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Misleading manuscripts: Wyclif and the non-wycliffite bible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Michael Wilks
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Extract

The precise nature of Wyclif’s connection with the production of the first English bible is shrouded in mystery, a subject for the fierce controversy and debate that is possible only where ignorance and uncertainty prevail. To begin with, there is an almost total absence of reliable contemporary evidence. The first statements explicitly attributing authorship to Wyclif do not occur until the generation after his death. Of these, the earliest is that of the chronicler Henry Knighton, whose contacts with early lollardy might make him appear to be a more reliable source than most. Writing perhaps in the mid-1390s, Knighton referred back to the year 1382 as the time when Wyclif translated the gospel, which Christ had given to the clergy and doctors of the church, into the tongue, not of the angels, but of the Angles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 11: The Materials Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History , 1975 , pp. 147 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1975

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References

1 For details of previous translations of individual books of the Bible in England see Deanesly, [M.], [The] L[ollard] B[ible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions] (Cambridge 1920) especially pp 302-18Google Scholar; or the convenient list in Hargreaves, H., ‘From Bede to Wyclif: Medieval English Bible Translation’, BJLR, 48 (1965-6) pp 118-40 at 118-20.Google Scholar Compare Sir Craigie, W.A., ‘The English Versions (to Wyclif)’, The Bible in its Ancient and English Versions, ed Robinson, H.Wheeler (2 ed Oxford 1954) pp 128-45 at 134-7;Google Scholar Bruce, F.F., The English Bible: A History of Translations (2 ed London 1970) pp 10–11;Google Scholar Shepherd, G., ‘English Versions of the Scriptures before Wyclif’, CHB, II (Cambridge 1969) pp 362-87.Google Scholar

2 As canon of the augustinian house of St Mary of the Meadows at Leicester, he was not only in the heart of lollard country, but must have been acquainted with Hereford and Repingdon, and probably Swinderby: Deanesly, LB, p 239.

3 Knighton, [Chronicon, ed Lumby, J.R.], 2 vols RS (London 1889) II, pp 151–2,Google Scholar ‘Hic magister Iohannes Wyclif evangelium, quod Christus contulit clericis et ecclesiae doctoribus . . . transtulit de latino in anglicani linguam, non angeli-cam, unde per ipsum fit vulgäre et magis apertum laicis et mulieribus legere scientibus quam solet esse clericis admodum literatis et bene intelligentibus, et sic evangelica margarita spargitur et a porcis conculcatur.’ This section of the chronicle (from 1377) terminates at 1395, which presumably indicates the date of composition: Galbraith, V.H., ‘The Chronicle of Henry Knighton’, Fritz Saxl Memorial Essays, ed Gordon, D.J. (London 1957) pp 136-45.Google Scholar

4 Deanesly, LB, pp 282-3; Workman, [H.B.], [John Wyclif] (Oxford 1926) II,pp 193-4, 343-5.Google Scholar

5 Deanesly, LB, pp 293-4; Workman, II, p 169.

6 Wilkins, III, p 317, ‘Ne quis texta s. scripturae transférât in linguam anglicanam. Statuimus igitur atque ordinamus ut nemo deinceps aliquem textům sacrae scripturae auctoritate sua in linguam anglicanam vel aliam transférât per viam libri, libelli aut tractatus, nee legatur aliquis huiusmodi liber, libellus aut trac-tatus iam noviter tempore dicti Iohannis Wycliffe, sive citra compositus sive in posterum componendus, in parte vel in toto, publice vel occulte.’

7 Wilkins, III, p 350, ‘novae ad suae malitiae complementum scripturarum in linguam maternam translationis practica adinventa’; compare Deanesly, LB, p 238; Workman, II, pp 186-7 (correcting the date from 1412).

8 Cited Deanesly, LB, p 240; Workman, II, p 187.

9 ‘. . . for no doubt he shall find full many Bibles in Latin full false . . . and the common Latin Bibles have more need to be corrected, as many as I have seen in my life, than hath the English Bible late translated’: see further Deanesly, LB, pp 255 et seq. The high standard of Purvey’s work as a translator has been stressed by Hargreaves, , ‘The Latin Text of Purvey’s Psalter’, Med A 24 (1955) PP 73–90;Google Scholar ‘The Marginal Glosses to the Wyclimte New Testament’, S[tudia] N[eophilologica], 33 (Uppsala 1961) pp 285–300 Google ScholarPubMed; ‘The WyclifFite Versions’, CHB, II, pp 387–415 at 407-13Google Scholar.

