Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:55:25.635Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Earliest Translations of Luther into English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

William A. Clebsch
William A. Clebsch
Affiliation:
Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, Texas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the 1520's Luther's Latin writings were well known to scholars in England. But the realm was officially as loyal to the Catholic cause as any the popes of that decade might have named. The few clerics and theologians who dedicated themselves to the rediscovered gospel were hunted out and severely punished. Only by escape to the continent might they save their lives, in relative safety study evangelical teachings, and find literary expression for their convictions. Moreover, it was clear by 1525 that only through translating the scriptures and evangelical thought into English might the realm be reformed. Among the small circle of English Protestant writers, William Tyndale led the field by turning the New Testament into his mother tongue (1525–1526). He was guided by Luther's German New Testament not only in framing that translation but also in drafting the prefaces to it and to its individual books. Perhaps Tyndale had translated Bugenhagen's Epistola … ad Anglos into English, and perhaps MS. copies of this translation were circulated, but extant published copies date back only to 1536. Certainly Tyndale was the first translator of a Luther tract to have his work preserved to us.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 1963 , pp. 75 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1963

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 W.A., 7, 705–778Google Scholar. Frith translated the portions found Ibid., pp. 722–772 and part of the last paragraph p. 778.

2 Wilkins, David, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (4 vols., London,1737), III, 707Google Scholar. Much confusion reignsover the Henrician lists of condemned books,confusion which in large measure is attributable to the gross inaccuracies of Steele, Robert R., Notes on English Books Printed Abroad, 1525–48 (London, 1912; reprinted from Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, XI, 189–236Google Scholar).

3 Fols. [vi]r, A.ijr.

4 More's comment was quoted by Wolf, A. (ed.), Roye's Dialogue … (1874),p. 16.Google Scholar

5 Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises …(Cambridge, 1848), p. xxxvii.Google Scholar

6 W. A. 12,88-142.

8 Fols. B.j.v-Bij.r

7 W. A., 12,97 f.

9 Fol. Civ line 11-fol. C.ijv line 8.

10 Mozley, J. F., William Tyndale (London, 1937), p. 345Google Scholar. Mozley's confident judgment that Exposition of 1 Cor. 7 on the (presumably contemporaneous) “lists of books is also called The Matrimony of Tyndale” (idem.) was incorrect. No such list named Exposition and “also called” it Matrimony. Both titles appeared separately in three Henrician lists, Exposition without Matrimony in one, Matrimony without Exposition in none. Identification of the two works as one has the single attractive feature of disposing of Matrimony which otherwise seems to have escaped identification.

11 Tyndale, op. cit., p . 39.Google Scholar

12 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, I, 588;Google Scholar Letters and Papers … of Henry VIII, vol. III, 1760.

13 Mozley, , op. cit., pp. 112, 350 f.Google Scholar

14 Fol. iiv; Wolf edn., p. 35.

15 Mozley, , op. cit., p. 345.Google Scholar

16 Letters and Papers … of Henry VIII, vol. IV: 3, no. 5462, p. 2405. D. N. B., art. “Roy” also referred to the West letter but dated the visit “Some time before April 1529. …” Mozley, , op. cit., pp. 133 f., dated West's report to Wolsey in early February 1529, and Roye's visit before December 1528.Google Scholar Significantly Mozley remarked that all trace of Roye was lost as of June 1529, precisely at the time of the publication of Exhortation and Exposition, until the time of his reported death at the stake in Portugal in 1531. Rupp, E. G., Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (Cambridge, 1947; revised, 1949) displayed an animus against Roye, allowing him only A Brefe Dialoge as a literary accomplishment, and holding his martyrdom as attested by “only a bit of gossip” (p. 199).Google Scholar

17 Fol. d. iiir; the original was identified fol. [i.viir]. Nijhoff and Kronenberg, , op. cit., no. 2983, list an edition as perhaps from 1540 and as perhaps having been printed at Antwerp.Google Scholar

18 Wilkins, , op. dt., III, 727.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., p. 739.

20 Letters and Papers … of Henry, VIII, vol. V, App. p. 768.Google Scholar

21 Wilkins, , op. cit., III, 719.Google Scholar

22 Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments (fourth edn., ed. Pratt, Josiah, 8 vols., London, 1877), V, App. X;Google Scholar probably through some confusion authorship was attributed to Tyndale, and the entry came from the 1532 provincial synod's condemnation of Burgenhagen's Commentarius … in quatuor capita epistolae ad Corinthos.