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CHAPTER 3

The Bible at Oxford

The MEB has been persistently connected with Oxford University, whether through its supposed origins in the circle of the Oxford professor John Wyclif or simply as a center for biblical studies. We shall now explore these connections and implications directly.

Loss of Interest in the Bible in the Mid-Fourteenth Century and Its Revival by Wyclif (and Others)

In a recent study of Wyclif, G. R. Evans refers to “the legend that Wyclif put Scripture back at the centre of theological studies, and sought to make its text available for ordinary people to read in their own language,” and asks, concerning the first part of the legend, “Did Wyclif need to bring the study of the Bible back into a prominent position? Had it ever slipped from first place in theological studies?”¹ The answer to these questions is an undoubted “yes,” and it seems that we must affirm the truth of Wyclif ’s important role in renewing academic interest in the Latin Bible. Furthermore, like his admired predecessor at Oxford, Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), he sought to diminish the scholastic “track” by reducing all theology to the study of the Bible.² It may well be that we cannot avoid crediting to Wyclif the vernacular Bible as well, at least in the sense that his emphasis on the Bible was at least indirectly responsible for it. If so, we will have to decide whether the resulting project should be called simply “Wycliffian” rather than “Wycliffite” (the latter term, like “Lollard,” carrying with it polemical and heterodox intentions and overtones).

From the beginnings of the universities in the twelfth century until well into the fourteenth, there were major faculties of theology only in three centers of Europe: Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge.³ Originally at Oxford it seems that biblical exposition or exegesis was one of three “concentrations” for a theology degree, the others being the study of the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the study of the Histories of Peter Comestor. But by the mid-thirteenth century, Bible study had become an essential part of every theological education, along with the Sentences. However—and this is a sobering fact—even though the scholarly study of the Bible had flourished around the turn of the fourteenth century all over Europe, producing, notably, the commentaries of the Franciscan Nicholas of Lyre in France and the commentaries of the Dominican Nicholas Trevet in England, by the middle decades of the century interest in biblical exegesis had died out. According to William Courtenay, during the fourteenth century throughout the universities and other centers of study of Europe there was a “general separation of biblical exegesis and speculative theology,” and after 1335, scriptural studies were “almost a silent topic for the next forty years.”⁴ Beryl Smalley refers to it as the midcentury slump.⁵ Courtenay goes on to say that “the most important stage in the development of biblical studies in the late fourteenth century was the appearance of the treatises and commentaries of John Wyclif” written between 1371 and his death in 1384; and also, Courtenay adds, Wyclif ’s “English translation of portions of the Bible”⁶—which is another matter! He concludes that Wyclif ’s activity in this area should be seen “as part of the first wave of that reawakened interest” in Scripture study.⁷ However, Wyclif ’s exact contemporary, the Franciscan William Woodford, who lectured on Lombard at the same time as Wyclif, was also chiefly interested in producing biblical commentaries.⁸ Just before Wyclif ’s time, Richard Fitzralph (d. 1360) was vitally taken up with the text of Scripture, as shown in the dialogue on the subject in his Summa,⁹ and another contemporary of Wyclif ’s, the Benedictine Adam Easton, taught himself Hebrew and made a new Latin translation, and he also collated readings from different versions of the Bible.¹⁰

The Oxford Theology Curriculum and Wyclif’s Participation; Wyclif’s Bad Latin

Whatever the practice was in the faculty of theology at Oxford in the 1300s, the statutes that continued in force favored the Bible over the Sentences and certainly over the Histories. In the earliest statute, passed in 1253, it is said that before one can incept (meaning “commence” in the academic sense of finishing all requirements and receiving a degree) as a master of theology (after fulfilling the requirements of a bachelor and being licensed), one must read (lecture on) a book of the Bible or one of the four books of the Sentences, or a book of the Histories.¹¹ A later statute requires lecturing on a book of the Bible or the Sentences,¹² but further on it says that one must have audited (taken courses on) the Bible for three years and lectured on a book of the Bible,¹³ with no mention of the Sentences.

The requirements for proceeding from bachelor of theology to doctor of theology are obscurely stated: “After lecturing on a book of the Sentences, the one intending to incept must undertake study for at least two years or so before he ascends the magistral chair.”¹⁴ James Weisheipl tells us that this means that the new bachelor, called a “bachelor of the Sentences,” is to first lecture on the Sentences before giving at least two years of “cursory lectures” on the Bible.¹⁵ This procedure differed from that of the University of Paris, where the lectures on the Sentences followed those on the Bible. The Dominicans objected to the Oxford order, but the settlement of 1314 left the English custom in place.¹⁶

It is odd that Wyclif left no traces of a Sentences commentary or writing in the form of disputed questions or quodlibets, although he did leave behind determinationes, reflecting public academic disputes on controversial questions (but without using the term questiones). Given Wyclif ’s obsessive desire to write and publish constantly, and to rewrite and edit earlier writings, it is hard to believe that he would not have preserved such scholastic efforts if he took them seriously. We know from Woodford’s testimony that Wyclif did lecture on the Sentences, but it may be that he merely summarized the material for the students without adding anything original of his own. Instead, he wrote treatises on a wide range of subjects; and those who argue that some of them were outgrowths of his Sentences work must deal with the point that none of them preserve the sentential mode of discourse.

