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CHAPTER 4

Oxford Doctors, Archbishop Arundel, and Dives and Pauper on the Advisability of Scripture in English

Let us turn our attention now to various positions on the allowability or advisability of translating the Bible into the vernacular, specifically English. We will begin with works by three Oxford doctors of theology, namely, Thomas Palmer, a Dominican friar, William Butler, a Franciscan friar, and Richard Ullerston, a secular priest (like Wyclif and Hereford).

Thomas Palmer, OP: Partially for, Partially Against Translation

The prominent Dominican friar Thomas Palmer produced a treatise called De translacione Sacre Scripture in linguam barbaricam, which has usually been considered to be later than the others that we are considering here, but the recent researches of Cornelia Linde have called that judgment into question.¹ The work was edited by Margaret Deanesly in her Lollard Bible with some mistakes and with a misleading title, putting Anglicanam rather than barbaricam.² Linde establishes the correct title and finds no reason to doubt Palmer’s authorship (which has been considered questionable in the past). Palmer mentions the Lollards adversely twice, but because of his mild treatment of them, Linde suggests that the exchange it details may have taken place comparatively early, perhaps in the 1380s.³ The academic structure of the treatise might suggest that it was completed while he was still at Oxford, where he achieved his doctorate in theology by 1393, the year that he was appointed provincial of his order in England.⁴ It was also in 1393 that he allegedly defended the recently reconciled Nicholas Hereford from a Lollard critic, but I judge that this response was written by Hereford himself.⁵ However, when Palmer wrote in defense of images in 1398, he still cast his treatise in academic form, specifying that it was a determination made “in the schools of St. Paul, London.”⁶

The treatise on translation begins, like most scholastic exercises, with a question favoring the “wrong side”: “Utrum Sacra Scriptura in linguam anglicanam vel in aliam barbaricam sit transferenda,” that is, “Whether Sacred Scripture should be translated into the English or any other barbarous tongue,” and it opens with eighteen arguments for the affirmative, Quod sic videtur (we can call this part 1),⁷ followed by another eighteen Ad oppositum (part 2),⁸ corresponding to the Sed contra arguments that one finds in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. But then Palmer complicates the form by positing thirteen “other truths” (aliae veritates), of which the first is in favor of translation and the others against, or at least against translating all of Scripture (part 3).⁹ Next comes a brief reply to some of the veritates (part 4),¹⁰ followed by a Responsio on “not giving what is holy to dogs” (part 5).¹¹ Finally, there are answers to the original eighteen arguments in favor of translation (part 6).¹² Some parts are in rougher shape than others, and Linde suggests that it is to some extent a reportatio of an actual debate, which was not put into final form.

The bald distinctions “for” and “against” in this summary obscure Palmer’s own point of view, which emerges throughout the treatise: he agrees that essential portions of the Bible should be translated, but believes that other portions should not be translated, and, in fact, he holds that some portions cannot be translated adequately into a barbaric vernacular like English, which lacks the necessary sophisticated elements of style and structure to accommodate the scriptural meaning. His position is summed up in the final argument of the treatise, where the expectation is that he will refute the eighteenth argument in favor of translation, which is this: “According to the rule of reason, we understand that all things are conceded that are not prohibited; but there is not found anywhere in Scripture that it is forbidden to be translated into a barbaric idiom.”¹³ But the response to argument 18, which constitutes the end of the treatise, addresses an argument against translating any part of Scripture, and refutes this argument:

To the 18th, where it was argued thus: “The main reason why Scripture cannot be translated into a barbarous tongue seems to be that it is not ruled by grammatical rules and figures, with[out] which Sacred Scripture cannot be preserved from falsity and incongruity. But for this reason, no part of it should be translated, whether concerning things necessary for salvation or otherwise, because these rules, tropes, and figures are equally common in all parts of Sacred Scripture.” To this the opposite should be said.¹⁴

His refutation is as follows:

To this I respond by denying that these rules, tropes, and figures are equally common to all parts of Scripture, for some parts are seen to be true without them, and some are not. But the precepts of the law and those things that are necessary to salvation are open and plain. “For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.” And points of morality are, as it were, from natural law and are easy of belief, as the Psalmist says: “Your testimonies have become exceedingly believable.” And therefore there is no need for them to be preserved from falsity and incongruity by means of figures and tropes or other means, as there is for other difficult things contained therein.¹⁵

