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The Coverdale Translation of Psalm LXXXIV

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Edgar R. Smothers S.J.
Edgar R. Smothers S.J.
Affiliation:
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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Extract

The Coverdale Bible of 1535 in itself, in its sources, in its enduring vitality, is one of the remarkable monuments of the Protestant Reformation in England. Any historical study of it must set one at the heart of that astonishing release of human energies that put an end to an older epoch of Christendom and, along with other influences, set us on the road to our modern complexity of forces whose issue we do not descry. The new vernacular Bibles of the sixteenth century, embedded in the new doctrine of the private reader's emancipation from authority, were manifestly one of the chief engines of the popular appeal of Protestantism, which was to be in the event so sweepingly successful throughout northern Europe.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , October 1945 , pp. 245 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1945

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References

1 SirKenyon, Frederic, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (London, 1939), 211 f.Google Scholar, has these judicious remarks:

The earliest vernacular Bibles were not connected with the Reformation controversy…. But with the outbreak of the Reformation, Bible translation took on a new and controversial aspect. The reformers held that the best method of overthrowing the power of the monasteries and of the Roman Church was to enable the common people to read the Bible for themselves and learn how much of the current teaching of the priest and friar had no basis in the word of Scripture. The leaders of the Roman Church, on the other hand, doubted the advisability of allowing the Scriptures to be read by uneducated or half-educated folk without the accompaniment of oral instruction.

2 It is convenient to recall the three Latin Psalters attached to the name of Jerome. (1) The Psalterium Romanum, confined in modern liturgical use to the recitation of the Office in St. Peter's, and to incidental elements in the Missal and the Breviary, was a hasty revision made by Jerome at Borne, 383 A.D., of an earlier Latin version from the Greek. (2) It lent itself to new corruptions, and left the reviser so dissatisfied that he set to work on a thorough revision, with the Hexapla Septuagint as his basic text. This Psalter, produced at Bethlehem before 390, obtained early currency in Gaul, and is therefore called the Psalterium Gallicanum. It is the official Catholic version, incorporated in the Breviary and in the Clementine Vulgate Bible. Only to this version is the term Vulgate properly applied. (3) Finally, about the end of the fourth century, St. Jerome produced his direct translation from the Hebrew. There is a good modern edition of this, Psalterium iuxta Hebraeos Hieronymi, by Harden, J. M. (London: S.P.C.K., 1922)Google Scholar. [Pius XII, by the motu proprio In Cotidianis Precibus, March 25, 1945, has authorized for the recitation of the Divine Office optional use of a new Latin Psalter, made from the Hebrew, once it shall have been published in the sequence and setting of the Roman Breviary. The Psalter by itself has appeared in the United States with the following title: Liber Psalmorum cum Canticis Romani Breviarii: nova e textibus primigeniis interpretatio latina cum notis criticis et exegeticis cura professorum Pontificii Instituti Biblici edita (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1945).]

3 These are especially valuable: (1) Tedder, H. R., “Coverdale, Miles (1488–1568),” Dict. of National Biography, XII, 364–372Google Scholar. (2) R. Lovett, The English Bible in the John Rylands Library, 1525–1640 (printed for private circulation, 1899). (3) Westcott, Brooke Foss, A General View of the History of the English Bible (3rd edit., revised by William Aldis Wright, London, 1905)Google Scholar. (4) Guppy, Henry, “Miles Coverdale and the English Bible, 1488–1568,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XIX (Manchester, 1935), 300–328Google Scholar. (5) Willoughby, Harold R., The Coverdale Psalter and the Quatrocentenary of the Printed English Bible with a Facsimile Reproduction of the Psalter (Chicago: for the Caxton Club, 1935)Google Scholar. (6) Guppy, H., “The Royal Injunctions of 1538 and the Great Bible 1539–1541,” Bul. of the John Rylands Library, XXII (1938), 31–71Google Scholar. (7) Kenyon, as in f. n. 1. (8) Clapton, Ernest, Our Prayer Book Psalter (London: S.P.C.K., 1934)Google Scholar. This title was called to my attention by Professor Cadbury after the present study had been completed. The author publishes on facing pages all of the 1535 Psalter and of the Prayer Book Psalter, with an introduction and notes on Coverdale's sources. It is a very useful work; and I should have made frequent reference to it had it been earlier in my hands. The author's learning would have supplemented and supported my account of facts without, so far as I have observed, disturbing it. It may be remarked that Mr. Clapton in his notes rarely quotes the Zurich Psalter, and in the case of Psalm lxxxiv not at all. In his Introduction (p. xvi), he rightly recognizes Coverdale's “great respect for it.” I am most grateful to Professor Cadbury; and for the loan of the volume I am indebted to the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