10 Hargreaves, , CHB, II, p 400 Google Scholar, amending the reading given by him in ‘An Intermediate Version of the Wycliffite Old Testament’, SN, 28 (1956) pp 130-47 at 133Google Scholar. As Hargreaves comments (p 146), it is not clear why such an abridgement should have been made—although John Rylands Library English MS 89 provides another example—and it is even more difficult to understand why the writer should have copied in a note about Hereford stopping at Baruch which could have had no obvious relevance to his own work.

11 Forshall, J. and Madden, J., The Holy Bible: made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, 4 vols (Oxford 1850) I, p xvii;Google Scholar also Matthew, F.D., ‘The Authorship of the Wycliffite Bible’, EHR, 10 (1895) pp 91–9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Deanesly initially accepted that the translation was by ‘Wyclif and his circle’ (LB p 251), but in The Significance of the Lollard Bible (London 1951) pp 3-5, suggested that Wyclif merely inspired the work and that the chief translator was Hereford. Bodley 959 was still accepted here as the original manuscript.

12 Fristedt, [S. L.], [The] W[ycliffe] B[ible, 2 vols (Stockholm 1953-69)], I, pp 76, 113Google Scholar; ‘The Authorship [of the Lollard Bible]’, S[tudier i] M[odem] S[prakveten-skap = Stockholm Studies in Modem Philology,] 19 (Stockholm 1956) pp 28-41 at 31 Google ScholarPubMed; Lindberg, [C], [MS. Bodley 959: Genesis—Baruch ļ.20 in the Earlier Version of the Wycliffite Bible], 5 vols (Stockholm 1959-69) I, pp 21–3 Google Scholar; III, pp 29-32; IV, pp 18-19.

13 Fristedt, , WB, also ‘The Dating [of the Earliest Manuscript of the Wycliffite Bible’], SMS, ns, I (1960) pp 79–85 at 84-5.Google Scholar As he points out (WB I, p 43), this would mean that ‘we are not in possession of a single document which is indubitably by the pen of Wycliffe, Hereford or Purvey.’ That there was a considerable variety amongst the manuscripts of the English bible by 1400 is suggested by the introduction to an early fifteenth-century wycliffite concordance to the new testament in English: discussing synonyms of the word ‘church’, the author comments, ‘Now it may be so pat in sum Newe La we is writen in sum text pis worde kirke & in pe same text & in a no per book is written pis word chirche’: cited Mclntosh, A., ‘Some Linguistic Reflec tions of a Wycliffite’, Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in honor of F.P. Magoun, ed Bessinger, J. B. and Creed, R. P. (New York and London 1965) pp 290-3 at 291;Google Scholar and now printed in Kuhn, S.M., ‘The Preface to a Fifteenth-Century Concordance’, Speculum, 43 (1968) pp 258-73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Lindberg, II, pp 7, 29-31; III, 32-3: all the scribes were working off the same original manuscript and making a fair copy of revisions to it. Thus Bodley 959 is ‘the translator’s authorised copy, based on his own first version, and written out by several scribes who were also guided by him in revising the text.’ In V, pp 95-6, he suggests that it may be Hereford’s copy of his own original together with an intermediate Oxford version, in effect making this a third version.

15 Fristedt, , WB, I, pp 11-15, 146Google Scholar, was initially prepared to accept the Forshall-Madden dating to before 1390, but has subsequently re-dated to C 1400: ‘The Dating’, pp 84-5. Lindberg also oscillated between C 1390 and C 1400 (III, p 33; IV, pp 30-1), but has now settled for the latter: V, pp 55, 61, 95.

16 Lindberg, II pp 30-2; III, p 33; V, pp 95-6: this means that the completion ot the translation of the whole old testament cannot be placed before 1390 af the earliest. The original idea of a break in 1382 is still to be found with Dela-ruelle, E., L’Église au temps du Grand Schisme et de la crise conciliaire (Paris 1962) p 969.Google Scholar

17 Fristedt, , WB, I, p 145 Google Scholar; II, p xlvii: this led to the scribes of later manuscripts changing to a different one at this point, I, pp 86-8. A comparison can, he suggests, be made with Bodley Douce 369, which is not a single work but a fifteenth-century binding together of two separate parts. Craigie, ‘The English Versions’, p 139, appears to accept that the break in Bodley 959 is due both to] it being the end of the folio and to Hereford stopping the work of translation here.

18 Fristedt, , WB, I, pp 107, 135, 145Google Scholar; ‘The Authorship’, p 31: support for this belief in a complete version of the whole bible translated on strictly literal principles is provided by Christ Church MS E.4.