Let us look at his references to the Lollards. The first of the eighteen arguments against translation is that many things in Scripture are inutilia, “because they would harm rather than profit” (“quia nocerent plusquam prodessent”).¹⁶ The second is that not every truth should be written in English, because many truths are not useful; but, according to the Lollards, “Every truth is contained in Sacred Scripture, because it contains the First Truth, which contains all other truths.”¹⁷ It has been suggested that he is hereby attributing to the Lollards a sola Scriptura doctrine, namely, that all necessary truths are in Scripture and none in tradition.¹⁸ This, however, was not a usual Wycliffite view.¹⁹ Rather, he must mean that, because the Lollards believe that all truths are somehow contained in Scripture,²⁰ they should all be made available to the general public.

The eighteenth argument against translation is that the Jews killed Jesus because they did not understand the spiritual meaning of his sayings. “How then,” Palmer asks, “would simple uneducated persons not err, if they had it in the vernacular alone? Nowadays do not those who know only grammar, because of the bad understanding of Lollards and simple folk, persecute the disciples of Christ for expounding it spiritually? The answer is clearly yes.”²¹ We see that Palmer is accusing the Lollards, not of mistranslating Scripture, but of missing its true meaning in being overly literal.

William Butler, OFM: Completely Against

The Franciscan doctor of theology William Butler,²² in his determination against translating Scripture delivered at Oxford in 1401 or early 1402,²³ starts out more cleanly, by simply arguing against the proposition that Scripture should be translated. In opposing such translation, he gives a total of six reasons. Because the first part of his treatise is missing, we do not know the exact formulation of the assertion, but it is clear that the positive side was previously defended by others. We also know, however, that Butler was not present at this earlier defense, since at the beginning of his fifth argument he speaks against a point made by “the aforesaid assertors,” which, he says, was related to him.²⁴

Butler sums up his reasons against translation at the end: (1) the allectiva conditio (attractive nature) of Scripture (from which errors of interpretation easily arise); (2) the defective understanding of human nature (caused by original sin); (3) the analogy of the angelic hierarchy; (4) the singular conferral of the law of the Gospel (to be proclaimed rather than written); (5) the subtlety of Scripture’s literal artifice; and (6) the mystical body of Christ (different functions for different members).²⁵ In the course of his third argument, he seems to be asserting that bishops were currently prohibiting their subjects from having the Scriptures in English.²⁶ But, as Jeremy Catto observes, Butler makes no reference to Lollards, and, although the treatise by Palmer does mention Lollard interpretations of the Bible, it does not attribute any translation to them or accuse them of unorthodoxy.²⁷ Kantik Ghosh, however, argues that both Butler and Palmer do show awareness of Wycliffite issues, namely attacks against the prerogatives of the clergy, and he finds Ullerston’s reticence about the Lollards deliberately or indeliberately naive.²⁸

Richard Ullerston: Completely in Favor

Third, we address a Latin treatise preserved in the National Library in Vienna, advocating the translation of the Bible into English. Deanesly had attributed it to Purvey,²⁹ but Anne Hudson discovered from a copy of the end of the text in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, that it was by Richard Ullerston, a solidly orthodox and anti-Lollard doctor of theology from Queen’s College, Oxford.³⁰ Ullerston’s arguments were then used in an English tract titled Against Them That Say That Holy Writ Should Not or May Not Be Drawn into English, also attributed by Deanesly to Purvey, which reports Archbishop Thomas Arundel as having approved Queen Anne’s English Gospels.³¹ Only the third article of Ullerston’s original three-article treatise on Bible translation has survived, having been preserved among the Hussites in Bohemia, and the title that comes at the end of the Caius text, Tractatus de translacione Sacre Scripture in vulgare, may refer only to this part. Hudson deciphers the date as 1401, but she admits that the final digit is not absolutely clear, concluding however that “from the shape of the stroke there seems no possible alternative.”³² To me, however, the last digit does not resemble the first digit at all, and it may well be a “7”.³³

Last page of Ullerston’s treatise on translation, Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 803/807, fragment 36 verso detail.