4 Until recently, Christopher Froschouer of Zurich, who printed the Coverdale Bible of 1550, seemed to have a preponderance of probabilities in his favor (see, e.g., Guppy, “Miles Coverdale and the English Bible,” p. 309 f.). Sheppard, L. A., “The Printers of the Coverdale Bible 1535,” in The Library, XVI (Oxford, 1935), 280–289Google Scholar, has advanced the discussion to a new stage; and his findings are accepted by the British Museum, General Catalogue of Printed Books, XVI (London) 1936, 73 f.Google Scholar: “This Bible has been attributed to C. Froschouer of Zurich, but the initials used are found in books printed by the Cologne printers Cervicornus and Soter, the former of whom established a press at Marburg in 1535.” Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, p. 218, follows this opinion: the 1535 Coverdale was printed “probably … at Marburg.”

5 I omit further letterpress, consisting of Biblical quotations, and description of the pictorial border attributed to Holbein. According to Guppy, “Miles Coverdale and the English Bible,” p. 307, only one copy of the title in its original form survives, this in the collection of the Earl of Leicester. A facsimile of it accompanies Guppy's article (Plate 2). He apparently means that only one perfect copy survives, for the British Museum claims one, mutilated (General Catalogue, XVI, 73 f.).

6 This and the preceding passage are transcribed from photostatic restorations of missing parts in the Coverdale Bible, excellently preserved, of the Newberry Library, Chicago. The preliminary quire and a few other leaves are thus supplied; and there are a few mended leaves; otherwise this original copy is intact, Psalm lxxxiv (Coverdale lxxxiii) included. The title-page is restored; but the last leaf remains, with the anonymous imprint, as follows: “Prynted in the year of owe Lorde M.D.XXXV. and fynished the fourth daye of October.”

7 John William Whittaker, Anglican divine of the early nineteenth century, is perhaps the last writer of serious credentials to assert it (An Historical and Critical Inquiry into the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures [Cambridge, 1819–20], p. 50 ff.: not seen). His faulty argumentation was the occasion of establishing the contrary conclusion more firmly than before; and it led to discovering precisely Coverdale's main source, the Zurich Bible, with which we shall be presently occupied. See Westcott, General View, p. 162, f. n. 5.

8 State Papers Published under the Authority of His Majesty's Commission: I King Henry the Eighth, Part II Correspondence between the King and his Ministers, 1530–1547 (London, 1831), 576. See also p. 578, no. 108.

9 “Miles Coverdale and the English Bible,” p. 311.

10 Cf. Bülbring, Karl d., The Earliest Complete English Prose Psalter, in Early English Text Society, Original Series, no. 97 (London, 1891), p. iGoogle Scholar.

11 P. 61 f.

12 Miss Winifred V. Eisenberg, Assistant Librarian, Krauth Memorial Library, Lutheran Seminary, Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, has verified Pagnini's fidelity here to the Hebrew by consulting the copy of his original edition (Lyons, 1528), in the Seminary collection. There is no sign in his text or accompanying it of the imported verses. I am grateful to Miss Eisenberg both for this personal service, and for procuring the photostats which I have used of other parts of the Pagnini Bible.