19 Fristedt, , WB, II, pp lxiii–lxiv Google Scholar, although he had earlier rejected the theory of an Oxford idiom’ (I, pp 39-50, 91) and identified the dialect of the original literal version (I, pp 95-8, 118, 145-6) as being that of Leicestershire, which might indicate Lutterworth, but with some northern idioms, which he first attributed to derivations from Wyclif, but subsequently explained by the argument that Hereford was himself a Yorkshireman too: ‘The Dating’, p 80. Lindberg identifies the dialect of the original translation and of the various scribes of Bodley 959 as being that of the north-west Midlands: see the detailed discussion in I, pp 13-15, 23-5; II, p 18; III, pp 16-18, 33; IV, pp 30-1; V, p 98; whereas M. L. Samuels, ‘The Dialect of MS Bodley 959’ = Lindberg, V, pp 329-39 (App. I) prefers the central Midlands; but both would accept a Leicester location.

20 Fristedt, , WB, II, pp xlviii–xlix, lxiii-lxiv, revising I, pp 1, 6-7, 118Google Scholar. The case for Trevisa’s participation, originally suggested by Caxton, rests primarily on his remarks in Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk upon Translation of the mid- 13 80s in favour of putting the bible into English, and on the fact that he was at Queen’s college for a number of years which coincide with the residence there of Hereford and, to a lesser extent, Wyclif himself. Trevisa and Hereford were members of the southern group of masters who were expelled during the north versus south conflict in the college during 1376-80, and in 1378-9 they carried away a number of books from the college library which might well have been useful to someone translating the bible. See further Wilkins, H.J., Was John wycliffe a Negligent Pluralist?: John de Treuisa, his Life and Work (London 1915) pp 100-12Google Scholar; Fowler, D. C., ‘John Trevisa and the English Bible’, Modern Philology, 58 (Chicago 1960-1) pp 81–98.Google Scholar

21 Fristedt, , WB, I, pp 115-17Google Scholar; compare Lindberg, IV, pp 30-1. Walter Brut seems to have been a literate layman: at his trial in 1393 he, or an associate, reproached Hereford for his ignorance of latin grammar: see Workman, II, P 337

22 The idea of an intermediate version, for which see Hargreaves, ‘An Intermediate Version’, especially p 145, was previously put forward by Talbert, E.W., ‘A Note [on the Wyclyfite Bible Translation’], University of Texas Studies in English, 20 (1940) pp 29–38 Google Scholar, mainly on the basis of Huntington Library MS HM 134. Fristedt, originally working independently of Talbert, first accepted Talbert’s evidence (‘The Authorship’, pp 28, 33-40), but subsequently rejected it on the grounds that the Huntington MS contained passages from Purvey’s version of C 1396, and so must be dated after 1400: ‘The Dating’, pp 81-2.

23 Fristedt, , WB, I, p 145 Google Scholar. Talbert suggested a continuous process of revision between 1384 and 1395: ‘A Note’, p 38.

24 Fristedt, , WB, I, pp 136, 141-8Google Scholar; II, pp xi, lxiv, lxvi; compare ‘The Authorship’, p 35. He argues that the same rules were applied to the lollard translation of the pseudo-Augustinian tract De salutaribus documents: I, pp 43-8; II, passim; also ‘New Light on John Wycliffe and the First Full English Bible’, SMS, ns, III (1968) pp 61–86 Google Scholar. That Wyclif himself conceived the idea of translating the Bible into English is also maintained by Knapp, P.A., ‘John Wyclif as Bible Translator’, Speculum, 46 (1971) pp 713-20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Fristedt, , WB, I, pp 95–105, 115-17Google Scholar; II, pp xlviii-xlix, lx-lxi, lxiv-lxvii; compare ‘The Authorship’, p 37.

26 Fristedt, , WB, I, pp 8–9, 140-1Google Scholar. According to this it was Purvey’s departure from the literal method in his second revision which explains the need for the General Prologue —he was conscious of the need to justify the new method (I, p 137)—and also accounts for Arundel’s condemnation, aimed against the revision rather than the original translation: a straight word for word translation might have been tolerated, but not one which set out to make the bible intelligible to all (I, pp 142-3).

27 Lindberg, II, pp 30-2; III, p 33.

28 Workman, II, pp 157, 160-2, allowed that Wyclif instigated the translation of the old testament, and the literal quality of the original version was due to his intention that there should be a sentence by sentence translation, but the work was carried out by Hereford first, and then Purvey, and Wyclif himself had no hand in it. But Wyclif was dissatisfied with the result, as shown by his refusal to use it, and set Purvey to the task of revising it. Much the same position was adopted by Winn, H.E., Wyclif: Select English Writings (London 1929) pp 7–9 Google Scholar; also Leff, G., Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, 2 vols (Manchester/New York 1967) II, pp 512 n 3, 578, 591Google Scholar.