It has been suggested that the sentential style of presentation was going out of fashion in England just at this time, which might account for Wyclif’s failure to use it.¹⁷ But perhaps there was another explanation for his dislike of the discourse. For some reason Wyclif had never learned to speak and write Latin properly; his academic style may have been the worst in medieval Christendom. Could he have realized that his linguistic skills were not equal to the questionoriented give-and-take of scholastic disputation? Blame for his poor Latin has been unjustly put on his scholastic studies.¹⁸ Another spurious explanation is that by this time English scholars had stopped thinking in Latin and were instead thinking in English: “Wycliffe’s Latin is base even as compared with that of such of his predecessors as Ockham; there is a gulf between it and that of Thomas Aquinas. Wycliffe in fact belongs to a time when scholars were ceasing to think in Latin. It is significant of his position that he is one of the founders of English prose-writing. To understand his Latin it is often necessary to translate it into English; certainly in obscure passages this is often the readiest way of getting at his meaning.”¹⁹ However, other writers of the time wrote good Latin, from his former scholastic colleague William Woodford to formulators of episcopal constitutions and registers to legal commentaries to chronicles to spiritual treatises and other kinds of composition. The idea that Wyclif’s Latin is infected by English constructions is sound enough in his case, in contrast to other authors of the time. But the further notion that, even though he was linguistically inept in Latin, he was masterful in English needs reconsideration, since it is based on the assumption of his authorship of numerous English treatises. Perhaps, however, one might make a case that he served as an inspiration for the awkward Latin-based language of EV, though hardly for Fristedt’s theory that Wyclif carefully doctored a Latin Bible with English glosses, which provided the basis for the First Revision (that is, from EEV to EV). The great mystery is that he went through the entire master of arts (MA) and bachelor of theology curricula with defective language skills and emerged at the level of theological master.

The above-stated possible reasons for Wyclif ’s neglect of sentential discourse, that it was going out of fashion and that his Latin was not up to it, lead me to consider another possibility: he elected to spend more time and effort on the Scripture track, coming up with an ambitious plan to produce postils on the entire Old and New Testaments. Though there seems to be nothing of his own in these commentaries, he must have preferred to produce a routine biblical commentary, unusual for his day, to creating yet another commonplace Sentences summary. His plan had the distinct advantage of giving him a supreme mastery of the Word of God, to prepare him for his lectures.

Bible Study at Oxford: Graduate Students and Extracurricular Auditors

We can only conjecture whether Wyclif ’s concentration upon the Bible during his theological studies and doctoral teaching had an immediate effect upon the way in which the Bible was taught at Oxford. It would not seem that his postils were a great success, since they survive, if at all, only in scattered copies,²⁰ and there is no indication that anyone after him attempted a similar feat, even in part.

It is assumed that Wyclif lectured from his postils between 1371 and 1376.²¹ But every theology master must have lectured on the books of the Bible in his own way. And, contrary to what is often stated, I argue below that such lectures could be attended not only by arts masters who were proceeding to a degree in theology, but also by clerical auditors who came to the university with no intention of obtaining a degree.

Who were the clergy who went to Oxford to study the Bible? John Moorman, writing about the thirteenth century, says that rectors of parishes “were sent to the Universities for a few years not to read the usual ‘arts’ course but to study such subjects as would enable them to serve more efficiently in the parishes. Among the many licences which were granted to men who wished to leave their parishes for a time ‘to frequent the schools’ we find that some went to read theology, some Canon Law, while a few made the Bible the special object of their studies.”²² He finds the latter group of students specified under the designations “in Sacra Pagina” and “in Sacra Scriptura,”²³ but these phrases were simply different ways of designating theology: in other words, theology itself was thought of as primarily the study of the Bible.

In his recent book on study leaves for parish clergy, Donald Logan has found that well over a thousand curates (rectors) were given permissions in the first half of the fourteenth century from the diocese of Lincoln alone. They went to university (overwhelmingly to Oxford) for a few years to improve themselves.²⁴ Logan, however, believes that they would not have been allowed to study the Bible, because the MA was required for incepting in theology.²⁵ But, as we saw above, the curates he is speaking of, for the most part, like the majority of other students at Oxford, did not intend to get a degree,²⁶ and it would follow that they were under no constraint to follow degree programs.²⁷

