The Middle English Bible. Henry Ansgar Kelly
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was not the work of the author of the Prologue, and it would still be possible to maintain without inconsistency that the earlier version was in its origin not Wycliffite but Catholic.”72 Thurston could have added that, even though a Wycliffite may have revised a non-Wycliffite EV, he did not inject any Wycliffite doctrines or sentiments into the resulting LV.
But Thurston’s way out for Gasquet, that EV at least was Catholic in origin (a conclusion that Thurston himself thought was mistaken),73 would not, I think, have satisfied Gasquet. I can see a different tack that may well have occurred to him, to judge from his original observation that the prologue appears in only “some few copies.” Hudson has made this point more recently: “The important point to note is that the Prologue is not the regular concomitant of the LV translation, but an exceptional addition to it.”74 In explaining this state of affairs, Herbert Workman in 1926 in effect assumes that the prologue was originally present as an integral part of LV, but was eliminated in most copies because of its unorthodox contents.75 But since the text of the Bible itself was so clearly orthodox, it does seem odd that the translator would prefix such a provocatively unorthodox prologue. In Chapter 2 we will consider the possibility that it was not an “official” prologue, but rather an attempt of an interloper with radical religious views to take the credit of the translation enterprise for himself and his cause. But even if it can be established that the author of the prologue was not a main force behind the Bible project, we will see that it remains undeniable that he was a participant in it. Gasquet, however, was willing to admit such Wycliffite participants, in the person of Hereford and even Purvey, and this, in effect, constituted another answer to Ogle’s challenge, which comes in summary form in Gasquet’s original article:
Whether Hereford, or Purvey possibly (for at best we are, so far as this is concerned, dealing with possibilities), may have had any part in the translation does not, after all, so much concern us. Our chief interest is not with the translator, but with the work itself, and with the question whether it may fairly be claimed as the semi-official and certainly perfectly orthodox translation of the English Church; or whether, on the other hand, it must be regarded as a version secretly executed, clandestinely circulated, and still more stealthily studied, by the Lollard followers of Wyclif. This is the main point of interest.76
Ogle conceded Gasquet’s first point, the orthodoxy of the English Scriptures. Later, in Chapter 5, we will look into the second point mentioned here: was it a “stealth” project, or was it out in the open and accepted by the authorities?
As we will see in Chapter 7, Thomas More assumed that EV and LV, whether or not he recognized the differences between them, were pre-Wycliffite and that there was also a later Wycliffite Bible, represented by Hunne’s Bible with its clearly heterodox prologue. Gasquet’s judgment about EV and LV was the same, if we read “non-Wycliffite” for “pre-Wycliffite” (and, of course, discount More’s idea of a later translation that was indeed by Wyclif or Wycliffite).
Recent Developments
Later in the twentieth century, after Gasquet was forgotten, there were other efforts to modify or redefine the Wycliffite nature of the Middle English Bible. Anne Hudson has done much of this herself, in deflating exaggerated claims, some of which we have already seen, notably for the role of certain individuals like John Purvey and Nicholas Hereford.
First, there is David Fowler’s suggestion in 1960 that both Wyclif and Trevisa took part in producing EV while living at Queen’s College in the 1370s.77 Sven Fristedt, however, believes that Trevisa and his colleagues had completed, or nearly completed, the first version of EV (what I call EEV) before Wyclif entered the picture. After Wyclif took up residence in Queen’s in 1374, he assessed the project, and, in order to improve it, he set about furnishing a Latin Bible with English glosses, which were used by Hereford and others to produce the “first revision” of EV (basically the text of EV as Forshall and Madden present it).78 Conrad Lindberg, who has been studying and editing manuscripts of the MEB since the 1950s, thinks, on the contrary, that Wyclif started preparing a critical text of the Latin Vulgate as soon as he came to Oxford, around 1354,79 and that he himself translated the EV New Testament,80 and also worked on LV before his death at the end of 1384.81
Let us look next at the proposal made by Michael Wilks in 1975.82 Hudson purports to sum up his suggestion thus: “that there existed a pre- or non-Wycliffite vernacular bible which the lollards took over and modified.”83 However, Wilks does not put it this way; he only says that the EV New Testament had been produced by 1382, with no provable or likely connection to Wyclif (Wyclif ’s own view being that the Word of God should be delivered to the faithful not through providing translations to be read but through good preaching). Then, shortly afterward, Wilks suggests, Nicholas Hereford and other Wycliffites began work on translating the rest of the Bible, producing the EV Old Testament, and next John Purvey produced the whole LV Bible. Thus, he conjectures, there was “a takeover of an originally independent English bible project by the Wycliffite movement in the decade or so after Wyclif ’s death.”84
Since Hereford and Purvey have been sidelined by Hudson, Wilks’s hypothesis can be expanded to posit that the whole enterprise was originally nonpartisan. It may even have been anti-Wycliffite in sentiment. In a recent discussion of “ideological and political fissures” at Oxford, Patrick Hornbeck notes that “the reforming fellows of The Queen’s College … distanced themselves from some of Wyclif ’s ideas whilst nevertheless sponsoring, in part, the English translation of the Bible” (Hornbeck takes it for granted that the latter was an idea of Wyclif ’s).85 Ian Johnson puts it another way: if we acknowledge that the translation endeavor was a team effort, “we need not assume that the project was entirely driven by a single ideology of church reform, or that all the collaborators could even have been characterized as Wycliffite”; and although the so-called General Prologue was written by a member of the team, “it should perhaps be taken as a polemical interpretation of the project, not a definitive statement of its aims.”86
More recently, David Lawton says it is possible “that ‘Wycliffite Bible’ is a misnomer and that the translation becomes so only when his followers take it up and it is irretrievably associated with them.” He admits that we do not know whether it was Wycliffite in origin and says that “it may be time to abandon the ubiquitous modifier ‘Wycliffite’ for its earliest full versions.” He believes, however, that the versions became associated with the Wycliffites very early on and that they were undoubtedly illegal in the fifteenth century.87
For my part, I think it likely that the enterprise was inspired by Wyclif, at least partially, because of his role in reviving Bible study at Oxford, and therefore could be called “Wycliffian” (see Chapter 3); but there is no indication that it was “Wycliffite,” that is, undertaken to promote heterodox doctrines. The EV Gospels were used by the authors of the Glossed Gospels, an Oxford project that began, according to Hudson, probably “before 1390 or even 1385,”88 but even though she calls them “Wycliffite,” she can find little in them that is unorthodox.89 And it is a project that was not successful, to judge by the small number of copies that have survived.90 It may be that there was no effort to take over the Bible translation project until the LV process was nearly finished, and that the first attempt to appropriate it for Lollardy was by the “simple creature” who wrote the treatise Five and Twenty Books—a question to be discussed in Chapter 2.91 But even so, it may be doubted that this was a widespread movement, since, as Fiona Somerset points out, few of the English Wycliffite writers made use of EV and LV.92
CHAPTER 2
Five and Twenty Books as “Official” Prologue, or Not