29 Lindberg, II, pp 30-2; III, p 33; V, pp 92, 95. The possibility that translation of the new testament preceded that of the old testament was considered by Forshall and Madden, I, pp xv-xvii; compare Craigie, ‘The English Versions’, pp 139-40.

30 Lindberg, II, p 32, who rules Trevisa out on the grounds of dialect. However relevant this may be in an old testament context, it does not necessarily preclude his involvement in translation of the new testament.

31 Lindberg, III, p 32; and see also Thomson, S.H., Europe in Renaissance and Reformation (London 1963) p 175 Google Scholar: Wyclif began translating the bible between 1380 and 1384, leaving Hereford and Purvey to complete and revise the work, which was finished by 1388.

32 Lindberg, II, pp 30-2; III, p 33; IV, pp 30-1.

33 In the De ventate sacrae scripturae, 10 (I, pp 218-21) he attacked the ‘sophists’ who argued that the old testament was not part of scripture: it had to be accepted as canonical, and Christ himself had said that he came to fulfil the old law, not destroy it. But Wyclif’s own use of it was decidedly selective, and he was quite prepared to use the pauline principle that the foundation of the church constituted a new age operating on different principles, so that the new apostolic law swept away mosaic ordinances, when it was convenient for him to do so: see for example his refusal to use the old testament to justify warfare in De civili dominio, II, 17, pp 247-8, and his denunciation of arguments for papal absolutism based on old testament passages like Jer. 1:10, as in De ţotestate papae, 11, p 273. This did not however deter him from finding ‘right’ examples in the old testament, for example, 11, p 275; compare De Ecclesia, 7, pp 143-4. His overall position does not seem to have changed much from his initial discussion in chapters 7 and 8 of the De mandatis divinis, in which he concluded that the old testament contained certain basic truths in conformity with the new testament, but was far from being of equal standing with the lex evangelica. All references are to the Wyclif Society editions.

34 The first indication seems to be Sermones, III, 45, p 384 (June 1382) where he argues that pronunciation of the gospel is no more important than the language it is written in provided the right meaning is retained. De nova praevarkantia mandatorum, 1, pp 116-17 (late 1382 or early 1383) refers only to pamphlets preaching biblical truths in English; whilst De triplici vinculo amoris 2, p 168 (late 1383) mentions only writings in English and queen Anne of Bohemia’s possession of Czech and German translations of the bible: Buddensieg’s editorial note is surely correct against Deanesly, LB, p 248, in that there is no specific reference here to an English bible. Of Mynistris in ¡e Chirche, ed Arnold, p 293 (about September 1383) merely suggests that the gospels should be known and expounded in English; and similarly Opus evangelicum, III, 31 and 36 (II, pp 15 and 132) of 1384, but incorporating earlier material, refers to English preaching.

35 McFarlane, K. B., Wyclijfe and English Nonconformity (repr Harmondsworth 1972) p 125 Google Scholar, with reference to Knighton, II, p 313. For the re-dating of this see Hudson, A., ‘A Lollard Sermon-Cycle [and its Implications]’, Med A, 40 (1971) pp 142-56 at 152 n 1.Google Scholar

36 De amore = Ep V, p 9 (late 1382); Speculum saecularium dominorum, 1, pp 74-5 (1382-3).

37 Expositio Matt. XXIV, 8, p 378, ‘quia temporales domini .. . possunt tarnen ex Dei gratia studere Christi evangelia in lingua eis cognita’.

38 De contrarietate duorum dominorum, 2, p 700, ‘dyabolus. . . faciat comburi codices de lege Domini. Lingua enim sive hebraea sive graeca sive latina sive anglica est quasi habitus legis Domini’; and see also 8, p 711, accusing the friars of arranging ‘quod libri ewangelici et sensu catholici declarati populo comburantur.’

39 Scharz, W., ‘The Meaning of Ftdus Interpres in Medieval Translation’, JTS, 45 (1944) p 75.Google Scholar

40 De Ecclesia, i, p 10: the statement ‘in tota scriptura non ponitur vel una sillaba sine sensu’ is in fact a tautology in that scripture is itself to be defined as those parts of the bible which have a right ‘sense’.

41 Decretales, V, vii, 12, which derived from Innocent Ill’s condemnation of waldensians in Metz who were translating the bible into French for use in unauthorised preaching: see Reg., I, 141-2 (PL 214 (1855) cols 695-9).