It is true that almost all of the licenses for study leave in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries refer only to studium litterarum, but this should not make us think that the rectors studied only arts courses. The licenses are simply following the text of Boniface VIII’s decretal Cum ex eo in the Liber Sextus, issued in 1298, allowing new appointees to rectorships to put off progression to the priesthood while in studies.²⁸ John Andrew in the Ordinary Gloss to the Sext (finished in 1304 or 1305) says at litterarum that because the pope does not make distinctions, he understands it as a general expression, to refer to grammar, canon or civil law, or theology.²⁹ The decretal allows dispensations for as long as seven years, and Andrew comments, “Note that a scholar should be proficient (provectus) in seven years,” adding that a five-year period of proficiency is specified for a theology student in an earlier decretal, and the same period is set elsewhere for a student in civil law.³⁰ It is noteworthy that six of the priests studied by Logan who were given study leave were specifically allowed to study theology or canon law, even though they did not have the MA.³¹

We can get some notion of how such short-term concentrations operated from William Lyndwood, writing in the 1420s,³² who himself received such a license and dispensation when he was a deacon (in his case to complete his doctorate in both laws).³³ Commenting on Archbishop John Peckham’s 1281 constitution requiring those practicing as advocates in court to have studied canon and civil law for at least three years (“nisi prius ad minus per triennium audiverit jus canonicum et civile cum debita diligentia”), Lyndwood says that the stipulated time in Roman civil law for advocates is five years. He suggests that Peckham lessened the requirement only for those working in the smaller church courts, where three years of experience in cases and in studying practice and theory seems sufficient (“in talibus namque sufficere videtur quod aliquis sit exercitatus in causis et habeat practicam cum speculativo per triennium”). The would-be advocate must study as the disciple of a master or doctor (“ut discipulus sub magistro sive doctore”); the constitution seemingly allows the study to take place not only in a university (“studium generale”) but elsewhere as well; Lyndwood, however, thinks otherwise: one should audit the laws under a doctor in a place where such laws are publicly taught (“quod debeat jura audire sub doctore in loco ubi jura hujusmodi publice docentur”). Afterward, the student can prove that he has fulfilled the forensic requirement by the testimony of the doctor under whom he studied (“per testimonium doctoris sub quo studuit”), or by a testimonial letter from the chancellor of the university where he studied (“litera testimonialis cancelarii universitatis in qua studuit”).³⁴

As for the curriculum to be followed by these three-year students, Lyndwood recommends that, even though the statute specifies both canon and civil law, they limit themselves to canon law, learning only such provisions of civil law as are cited in glosses to the canons; otherwise, they will be able to learn neither subject well.³⁵

I take it that most of the rectors who went to Oxford to study theology spent their specified years of leave in a similar way, being able to set up their own individual programs of study.

We saw in Chapter 2 that Simple Creature condemned a supposedly new proposal that would put an end to the immediate access to Bible study that curates now enjoyed and force them to spend nine or ten years in the arts beforehand. It is important to look at his words on this point, because they have been mistakenly interpreted as a knowledgeable reference to a curricular squabble that occurred in Oxford in 1388, hence providing a sound date for his time of writing. He says:

But alas! alas! alas! The most [greatest] abomination that ever was heard among Christian clerks is now purposed in England, by worldly clerks and feigned religious, and in the chief university of our realm, as many true men tell with great wailing. This horrible and Devil’s cursedness is purposed of Christ’s enemies and traitors of all Christian people, that no man shall learn divinity, neither Holy Writ, no but he that hath done his form in art, that is, that hath commenced in art, and hath been regent twain year after; this would be nine year either ten before that he learn Holy Writ.³⁶

After proceeding to talk about the general degeneracy of morals at Oxford, and especially sodomy and simony, he returns to the subject of impeding the learning of Scripture:

Yet on these three abominations God would graciously convert clerks, if they would do very [true] penance, and give them wholly to virtues; but on the fourth most abomination³⁷ purposed now to let [prevent] Christian men, yea, priests and curates, to learn freely God’s Law, till they have spent nine year either ten at art (that comprehendeth many strong errors of heathen men against Christian belief), it seemeth well that God will not cease of vengeance till it and other be punished sore; for it seemeth that worldly clerks and feigned religious do this, that simple men of wit and of finding know not God’s Law, to preach it generally against sins in the realm. But wit ye, worldly clerks and feigned religious, that God both can and may, if it liketh [pleases] Him, speed simple men out[side] of the university as much to ken Holy Writ as masters in the university; and therefore no great charge though never man of good will be poisoned with heathen men’s errors nine year either ten, but ever live well and study Holy Writ by old doctors and new, and preach truly and freely against open sins, [un]to his death.³⁸

We learn two things here: first, that Simple Creature is well aware that students at Oxford, specifically priests with the care of souls, at the present time can study the Bible without having to go through the arts curriculum; and second, that he believes there is an effort underway to put an end to this easy access to Scripture instruction. He could hardly be wrong about the first point. Wyclif himself, writing in 1378, speaks of the practice of parish priests going on leave to universities to study the Bible. “It is permissible,” he says, “for a rector to be away from his parish, for a time, to gather the seed of faith in theological schools, so that he may sow it ‘in due season.’”³⁹ It is confirmed in a Wycliffite tract, Why Poor Priests Have No Benefice: “If such curates be stirred to go learn God’s Law and teach their parishens the Gospel, commonly they shall get no leave of bishops but for gold; and when they shall most profit in their learning, then shall they be clept home at the prelate’s will.”⁴⁰

But Simple Creature is clearly wrong about the second point, and it demonstrates that he and his immediate associates were not familiar with procedures at Oxford.

