Weigle, Luther A. “The Church and the English Vernacular.” In The English New Testament: From Tyndale to the Revised Standard Version, pp. 28-54. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1949.

[In the excerpt below, Weigle examines sixteenth-century concerns regarding the propriety and practicality of translating the Bible into English.]

The movement for a vernacular English Bible, from Tyndale to the King James Version, was part of the general movement that took the Church of England from the control of the Papacy. The Bible of the Roman church was the Latin Vulgate, and the language of its worship was Latin. Generally speaking the Roman Catholics in sixteenth-century England and those of the Church of England who were anxious to retain as much as possible of Catholic faith and practice either opposed the use of the Bible in the English vernacular or viewed it with misgiving; while those in sympathy with the Protestant reformers espoused and furthered it.

The attitude of the medieval Church toward vernacular translations from the Bible was one of “toleration in principle and distrust in practice,” says Margaret Deanesley at the close of her thorough and competent study of the subject [The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions (Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1920).] Translations were permitted for missionary purposes, to aid in the conversion of non-Christian peoples; and among people already professing the Christian faith, translations of parts of the Bible were permitted as aids to devotion and in manuals of religious instruction. Paraphrases of Scripture were favored rather than exact translations, however; and there was no objection to biblical stories, glosses, and homilies in the vernacular since these could not be quoted as having the authority of Scripture itself.

The principle that underlay the attitude of the medieval Church toward the use of the vernacular is expressed in a letter written by Pope Gregory VII in 1079 to Vratislaus, king of Bohemia, who had asked permission for his monks to recite the divine office in the Slavonic language:

Since your excellency has asked that we would allow the divine office to be said among you in Slavonic, know that we can by no means favourably answer this your petition. For it is clear to those who reflect often upon it, that not without reason has it pleased Almighty God that holy scripture should be a secret in certain places, lest, if it were plainly apparent to all men, perchance it would be little esteemed and be subject to disrespect; or it might be falsely understood by those of mediocre learning, and lead to error. Nor does it avail as an excuse that certain religious men have patiently suffered the simple folk who asked for it, or have sent them away uncorrected; since the primitive Church allowed many things to pass unheeded, which, after Christianity had grown stronger, and when religion was increasing, were corrected by subtle examination. Wherefore we forbid what you have so imprudently demanded of the authority of S. Peter, and we command you to resist this vain rashness with all your might, to the honour of Almighty God.

As the medieval Church grew more corrupt, and men began to criticize it and to base their criticism upon the Scriptures, the attitude of the Church toward vernacular translations hardened. It was held that the vernacular is too rude to express the great concepts of Christian faith, and that the attempt to translate these from the Latin into the language of the people introduces erroneous connotations, breeds pride of opinion, and leads to sectarian contentions and to heresy. The Church has the truth, it was maintained; and without its guidance private judgment falls into individualism and error. There is always need, therefore, of the Church's authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures. And it is not only unnecessary for the people to understand the language of the Church's worship; it is better that they should not. For worship in an unknown or archaic tongue heightens the mystery of divine grace and awakens reverence; it conveys a sense, moreover, of the oneness and changelessness of Catholic faith and practice.

Pope Innocent III wrote to the people of Metz in 1199:

The secret mysteries of the faith ought not to be explained to all men in all places, since they cannot be everywhere understood by all men; but only to those who can conceive them with a faithful mind, for what says the apostle to simple people? Even as babes in Christ I have fed you with milk and not with meat. … For such is the depth of divine scripture, that not only the simple and illiterate, but even the prudent and learned, are not fully sufficient to try to understand it. For many seek and fail in their search, whence it was of old rightly written in the divine law, that the beast which touched the mount should be stoned: lest, apparently, any simple and unlearned person should presume to attain to the sublimity of holy scripture. … Seek not out the things that are above thee. For what says the apostle? Not to think more highly than one ought to think, but to think soberly.

From the Norman Conquest in 1066 until the time of Wycliffe the written vernacular of England was French. Not until 1362 was Parliament opened in English, and pleading in English allowed in the courts of law. Wycliffe shares with Chaucer the glory of creative service to English literature. If Chaucer is to be regarded as the father of English poetry, Wycliffe is the father of English prose. And Wycliffe was the first to conceive the idea of a translation of the entire Bible into English for the use of all the people.