13 They were read in the churches as part of the Latin version of Psalm xiii (Heb. xiv) in the time of St. Jerome. Eustochium called his attention to this fact, and to St. Paul's apparent dependence on this very text, as a difficulty against his opinion that the Apostles invoked the Septuagint only when it was sustained by the Hebrew. “Quod cum audissem,” he writes of her objection, “quasi a fortissimo pugile percussus essem, coepi tacitus aestuare, et stuporem mentis uultus pallore signare.” (Commentary on Isaias, XVI, introd.: Migne, P. L. XXIV, 547.) He devoted a day, he says, to the solution. The passage as quoted by St. Paul to the Romans (iii, 10–8), is a composite of several texts from the Psalms and from Isaias, with a quotation from Psalm xiii in the first place. (For the full analysis, see Jerome, loc. cit., or Westcott and Hort, N. T. in the Original Greek, appendix “Quotations from the O. T.”) The Apostle, says St. Jerome, was therefore in no wise exceeding the Hebrew canon; on the contrary, readers of St. Paul made the mistake of referring his long series of quotations to a single source. The resultant surcharge in Psalm xiii could not, he points out, have belonged to the primitive Septuagint; though he notes its presence in the common Greek text of his time. Indeed, we may add, it stands in such celebrated manuscripts as the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus. The Alexandrinus omits it; and one of the post-contemporary correctors of א (Ca) has inserted deletion hooks about it. It must have entered earlycinto the Christian Psalter.

14 “Mit ganz besonderer Sorgfalt feilte Luther immer aufs neue an den sich mehrenden Ausgaben der Psalmen, und man gewahrt recht gut, wie es ihm hier gait, nicht bloss die Worte widerzugeben, sondern auch seiner Übersetzung das dichterische Gefuhl und den Schwung des heiligen Urtextes einzuhauchen.” Hartmann Grisar, Luther III (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1912), 420.

15 “Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen”: see Dr.Werke, Martin Luthers, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, XXX, ii (Weimar, 1909), 637Google Scholar. The sense of “asses” is clarified in the context (p. 635): “Wann ewr Papist sich vil unnutze machen wil mit dem wort ‘Sola Allein’ so sagt im flugs also: Doctor Martinus Luther wils also haben, unnd spricht, Papist und Esel sey ein ding. Sic uolo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.” The Sendbrief, written and published in 1530, is Luther's apology for his “allein durch den Glauben,” Romans iii, 28. I am indebted to Father Alcuin Hemmen, O.S.B., for friendly aid on points of Luther's idiom.

16 Nestle, Eberhard, “Bibelübersetzungen deutsche,” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencykl. f. protestantische Theologie und Kirche, III (Leipzig, 1897), 72Google Scholar. For Luther and his work I have relied greatly on Nestle, on Johannes Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, VII (editions 13 and 14 revised by Ludwig Pastor, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1904), and on Grisar, cited in f. n. 14. From Janssen, p. 645, f. n. 3, I draw an important quotation of Johann Bachmann, Altestamentliche Untersuchungen I (Berlin, 1894), 101 ff., Appendix iv, on Luther's proficiency in Hebrew. In celebration of the Luther anniversary, 1883, Bachmann had prepared a special study based on the marginal notes in Luther's copy of the Hebrew Bible:

Alles in allem: Man findet nicht in dem kostbaren Bibelexemplar des grossen Mannes, was man erwartet. Das Hebräisehe war eben nicht seine Sache; drum hielt er sich an den Text der Vulgata und Septuaginta: ohne Zweifel zu Nutz und Frommen seiner schöner deutschen Bibelübersetzung. Er gab dem griechischen Text den Vorzug vor dem masoretischen. Most of the marginal notes in this Hebrew Bible, Janssen observes, are found to be not of Luther's hand, but of a German Jew, a former owner of the book.

17 This form of the name I adopt from the Enciclopedia Italiana, XXV (Rome, 1935), where a brief biography is found. The name on the title page of his works appears in the ablative as Sancte Fagnino, authorizing Sanctes Pagninus as the Latin form. The variants Santes and Xantes occur.

18 E. Nestle, “Bibelübersetzungen, lateinische,” Herzog-Hauck, III, 51.

19 A copy of this Thesaurus Linguae Sanctae (Lyons, 1529) is in the Rare Book Room, General Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

20 Biblia. Habes in hoc libro prudens lector utriusque instrumenti nouam translationem aeditam a reuerendo sacrae theologiae doctore Sancte Pagnino lucensi concionatore apostolico Praedicatorii ordinis…. The work was printed at Lyons.