Simple Creature’s remarks were seen by John Lewis⁴¹ and others as being a reference to the proposal in 1387 or early 1388 to enforce the statute of 1253 stipulating that no one can incept in theology (qualify for theological regency, that is, teaching theology) without first finishing regency in arts.⁴² According to Lewis, the proposal was “that hereafter no one should be an inceptor in divinity unless he had first completed his act in the liberal sciences, had read a book of the Canon and preached publicly in the university, which the Author [of the Prologue] represents as if it was purposed that ‘no man should learn divinity nor Holy Writ till he had done his form, or commenced in art, and been regent two year after.’”⁴³ Lewis quite clearly tells us that the General Prologue author misrepresented the proposal by interpreting it to refer to the very beginning of theology study rather than to its completion. He could also have told us that the GP author was mistaken in assuming that the policy was directed against all students at Oxford, whereas it was aimed only against friars, by the secular clergy. It had been customary to dispense friars from the requirement of inception (and formal study) in the faculty of arts, and now it was proposed to refuse to grant any such dispensations—which, however, were characterized as dispensations from the requirement of regency after incepting as masters of arts.

Simple Creature’s garbled reference to the proposed Oxford reform has been taken as a sure date for the GP: it must have been written after the measure was proposed in 1387, and before it was inhibited by Richard II on March 17, 1387/8, and again on August 1, 1388 (the assumption being that Simple Creature could not have made his statement after the initiative was spiked and the crisis averted).⁴⁴ But Simple Creature has only heard the alarming news about the curricular proposal from “many true men,” informants who would not necessarily have known about the king’s actions against it; and doubtless the shock of the deadly proposal (as they understood it) was still reverberating in the land. Even if it was not, and Simple Creature was writing years later, he may have decided to present it as an ongoing threat, since it involved the enforcement of an existing requirement (he thinks). He need not have been writing as late as 1395 or 1396, since, as we saw in Chapter 2, Lewis’s argument for associating the sodomy-at-Oxford complaint with the Lollard Twelve Conclusions has been called into question.

Simple Creature’s Unrealistic/Inaccurate Ideas About the Production of the MEB

Before we ask whether the Middle English Bible could have been intended to play a role in the continuing education of priests at Oxford, let us try to draw some conclusions about how it was and was not undertaken and carried out.

Discussion of the so-called Wycliffite Bible has been dominated by the account given by Simple Creature in Five and Twenty Books. Let us look at it in detail:

1. “First, this simple creature had much travail, with diverse fellows and helpers, to gather many old Bibles, and other doctors, and common glosses, and to make one Latin Bible some-deal true.”

2. “And then to study it of the new, the text with the gloss, and other doctors as he might get, and specially Lyre on the Old Testament, that helped full much in this work.”

3. “The third time, to counsel with old grammarians and old divines of hard words and hard sentences, how those might best be understood and translated.”

4a. “The fourth time to translate as clearly as he could to the sentence.”

4b. “And to have many good fellows and cunning at the correcting of the translation.”⁴⁵

Therefore, Simple Creature’s alleged steps are as follows: (1) establishing a sound Latin text, (2) studying it for the meaning of the Latin Bible, (3) consulting about how to render difficult Latin passages into English, (4a) producing a complete translation, and (4b) correcting it. There is no talk of producing glosses to any part of the Bible;⁴⁶ but elsewhere he says he has glossed Job and the prophets,⁴⁷ and provided marginal word glosses via Jerome, Lyre, and others to the whole Hebrew Bible, especially the Psalms.⁴⁸ And there is no sense of first executing a literal translation and then systematically transforming it into a more fluent version, though this is what Dove assumes he is talking about when speaking of his translation principles: “The writer of the prologue provided a fascinating account of ways in which the earlier version of the translation, which was never intended to be copied and circulated, was made syntactically and stylistically more comprehensible and accurate in the later version.”⁴⁹ Hudson suggests that the Glossed Gospels project was part of the preparation outlined in number 2,⁵⁰ but this conflicts with the conclusion that the authors of the Glossed Gospels followed EV even after LV was available, because of its closeness to the Latin.⁵¹ In other words, glossing the Gospels was not a step toward producing an accurate English translation or perfecting it. This is confirmed by the seeming lack of interest throughout these Gospel compilations in translation problems, for instance, Latin variants and grammatical ambiguities.