Ullerston’s first two articles (nonextant) dealt with the question of whether Jerome’s translation is “true,” and he concluded that it is. It is puzzling how he could write at great length on this subject without knowing the original languages from which Jerome was translating. The conclusion that he came to is clear from the third article, that it was allowable for Jerome to make his translation; and this remaining article deals with the question of whether it is allowable to translate Scripture into other languages as well, that is, tongues that are “less principal and famous” than Latin.³⁴

He goes on to say that in the times of “our fathers”—it is not clear whether he means this literally, “in the previous generation,” or is referring to earlier times, even the patristic era, or to all times up to now—there was never any question about this matter. He could have added that this was also seemingly still the case outside England, since it is only in England that we find a call for unrestricted access to the Scriptures. In other words, there was no need for such a demand in other countries, where vernacular translations were a matter of course.³⁵

However, nowadays, Ullerston continues, there is great doubt, so much so that two valiant doctors in this cathedra, or seat of learning, spent the whole time of their lectures on much this point; one of them gave several arguments for the negative position, and the other offered scores (vigenarii) of arguments on the affirmative side. But neither of them was judged to have won his case.³⁶ Thus Ullerston resembles Butler, reacting to a debate that he did not personally participate in.

He then describes his plan of procedure: first he will recite some of the negative arguments of the first doctor, and then add some further negative arguments on his own, and finally he will respond to all of these arguments with positive arguments, by which responses his own position will be made clear.³⁷

Ullerston’s gently sarcastic tone in his introduction was missed by Deanesly, who mistranslates “nescio per quot argumentorum vigenarios” as “by I know not how many powerful arguments.”³⁸ Hudson does not translate the passage, but she does identify the second doctor with Ullerston himself, and she thinks that all thirty of the negative arguments he gives are those of the first doctor.³⁹ Dove follows suit, saying that Ullerston’s treatise “is set up as a debate between two doctors.”⁴⁰ But in fact it is clear from what Ullerston says that he did not even attend the Oxford debate, and that the debate dealt with a somewhat different question from that of his article. Furthermore, only the first four of his negative arguments are those of the first doctor, which were supplied to him by a friend. When Ullerston begins to list the arguments against the proposition, he says: “The first doctor asks: ‘Should Sacred Scripture be interpreted into all languages,’ which somewhat coincides with my article” (that is, the positive position taken in his treatise).⁴¹ Then, after giving the first four arguments, he says: “Now these arguments a certain man, a friend, set down, as written in the hand of the aforesaid first doctor.”⁴² He continues by giving twenty-six additional arguments against his own article (not against the question debated by the two doctors).⁴³ Later on, at the end of his response to the fourth argument, he says that this concludes his response to the arguments of “the reverend doctor.”⁴⁴

In proceeding as he does, Ullerston is not trying to give the appearance of being evenhanded,⁴⁵ but rather is following (or inventing) a modified form of scholastic argumentation. In the classic scholastic method, as demonstrated most familiarly by St. Thomas in his Summa theologica, a proposition is stated and arguments given in favor of it, and then the professor comes to the opposite conclusion, giving his reasons; finally, he responds to the original arguments one by one.⁴⁶ What Ullerston does is to start with a question, rather than a proposition; he gives arguments on the negative side and then he refutes the arguments, thereby affirming the positive side.

Let us examine Ullerston’s treatise. It is divided into twenty-four chapters, and, whether this division was Ullerston’s doing or not, it will be useful to follow it.⁴⁷ There is some hesitation on the part of the scribe as to where the divisions go, and some rubrics are crossed out. The chapters are as follows:

Chapter 1 (195ra): introduction; negative arguments 1–4 from the first doctor; negative arguments 5–10 from Ullerston.

Chapter 2 (195va): negative arguments 11–20.

Chapter 3 (196ra): negative arguments 21–30.

Chapter 4 (196rb): discourse on translacio and interpretacio.

Chapter 5 (196vb): discourse on what is licit and illicit.

Chapter 6 (197rb): discourse on translation; assurance of relying on Church teaching; preview of next three chapters.

Chapter 7 (197va): listing of Ullerston’s motives for taking the affirmative side.

Chapter 8 (198rb): response to objections to his motives.

Chapter 9 (198vb): conjectured motives of those holding the negative side.

Chapter 10 (199rb): responses to arguments 1–2 of the doctor.