A contemporary chronicler, the continuator of Henry Knighton's work, wrote thus concerning Wycliffe:

Christ gave His Gospel to the clergy and learned of the Church that they might give it to the laity and weaker persons, according to the exigency of the time and the need of the persons. But this Master John Wyclif translated the Gospel from the Latin into the Anglican language not the angelican. And Wyclif, by thus translating the Bible, made it the property of the masses and common to all and more open to the laity and even to women who were able to read than formerly it had been even to the scholarly and most learned of the clergy. And so the Gospel pearl is thrown before swine and trodden underfoot and that which used to be so dear to both clergy and laity has become a joke and this precious gem of the clergy has been turned into the sport of the laity, so that what used to be the highest gift of the clergy and the learned members of the Church has become common to the laity.

Archbishop Arundel, writing to the Pope in 1412, referred to Wycliffe as “that wretched and pestilent fellow of damnable memory, son of the old serpent, and the very herald and child of anti-christ, … who crowned his wickedness by translating the Scriptures into the mother tongue.” Under Arundel's leadership the provincial council of Oxford enacted thirteen constitutions dealing with the Lollards, as Wycliffe's followers came to be known. The seventh of these reads.

Since it is dangerous, as S. Jerome witnesses, to translate the text of holy scripture from one language into another, because in such translations the same meaning is not easily retained in all particulars: even as S. Jerome, although he was inspired confessed that he had often erred in this matter: therefore we decree and ordain that no one shall in future translate on his own authority any text of holy scripture into the English tongue or into any other tongue, by way of book, booklet, or treatise Nor shall any man read this kind of book, booklet or treatise, now recently composed in the time of the said John Wycliffe, or later, or any that shall be composed in future, in whole or part, publicly or secretly, under penalty of the greater excommunication, until that translation shall be recognized and approved by the diocesan of the place, or if the matter demand it, by a provincial council.

As a countermove to the Wycliffe translations of the Bible Archbishop Arundel licensed in 1410 an English translation of the Meditationes Vitae Christi ascribed to Bonaventura, which was published under the title The Mirrour of the Blessed Life of Jesu Christ. In 1431 the Bishop of Bath and Wells forbade the possession of English translations of the Bible; and in 1514 one of the articles of the condemnation of Richard Hun was: “He defendeth the translation of the Bible and the holy scripture into the English tongue, which is prohibited by the laws of our mother, holy Church.”

The new attitude toward the English translation of the Scriptures which gradually emerged in the sixteenth century was due to the New Learning fostered by the Renaissance, to the Protestant Reformation on the continent of Europe, and to the incarnation of these two strains of influence in the single-minded devotion and sound scholarship of William Tyndale. It was greatly furthered, moreover, by the development of the new art and business of printing.

Outstanding among the exponents of the New Learning was Erasmus, who wrote his Enchiridion Militis Christiani or Manual of the Christian Knight in 1502, produced a new Latin version of the New Testament in 1505, and published the first edition of his Greek New Testament in 1516. In the Paraclesis, or exhortation, prefixed to the Greek New Testament Erasmus wrote:

I vehemently dissent from those who are unwilling that the sacred scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, should be read by private persons. Christ wishes his mysteries to be published as widely as possible. I wish even all women to read the gospel and the Epistles of Saint Paul, and I wish that they were translated into the tongues of all men. … I would to God that the ploughman would sing a text of Scripture at his plough-beam; and the weaver at his loom with this would drive away the tediousness of time. I would the wayfaring man with this pastime would expel the weariness of his journey. And, to be short, I would that all the communication of the Christian should be of the Scripture; for a manner, such are we ourselves, as our daily tales are. … We cannot call any man a Platonist, unless he have read the works of Plato. Yet call we them Christian, yea and divines, which never have read the Scriptures of Christ.

There is an echo of these words of Erasmus in Foxe's account of the young Tyndale's reply to his opponent: “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the scripture than thou dost.” Erasmus was not himself qualified to make a vernacular translation, but his Greek New Testament was used by Luther as the basis for the translation into German, and by Tyndale for the translation into English.

We may distinguish seven issues that were involved in the development of the English Bible in the eighty-five years between the publication of Tyndale's first New Testament in 1526 and the publication of the King James Version in 1611:

1. Shall there be an English translation of the Bible?

2. If so, shall the English Bible be in the hands of the people?

3. Shall the English Bible contain only a translation of the Hebrew, Greek or Latin text, or shall it also have notes, explanatory glosses, and prologues or prefaces to the various books?