21 General View, p. 261.

22 On Zwingli, I have used especially Egli's, Emil art. “Zwingli, Ulrich (Huldreich), 1484–1531,” in Herzog-Hauck, XXI (Leipzig, 1908), 774–815Google Scholar. For the history of the Zurich Bible, I depend upon Mezger, Johann Jakob, Geschichte der deutschen Bibeltlbersetzungen in der schweizerischreformirten Kirche von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (Basel, 1876)Google Scholar. (Loaned by the Library of Congress.)

23 With allusion to I Cor. xiv (Mezger, p. 68).

24 Mezger gives the names of the following celebrities connected in Zwingli's time with his school: Conrad Pellicanus, Jacob Ceporinus, Andreas Boschenstein, Theodore Bibliander, Peter Martyr, Oswald Myconius, Leo Judä, Caspar Megander, Johann Amman, and Heinrich Bullinger. Of Judä, Mezger writes, p. 68: “Bald wurde auch der Mann zu dieser Thätigkeit berufen, welcher die Seele der Zurcherschen Übersetzungsarbeit werden sollte, Leo Judä, Zwinglis Freund und Studiengenosse aus Rappoldsweiler im Elsass.”

25 By the Apocrypha of the Old Testament in the Protestant Bibles are to be understood the Deuterocanonicals of the Catholic.

26 The title page of the new part is quoted by Mezger, p. 77, as follows: Das vierde tyl des alten testaments. Alle Propheten uss ebreischer sprach, mitt gutem trüwenn unnd hohem flyss, durch die Predicanten zu Zurich, in Tutsch vertolmätschet. Judä is named as sole translator in the title of the Apocrypha (Mezger, p. 85).

27 Mezger, p. 95.

28 Mezger, pp. 98–101.

29 Werke, Luthers, Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Der Deutsche Bibel I (Weimar, 1906), 453 ff.Google Scholar; Einleitung, pp. xiv, xvii.

30 Bindseil, Heinrich Ernst and Niemeyer, Hermann Agathon, Dr.Luthers, MartinBibelübersetzung nach der letzten Original-Ausgabe kritisch bearbeitet III (Halle, 1850)Google Scholar.

31 See f. n. 12.

32 Bibel Teütsch der ursprünglichen Hebreischen und Griechischen warheyt nach auffs treüwlichest verdolmetschet…. Getruckt zů Zürich bey Christoffel Froschouer im Jar als man zalt M.D.XXXVIII. (Loaned by the University of Chicago.) On peculiarities of this dialectic version, I enjoyed the valuable advice of Professor Norman Willey of the German faculty, University of Michigan.

33 These have been mentioned above in footnotes 6 and 3 (no. 5). I have also used a microfilm of the British Museum copy. Like the microfilms mentioned in later footnotes, this of Coverdale is from the University of Michigan set of Microfilms of Books Printed in England before 1600 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, in course of publication). The Library Staff of the University of Michigan has in hand the official cataloguing of this collection, to which a number of libraries have subscribed.

34 This, like the omission or partial omission of titles, though not consistently observed, is frequent in the Psalter of 1535. Our Psalm there has the shortened title, “A psalme of the children of Corah.”

35 James, M. R., The Canterbury Psalter (London, 1935), p. 2Google Scholar. This is a facsimile, preceded by an introduction, of a beautiful manuscript of the 12th century from the hand of Eadwine, monk of Christ Church, Canterbury. Its title, in an ancient catalogue published by Provost James, is Tripartitum Psalterium Edwini. St. Jerome's version from the Hebrew, the Roman version and the Gallican are here given side by side with interlinear and marginal matter and a wealth of illustrations copied from the Utrecht Psalter.

36 The Byble which is all the Holy Scripture … truly and purely translated into Englyshe by Thomas Matthew…. M.D.XXXVII, Set forth with the Kinge's most gracyous lycēce. Pollard and Redgrave, Short Title Catalogue, no. 2066; seen in microfilm. I profited much by comparing a 1549 edition of the same (Pollard and Redgrave 2077) in the Hollands Collection of Old Bibles now in the Rare Book Room of the General Library, University of Michigan, the gift of William C. Hollands, University Binder, in memory of William Tinker Hollands of the Class of 1913. Guppy, “The Royal Injunctions … and the Great Bible,” has a plate of the original title page.