Hudson observes that Forshall and Madden and others after them thought that Simple Creature’s entire program dealt only with LV, whereas she believes that it accurately describes the whole project from the beginning, including therefore EV, saying that “it is not to be expected that any contemporary writer would distinguish EV from LV in the clear-cut and oversimplified way done by Forshall and Madden.”⁵² For my part, I believe that a clear distinction would be recognized certainly by the producers of LV, because the revision was so systematic; for instance, all Latin absolute participles were translated literally into English in EV, but in LV all were removed. The cursory way in which Simple Creature speaks of the “correction” of his translation in this account (4b) would seem to preclude any such idea of a thoroughgoing revision. Later on, he tells of changing such absolute participles in the Latin text directly into English finite forms, not rendering them first into English participles and then eliminating them. Furthermore, the methods he suggests for resolving absolute constructions do not correspond to the actual practice of LV.⁵³ My suggestion, therefore, is that his account is largely imaginary, describing what he considers to be a reasonable way of progressing, from establishing the Latin text, to studying it, and translating it and correcting it.

Jeremy Catto finds manuscript evidence of all of the stages postulated (as he sees them), except for “the newly established Latin text.”⁵⁴ There does seem to have been great interest in the Latin text of the Bible on the part of the translators, but not in producing a complete corrected Latin text. Rather, there was an effort to decide on the correct Latin reading in each passage of EV and LV as it was being worked on.⁵⁵ Fristedt concludes that there was no attempt to correct the Latin text until the whole of the original form of EV (that is, EEV) was completed,⁵⁶ and he places the search for old Latin Bibles by Simple Creature “and his numerous coadjutors” even later, when preparing to embark on LV.⁵⁷ There appears to have been little or no concern about the impossibility in certain cases of deciding which of two variant Latin readings is the correct one, and, accordingly, giving both as possibilities. What we have instead is an abundance of internal glosses, especially in EV, of alternative translations of the same Latin word.

Why EV Before LV? Unsatisfactory First Try, or Planned Preliminary Stage, or Study Help for the Clergy?

In analyzing Five and Twenty Books (GP) and its relationship to the MEB, we have already seen some differences between EV and LV. Let us remind ourselves that the biblical text that EV translates is the Latin Vulgate, and the LV revisers of EV seemingly had only the Vulgate before them as well, with no knowledge of the Hebrew or Greek texts or languages.⁵⁸ EV usually follows Latin grammatical constructions very closely, while LV systematically transforms some of them into more idiomatic forms. Albert Baugh pronounces LV “in every way superior to the early version.”⁵⁹ But it all depends on what one means by “superior.” When dealing with the Word of God, what is more important, accuracy or fluency?

Recently Lilo Moessner has given a more positive analysis of the EV and its “structural iconicity,” that is, its fidelity to the Latin constructions, and finds that the grammatical structure of the LV “is not without flaw,” and that LV does not always achieve the goal of being as clear, let alone clearer, than the original Latin.⁶⁰ Instead of an “iconic” or “mirror-image” metaphor, we can speak of “calques,” that is, patterns, in the narrow sense of “loan translations,” in which the donor language contributes a structure not entirely natural in the receiver language: it has a foreign or nonnative feel about it, and stands out as a “loaner.”⁶¹ Middle English examples are “again-buyer” for redemptor and “again-bite of inwit” for remorsus conscientiae.

Moessner finds that the usual designations of “literal” and “free” translations are inadequate and confusing, and notes with approval David Lawton’s observation that the EV and LV present “a choice not between literal and free translation but between two understandings or types of literal translation.”⁶²

EV can be regarded in a number of ways. To begin with, we may think that it was a timid first try at Englishing the whole Bible, dominated by fear of distorting the meaning of the Latin original, and that its inadequacy was soon recognized and a redo was undertaken. Or we may think of it as a deliberate preliminary step taken to get the exact meaning of the Latin into English first, and then to adjust it in the interests of the vernacular idiom.⁶³ This second view is a common one, shared, for instance, by Conrad Lindberg: “When John Wyclif and his followers decided to take on the work of translating the Bible into English, they were faced with a twofold problem: how to be faithful to the Word and yet create a readable text. They solved it by making two translations, one more literal, the other more idiomatic.”⁶⁴ As we have seen, Mary Dove assumes that EV was never intended for circulation.⁶⁵

This second hypothesis, however, does not seem as plausible as the first. It is not easily credible that a systematic Latinate translation would be carried through to the end with the intention of then scrapping it for an idiomatic rendering, going though the whole Bible again. The envisaged process has been compared to Richard Rolle’s twofold rendering of the Psalms, first word for word, and then less so.⁶⁶ But Rolle was dealing with a single book of the Bible, and he did the second version himself immediately after doing the first, whereas the adherents of a provisionary EV seem to think of it as handed over to a separate LV team for polishing.