4. Shall the English Bible be read, and the English language be used, in the services of the Church?

5. Shall the English Bible retain the old ecclesiastical words?

6. Shall the translation be made from the Latin Vulgate or from the original Hebrew and Greek?

7. Shall it use only native English words of Anglo-Saxon origin or words of Latin derivation?

1. That there should be a printed and published English translation of the Bible admitted of no doubt, once Tyndale's work appeared. Denunciations and prohibitions could not stop it; the buying and burning of thousands of copies simply furnished funds for the printing of more. And people were determined to have it. Bishop Nix in 1530 implored the help of the king, saying that the movement was beyond his power to suppress, and that if it should continue, “I think they shall undo us all.” In June of that year the king issued a proclamation condemning Tyndale's books and requiring all who had copies to surrender them. This proclamation went on to deal with the basic issue as follows:

And furthermore, for as much as it is come to the hearing of our said sovereign lord the king, that report is made by divers and many of his subjects, that as it were to all men not only expedient, but also necessary, to have in the English tongue both the New Testament and the Old: and that his highness, his noble men and prelates were bounden to suffer them so to have it; His highness hath therefore semblably there upon consulted with the said primates and virtuous, discrete, and well learned personages in divinity foresaid, and by them all it is thought, that it is not necessary, the said scripture to be in the English tongue, and in the hands of the common people; but that the distribution of the said scripture, and their permitting or denying thereof, dependeth only upon the discretion of the superiors, as they shall think it convenient. And that having respect to the malignity of this present time, with the inclination of the people to erroneous opinions, the translation of the New Testament and the Old into the vulgar tongue of English, should rather be the occasion of continuance or increase of errors among the said people, than any benefit or commodity toward the weal of their souls. And that it shall now be more convenient that the same people have the holy scripture expounded to them, by preachers in their sermons, according as it hath been of old time accustomed before this time.

These sentences are immediately followed, however, by a conditional promise:

All be it if it shall hereafter appear to the king's highness, that his said people do utterly abandon and forsake all perverse, erroneous, and seditious opinions, with the New Testament and the Old, corruptly translated into the English tongue now being in print: And that the same books and all other books of heresy, as well in the French tongue as in the Dutch tongue, be clearly exterminated and exiled out of this realm of England forever: his highness extendeth to provide, that the holy scripture shall be by great learned and catholic persons, translated into the English tongue, if it shall then seem to his grace convenient so to be.

Hugh Latimer, who was then one of the king's chaplains, reminded him of this promise and asked its fulfillment, in a bold and earnest letter on December 1, 1530. Four years later, in December, 1534, “the bishops, abbots, and priors of the upper house of convocation, or the second synod of the province of Canterbury,” petitioned the king “to decree that the holy Scripture shall be translated into the vulgar English tongue by certain upright and learned men to be named by the said most illustrious king and be meted out and delivered to the people for their instruction.” They added that he should “command, with a penalty assigned and imposed, that no layman or secular person among his subjects should for the future presume publicly to dispute or in any manner to wrangle concerning the catholic faith, or the articles of the faith, the Holy Scripture or its meaning.”

Archbishop Cranmer proposed that a translation be made by the bishops, but the plan failed. Bishop Gardiner, despite his Catholic conservatism, did his share. But Bishop Stokesley was defiant. When asked why he had not returned his portion, he answered:

I marvel what my Lord of Canterbury meaneth, that thus abuseth the people, in giving them liberty to read the Scriptures, which doth nothing else but infect them with heresy. I have bestowed never an hour upon my portion, nor never will; and, therefore, my lord shall have this book again, for I will never be guilty of bringing the common people into error.

Finally the question as to whether or not an English translation of the Bible should exist and be recognized as lawful to possess and read was settled by the royal licensing of Matthew's Bible and Coverdale's Bible in 1537, by Cromwell's Injunctions of 1538, by the authorization of the Great Bible, and by the king's proclamation of May 6, 1541, enforcing the Injunctions, and requiring the possession in every church of “Bibles of the largest and greatest volume.”

2. We turn now to the second question: Shall the English Bible be in the hands of the people? Sir Thomas More, whom Bishop Tunstall secured to be the literary opponent of Tyndale, took the position that it is well to have the Bible translated into English, provided it is done by “some good catholic and well learned man, or by divers, dividing the labour among them, and after conferring their several parts together each with other,” and provided that their work is approved by the bishops. But he proposed that the English Bible be afforded only a limited and strictly controlled circulation. All copies, in any diocese, should be owned by the bishop, who would at his discretion loan a copy “to such as he perceiveth honest, sad, and virtuous, with a good monition and fatherly counsel to use it reverently with humble heart and lowly mind, rather seeking therein occasion of devotion than of discussion.” After the decease of the person to whom it was loaned the book must be “brought again and reverently restored” to the bishop.