37 Guppy, p. 54 ff., and Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, p. 221.

38 (1) The Byble in Englyshe, that is to saye the content of all the holy scripture, bothe of the old and new testament, truly translated after the veryte of the Hebrue and Greke textes by the dyligent studye of dyverse excellent learned men, expert in theforsayde tonges. Prynted by Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch. Cum priuilegio ad impremendum solum. 1539. Pollard and Redgrave 2068; seen in microfilm. (2) The byble in Englyshe of the largest and greatest volume, auctorysed and appoynted by the commaundmente of oure moost redoubted Prynce and souerayne Lorde Kynge Henrye the viii supreme Heade of this his churche and Realme of Englande to be frequented and used in euery church w'in this hys sayd realme, accordynge to the tenour of hys former Injunctions geuen in that behalfe. Ouersene and perused at the comaundement of the kynges hyghness by the ryghte reuerende fathers in God Cuthbert byshop of Duresme and Nicolas bisshop of Rochester. Printed by Edwarde Whitchurch. Cum priuilegio ad impremendum solum, 1541. Pollard and Redgrave 2075; seen in microfilm. (3) The Byble in Englishe, that is the olde and new Testament, after the translation appoynted to bee read in the Churches. Imprynted at London in Fletestrete, at the signe of the Sunne ouer agaynste the conduyte, by Edwarde Whitchurch. The xxix day of December the yeare of oure Lorde M.D.XLIX. Hollands Collection, University of Michigan; Pollard and Redgrave 2079. There are many more editions of this official Bible, in whose history the interplay of political and ecclesiastical forces of Henrican England are in striking evidence. The 1540 edition has the name of Thomas (Cranmer), Archbishop of Canterbury in the title, and the first publication of his Prologue. The title-page of the Henrican editions, both in letter-press, which varies, and in the pictorial design, thought to be by Holbein, is an eloquent Protdocument. For facsimiles and historical information, see Guppy, “The Royal Injunctions… and the Great Bible.” Textual changes in successive editions proved unimportant for the purposes of the present study. See, on this subject, Westcott, General View, especially p. 280, f. n. 1.

39 The Matthew Bible reinstated “selah” after “praysinge the” (lines 7–8); the Great Bible, following the common practice of the new translations and the Masoretic text, retained it here and after “Jacob” (line 13). In the Prayer Book, as in Coverdale 1535, and in the Vulgate, it is omitted, probably with little protest from those who use the Psalter most.

40 I have used a reproduction in facsimile, The “Book of the Common Prayer” as issued in the year 1549 (Seal Chart near Sevenoaks, Kent: G. Moreton, 1896)Google Scholar, folio lxv verso.

41 General View, p. 180.

42 General View, p. 184.

43 On Münster, see Viktor Hantzsch's monograph, Sebastian Münster, Leben, Werk, Wissenschaftliche Bedeutung, in Abhandl. d. Kön. Sachischen Gesellsch. d. Wissensch., phil.-hist. Cl., XXVIII (Leipzig, 1899), no. 3. On his change of religion, Hantzsch refers to a letter of Boniface Wolfhard to William Farel, written in April, 1530, published in A.-L. Herminjard, Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue française II (2nd edit., Geneva, 1878), no. 289. Wolfhard had himself received an invitation to the chair of Hebrew at Basel, but had declined it in Münster's favor, knowing that on no other condition could the latter be torn from his cowl (e cuculla posse avdli). It is sad, he writes, that Christ is not served without mundane inducement. Gaudeo tamen quacunque occasione a Satanae ministerio ereptum.

44 En tibi lector Hebraica Biblia latina planeque noua Sebast. Munsteri tralatione… Basileae 1534. The second volume, containing the Psalms, is dated the following year. I have used photostats of a copy in the Library of the University of Illinois.

45 Westcott, General View, pp. 199 and 280; Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, p. 224.

46 Conclusion of this study affords the writer welcome opportunity of acknowledging the favors he has for some time enjoyed as a guest scholar at the University of Michigan. In particular, he offers his gratitude to the many members of the Library Staff who have assisted him. Miss Margaret I. Smith, Chief Reference Librarian, and Miss Ella M. Hymans, Curator of Rare Books, have each had a special share in this collaboration.