Chapter 11 (199vb): responses to arguments 3–4 of the doctor.

Chapter 12 (200rb): response to argument 5.

Chapter 13 (201ra): responses to arguments 6–8.

Chapter 14 (201rb): response to argument 9.

Chapter 15 (202ra): responses to arguments 10–12.

Chapter 16 (202va): responses to arguments 13–14.

Chapter 17 (202vb): responses to arguments 15–16.

Chapter 18 (203rb): responses to arguments 17–18.

Chapter 19 (203vb): responses to arguments 19–21.

Chapter 20 (204va): responses to arguments 22–23.

Chapter 21 (205ra): response to argument 24.

Chapter 22 (205va): responses to arguments 25–29.

Chapter 23 (206ra): response to argument 30.

Chapter 24 (207va): some extended arguments and nine brief arguments in favor of translation.

At the end of chapter 6, after stating his desire to conform to Church teaching,⁴⁸ he lays out what he will cover next: namely, some of the reasons that move him to take the affirmative side of the argument, followed by what he thinks might be reasons that others have for taking the opposite view.⁴⁹

The last chapter is a puzzle. Ullerston has spent a huge amount of space in chapter 23 on the thirtieth objection, that the Gospel should not be preached to everyone, and he fails to come to a satisfying conclusion, moving instead in chapter 24 to support what he claims to have advocated somewhere above, that the law of Christ should be published with moderation in every idiom;⁵⁰ perhaps he is still responding to the thirtieth objection. He continues with an elaborate statement that prohibiting the translation of the Bible would be contrary to Christ’s plan for his church, and that the work of translation is virtually inspired by the Spirit of God:

Si enim Dominus Jhesus Christus peregre proficiscens ab hoc mundo tradidit servis suis bona sua, unicuique viz. secundum propriam virtutem, per quorum usum laudabilem possunt regnum ecclesie adipisci, quis prohibere potest fidelem servum ejus cui Dominus dedit talentum, interpretacionem viz. sermonum ejus in vulgare, ne sic transferat in vulgare, cum talis, Spiritu Dei actus, non minus posset aliud loqui quam [quod] Dominus in ore ejus posuerit, quam [quod] propheta gentilis Balaam, qui dixit, ut habetur Numeris 23, “Num aliud possum loqui nisi quod jusserit Dominus?” Et hoc idem senciendum est de illis qui habunt industriam aquisitam ad consilia peragenda, que et omnia alia ad sui laudem perficere nos concedat Jhesus Christus, qui sine fine vivit et regnat, amen.⁵¹

For if the Lord Jesus Christ in passing from this world gave to His servants His goods, each according to his power, through the laudable use of which they can acquire the kingdom of the Church, who can prohibit His faithful servant to whom the Lord gave a talent, that is, the interpretation of His words into the vernacular, from thus translating into the vernacular, since such a one, driven by the Spirit of God, could speak nothing other than [what] the Lord had placed in his mouth, than [what] the gentile prophet Balaam [spoke], who said, as is read in Numbers 23.12, “Can I speak anything else but what the Lord commandeth?” And the same is to be thought about those who have acquired the skill to carry through with such tasks—which, and all things else, may Jesus Christ grant to us to perform to His praise, who lives and reigns without end, amen.

This statement and prayer have the look of a conclusion to the treatise. But there follows a list of nine succinct reasons for translating Scripture, in which Ullerston might seem to be including himself among the ranks of capable translators.⁵² These reasons are clearly an afterthought, since they are not mentioned in the plan that Ullerston stated at the beginning. In the Caius fragment, where a later hand has numbered the reasons in the margin, the colophon follows, identifying Ullerston.

Perhaps a clue is to be found in the seventh of the nine propositions, which says that, just as preaching the Word of God and administering the sacraments is to be supervised by the wise counsel of prelates, the same is true of the use of translation.⁵³ This would seem to be a reference to the constitution dealing with Bible translation, Periculosa, proposed at the council of the province of Canterbury held at Oxford in November 1407. Ullerston was in residence at Queen’s College at the time of the council, and may even have participated in it, as a member of the lower house or as an onlooker. Hudson and others have uniformly taken a more severe view of the purport and effect of the constitutions passed at this time, saying, for instance, that they forcibly closed down the debate on translation and formally forbade the vernacular translation of the Scriptures.⁵⁴ But, in fact, as we will see in Chapter 5, all that the legislation required was episcopal or provincial supervision or license approving recent translations before being used for lectures.