It would seem much more likely that, after EV was produced, a change of translational philosophy occurred, which dictated the LV transformations. It might well be that John Trevisa underwent the same kind of conversion in translation theory when working on the Polychronicon. Sven Fristedt has identified a large relic of what looks like an original very literal translation; it occurs far along in the work, in chapters 15–26 of book 6. He compares it to the transformed rendering of the same chapters found in other manuscripts, with ablative absolutes and other participles removed, and so on—corresponding to the rest of the existing Englished work.⁶⁷

It is possible to imagine Trevisa and Nicholas Hereford, who both arrived at Queen’s College in 1369, working on EV, with Trevisa eventually turning aside, while still at Queen’s, to produce a similarly literal version of the Polychronicon.⁶⁸ As Fristedt notes, David Fowler has “ascertained that Trevisa had his hand on the Latin Polychronicon as early as 1377,”⁶⁹ and therefore Trevisa may have been at work on Englishing it “for at least ten years”⁷⁰—and possibly more. Then, when the decision was made to produce a more fluent version of the Bible, Trevisa perhaps participated in producing LV, before or while doing a like revision of his first rendering of Higden’s work.⁷¹

However, there is a weighty argument against such a hypothesis of Trevisa’s participation in the MEB. Although we might admit that for Trevisa “the translation of the Bible is the most important precursor to the translation of the Polychronicon,”⁷² it seems clear from the dialogue that serves as an introduction to the final version of his Englished Polychronicon,⁷³ that he is not aware of any significant effort to translate the whole Bible, a point made by Margaret Deanesly.⁷⁴ After mentioning some works translated out of Greek into Latin, the sensible lord of the exchange says, “[Also, Holy Writ was translated out of Hebrew into Greek and out of Greek into Latin, and then out of Latin into French.] Then what [how] has English trespassed, that it might not be translated into English?”⁷⁵ He goes on to name some other translations, including King Alfred’s rendering of a large part of the Psalter into English, and Bede’s translation of St. John’s Gospel into English. He continues: “Also the Gospel and prophecy and the right faith of Holy Church must be taught and preached to Englishmen that ken no Latin. Then the Gospel and prophecy and the right faith of Holy Church must be told them in English, and that is not done but by English translation, for such English preaching is very [true] translation, and such English preaching is good and needful.”⁷⁶

We notice that lord of the dialogue fails to mention not only the MEB, but also Rolle’s well-known translations of the Psalms. We will see that another fervent advocate of Bible translation from Queen’s College, Richard Ullerston, will also fail to mention the MEB, though he does mention Rolle.

There is a third way of explaining EV, suggested by David Lawton and Lilo Moessner, and K. B. McFarlane before them: that translation was foreseen as having a permanent value in assisting persons with only elementary Latin, particularly run-of-the-mill clergy, to use as a guide to understanding the Latin text.⁷⁷ Lewis Brewer Hall also assumes that assisting the clergy with their understanding of Scripture was one of the purposes of EV, with the further assumption that they themselves could render the literal meaning in better English.⁷⁸ And, we should add, the unpromising minor clergy at Oxford and laymen (if there were any students not in minor orders) would also find such translations helpful, not to mention both clergy and laity everywhere throughout the realm.⁷⁹ Ullerston will make this argument for all biblical translations.⁸⁰

We cannot, of course, prove that EV was designed to help the parish priests who went to Oxford to study the Bible, but, whatever its intended purpose, both masters and students would have been foolish not to welcome it, and LV as well, when it became available, as an aid not only to understanding the Latin Bible but also to preaching the Word of God (or “God’s Law,” if that is how they preferred to call it), especially the Gospel pericopes featured in Sunday masses.

The Transformation of EV to LV

From my analyses of EV and LV, especially in the Gospel of Luke, I confirm the long-standing view that LV systematically de-Latinizes EV. The translators responsible for LV employed a form of English that resonates better with Modern English than that of EV, for the most part. We need not assume, with McFarlane, that the reason for producing LV was that the presumed purpose of EV, “to enable a reader of weak Latinity to construe the Vulgate for himself,” proved unsatisfactory.⁸¹

Most of the constructions endorsed by Simple Creature in the General Prologue turn out to be those used in transforming EV Luke to LV Luke, the book that I have analyzed most thoroughly, though it is not always true in other books. Anne Hudson shares with others the conclusion that, while more intermediate versions of EV are being discovered, the LV translation is remarkably uniform throughout, as well as being generally stable from copy to copy.⁸² But I have found some interesting differences in various parts of the translation, and the stability of the text may help to establish that these differences are original rather than merely scribal.⁸³

The obvious goals of all translators of the Bible are accuracy and clarity. Lindberg considers that these goals were aimed at in LLV, Bodley 277, Henry VI’s Bible: it was “a conscious attempt to merge original features (at times more ancient than EV) with modernisms (not all the most recent) to form a text true to the double aim of this translation of the Bible: to be true to the Word, and to help the reader.”⁸⁴ Modern-day scholars who have studied the EV and LV have usually judged them on the basis of literary style and fluency.⁸⁵ But, as Nicholas Watson notes, the Middle Ages had no word for “literary,”⁸⁶ though they did, of course, have criteria for judging what was awkward or not. Sometimes, nowadays, “literary” is contrasted with “literal,” and “literalism” is often a bad word; but, properly understood, as fidelity to the original meaning, it is essential, particularly in the case of the Bible.⁸⁷ Even for Simple Creature in the GP, sticking to the letter is the best, and the LV often follows the EV word for word. But when clarity is sacrificed, the language should be modified, even at the expense of altering the original data. It is obvious that the supervisors of LV wished to resolve ambivalences and difficulties in the original Latin rather than to present the problems to the English readers and let them puzzle over them. This is sometimes taken to be a characteristic of the proto-Protestant reformist impulse behind this medieval Bible project.⁸⁸ Such a conclusion would make sense if, as has usually been assumed, the sentiments enunciated by the Wycliffite author of GP were, as he claimed, the driving force of the LV text. But if, as I think, he was a Johnny-come-lately to the enterprise, we need to arrive at other explanations. The rationale that first suggests itself is that for nonscholarly devotional reading it was assumed that plausible resolutions to textual problems were preferable to ambiguities or puzzles in the text.

