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CHAPTER 2

Five and Twenty Books as “Official” Prologue, or Not

After having finished our survey of the various ways in which the MEB has been regarded over the centuries, it is fitting that our first order of business should be an analysis of the only writing of the time that deals with it, namely, the treatise beginning Five and Twenty Books, which Forshall and Madden printed as the prologue to the Later Version. Its Wycliffite sentiments are a main reason why the MEB itself is so firmly attributed to Wycliffites. Even scholars like Anne Hudson, who points out that the treatise is to be found in only a few copies of the Bible (and therefore it cannot be safely taken as an integral part of LV), believe that the author was, if not the sole or chief translator, as he claims, at least an important participant, and accept his account of the translation process as accurate.¹

The General Prologue: A Latter-Day Prequel?

Let me start by giving a specific accounting of all ten manuscript copies of Five and Twenty Books/General Prologue:²

1. It survives in complete form as prologue to one complete LV Bible (Cambridge CCC 147).

2. Chapter 1 alone serves as prologue to two complete LV Bibles (Bodl.277 and Royal 1.C.8 [added to the latter in the time of Henry VII]).³

3. It serves as prologue to one LV Old Testament; most of chapter 15 missing (Harley 1666).

4. It appears two times as prologue to the LV New Testament (CUL Kk and Princeton).

5. It comes one time between an LV Old Testament and LV New Testament (CUL Mm).

6. It comes one time after an EV New Testament (Dublin Trinity A.1.10).

7. Pertinent sections of chapters 1–11 are inserted piecemeal in the Old Testament of one complete LV Bible (Lincoln).

8. It survives one time as a separate pamphlet (OUC G3).

When the treatise was first printed, in 1540 by John Gough, it was given the title of The Door of Holy Scripture, and in a 1550 edition by Robert Crowley, it was called The Pathway to Perfect Knowledge, although Crowley identifies it as “a Prologue written about 200 years ago by John Wyclif.”⁴ Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden in their parallel edition of EV and LV placed this Wycliffite work at the beginning, and they started the custom of referring to it as the “General Prologue,” but taking it to be a prologue only to the Old Testament.⁵ This is the way it is characterized in the Dublin Trinity manuscript: “A Prologue for All the Books of the Bible of the Old Testament.”⁶

Today it is more commonly considered to be a prologue to the entire Bible, including the New Testament; so Mary Dove, who calls the treatise “The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible.”⁷ Most neutral of all would be to follow Gasquet’s lead and refer to it by its incipit, Five and Twenty Books.⁸

I should clarify that, even though the author refers to himself in the third person as “a simple creature,” he uses this style only at one point, in the last chapter, elsewhere speaking in the first person (and that not very frequently).⁹ Here is the whole third-person passage:

For these resons and othere, with comune charite to save alle men in oure rewme whiche God wole have savid, a simple creature hath translatid the Bible out of Latin into English. First, this simple creature hadde miche travaile, with diverse felawis and helperis, to gedere manie elde Biblis, and othere doctouris, and comune glosis, and to make oo Latin Bible sumdel trewe; and thanne to studie it of the newe, the text with the glose, and othere doctouris, as he mighte gete, and speciali Lyre on the Elde Testament, that helpide ful miche in this werk; the thridde time to counseile with elde gramariens, and elde divinis, of harde wordis, and harde sentencis, hou tho mighten best be undurstonden and translatid; the fourth time to translate as cleerly as he coude to the sentence, and to have manie gode felawis and kunninge at the correcting of the translacioun.¹⁰

He romanticizes the actual process of translation, claiming that there is one master translator for the whole Bible, namely, himself.¹¹ Later, however, he does speak of translators in the plural, when he calls for the Church to approve the translation “of simple men.”¹² (He refers to the intended audience of the translation as “simple men of wit.”)¹³

Simple Creature (as we can call the author) implicitly includes the New Testament in his scope, since one of the examples he chooses to illustrate his technique is from Luke.¹⁴ As we see from the cited passage, he presents himself as translating the Bible by a one-time process, with no middle stage (EV), and no glossing; with, however, much reading up on glosses and commentaries of authorities, especially Nicholas of Lyre for the Old Testament, and also lots of consultation with others, and with much correcting and improving as he proceeded.¹⁵ There is nothing impossible, I admit, about a single person taking on the job of producing EV or of transforming EV into a more presentable form (LV), someone perhaps like John Trevisa—who from Caxton onward was credited with rendering the whole Bible into English. In the sixteenth century, the Douai-Rheims Bible was translated from the Vulgate by one man, Gregory Martin, at the planned rate of two chapters a day, and the whole was finished, having been corrected and annotated by no more than one or two of his colleagues at a time, and made ready for publication, in a very brief time, some months short of two years.¹⁶ Trevisa himself is credited with translating Ranulf Higden’s enormous Polychronicon in a similarly short period (ca. 1385–87).¹⁷