So that, as near as may be devised, no man have it but of the ordinary's hand, and by him thought and reputed for such as shall be likely to use it to God's honour and merit of his own soul. Among whom, if any be proved after to have abused it, then the use thereof to be forboden him, either for ever, or till he be waxen wiser.

In defense of this proposal More used the analogy of medicine and the physician:

It were not unreasonable that the ordinary whom God hath in the diocese appointed for the chief physician to discern between the whole and the sick, and between disease and disease, should after his wisdom and discretion appoint everybody their part, as he should perceive to be good and wholesome for them. And therefore as he should not fail to find many a man to whom he might commit all the whole, so, to say the truth, I can see none harm therein, though he should commit unto some man the gospel of Matthew, Mark or Luke, whom he should yet forbid the gospel of St. John, and suffer some to read the Acts of the Apostles, whom he would not suffer to meddle with the Apocalips. Many were there I think that should take much profit by saint Paules epistle ad Ephesios, wherein he giveth good counsel to every kind of people, and yet should find little fruit for their understanding in his epistle ad Romanos, containing such high difficulties as very few learned men can very well attain. … So that, as I say, though the bishop might unto some layman betake and commit with good advice and instruction the whole Bible to read, yet might he to some man well and with reason restrain the reading of some part, and from some busybody the meddling with any part at all, more than he shall hear in sermons set out and declared unto him; and, in likewise, to take the Bible away from such folk again, as be proved by their blind presumption to abuse the occasion of their profit unto their own hurt and harm. And thus may the bishop order the scripture in our hands with as good reason as the father doeth by his discretion appoint which of his children may for his sadness keep a knife to cut his meat, and which of his wantonness have his knife taken from him for cutting of his fingers.

This proposal was never adopted. Something like it was implied in the 1534 petition of the Convocation of Canterbury, as we have seen; but the fourth of Cromwell's Injunctions of 1538 was:

Item, that ye discourage no man privily or apertly from the reading or hearing of the same Bible, but shall expressly provoke, stir, and exhort every person to read the same, as that which is the very lively word of God, that every Christian man is bound to embrace, believe, and follow, if he look to be saved; admonishing them nevertheless, to avoid all contention, altercation therein, and to use an honest sobriety in the inquisition of the true sense of the same, and refer the explication of obscure places, to men of higher judgment in Scripture.

This was enforced by the king's proclamation in 1541, which expressly stated that access to the Bible was to be afforded to “every of the king's Majesty's loving subjects, minding to read therein.” The right of private persons to purchase English Bibles was secured by Cranmer in November, 1539; and in the patent of that date, which gave to Cromwell control of the printing of the English Bible, the king states that he is granting to the people “the free and liberal use of the Bible in our own maternal English.”

This freedom was somewhat abridged in the closing years of Henry's reign, when the tension was tightening between Catholic and Protestant parties within the Church of England. In 1543 an Act for the “advancement of true religion” was passed by Parliament, ordering the destruction of all of Tyndale's translations, forbidding any unauthorized person to read the Bible aloud to others in any public place, and forbidding the private reading of the Bible by all women except noblewomen and gentlewomen, and by all “artificers, apprentices, journeymen, servingmen, yeomen, husbandmen, or laborers.”

At Henry's last appearance before Parliament he wept, and moved many in his audience to tears, as he spoke of the failure of his hopes:

Be not judges yourselves of your own fantastical opinions and vain expositions; and although you be permitted to read Holy Scriptures and to have the Word of God in your mother tongue, you must understand it is licensed so to do only to inform your conscience and inform your children and families, not to make Scripture a railing and taunting stock against priests and preachers. I am very sorry to know and hear how irreverently that precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rimed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same. For of this I am sure, that charity was never so faint among you, and virtuous and godly living was never less used, nor God Himself among Christians never less served. Therefore be in charity one with another, like brother and brother; and love, dread, and serve God, to which I, your Supreme Head and Sovereign Lord, exhort, and require you.

With Henry's death and the accession of Edward the restrictions upon the reading of the English Bible were removed.