The iconic method of translation followed in EV resembles that followed in various Vetus Latina translations of the Bible. In the Old Testament, these translations were replaced by fresh ones made by Jerome—still, however, following characteristics of the Hebrew (and Greek) and at the same time respecting the Latin versions he was replacing.⁸⁹ But in the New Testament, the iconicity was left more in place, since the old translations were only edited anew, the Gospels by Jerome, and the other books by unknown editors. It might not be too far from the truth to see the LV revision of the EV text of the Middle English Bible as a process somewhat in between these two methods of producing the Vulgate.

But whatever advantages could be perceived in the EV text in facilitating understanding of the Latin Bible, the peculiar virtues of more familiar kinds of speech found in LV proved preferable, as can be seen from the far greater survivals of LV manuscripts. This was the version that won the hearts of the English reading public of all persuasions.

LV Motivations as Inferred Versus GP Motivations as Stated

Let me single out one aspect of EV and LV and draw some conclusions from it, namely, the practice of EV to take over absolute constructions literally and the practice of LV to do away with such forms by resolving them finitely.⁹⁰ In doing so, LV was not rejecting a hidebound traditional way of writing, but resisting an innovation that was just appearing in the language. However, though LV was thereby conforming to earlier stylistic norms, there should have been a real objection to doing this on the level of accuracy; participial constructions are deliberately ambiguous, and “clarifying” them in one definite way or another, say, as causally or temporally related (using because or when), when the relationship might be the opposite, or simply circumstantial or appositional, destroys what might be considered a divinely inspired uncertainty.⁹¹

It has been concluded on the basis of the General Prologue that “the goal in the Wycliffite Bible is a translation that produces clear English while staying as close as possible to the Latin.”⁹² But it is apparent that Simple Creature’s goals were much more ambitious; he wanted to outdo the Latin and make it more intelligible.

He hopes that he improves on the truth and clarity of the Latin text by taking these sorts of decisions, which might seem to imply a certain quality of arrogance in assuming the correctness of his judgments, making his version better than the original. Let us review what he (or an or-speaking interpolator) says at one point: “Whether I have translated as openly or openlier in English as in Latin, let wise men deem that know well both languages and know well the sentence of Holy Scripture; and whether I have done thus or nay, ne doubt, they that ken well the sentence of Holy Writ and English together and will travail with God’s grace thereabout, may make the Bible as true and as open, yea, and openlier in English than it is in Latin.”⁹³ He claims, of course, to rely on the context of each passage, but ultimately his main reliance is on divine inspiration and guidance. His final thoughts sum up his attitude: “Many such adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions be set oft one for another, and at free choice of authors sometimes; and now those shall be taken as it accordeth best to the sentence. By this manner, with good living and great travail, men may come to true and clear translating and true understanding of Holy Writ, seem it never so hard at the beginning. God grant to us all grace to ken well and keep well Holy Writ, and suffer joyfully some pain for it at the last. Amen.”⁹⁴ In this view, Simple Creature may have been influenced by one of his favorite works, Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana, as well as Wyclif ’s De veritate Sacre Scripture. But both Augustine and Wyclif are speaking of seeking divine help in explicating, not translating Scripture.⁹⁵

The fact remains that by disambiguating such ambiguities for the sake of fluency, a translation like LV forecloses meanings left open in translations like EV, which observe limits imposed by the original forms.

Other Factors In and About Oxford, and a Suggested Downsizing of the Translation and Revision Enterprises

Other scholars who may have participated in the translations have been suggested by Jeremy Catto, connecting supporters of the project with residents of Queen’s College, Oxford, including Richard Ullerston, who will be treated below for his defense of Bible translation sometime in the decade 1400–1409, and also Philip Repingdon in his post-Wycliffite phase.⁹⁶ Repingdon, of course, may have begun his participation in his pre-Queen’s period, and while he was still a Wycliffite.