As we saw in the first chapter, David Fowler and Sven Fristedt think that Trevisa had a hand in EV. David Daniell sums up Fowler’s case and leaves it an open question as to whether Trevisa was involved in the project.¹⁸ On the face of it, Trevisa’s participation might seem unlikely, in view of EV’s “iconic” character (that is, its strict adherence to Latin grammatical constructions),¹⁹ which is foreign to Trevisa’s practice elsewhere. However, Fristedt has brought forth convincing evidence that Trevisa first produced a literal version of the Polychronicon similar to EV before giving it the sort of freer form that we find in LV.²⁰ Perhaps Trevisa’s participation in LV, which Fowler considers but does not defend, deserves more consideration. A prosodic (cursus) analysis could possibly throw light on the question, but it is outside the scope of the present study.

We will discuss further implications of Simple Creature’s alleged program, and Trevisa’s possible role in the MEB, when taking up Scripture study at Oxford in Chapter 3.

Simple Creature’s Wycliffite Sentiments and His Date of Writing

I have great doubt, on linguistic grounds and translation practices identifiable in the EV and LV texts, that the prologuist Simple Creature is himself the translator of LV, at least the greater part of it. But before I get into the peculiarities of his dialect, style, and principles, let me set out some of his views as we can deduce them from Five and Twenty Books. For the most part he avoids controversial topics, but he does manifest some Wycliffite teachings, although many are buried deep within the treatise. It would not be surprising if many users of the treatise in the Middle Ages, whether placed as a prologue to the Scriptures or as an independent work, would have missed the polemical elements, as Gasquet did.

The very first sentence of the treatise: “Five and twenty books of the Old Testament be books of faith, and fully books of Holy Writ,”²¹ expresses a controversial position, but it is not recognizably Wycliffite; it follows St. Jerome in labeling the other books as “apocryphal” and not inspired, a view not widely accepted since patristic times, so far as I am aware, at least in the West. Wyclif himself was not dogmatic on the subject. In De veritate Sacrae Scripturae, he follows Jerome’s count of 22 canonized books of the Old Testament, which correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, whereas there were 24 books immediately accepted to the canon of the New Testament, corresponding to the 24 letters of the Latin alphabet (with three more soon added, namely, Mark, Luke, and Acts). But Wyclif says that many of the apocryphal books are inscribed in the Book of Life, and therefore they are to be accepted as constituting the same sort of truths as our canonical Scripture, and holds that it is foolish to debate excessively about it.²²

The first near-Wycliffite passage is the assertion later in chapter 1 that Christian men and women, old and young, should study the New Testament assiduously, because it is open to the understanding of simple men, especially those who are properly meek and full of charity.²³ In chapter 2, the author becomes bolder in calling the pardons of the bishops of Rome lies (“leesingis”) and associated with Antichrist.²⁴ Nothing else untoward occurs after that until chapter 10, when he takes occasion to use three stories from Kings and Paralipomena to chastise unworthy lords and prelates. “Alas, alas, alas!” he exclaims. In contrast to King Josaphat’s promulgation of the law of God, some lords today order the preaching of indulgences, which are no more than bald-faced lies.²⁵ He denounces rulers who persecute those who preach the Gospel²⁶ and criticizes making idols of saints and swearing by them.²⁷ He laments that those who abstain from needless oaths and reprove sin are called Lollards, heretics, and raisers of debate and treason against the king,²⁸ and he rebukes the giving of alms to dead images.²⁹ Less specifically Wycliffite, perhaps, are his denunciations in chapter 13 of the widespread practice of sodomy and simony at Oxford University (the “strong maintenaunce” of sodomy at Oxford was made known “at the laste parlement”), and his condemnation of the new proposal that would require spending nine or ten years in the arts (which deal with pagan traditions) before one is allowed to proceed to the study of God’s word.³⁰ We will deal with the curricular complaint in Chapter 3, where we will see that, far from being an accurate reference to events of 1387 and 1388, it shows him to be unfamiliar with the university and its rules and customs, and cannot be taken to indicate the date of his writing.