3. It was to be expected that English translations of the Bible in the sixteenth century would be heavily loaded with notes and glosses. The Catholic tradition was that Scripture has a fourfold meaning: first, literal or historical; second, allegorical; third, moral; and fourth, anagogical or mystical. To take the most familiar example, “Jerusalem is literally a city of Palestine, allegorically the Church, morally the believing soul, anagogically the heavenly Jerusalem.” John of Salisbury, English bishop and scholar of the twelfth century, held that “although the superficial meaning of the letter be accommodated to a single sense, a multitude of mysteries lie within; and often allegory edifies faith, and history morals, and the mystical meaning leads heavenwards in many manners.” Because of this principle of the four senses of Scripture, and because of reliance upon the authoritative teaching of the Church, the glosses and interpretations often seemed to be more important than the text they undertook to explain. The “bare text” of Scripture was regarded as a dangerous thing, apt to mislead the people. “The letter slayeth,” a verse from Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians, was cited in denunciation of those who, like Wycliffe and Tyndale, insisted that the literal sense of the Scripture is basic.

In 1531 Tyndale declared to Stephen Vaughan, who sought to induce him to return to England, that he would be satisfied if only a “bare text” might be placed in the hands of the people. Here are his words, as reported by Vaughan in a letter to King Henry:

“I assure you,” said he, “if it would stand with the king's most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text of the scripture to be put forth among his people, like as is put forth among the subjects of the emperor in these parts, and of other Christian princes, be it of the translation of what person soever shall please his majesty, I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write more, nor abide two days in these parts after the same; but immediately to repair into his realm, and there most humbly submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace will, so this be obtained. And till that time, I will abide the asperity of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains as it is able to bear and suffer.”

Tyndale made no great use of notes. The important thing with him was the text of Scripture itself. “I had perceived by experience,” he said, “how that it is impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text.” His marginal notes are brief and comparatively few. The 1526 and 1535 editions of the New Testament have none. It is only the notes on the Old Testament that are sharply critical of his opponents. Those on the New Testament are forthright and clear, but mild in tone. Tyndale could and did use biting language, but this was in his treatises on the current abuses within the Church; except for some of the notes on the Old Testament, he kept sharp comment out of his translation of the Scriptures.

Coverdale had only sixty-six notes for his entire translation—forty-seven in the Old Testament and nineteen in the New—and most of these simply give alternate readings. The notes which he planned for the Great Bible were not published.

Matthew's Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the Bishops' Bible contain more notes than Tyndale. These are of all sorts—textual, expository, doctrinal, and practical. They are anti-papal, not by direct attack, but in the sense that their content is in accord with the principles of the Protestant Reformation. The Rhemish Version has strongly and directly polemical notes, denunciatory of Protestants.

The rules for the making of the King James Version forbade marginal notes, except as these might be required “for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words, which cannot without some circumlocution so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text.” The spirit of this injunction was well observed, yet the marginal notes appended to the King James Version number 6,637 for the Old Testament and 765 for the New Testament. About one third of the notes to the Old Testament and three fourths of the notes to the New Testament give alternative readings; and most of the remainder give a more literal statement of the meaning of one or more of the original words.

4. Shall the English Bible be read, and the English language be used, in the services of the Church? That was a major question, for the language of the Church in the early sixteenth century, as throughout the medieval period, was Latin. Its Bible was the Latin Vulgate; the Mass was said in Latin.

Preaching, of course, was in English; and from the fourteenth century on there was a growing demand for more and better preaching. Lay people were expected to learn the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Pater Noster, and the Ave Maria, and to repeat these in their devotions. Priests were expected, moreover, to explain these to the people in English at least three or four times a year; and a few of the bishops urged that such instruction be given more often, or even on every Lord's Day. Archbishop Thoresby's Lay Folks' Catechism (1357) is a manual, in rough English verse, of materials for use in preaching and instruction. John Myrc counselled the priest to inform his flock that

it is much more speedful and meritable to you to say your Pater Noster in English than in such Latin as you do. For when you speak in English, then you know and understand well what you say; and so, by your understanding, you have liking and devotion for to say it.

Necessarily, some English was used in the confessional; and if a person was excommunicated, it was required that the grounds of excommunication should be clearly stated in English, so that the people might understand them. Baptism was valid, even though it be administered by a layman, in case of need, and in English. Bits of English were used in the marriage service.

English materials for instruction in the Christian faith and aids to devotion were contained in the English primers which were in use in the later medieval period. One of these, which belongs to the fourteenth century, is reproduced in G. A. Plimpton's The Education of Chaucer. Beginning with the “Christ-cross,” it contains the alphabet, the Invocation, the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, expositions of the seven deadly sins and the seven principal virtues, and translations of 1 Cor. 13, the Beatitudes, and some sayings of Augustine. The Lay Folks' Mass Book (about 1300) explains the structure and meaning of the Mass, directs the thoughts of the worshiper, and supplies forms of prayer and devotion. All is cast in rough, jingling English verse, as an aid to the memory; and the reader is advised to “con with-outen boke” so that he may readily use these forms of devotion while the Mass is being said. John Myrc, with respect to the proper use of the Ave Maria, advised:

Teach them to say this in the English tongue, that they may understand what they say. And always, when they come to this word, “God is with thee,” that they say it devoutly and with full devotion, not too hastily, to say many Ave's; for it pleaseth our lady more to be greeted devoutly with one Ave, than with many without devotion.