The deference to bishops noted in the added proposition at the end of Ullerston’s treatise is actually entirely in keeping with his response to the second argument of the first doctor, which said that Bible translation was properly a task for bishops to perform, but that the English bishops at that time were not adequate for the task.⁵⁵ Ullerston agrees that it would be fitting if bishops were sufficiently expert to accomplish the task, but says that it does not follow that if they are not able to do it on their own, all others would be insufficient. It only requires good men to be chosen who are adequately equipped for the enterprise. He gives the example of the translators who were chosen from each of the tribes of Israel and sent to Alexandria to render the Bible into Greek; none of them were said to be pontiffs.⁵⁶

Ullerston in English: Reporting Archbishop Arundel’s Approval of Queen Anne’s English Gospels

The English treatise noted above, Against Them That Say, which draws on Ullerston’s Latin treatise, has uniformly been judged to be Lollard in sentiment. Margaret Deanesly ascribes it to John Purvey;⁵⁷ Curt Bühler, who does not know Deanesly’s work, terms it “a Lollard tract” in the title of his edition of 1938; while Hudson says, “In form it is a typical Lollard production: lists of authorities, biblical, patristic, canonistic and historical, cited in favor of a Lollard viewpoint and given a rough frame.” She favors a date before 1407, because of “the absence of allusion to the prohibition of biblical translation.”⁵⁸ If, however, we judge that biblical translation was not prohibited, we should revisit the subject, and the whole question of the treatise’s Lollardy. As it stands, I can find only one passage in it that seems obviously Wycliffite: after citing Fitzralph’s statement that the Sacrament might well be made (that is, the Mass celebrated) in the vernacular of each country, the author says: “But we coveiten not that, but prey anticrist that we moten have oure bileve in Englishe.”⁵⁹ The sentiment is very much out of tune with the rest of the treatise. Perhaps the text originally read “unto crist,” which was distorted by an early copyist. Mary Dove says that the writer was probably a Wycliffite,⁶⁰ and that “by ‘anticrist’ the writer surely means the church authorities who are denying the people the Bible in English.”⁶¹ Like Hudson, she is writing under the assumption that the constitutions passed in 1407 and promulgated in 1409 banned biblical translations, but unlike Hudson she assumes that the author of this treatise knows of the ruling and is protesting against it.

Dove notes that the treatise appears “in most copies … in the context of identifiably Lollard material,” but that, surprisingly, in the manuscript of the Pierpont Morgan Library (no. 648, ca. 1445–55), it comes between Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Life of Jesus Christ and Bridget of Sweden’s Revelationes.⁶² However, the only other medieval copy, besides Morgan, is the Trinity College Cambridge manuscript (B.14.50), which indeed includes this piece among Wycliffite treatises and excerpts.⁶³ The other four copies are in “collections of texts supposedly heralding the Reformation” produced in early modern times, as Dove tells us.⁶⁴ The Trinity manuscript, which Dove takes as her base text, has the reading as above, “prey anticrist”; but Morgan erases “prey,” and three of the later copies omit “prey” entirely. Dove comments, “The notion of praying to Antichrist evidently daunted scribes.”⁶⁵

Immediately after making the above statement, the author identifies himself as someone who has had much personal experience in dealing with Jews: “We that have much communed with the Jews know well that all mighty men of them, in what[ever] land they be born, yet they have in Hebrew the Bible, and they be more active in the Old Law than any Latin man commonly, yea, as well the lewd men of the Jews as priests.”⁶⁶ The most likely Englishmen of the time about whom this could be said were the keepers of the rolls, who also functioned as wardens of the Domus Conversorum. The warden from 1405 to 1415 was John Wakering, who shortly afterward became bishop of Norwich.⁶⁷ One of the residents of the Domus at this time was the daughter of Rabbi Moses, referred to as “bishop” of the Jews.⁶⁸ Of course, English clerics who traveled or resided abroad could also have had the opportunity to commune with Jews.