Beginning with John Lewis in 1731,³¹ the sodomy complaint was connected to the denunciation of sodomy in the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards posted during the parliament held in London in 1395, thereby dating the prologue subsequently, and many scholars have agreed with him; at the same time, of course, this would provide a date for the completion of LV, for those who believe that Simple Creature was responsible for both.³² But Mary Dove has convincingly questioned the connection of sodomy at Oxford with that parliament. The accusation of sodomy against the clergy in Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards posted at the time does not concern Oxford; and the Oxford master reported as charged with sodomy then had in fact died years before.³³ But given Simple Creature’s above-mentioned unfamiliarity with Oxford, a distorted report of one or other of these incidents may underlie his complaint of rampant sodomy at the university.

Seemingly the most seriously heterodox passage in GP is to be found in chapter 12, where Simple Creature appears to characterize the Eucharist as purely commemorative:

If it seemith to comaunde cruelte either wickidnesse, either to forbede prophit either good doinge, it is a figuratiif speche. Crist seith, “If ye eten not the flesch of Mannis Sone and drinke not His blood, ye schulen not have liif in you.” This speche semith to comaunde wickidnesse either cruelte, therfore it is a figuratif speche, and comaundith men to comune with Cristis passioun, and to kepe in mynde sweetly and profitably that Cristis flesch was woundid and crucified for us.³⁴

As we will see, this passage was the basis of the most incriminating charges in the posthumous trial of Richard Hunne.³⁵ The fact is, however, that Simple Creature was not concerned here to introduce a controversial theological theory, since the statement comes in the midst of a large swatch of St. Augustine’s discourse on ways of interpreting Scripture in his treatise De doctrina Christiana, and he translates it literally. Here is the original Latin:

Si autem flagitium aut facinus videtur jubere, aut utilitatem aut beneficentiam vetare, figurata est. “Nisi manducaveritis,” inquit, “carnem Filii Hominis et sanguinem biberitis, non habebitis vitam in vobis.” Facinus vel flagitium videtur jubere; figura est ergo, praecipiens passioni dominicae communicandum, et suaviter atque utiliter recondendum in memoria quod pro nobis caro ejus crucifixa et vulnerata sit.³⁶

It is a great irony that Augustine’s sentiment was taken to accord with Wycliffite theology, though it would seem rather to contrast with Wyclif ’s usual statement of his view, which can be labeled “consubstantiation” as opposed to the transubstantiation of the orthodox Church; that is, Wyclif holds for the real presence of the body and blood of Christ along with the continuing presence of the substances of bread and wine.³⁷

Simple Creature in my view reveals no awareness of EV. I think that Forshall and Madden and others are misreading the text when they say that the author in referring to the English Bible “late translated” is speaking of EV,³⁸ and that he is also saying that it needs correction. The expression comes after Simple Creature has set forth the principles he uses in his translation, and he concludes by saying, if anyone should find fault in the result, let him correct it, but first check to see if there is not some mistake in the Latin Bible used, for he has seen many Latin Bibles that have more need to be corrected “than hath the English Bible late translated.”³⁹ The most natural way to take this, I think, is to say that he is referring to his own just completed Bible. If, however, he is taken to refer to EV, it would be his only such reference to EV in his treatise, or only one of two.⁴⁰ We will take this matter up again in the Chapter 3.

Finally, let us note that neither the just quoted passage nor any other part of the treatise necessarily reads like a prologue to the English Bible: there is no indication that the reader is to “look at the text following” or the like. It could just as easily be intended as a separate treatise.

The Conjunction Either Preferred to Or in GP and LV Old Testament

The most important differentiator between GP and most of EV/LV that I will put forward is a dialectal one, Simple Creature’s overwhelming preference for either over or, as in: “The first is Proverbis, either Parablis.”⁴¹ He uses either 195 times in the sixty pages of his treatise, and or only two times (and other two times).⁴² In Table 2.1, I give the incidences in FM’s copy texts, which are followed by most of the other manuscripts.⁴³ I also give the related preference for neither over ne.⁴⁴

Table 2.1. Dominance of Either in GP

GP (SC)	Chaps. 1–14Harley 1666	Chap. 15Cambridge Mm.2.15
	either 141, eithir 25, ether 1 other 1, outher 1 or 0 neither, neithir, nether 66 ne 1	either 22, eithir 6 or 2 neither 6 ne 0