A word of caution is perhaps necessary here. It must not be imagined that the people of England attended Mass in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, each with a prayerbook in his hand, in which he could follow the words of the priest. Most people had no books, for they could not afford them before the age of printing. It was only the more wealthy who would possess manuscript translations of the gospels or the psalms or other written aids to devotion. For the people generally Christianity was still an oral religion. They were dependent for their forms of worship upon what they had been taught by word of mouth and could remember. If they could remember nothing else, there was at least the Lord's Prayer.

If thou can naught read nor say
Thy pater noster rehearse alway,

says the Lay Folks' Mass Book. The same volume urges that if the layman can make no other response in the course of the priest's repetition of the Latin liturgy, he should at least be able to join in the closing petition of the Lord's Prayer:

but answer at temptacionem
set libera nos a malo, amen.
it were no need thee this to ken
for who con not this are lewed men.

If the worshiper made no other than this one response, and even if he failed to make this, it did not really matter. For the Mass depended in no way upon the participation of the people; they were there to witness it. Even their hearing it was unessential. It was like a stage play which contains a few cues at which the audience is expected to say or do something. The Mass differed from a stage play, however, in that the members of the audience were expected to engage in their own prayers and forms of devotion, while it was being celebrated by the priest and his assistants.

This practice is so far from our present thought of public worship, and the theory underlying it has so important a bearing upon the general problem with which we are dealing, that I quote a more adequate statement from B. L. Manning's compact but thorough study of The People's Faith in the Time of Wyclif:

The Lay Folks' Mass Book was not a translation of the liturgy. It rested on the theory that the priest and the layman ought to approach God, not by the same, but by different ways. Even their creeds were not identical; the priest used the Nicene formula, the people an English version of the Apostles' Creed. … To translate the whole of the liturgy would have been regarded as an act of desecration. Though some of it might be rendered into English with propriety, there was a deep-rooted feeling against any such treatment of the more sacred parts. … Alexander VII expressed no new feeling in the Church when, in 1661, he condemned a translation of the whole missal. Only the blasphemous, he thought, could have endeavoured thus “to cast down and trample the majesty of the most sacred rite embodied in the Latin words, and by their rash attempts to expose to the vulgar the dignity of the holy mysteries.” The object of the Lay Folk's Mass Book was, therefore, not to make the congregation understand what the priest was saying. Two devotions, one lay and one clerical, were to proceed at the same time. According to Lyndwood, who quoted an early fourteenth century writer, the Canon of the Mass was said in silence ne impediatur populus orare [lest the prayers of the people be hindered].¹

The translation of the Bible into English soon brought about the displacement of Latin as the language of public worship. It led at first to some disorder, for people would take English New Testaments to church and would read from them aloud to their neighbors in the audience while the priest was engaged in the celebration of the Mass; or someone would go to one of the great Bibles chained to its stand by the wall of the church, and read aloud to a growing group, ignoring what the priest was doing. King Henry complained bitterly of such practices, and forbade them in terms such as these:

His Majesty straightly chargeth and commandeth, that no person … or persons shall openly read the Bible or the New Testament in the English tongue in any churches or chapels or elsewhere with any loud or high voice, and especially during the time of divine service, or of celebrating and saying of masses; but virtually and devoutly to hear their divine services and masses, and use that time in reading and praying with peace and stillness, as good Christian men used to do.

This disorder was a passing phase, however; quickly, and inevitably, the English Bible began to be read in the proper order of public service in the church, and English became the language of the service itself.

Tyndale showed his regard for the liturgy of the church, and his desire that its Scripture lessons be read in English, by adding to the 1534 and 1535 editions of his New Testament translations of the “epistles” from the Old Testament and Apocrypha that were appointed to be read in the Salisbury service book. He translated these directly from the original Hebrew and Greek, and not from the Latin of the missal.

There are records of the use of English in the Mass in the year 1538. In 1543 Convocation ordered

that every Sunday and Holy Day throughout the year the curate of every parish church after the Te Deum and Magnificat should openly read unto the people one chapter of the New Testament in English without exposition, and when the New Testament was finished then to begin the Old.