Dove demonstrates that Against Them draws almost entirely from various portions of Ullerston’s treatise, far more extensively than cited by Hudson.⁶⁹

Alastair Minnis says that the “anonymous Lollard” who compiled the work ignored “Ullerston’s balancing arguments against translation,”⁷⁰ but, as we have seen, Ullerston included these arguments only in summary form and only for the purpose of refuting them.

Against Them’s original material, apart from a few odds and ends, is mainly limited to three anecdotes at the end. The first is a very brief recollection of a sermon preached before the bishop of London by the Dominican friar John Tille in the hearing of a hundred people, saying that St. Jerome professed to have erred when he translated the Bible.⁷¹

This report of Tille’s sermon is accepted as authentic by historians, like A. B. Emden. Tille achieved his doctorate in theology at Oxford by 1403; he was the prior of the London convent of Dominicans, that is, Blackfriars, from 1402 and again in 1408, after Thomas Palmer stepped down in 1407.⁷² He may still have been at Blackfriars for the meeting of convocation in January 1409 at St. Paul’s, when the Oxford constitutions were confirmed, and in April, when Archbishop Arundel sent the standard notice to the bishop of London to promulgate them throughout the province.⁷³ Dove in fact suggests that Tille was actually addressing the constitution dealing with the Bible, Periculosa, which starts out with the same quotation of Jerome about the dangers of translating the Bible.

The author of Against Them reacts to Tille by comparing him to the magician Elymas (Bar-Jesus), who tried to keep Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Paphos, from the faith by preventing him from hearing St. Paul preach the Word of God; whereupon Paul rebuked him and said he would go blind: “But Friar Tille, that said before the bishop of London, hearing a hundred men, that Jerome said he erred in translating of the Bible, is like to Elymas, the which would have letted a bishop or a judge to hear the belief, to whom Paul said, ‘O thou, full of all treachery and of all fallacy, seeking to turn the bishop from the belief, thou shalt be blind to a time.’ This is written in the Deeds of the Apostles, thirteenth chapter.”⁷⁴ It is interesting that he interprets the proconsul of Acts 13 as a “judge or bishop,” and then settles on “bishop.” He goes on to cite Jerome much more fully than Ullerston does in his extant third article, but we must remember that Ullerston dealt entirely with Jerome’s translation in his first two articles, and it may be that the English author had access to the whole treatise. Or, dare we suggest it, perhaps the author of the English treatise is Ullerston himself, or at least a rather disorganized intimate of his?

The second fresh anecdote that Against Them contributes goes back in time to a supposed bill in Parliament against current Bible translations:

Also it is known to many men that in the time of King Richard, whose soul God assoil, into a Parliament was put a bill by assent of two archbishops and of the clergy, to annul the Bible that time translated into English, and also other books of the Gospel translated into English, which, when it was seen of Lords and Commons, the good duke of Lancaster, John, whose soul God assoil for His mercy, answered thereto sharply, saying this sentence: “We will not be the refuse of all men, for sithen other nations have God’s Law, which is law of our belief, in their own mother language, we will have our in English, who that ever it begrudge.” And this he affirmed with a great oath.⁷⁵

It is usually thought that there is no historical basis to this story, but Ralph Hanna takes it at its face as a reference to a real clerical effort in Parliament to suppress “Lollard biblical translations” (he assumes that EV and LV were perceived as Lollard), perhaps in 1388 or in 1394.⁷⁶

Against Dove’s assertion that “it was not for parliament to legislate on such matters,”⁷⁷ we can point out that there was a statute against heretical preaching passed in the wake of the Blackfriars meeting of 1382, which invoked the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops and other clergy of the realm.⁷⁸ And Parliament legislated against heretical books in the 1401 statute Contra Lollardos,⁷⁹ which followed the formulation sent forward by convocation.⁸⁰

We must remember that the Church convocations were considered part of Parliament when they met together. In the Merciless Parliament of 1388 singled out by Hanna, the Monk of Westminster reports that there was a magnus rumor, or great discussion, in full Parliament on March 12 concerning the Lollards and their preachings and books in English (“de Lollardis et eorum predicacionibus et libris in Anglicis”) whereby they were leading astray simple folk and even some substantial persons. Four of the implicated preachers were summoned for trial before a panel of bishops and scholars, and on reconvening on April 20, two of them were convicted and imprisoned and the other two reconciled.⁸¹ As Emden clarifies, the panel was a committee appointed by the convocation of Canterbury, chaired by Thomas Southam, archdeacon of Oxford, a “civilian” lawyer.⁸²