It is noteworthy that the two uses of or occur in a statement in which he hopes that wise men who know the Scriptures will judge that his translation renders the Bible as clear or even clearer than the original Latin:

And where [i.e., whether] I have translatid as opinly or opinliere in English as in Latin, late wise men deme, that knowen wel bothe langagis and knowen wel the sentence of Holy Scripture; and wher [i.e., whether] I have do thus, or nay, ne doute, they that kunne wel the sentence of Holy Writ and English togidere, and wolen travaile with Goddis grace theraboute, moun make the Bible as trewe and as opin, yea, and opinliere in English than it is in Latin.⁴⁵

The use of either for or is comparatively rare in England as a whole, to judge by the data provided by the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME), especially when either is preferred so exclusively.⁴⁶

When we look at a sampling of the Old Testament (Genesis at the beginning, 1 Samuel and Job in the middle, and 1 Maccabees at the end), we find that the EV prefers or, but LV Old Testament regularly transforms EV or into either.⁴⁷

In the New Testament, looking only at the Gospels, we observe that EV Matthew, Mark, and John, like the Old Testament books, favor or, but Luke favors either, though there is much variation evident.⁴⁸ It turns out that EEV Luke prefers or, meaning that an either-speaking scholar like Simple Creature meddled with EEV to produce the EV mixed bag.⁴⁹ The striking thing is that all EEV Gospels use only or, and the same is true of all LV Gospels.⁵⁰

Lindberg observes that all EV manuscripts show signs of revision.⁵¹ But let us note Fristedt’s view that some new readings are systematic changes to EEV made by the First Revision team (instructed by the postulated Latin Bible annotated by Wyclif), whereas other manuscripts “were tampered with by men of small learning who for reasons unknown sporadically and at random corrected texts from other manuscripts.”⁵² One typical First Revision characteristic is the introduction of glosses after or or ether.⁵³

Let us now see what the rest of the New Testament shows us on or and either. First of all, we can say that there is a preference for or in the Pauline Epistles of both EV and LV.⁵⁴ Moreover, like the whole of EV, the rest of the LV is equally sparing in its use of either, with the notable exception of four books, namely, Acts, James, 1 Peter, and the Apocalypse.⁵⁵ Here at last, then, we may speculate that Simple Creature may have at least participated in a later phase of the Bible-translation project: but it is a far cry from his having done the whole thing.

There is another use of either in GP and the LV Old Testament that may indicate Simple Creature’s participation in the LV Old Testament: namely, the phrase ever-either to mean “each of two.”⁵⁶

To summarize, we see that EV favors or in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. LV favors either in the Old Testament and or in the New Testament, except that four of the later books of LV (Acts, James, 1 Peter, and the Apocalypse) favor either. The phrase ever-either is also favored by GP and the LV Old Testament.

By the either criterion alone, therefore, we might conclude that Simple Creature, the author of GP, was the translator of the LV Old Testament and the four either-favoring books of the LV New Testament. But now we will look at some peculiarities that will tend to exclude the LV Old Testament from Simple Creature’s handiwork.

Forsooth Shunned in GP and LV New Testament, but Not in LV Old Testament

At one point in his discussion of translation principles, Simple Creature takes up the frequent Vulgate use of the postpositive narrative particles autem and vero (which translate the still more frequent Greek postpositive de), saying that they can mean either “forsooth” or “but,” and that he himself in his Bible translation commonly renders them as “but”; but he adds that the Latin particles can also mean “and,” according to the grammarians.⁵⁷ In the sixty pages of Five and Twenty Books (GP), he never uses forsooth in these ways. Let us see what the practice is of our versions.

In the Old Testament, LV consistently continues the EV style of translating autem and vero as forsooth or, less frequently, soothly, in Genesis, 1 Samuel, Job, and 1 Maccabees. LV, however, invariably changes the postpositive position to initial.⁵⁸

This usage would indicate that Simple Creature is not the translator of the LV Old Testament, in spite of LV’s preference for either.