42 See for example the long attack on the papalists in De Ecclesia, 3 pp 48-56, demanding that their actions should be judged against the bible truly understood, and concluding, ‘Quae enim posset esse maior adulteratio verbi Domini quam intelligere ipsum ad sensum diaboli iuxta quem defendatur esse haereticum et blasfemum . . . ?’ Similarly De ventate sacrae scriptum, 7, especially pp 141-2, 148, 158-9, for the argument that those who misinterpret scripture are falsifying it, and so can be accused of saying that scripture is largely untrue: ‘Ex istis videtur quod magna pars scripturae foret falsissima . . .’

43 Deanesly, The Significance of the Lollard Bible, pp 8-9; Knapp, ‘John Wyclif as Bible Translator’, p 714; Mallard, W., ‘John Wyclif and the Tradition of Biblical Authority’, Church History 30 (Chicago 1961) pp 50–60 at 57.Google Scholar

44 Compare the very pertinent remarks of Ullmann, W., ‘The Bible and Principles of Government in the Middle Ages’, La Bibbia nell’alto medioevo: Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 10 (Spoleto 1963) pp 181–227, 331-6.Google Scholar

45 De ventate sacrae scripturae, 6 (I, pp 107-8), ‘Nam, sicut ostendi alibi de lege Dei, est praeter codices vel signa sensibilia dare veritatem signatam, quae potius est scriptura sacra quam codices. Unde solebam describere scripturam quod sit sacra veritas inscripta .. .’, and more extensively pp 114-16: the same distinction applies in reverse to heresy: 7 (I, p 140). See also Trialogus, III, 21, pp 238-9; De civili dominio, III, i, p 4, ‘codices aut habitus corporales vel ritus sensibiles non sunt Christiana religio, licet sint quandoque per accidens eius signa.’

46 For example De ventate sacrae scripturae, 3 (I, p 44); 16 (II, pp 5, 15, 19-20, 32).

47 Note the use of phrases like De Ecclesia, 7, p 146, ‘scrutetur homo totam scrip turam ...’; p 156, ‘Sed scrutetur fidelis evangelium . ..’; and therefore ‘nam mille sunt fideles qui habent immediate a Deo fidem scripturae independenter ab ilio [papa], etiam plus quam ipse’, De potestate papae, 10, p 261; also De officio regis, 4, p 72.

48 There is an excellent illustration of this principle in Trevisa’s Dialogue: ‘Also the gospel and prophecye & the right feyth of holy chirche must be taught and preched to Englysshe men that conne no latyn. Therme the gospel and pro phecye and the right feyth of holy Chirche must be told hem in englysshe, and that is not don but by Englysshe translacon, for such englysshe prechyng is verytranslacon, and such englyssh prechyng is good and nedefull, thene englyssh translacon is good and nedefull.’ See Wilkins, p 95; Fowler, pp 97-8.

49 As originally pointed out by Arnold, [T.], [Select English Works of John Wyclif], 3 vols (Oxford 1869-71) in notes to I, p 71 and II, p 13Google Scholar.

50 Workman, II, pp 176-7. Pristedt, WB, I, pp 7, 106, glosses rather unconvincingly over this point. A similar situation arises with Chaucer’s translations: see now Thompson, W.M., ‘Chaucer’s Translation of the Bible’, English and Medieval Studies presented to J. R. R. Tolkien, ed David, N. and Wrenn, C.L. (London 1962) pp 183-99.Google Scholar

51 The translator used the 3-part version of the Sermones written (as a single work) by Wyclif in 1381-2, not the 4-part compilation of 1384.

52 The suggestion is made by Arnold, II, p 34.5 note.

53 ‘A Lollard Compilation and the Dissemination of Wycliffite Thought’, JTS, ns, 23 (1972) pp 65–81, especially 75-80Google Scholar; ‘Some Aspects of Lollard Book Production’, SCH, 9 (1972) pp 147–57 Google Scholar, especially 155-7; also ‘A Lollard Sermon-Cycle’, pp 145-6, 150.

54 It is possible that this was at Oxford itself (‘A Lollard Compilation’, pp 73, 75) but the alternative suggestion of the Braybrooke area (‘Some Aspects’, pp 155-6; compare the remarks on dialects, ‘A Lollard Sermon-Cycle,’ pp 149-50) may prove to be a more fruitful one, since this was the land of Thomas Latimer, known to be one of the lollard knights, and a notorious lollard centre in the early fifteenth century: see McFarlane, K. B., Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford 1972) pp 195–6.Google Scholar