The Middle English Bible. Henry Ansgar Kelly
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men to worship graven images of stone and of tree, stand ye stiff in the faith, and worship ye yon God above all thing. And think that imagery and paint is but a book to the lewd people for to steer them to think on God and other saints and to worship God above all thing, and saints in their degree, as the Law showeth well, De Cons., D. 3, c. Perlatum.128
It may be, however, that he is saying that the strictures against preaching and teaching are equivalent by counteracting the true purpose of religious art. The canon of Gratian that he cites, Perlatum, an excerpt from Pope Gregory the Great’s letter to Bishop Serenus of Marseilles, can be read as authorizing literate persons to read the Bible:
It is reported to us that, fired by inconsiderate zeal, you have destroyed images of saints under the alleged excuse that they should not be adored. We praise you for forbidding them to be adored, but we rebuke you for breaking them up. Tell me, brother, what priest has ever done or been heard of doing what you did? It is one thing to adore a picture and quite another to learn from the story the picture tells what is to be adored. For what writing [or: Scripture] does for those who read it, a picture does for uneducated people who look at it, for in it the ignorant see what they should follow, reading it even though they know not letters. Therefore, especially for the multitude of people, the picture takes the place of reading.129
The Longleat commentator ends by recommending that his friend not only read the Sunday Gospels in the following pages, but also the Gospels generally and the other books of the Bible:
And sometime, when ye may, read of the Gospel and of God’s Law, that ye may the more know your God and the more love Him and wit the better when ye do well and when amiss. Therefore read in books of God’s Law, for not only they be blessed that hear God’s Word and keep it, but also the teachers and the readers of God’s Word be blessed of God. And therefore St. John saith in the Book of God’s Privities, Beatus qui legit et qui audit verba prophecie hujus et servat ea que in ea scripta sunt, “Blessed be he that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy and of God’s Law and keepeth things that be writ therein” (Apoc. 1.3).130
The Longleat author tells us in one of his Sunday commentaries, on the Gospel of the Good Samaritan, that many bishops and other churchmen are opposed to the idea of allowing the laity to have easy access to the Scriptures, and he gives a reason for it: they themselves are so ignorant about fundamentals that they want to keep the people in deeper ignorance so that they might seem wise: “Many prelates and men of Holy Church be so lewd that they ken not answer, nor they ken well hear [the] Creed, and therefore they defend [prohibit] English books of God’s Law, and suffer books of the Fiend’s law…. They love no multiplication of God’s Law, for they would not be asked nor opposed. And, for many of them be well lewd, therefore they would keep the people in overdone lewdness, that themselves in their lewdness might seem wise.”131 Once again, this is clearly not said in the context of a general provincial prohibition.
The upshot of this chapter is that there was no prohibition on translating the Scriptures into English at the turn of the fifteenth century, though some scholars and preachers and even bishops (to judge from the Longleat author) were beginning to think it advisable. Another testimony to this notion is found in The Chastising of God’s Children, written around this time. The author, addressing a nun whom he is directing, says that some are against it, because of the inadequacy of English, but he allows it:
Many men reprove it to have the Matins or the Psalter or the Gospels or the Bible in English, because they may not be translated into vulgar, word by word as it standeth, without great circumlocution, after the feeling of the first writer, the which translated that into Latin by teaching of the Holy Ghost. Nevertheless, I will not reprove such translation, nor I reprove not to have them on English, nor to read on them where they may stir you more to devotion and to the love of God. But utterly to use them in English and leave the Latin, I hold it not commendable, and namely in them that be bound to say their Psalter or their Matins of Our Lady.132
This antitranslation movement, however, was of recent vintage, and it inspired some strong opponents, notably Richard Ullerston and his vernacular inheritor in the treatise Against Them, who cited prominent lay supporters, led by John of Gaunt, and also Thomas Arundel, the current archbishop of Canterbury, when he was archbishop of York and chancellor of England.
CHAPTER 5
The Provincial Constitutions of 1407
The Constitution on Bible Translation (Periculosa) and the Middle English Bible
The Oxford constitutions were passed in November 1407, and then, two further convocations later, were confirmed at the meeting in London in January 1409, after being discussed “by repeated promulgation” (repetita promulgatione) but left unchanged; in the following April, they were ordered by Archbishop Arundel to be put into effect throughout the province.1 They have often been regarded as the sole work of Arundel himself; and Periculosa, the meaning of which should be very simple, has been interpreted as forbidding English translations altogether, “prohibiting scriptural translation on the authority of Jerome.”2 We are told by one historian that in virtue of this legislation, “the Wycliffite translations of the Bible were outlawed,” and “for the next 125 years, it was illegal to make or own any Wycliffite Bible in England without special license, and anyone caught in possession of a copy could in theory be tried for heresy and burnt to death.”3 Others assure us that the legislation “banned the Lollard Bible,”4 or that “possession of the Lollard Bible was prohibited after 1409,”5 or that all English Bible translation and reading was forbidden,6 that the mere possession of an English Bible “was an offence punishable by death”7 or “sent people to the flames.”8 Advocacy of translating the Bible was “labeled outright heresy.”9 The constitution “categorically prohibited all disputation on this issue.”10 Even before this, we are told, “making a translation of the Bible from the official Latin Vulgate of Jerome was an act that challenged the authority of the church and initiated linguistic separation from the wider Latin-speaking church in Europe.”11
Let us examine these claims in light of the actual text of the legislation, aided by Gasquet’s analysis, and then examine how the EV and LV should have fared, or actually did fare, if or when the mandate was enforced. Let me begin by quoting what Sir Thomas More said about the “constitution provincial” on Bible translation: “Many men talk of it, but no man knoweth it.”12
Periculosa reads as follows:
Periculosa quoque res est, testante beato Hjeronymo, textum Sacre Scripture de uno in aliud idioma transferre, eo quod in ipsis translationibus non de facili idem sensus in omnibus retinetur, prout idem beatus Hjeronymus, etsi inspiratus fuisset, se in hoc sepius fatetur errasse. Statuimus igitur et ordinamus ut nemo deinceps textum aliquem Sacre Scripture auctoritate sua in linguam Anglicanam vel aliam transferat per viam libri, vel libelli, aut tractatus, nec legatur aliquis hujusmodi liber, libellus, aut tractatus jam noviter tempore dicti Johannis Wicliffe sive citra compositus, aut in posterum componendus, in parte vel in toto, publice vel occulte, sub pena majoris excommunicationis, quousque per loci diocesanum, seu, si res exegerit, per concilium provinciale, ipsa translatio fuerit approbata. Qui vero contra hoc fecerit, ut fautor hereseos et erroris similiter puniatur.13
Here is Gasquet’s translation (I supply in brackets the parts that he omits; the italics are his):
It is dangerous, as St. Jerome declares, to translate the text of Holy Scripture out of one idiom into another, since it is not easy in translations to preserve exactly the same meaning in all things [and Jerome himself, even though he was inspired, admits that he has often been in error in this matter]. We therefore command and ordain that henceforth no one translate any text of Holy Scripture into English or any other language in