As for the New Testament, forsooth and soothly are favorite words for this context in the EV New Testament, but not in LV, where they were actively boycotted.⁵⁹

Now let us look at a different stylistic use of forsooth. At the end of his treatise, as an afterthought, Simple Creature returns to translational style with three notes, all of which are relevant for our discussion. We will begin with the second, since it deals with forsooth. He says that the conjunction enim commonly means “forsooth,” but, as Jerome warns, it can also signify cause, “forwhy.”⁶⁰ It turns out, however, that out of the more than eight hundred uses of enim in the Vulgate New Testament, LV translates it as forsooth only once (Romans 9.28). LV does translate enim as forwhy twenty-six times, but this can hardly be interpreted as meaning that it was an important principle to the translator.⁶¹ Rather, it is more likely that Simple Creature noticed this use in LV and turned it into a principle.

Simple Creature’s Declarations on the Latin Prepositions Ex and Secundum

The other notes that Simple Creature adds at the end of his treatise deal with two prepositions.

Ex to Be Rendered as Of or By (According to SC)

First, he says that the Latin preposition ex can mean sometimes “of” and at other times “by,” according to Jerome.⁶² Jerome obviously knew nothing of English, of course, so Simple Creature is probably saying merely that ex often signifies agency, which he assumes would be rendered by by. In so saying, however, he shows how out of touch he is with the realities of EV and LV. It is obvious that ex is usually translated as of, but it is also translated in several other ways, among which by is very infrequent. LV never changes an alternative translation of ex in EV to by, except as part of a policy of changing every after to by.⁶³

The fact that by is hardly used for ex in LV is all the more striking when we consider the explosion of uses of by elsewhere in LV. For instance, there are three times as many bys in LV Genesis as there are in EV Genesis.⁶⁴

Secundum to Be Translated as After, or By, or Up (So Says SC)

The final note that Simple Creature makes at the end of his treatise concerns the Latin preposition secundum, which commonly means “after,” but it may also mean “by” or “up,” so either “by your word” or “up your word.”⁶⁵ Actually, even though Simple Creature allows the use of up as a preposition, he himself does not use it in this way when the sense calls for it (which occurs only in chapter 15); for instance, he says: “aftir the sentence, and not onely aftir the wordis.”⁶⁶ His translation note would seem to indicate that “after” is the usual meaning of secundum, but that on occasion by or up would better give the sense.

This opens up a very interesting set of questions. It turns out that after is by far the favored translation of secundum in EV, in both Old Testament and New Testament, but in the Old Testament LV it is replaced almost always with by.

But let us first deal with the unusual preposition up. First of all, we note that there is no use of up as a preposition in three of our four sample books of the Old Testament in EV, but EV 1 Maccabees has added some (Table 2.2).

Table 2.2. UP as Preposition in EV Old Testament

This calls for a closer look, since Forshall and Madden list what they consider the “very frequent” use of up for “after” as one of the characteristics of the translator who takes over EV after the middle of Baruch, continuing through the end of the Old Testament all the way to the end of the New Testament;⁶⁷ and Fristedt considers use of the preposition up to be a characteristic of Purvey (as author of GP and translator of LV), taking it as an innovation introduced into post-Baruch EV by later correctors.⁶⁸ Let me state right away that I find a few signs of a stylistic break in Baruch itself.⁶⁹

I have surveyed the use of the preposition secundum from the Prophets to the end of the Old Testament, and also the preposition juxta when it means the same thing.⁷⁰ What we see is no change immediately after Baruch in the large book of Ezekiel, but then a sudden intrusion of ups into Daniel, complete dominance in the Minor Prophets, a half victory in First Maccabees, and complete retreat in Second Maccabees. It is clear that an up user came on the scene at this point in the translation, exerted his influence, and then departed.

The fortunes of up in the EV New Testament are very intriguing. In the Gospels of the EEV (Oxford, Christ Church College 145) there is no use of up, but in EV (Douce 369.2) there is an intrusion of ups into Luke and a few into John.⁷¹ This may remind us of the intrusion of eithers into EV Luke. The either user could have been Simple Creature, but not the up user (since he shows no use of up in GP). However, there is a marked use of prepositional up in the rest of the New Testament in EEV, which is entirely followed by EV.⁷² It indicates a change of personnel in the translation of EEV after the Gospels.⁷³

In the LV, there seems to be a complete lack of up as a preposition in the Old Testament, except for a flurry of uses in a single book, 2 Samuel.⁷⁴ It is also completely missing from the four Gospels and the rest of the LV New Testament.⁷⁵ This is a sobering thought for those who believe that Simple Creature is speaking for the LV translators.

