coverdale, issued translations of various portions of the Old Testament.

Shortly after the public burning of the copies of the translated Testament by Bishop Tunstall, on May 24, 1530, an assembly was called together by Archbishop Warham to formally condemn these and other books then being circulated with the intention of undermining the religion of the country. The king was present in person, and a list of errors was drawn up and condemned “with all the books containing the same, with the translation also of Scripture corrupted by William Tyndale, as well in the Old Testament as in the New.” After this meeting, a document was issued with the king’s authority, which preachers were required to read to their people. After speaking of the books condemned for teaching error, the paper takes notice of an opinion “in some of his subjects” that the Scripture should be allowed in English. The king declares that it is a good thing the Scriptures should be circulated at certain times, but that there are others when they should not be generally allowed, and taking into consideration all the then existing circumstances, he “thinketh in his conscience that the divulging of the Scripture at this time in the English tongue to be committed to the people … would rather be to their further confusion and destruction than for the edification of their souls.”

In this opinion, we are told, all in the assembly concurred. At the same time, however, the king promised that he would have the New Testament “faithfully and purely translated by the most learned men,” ready to be distributed when circumstances might allow.

Sir Thomas More plainly states the reason for this prohibition. “In these days, in which Tyndale (God amend him) has so sore poisoned malicious and new-fangled folk with the infectious contagion of his heresies, the king’s highness, and not without the counsel and advice, not only of his nobles with his other counsellors attending upon his Grace’s person, but also of the most virtuous and learned men of both universities and other parts of the realm, specially called thereto, has been obliged for the time to prohibit the Scriptures of God to be allowed in the English tongue in the hands of the people, lest evil folk … may turn all the honey into poison, and do hurt unto themselves, and spread also the infection further abroad … and by their own fault misconstrue and take harm from the very Scripture of God.”258

Early in 1534 Tyndale took up his abode once more in Antwerp at the house of an English merchant, and busied himself in passing his revised New Testament through the press. This was published in the following November. To it he prefixed a second prologue dealing with the edition just published by George Joye. This he declares was no true translation, and charges his former assistant with deliberate falsification of the text of Holy Scripture in order to support his errors and false opinions. The edition itself manifests many changes in the text caused by the criticism to which the former impression had been subjected, whilst many of the marginal notes “exhibit the great change that had taken place in Tyndale’s religious opinions, and show that he had ceased to be an Episcopalian.”259

Having given a brief outline of the history of Tyndale’s Testament, we are now in a position to examine into the grounds upon which the ecclesiastical authorities of England condemned it. For this purpose, we need again hardly go beyond the works of Sir Thomas More, who in several of his tracts deals specifically with this subject. “Tyndale’s false translation of the New Testament,” he says, “was, as he himself confesses, translated with such changes as he has made in it purposely, to the intent that by those changed words the people should be led into the opinions which he himself calls true Catholic faith, but which all true Catholic people call very false and pestilent heresies.” After saying that for this reason this translation was rightly condemned by the clergy and openly burnt at Paul’s Cross, he continues: “The faults are so many in Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, and so spread throughout the whole book, that it were as easy to weave a new web of cloth or to sew up every hole in a net, so would it be less labour to translate the whole book anew than to make in his translation as many changes as there needs must be before it were made a good translation. Besides this, no wise man, I fancy, would take bread which he well knew had once been poisoned by his enemy’s hand, even though he saw his friend afterwards sweep it ever so clean… For when it had been examined, considered, and condemned by those to whom the judgment and ordering of the thing belonged, and that false poisoned translation had been forbidden to the people,” it would be the height of presumption for any one to encourage the people boldly to resist their prince and disobey their prelates, and give them, as some indeed have, such a poor reason as this, “that poisoned bread is better than no bread.”260

Further, in speaking with sorrow of the flood of heretical literature which seemed ever growing in volume, Sir Thomas More writes: “Besides the works in Latin, French, and German, there are made in the English tongue, first, Tyndale’s New Testament, father of them all, because of his false translations, and after that the five books of Moses, translated by the same man, we need not doubt in what manner, when we know by whom and for what purpose. Then you have his introduction to St. Paul’s Epistle, with which he introduces his readers to a false understanding of St. Paul, making them, among many other heresies, believe that St. Paul held that faith alone was sufficient for salvation, and that men’s good works were worth nothing and could deserve no reward in heaven, though they were done in grace.”261

Again, he says: “In the beginning of my Dyalogue, I have shown that Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament deserved to be burnt, because itself showed that he had translated it with an evil mind, and in such a way that it might serve him as the best means of teaching such heresies as he had learnt from Luther, and intended to send over hither and spread abroad within this realm. To the truth of my assertion, Tyndale and his fellows have so openly testified that I need in this matter no further defence. For every man sees that there was never any English heretical book sent here since, in which one item of their complaint has not been the burning of Tyndale’s Testament. For of a surety they thought in the first place that his translation, with their further false construction, would be the bass and the tenor wherever they would sing the treble with much false descant.”262