Even though I have argued that Simple Creature himself was not an Oxford man, the general dialect of EV and LV has been associated with the university,⁹⁷ and one should not be surprised to find many other connections. Another locus at Oxford has recently been singled out by Anne Hudson as a probable center of translational activity, namely Greyfriars, the Franciscan house at the university: one of the reasons being the resources of its library.⁹⁸ Included in her suggestion is the supposition that the compilers of other works associated with the Wycliffites (associated with them at least nowadays, I would add) also took advantage of the house’s facilities; she designates specifically the Glossed Gospels; the encyclopedia called Floretum in its full form and Rosarium in the abridged version; the revisions to Richard Rolle’s English Psalms commentary;⁹⁹ and the large liturgical cycle of Wycliffite sermons.¹⁰⁰ She points out that “Wyclif and his disciples were not in the 1370s defined as enemies,” and the intensive scholarly labor that went into at least the biblical and encyclopedic enterprises had nothing obviously Wycliffite about them, “even in the developed sense of that term let alone in that of the 1370s.”¹⁰¹ I agree and wish to push the argument further, specifically concerning the organization and production of EV and LV. I suggest that there was nothing hugger-mugger about this endeavor and no reason for secrecy. The question remains, however, whether it was, especially at its origins in the production of EV, a large-scale endeavor with such wide participation that it was too routine to be mentioned, or whether it was a small-scale enterprise on the level envisaged by Forshall and Madden, who saw Wyclif himself producing the EV New Testament and Nicholas Hereford most of the EV Old Testament, with John Purvey doing the whole LV Bible. If we dismiss Simple Creature’s vision of painstaking preparation of an accurate Vulgate text and just think of getting down to work and doing it, it could have been accomplished in a short time with a minimum of fuss. There is the Douai-Rheims example to be remembered, and though that project was recognized as very important, there was hardly any mention of it left in writing, just notings of its beginning and end.

The production of the ur-EV text (that is, EEV) may have been the inspiration of a single master in the theology faculty at Oxford, perhaps even Wyclif himself, in his Wycliffian, pre-Wycliffite period (not very likely, I think, given his linguistic shortcomings). If Gregory Martin by himself translated the entire Vulgate in eighteen to twenty months, our hypothetical professor along with a half-dozen graduate students, with their MAs long behind them, could have completed the whole Bible in a matter of three or four months. The resulting text could then have been circulated as a whole or by books or groups of books, as a working text, not only for the use of other students and masters, but also with an eye to further refinement, perhaps with the familiar medieval request to readers to improve the text, as, for instance, when Simple Creature says, “I pray, for charity and for common profit of Christian souls, that if any wise man find any default of the truth of translation, let him set in the true sentence, and open, of Holy Writ.”¹⁰² Or perhaps a message like that of William Tyndale at the end of his 1526 New Testament:

Count it as a thing not having his full shape, but as it were born afore his time, even as a thing begun rather than finished. In time to come, if God have appointed us thereunto, we will give it his full shape, and put out, if aught be added superfluously, and add to, if aught be overseen through negligence, and will enforce to bring to compendiousness that which is now translated at the length, and to give light where it is required, and to seek in certain places more proper English.¹⁰³

At any rate, once the translation began to be reproduced, many changes were introduced into it by the copyists and users, some merely scribal, whether mistakes or dialectal features, some conscious corrections or intended improvements. We can only conjecture how many of the conscious improvements were “authorized” by the original translators or their supervisor. We must take very seriously Fristedt’s demonstration that there was a consistent effort that transformed EEV into EV. But we can readily imagine that many changes were “sports,” or mutations not naturally or deliberately selected to survive (to speak genetically). One example noted in the Chapter 2 is the intervention of an either speaker in the Gospel of Luke in Douce 369.2 (used by Forshall and Madden as their main EV text), predominantly not found in other EV copies, and not at all in LV.¹⁰⁴

Then, after a few years, we can speculate, two other masters decided it would be a good idea to systematically revise the new translation in such a way that it would not adhere so closely to the Latin forms, to produce a text that would be more amenable to wider use, in sermons and in the liturgy in local parishes. One of these masters would take responsibility for the Old Testament; he and his students were predominantly either speakers and did not have a set objection to forsooths (to mention a couple of features that we have noticed above). The other master gathered a group to handle the New Testament. They doubtless took to themselves whatever copies of EV happened to be at hand, doubtless in various states of correction or revision—whether or not acting in consultation with EV’s original translators. Once again, the whole enterprise need not have taken a great deal of time.

The terminus ante quem for EV is 1397, because of the Egerton Bible found to have been in the possession of Thomas of Gloucester at his death.¹⁰⁵ What is the terminus a quo? Most of those who believe it to be “the Wycliffite Bible” date its beginnings to around 1380; but Conrad Lindberg, taking Simple Creature’s schedule as authentic, traces its beginnings, as we have seen, to Wyclif ’s first arrival at Oxford in 1354, when he would have begun to prepare the Latin edition, with glossing beginning around 1360, with EV produced around 1370–80 and LV finishing around 1390.¹⁰⁶ If, on the other hand, we take EV to be a simple and quick translation, with no necessary involvement by Wyclif, our speculations can be wide-ranging, even ante tempus dicti Johannis Wyclif. As we will see below, “the time of John Wyclif” was defined as dating from when he began to disseminate his heresies.¹⁰⁷