The statement made by Simple Creature about the alternative translations of secundum reveals an unawareness on his part of what actually happened in the transition from the EV Old Testament to the LV: there was a massive rejection of after in favor of by in the translation not only of secundum but also of juxta, when it means the same thing. However, after remained in favor in the LV New Testament.⁷⁶

Summary Judgment on Simple Creature

Let us make some interlocutory conclusions here on the basis of Simple Creature’s translational practices and personal style in GP, which has been taken as written after the whole of LV was finished (except for Forshall and Madden, who believe that it may have been written before the LV New Testament was done):⁷⁷

1. He says that the Latin preposition ex can be translated not only by of but also by by; but it is almost never translated by by in either EV or LV, even though LV greatly expands the use of by for other Latin prepositions.

2. He specifies that the Latin preposition secundum can be translated not only by after, but also by by and up. He does not realize that the LV Old Testament actively boycotted after and replaced it with by, while the LV New Testament kept after. Further, he does not know that, while the preposition up had found some favor in some parts of EV, especially in the New Testament Epistles, it had been entirely purged from LV.

3. It might seem that his recommendation to translate Latin autem otherwise than by forsooth was put into practice in the LV New Testament, but he seems oblivious of the continued use of forsooth throughout the LV Old Testament.

4. Furthermore, he shows no awareness that his recommendation of translating Latin enim by either forsooth or forwhy, which was the practice of the EV New Testament, was not followed in the LV New Testament (except minimally for forwhy).

5. Finally, while Simple Creature’s personal style of favoring either over or was adopted for the LV Old Testament, it found favor only in LV Acts and Revelation and two minor Epistles (James and 1 Peter), and abortively in Luke (seen in EV’s changes from EEV).

Thus, while one might be persuaded to see Simple Creature’s hand in one or another section of EV or LV by resorting to one of these criteria, by taking all of them together we must conclude that his profile is not matched in the Middle English Bible and that his claim to be the sole or main translator is overstated, to say the least. If he did participate at any stage, he was not able to impose all of his preferences, except perhaps in a few later books of the New Testament.

Other Wycliffite Connections Disallowed

Forshall and Madden believe that in the EV phase the New Testament was translated first, assuming that the renderings of the Gospels found in the Wycliffite Glossed Gospels, which they take to be by Wyclif himself, were extracted and used in EV.⁷⁸ The assumption nowadays is the reverse: that the Wycliffites responsible for the glosses use the already-finished EV text.⁷⁹ However, the Swedish scholars Sven Fristedt and Conrad Lindberg continue to favor Wyclif ’s participation. Lindberg believes that Simple Creature is reporting Wyclif ’s translational principles in GP chapter 15.⁸⁰

Forshall and Madden then identify the translator of the Old Testament as Nicholas Hereford, at least the first five-sixths of it, up to the middle of Baruch 3.20, where the fifth and last hand of MS Bodley 959 suddenly breaks off, because another manuscript, Douce 369.1, says at this point, though not in the hand of the scribe, “Explicit Nicholay de herford.”⁸¹ They argue that Douce was copied from 959 before the extensive corrections found in 959 were added.⁸² Lindberg dates MS 959 to around 1400, and he thinks the ascription of this part of the Old Testament to Hereford to be likely, and probably the rest of the Old Testament as well. He estimates that the project would have taken Hereford around twenty years, beginning while he was still an adherent to Wyclif ’s doctrines, and continuing after his reconciliation to the Church authorities, which occurred by 1391.⁸³ Anne Hudson regards the interpretation placed on this ascription with skepticism, not necessarily doubting that Hereford might have been involved, but rejecting the notion that the work of translation was that of one man.⁸⁴

Forshall and Madden are convinced that the translation of EV after Baruch 3.20 changes noticeably,⁸⁵ but Lindberg concludes that there is no material difference.⁸⁶ One example that Forshall and Madden give, that Hereford uniformly translates Latin secundum as after, whereas later it is frequently rendered as up, has been shown above to be true of only some books.