In 1544 the English Litany was prepared and published, together with an “Exhortation unto Prayer, thought meet by the King's Majesty and his clergy to be read to the people in every church afore Processions.” The Exhortation is an excellent little sermon on prayer—why we pray, for what to pray, and how to pray—which goes on to give reasons for the use of the vernacular in prayer:

To the intent, therefore, your hearts and lips may go together in God, that you should use your private prayer in your mother tongue, that you, understanding what you ask of God, may more earnestly and fervently desire the same your hearts and minds agreeing to your mouth and words. … Such among the people as have books, and can read, may read them quietly and softly to themself; and in such as cannot read, let them quietly and attentively give audience in time of the said prayers, having their minds erect to Almighty God and devoutly praying in their hearts the same petitions which do enter in at their ears; so that with one sound of the heart and with one accord God may be glorified in his Church.

Here is expressed a theory of public worship far sounder than the medieval theory, and destined to replace it. All of the congregation are to participate, with understanding and with sincerity, in the liturgy of praise and prayer to God. The Litany was reprinted in the King's Primer in 1545.

On Easter Day, April 1, 1548, the Holy Communion was for the first time administered in English; and in May of that year all of the service, including the Mass, was sung in English in St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, and other London churches. On January 21, 1549, the first Book of Common Prayer was adopted; and the issue of the language of public worship was settled. Except for the period under Queen Mary, the Church of England would henceforth use English in its services.

5. The question whether the English Bible should retain the old ecclesiastical words admits of a simple answer in principle: Yes, it should retain all such words as continue to be used in the life of the Church, and can be justified as proper translations of the original Hebrew and Greek. The successive versions of the sixteenth century, leading up to the King James Version, as a matter of fact followed this principle. Stated negatively, ecclesiastical words were not retained which were distinctively Roman, standing for doctrines or practices rejected by the Church of England, or which could not be justified as translations of the original Hebrew or Greek.

For example, Sir Thomas More's accusation that Tyndale was wilfully perverting the Scriptures was based largely upon Tyndale's use of “congregation” instead of “church,” “elder” where More wished “priest,” “repentance” instead of “penance,” and “love” instead of “charity.” We shall discuss these terms later; I refer to them now only to illustrate what happened to old ecclesiastical words. Tyndale's suggestion of “congregation” failed, and was replaced by “church” in the Geneva Version and those that followed it. “Elder” was kept because it was a correct translation of the Greek word presbuteros, and “priest” was not. “Repentance” was kept, both as a sound translation of the Greek, and because the Roman Catholic system of penance was rejected. “Love” was kept by all translations up to and including the first edition of the Bishops' Bible. In the second edition of the Bishops' Bible and in the King James Version, it was replaced by “charity” in a bit less than one fourth of the cases of its occurrence. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century revisions have restored “love” in these cases.

6. Tyndale's translation was made directly from the Hebrew and Greek; Coverdale's was based upon the Latin Vulgate. John Rogers, compiling the Bible which was published under his pseudonym of Thomas Matthew, used Tyndale's translations of all books for which these were available, and Coverdale for the remainder, following the principle of using the translations made directly from the original languages as far as he could. The title of the Great Bible, published in 1539, contains the statement “truly translated after the verity of the Hebrew and Greek texts, by the diligent study of divers excellent learned men, expert in the foresaid tongues.” Thereafter all authorized versions of the English Bible were based upon the original Hebrew and Greek.

This was not without opposition, however. The Roman Catholics in England, and those of the Church of England who wished to return to the rule of Rome or at least to retain in the Church as much as possible of Roman faith and practice, were insistent upon basing the English version of the Bible, if one had to be made, upon the Latin Vulgate. In the Convocation of 1542 the Great Bible was attacked. When Archbishop Cranmer put the question to the bishops one by one “whether without scandal, error, and manifest offence to Christ's faithful they would vote to retain the Great Bible in the English speech,” the majority answered that “the said Bible could not be retained until first duly purged and examined side by side with the [Latin] Bible commonly read in the English Church.” It was decided to undertake a revision to bring the Great Bible into accord with the Latin Vulgate, and the various books of the Bible were apportioned for this purpose among the bishops and other clergy who were members of Convocation. Bishop Gardiner presented a list of ninety-nine Latin words and phrases from the Vulgate which, “for the sake of their germane and native meaning and for the majesty of the matter in them contained,” should be retained in their Latin form or be rendered into English with the least possible change. The plan came to nothing, for Cranmer consulted the king, who authorized him to announce that it was the royal will and pleasure that the translation be examined by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The bishops protested, but the king's will stood, and the universities let the matter drop.