As noted earlier, John Purvey’s role as the chief mover behind the LV translation was elaborated from earlier conjectures to a harder hypothesis by Forshall and Madden. It was brought to the peak of respectability and certainty by Margaret Deanesly, who holds, in her monograph of 1920, that Purvey was not only the author of LV and GP but of the Glossed Gospels and various other tracts.⁸⁷ Cardinal Gasquet’s protest of 1894 went unheeded, but claims for Purvey were dismissed by most scholars after Hudson’s article of 1981.⁸⁸ It would be tempting to keep Purvey available as the Wycliffite prologuist Simple Creature,⁸⁹ since his recanting of Lollard doctrine came only in 1401, whereas Hereford’s was a decade earlier. Purvey came originally from northern Buckinghamshire (the village of Lathbury, by Newport Pagnell), which may have been a region of either speakers, and he does not seem to have been a scholar, since there is no record of him at Oxford⁹⁰—which, of course, would fit with SC’s ignorance of Oxford customs. In 1414, however, he was found to be in possession of a Bible (presumably Latin), a separate copy of the Gospels and a copy of the Pauline Epistles and other Latin works connected with the Bible, especially commentaries on the Epistles (by Lyre, “Bede,” and “Parisiensis”); and he also possessed the two main collections of canon law, Gratian’s Decretum and Gregory IX’s Decretals.⁹¹

A Trial Scenario for Simple Creature

Let us first consider the possibility that Simple Creature, a native of either country (perhaps somewhere in Buckinghamshire away from the Oxford environs), came to his biblical scholarship late, well after EV was finished and when LV was just wrapping up. He managed to join the New Testament team in time to contribute to the revising of four books, namely, Acts, James, 1 Peter, and the Apocalypse.

It is possible that at some point Simple Creature turned his hand to work with fellow either speakers on the Glossed Gospels, even though EV was used throughout. These compilations are entirely derivative in content, and, except for some quasi-treatises on special topics, they show little or no Lollard bias.⁹² The author of the Prologue to Short Matthew uses only either, at least in one of the two manuscripts that contain it (Mary Dove’s editions do not take note of either/or variants), and calls himself Simple Creature.⁹³ The body of the work also uses only either in the excerpts given by Hudson.⁹⁴ The Prologue to Short Luke similarly uses only either.⁹⁵ Here the author calls himself “a poor caitiff,” prevented from preaching for a while, for reasons known to God. Like Simple Creature in Five and Twenty Books, he uses both thirdperson and first-person pronouns to refer to himself.⁹⁶ Short Luke is based on Long Luke, and, in the selections given by Hudson, both use only either,⁹⁷ as do those from Short Mark⁹⁸ (Hudson considers Mark the last Gospel to be glossed).⁹⁹ Long John prefers or, though with a good sprinkling of eithers,¹⁰⁰ whereas Short John uses or almost entirely,¹⁰¹ and Long Matthew does so exclusively.¹⁰²

The Glossed Gospels was undoubtedly a long-term project. It must have overlapped with the LV project, even though it continued to use basically EV texts throughout.¹⁰³ It is my guess that the LV undertaking was independent of the Glossed Gospels endeavor, and that Simple Creature, if he did indeed work on the Glossed Gospels, eventually sought out the LV Old Testament team, which had been outsourced to his home territory, in either-speaking country.¹⁰⁴

Work on the LV Old Testament was nearing its end; specifically, I suggest, Isaiah had been finished: or was changed to either, and up mostly eliminated (as in other parts of the LV Old Testament), and, though forsooths were drastically cut down, still a lot remained (Table 2.3).

Table. 2.3. Or/Either, Up, Forsooth, and Forwhy in Isaiah

Note: “gl” refers to alternative translations of words preceded by or or either.

In EV, forsooth did service for enim in the Latin (which occurs ninety-seven instances in the Vulgate Isaiah) and other words; in LV, thirty-six of the instances that remain are carried over from EV (fourteen translating enim, seventeen translating autem). Only one new forsooth has been added (Isaiah 7.9, corresponding to no Latin term), and in two cases EV forsooth has been replaced by forwhy (Isaiah 10.22, translating enim, and 10.25, translating autem), and one time forwhy replaces for in EV (Isaiah 11.9, translating Latin quia). Soothly replaces forsooth six times in LV, and adds one (Isaiah 43.19, utique, EV also). It can hardly be thought that Simple Creature’s influence has been at work here. But perhaps it was the use of forwhy twice in this book to translate enim that gave him the idea for his remark in GP (that forwhy is the rendering of enim when signifying cause).

Up to this point, the LV team had omitted all of the prefatory material found in EV, but Simple Creature now proposed to contribute a prologue to Isaiah, which was accepted. The result fits his style, as we can see from a comparison with the EV Jerome prologue (Table 2.4).

Table 2.4. Or/Either and Forsooth in the Prologues to Isaiah

Isaiah	EV Prologue (Jerome)	LV Prologue (SC?)
Or/Either	or 3	or 1
	or (gl) 2
	ether 0	ether, ethir 11
Forsooth	forsothe 5	forsothe 0

We note that the new prologue has only one or, but this is doubtless a scribal stylistic improvement from either in the Royal manuscript, since the other collated manuscripts have either. Here is the sentence in which it occurs:

Therfor men moten seke the treuthe of the text, and be war of goostli undurstonding ether moral fantasie, and 3ive not ful credence therto, no but it be groundid opinly in the text of Hooly Writ, in o place or* other, ethir in opin resoun that may not be avoided; for ellis it wole as likingly be applied to falsnesse as to treuthe, and it hath disseived grete men in oure daies, by over greet trist to her fantasies.¹⁰⁵ *ether FGKMNPQRSVUXY

In this statement, Simple Creature’s Wycliffite leanings surface in a mild way, as Mary Dove points out.¹⁰⁶

Dove calls this prologue a “Prologue to the Prophets,” in keeping with some of the manuscripts, and with Simple Creature’s own characterization of it in GP,¹⁰⁷ but more accurately it is only a “Prologue to Isaiah,” as is recognized in other manuscripts.¹⁰⁸

The treatise beginning with the words The Holy Prophet David,¹⁰⁹ advocating the translation of the Bible into English, fits Simple Creature’s preference for either (seven times), but with a rather high incidence of or (two times). That the work is by the author of GP is suggested by Mary Dove, who says that the sentence “As Gregor and Grosted sein, to make unable curatis is the higheste wikkidnesse and tresun ayens God, and is lik sinne as to crucifie Crist” is a summary of part of GP chapter 10.¹¹⁰ Or, in keeping with my scenario here, we may judge it to be Simple Creature’s sketch of a sentiment that he will later expand in Five and Twenty Books. But in contrast to the larger treatise, his interest here is less on serious study of the Bible than in using it, as Dove says, “for comfort and consolation.”¹¹¹

In his Prologue to Isaiah, Simple Creature promised, impersonally, to write a discourse on the four levels of meaning in the Scriptures to be placed at the beginning of the Bible: “Of these foure undurstondingis schal be seid pleinlier, if God wole, on the biginning of Genesis.”¹¹² This must have turned into a draft of GP, which in the final form begins with a very long summary of the Old Testament books and takes up the four senses of Scripture only in chapter 12.¹¹³ He originally intended to draw on Nicholas of Lyre’s commentary and other books, but at the time of his writing he did not have them to hand, and he was forced to rely instead on Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana “as a default source,” as Rita Copeland puts it, until a copy of Lyre arrived.¹¹⁴ In other words, he was writing at a place significantly removed from Oxford, or from ready access to Oxford’s libraries.¹¹⁵ I should add here that Augustine’s work was used for the same purpose by the author of a prologue to one of the Glossed Gospels, namely, the so-called Intermediate Matthew, an or speaker, whose biblical quotations resemble EV, whereas Simple Creature’s quotations in Five and Twenty Books are akin to LV and sometimes are direct quotations of LV. It is judged that both the authors draw on some longer source using Augustine’s work.¹¹⁶

In contrast to Five and Twenty Books, which, as we have seen, was attached to very few MEB manuscripts, the Prologue to Isaiah is included in all twenty-one of the LV manuscripts containing Isaiah.¹¹⁷

Since our analysis above indicates that Simple Creature’s style is not matched anywhere in the LV Old or New Testament, except for four books in the latter, we should conclude that he was not a major force behind the project, and a claim on his part to be the translator would not sit well with the real translators. Accordingly, it may be that GP as first submitted by him ended with chapter 14, and after it was spurned by the LV administrators, Simple Creature hatched the idea of adding a final chapter, a new treatise that we can call after its opening words, “Forasmuch as Christ Saith,” in which he takes credit for the whole enterprise. This is where he first identifies himself as our humble servant: “For these resons and othere, with comune charite to save alle men in oure rewme, whiche God wole have savid, a simple creature hath translatid the Bible out of Latin into English. First, this simple creature hadde myche travaile, with diverse felawis and helperis,” and so on.¹¹⁸ We can be sure that Simple Creatures’s “divers fellows and helpers” did not take kindly to this description of their actual role in the production of EV and LV.¹¹⁹