The Rhemish Version, by Roman Catholic scholars, was based on the Latin. “We translate the old vulgar Latin text,” the Preface declares, “not the common Greek text, for these causes …”; then follows a detailed list of reasons for so doing. Among them are that the “old vulgar Latin text” is “most ancient”; that it was corrected by Jerome “according to the Greek”; that it “ever since hath been used in the Church's service”; that the Council of Trent had declared it “to be authentical”; that it is the “most grave” and “least partial” of the texts of the holy Scriptures; finally, that “it is not only better than all other Latin translations, but than the Greek text itself, in those places where they disagree,” the reason for this being that “most of the ancient heretics were Grecians, and therefore their Scriptures in Greek were more corrupted by them, as the ancient fathers often complain.”

7. As was to be expected in view of Tyndale's purpose to make the Scriptures plain in the language of the common people, most of the words that he used were of Anglo-Saxon origin, though he did not hesitate to use terms drawn from French and from Latin. Gardiner's proposal to Latinize the translation was simply one expression of the constant pressure from Catholics, whether Roman or Anglican, to keep as close to the Latin as possible—a pressure that found full expression in the Rhemish Version of 1582, which stayed so close to the Latin as to fail sometimes to be a translation into English. For example, in Eph. 3.6 it reads: “The Gentiles to be co-heirs and concorporate and comparticipant of his promise in Christ Jesus by the Gospel.” Sir John Cheke, professor of Greek at Cambridge, went to the other extreme in a translation of Matthew and part of Mark which he made about 1550, excluding all terms derived from the Latin or any other non-English language, and using such renderings as “mooned” for “lunatics,” “toller” for “publican,” “by-word” for “parable,” “crossed” for “crucified,” “uprising” for “resurrection,” “frosent” for “apostle,” and “gainbirth” for “regeneration.”

Cheke's work did not influence subsequent versions. On the contrary, both the Bishops' Bible and the King James Version yielded a bit to the pressure of the ecclesiastically sanctioned Latin. The King James Bible owes most to Tyndale, and its next debt is to Geneva; but next to the contribution of Geneva is that of the Rhemish version, from which the King James translators accepted many words and turns of expression that were of Latin origin.

That they should have done this, while in their preface they speak with scorn of the “obscurity” of the “late translation” of “the Papists,” is one of the minor ironies of history. The most vigorous defender of the three Protestant versions of the English Bible that were in use in the closing quarter of the sixteenth century—the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the Bishops' Bible—was William Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge University. His method was eminently fair to his opponents, but singularly devoid of worldly wisdom; for in his major work, entitled A Defense of the sincere and true Translations of the holie Scriptures into the English tong, against the manifolde cauils, friuolous quarels, and impudent slaunders of Gregorie Martin, one of the readers of Popish diuinitie in the trayterous Seminarie of Rhemes (1583), he copied, paragraph by paragraph, the book by Martin which he was answering, A Discoverie of the Manifold Corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the Heretikes of our daies, specially the English Sectaries, and of their foule dealing herein, by partial & false translations to the aduantage of their heresies, in their English Bibles vsed and authorised since the time of Schisme, and he thus gave to Martin's work a much larger circulation than it would otherwise have had. As part of the same campaign of defense he published in 1580 a parallel edition of the Rhemish New Testament and the New Testament of the Bishops' Bible, with detailed comments and confutations. This, again, greatly enlarged the circulation of the Rhemish version. Fulkes' parallel edition had so good a sale that it was reprinted in 1589, 1601, 1617, and 1633. Dr. Carleton rightly says that this work “brought under the notice of many an Englishman a version of the Scriptures which otherwise he would not have been likely to concern himself about or even to hear of.” But the most ironic touch to the story is that this parallel edition was doubtless used by the King James translators as they undertook the revision of the Bishops' Bible. It was the handiest tool they had; and so Dr. William Fulke, the bitter opponent of the Rhemish Version, became partly responsible for the influence that it had upon the King James Version.

Yet that influence was not enough to change the predominantly Saxon character of the vocabulary of the King James Version. The often-quoted figures, which I take from Professor Eadie, are that of the words used by Shakespeare about eighty-five per cent are Saxon; by Swift, eight-nine per cent; by Dr. Johnson, almost seventy-five per cent; by Gibbon, about seventy per cent; but that over ninety per cent of the words used in the King James Bible are of Saxon origin.

Note

1. Cambridge Univ. Press. Used by permission of The Macmillan Co.