Another major chronicler of the time, “the Canon of Leicester,” that is, Henry Knighton, also speaks of this Parliament’s concerns about Lollard books. Earlier, at the time of the condemnation of Lollard errors in 1382, Knighton asserted that Wyclif himself, or the Lollards in general, had translated the Gospel into English, and he expressed his disapproval of exposing the laity to Scripture without the mediation of the clergy.⁸³ It is telling, then, that he does not refer to the English Scriptures in his account of Parliament in 1388, where he says that the king at the bidding of the whole Parliament ordered the archbishop of Canterbury (William Courtenay) and the other bishops to prosecute the Lollards and examine their English books more fully (“librosque eorum Anglicos plenius examinarent”). The king further appointed examiners of heretical books and their abettors in every county (“in quolibet comitatu certos inquisitores de hujusmodi libris et eorum fautoribus instituit”). Knighton records one of the commissions, to the dean of Newark (New Work, Novum Opus) College in Leicester, Thomas Brightwell, a former Wycliffite.⁸⁴ This commission, dated May 23, mentions by name writings of Wyclif, Hereford, and John Aston, and speaks of writings both in English and Latin, and the name of Purvey is added in other versions of the commission; but an earlier commission to the sheriff of Nottinghamshire, dated March 30, specifies only Wyclif and Hereford and does not mention the “English and Latin” qualification.⁸⁵

H. G. Richardson admits that the letters patent cited by Knighton are genuine enough, but he says that “the other details of the chronicler’s story have little basis.”⁸⁶ There was, however, clearly some talk among the Lords and Commons about suspect writings at this time, but whether the subject of the Scriptures in English came up, we cannot tell. The tradition in circulation at the time of Against Them was that the clergy of the realm, led by both archbishops, Canterbury and York, attempted to suppress a current English translation of the entire Bible as well as other translations of the Gospels. Gasquet points out the Foxe reading of “Bible” for “bill” in his edition of Against Them and suggests that the incident referred to an attempt of the clergy to sanction an approved vernacular translation.⁸⁷ Perhaps John of Gaunt and his partisans were objecting to the phasing out of the already beloved EV by the new-fangled LV! A valid objection to LV would have been that it was less faithful to the literal meaning of the Vulgate. We know that Gaunt’s brother Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, possessed a lavish copy of EV. In fact, this was the Egerton Bible on display in the King’s Library at the British Museum, labeled as “The English Bible, Wycliffe’s Translation,” which originally inspired Gasquet to question the Wycliffite connections with the Middle English Bible.⁸⁸ It is rubricated for public liturgical use and contains a lectionary, or table of liturgical readings, at the end.⁸⁹

Gasquet considers Gloucester’s ownership of this and other English Scriptures (a Psalter and two books of Gospels) to be evidence of their non-Wycliffite nature, since Gloucester was a firm supporter of Archbishop Arundel.⁹⁰ Others, of course, argue the other way round, assuming the Wycliffite nature of the Bibles and taking Gloucester’s possession of them as evidence of his connection with or interest in Lollardy.⁹¹ There is, as Forshall and Madden noted,⁹² a brief Wycliffite rant in the Egerton Bible lectionary, complaining about recent bishops, abbots, and others being honored as saints. This has been taken by Matti Peikola as evidence that Gloucester supported the Wycliffites’ cause.⁹³ However, he points out that the common sanctoral that follows contains some of the objectionable saints, notably Thomas Becket and Swithun of Winchester;⁹⁴ and, even though the scribes were aware of the passage, neither of them seems to have composed it (or the lectionary itself),⁹⁵ and we cannot conclude that they, much less the duke, approved of it. Anne Hudson has recently given an example of a brief Lollard commentary, part of it quite strident, incorporated into Richard Rolle’s Psalter commentary, and copied by several orthodox scribes with no sign of hesitation or unease.⁹⁶

Let me add here some support to Gasquet’s argument that the early and continued use of the English Bibles for the liturgy is one of the strongest indications for the widespread acceptance of the translations by the general populace.⁹⁷ Peikola reports that 40 percent of all surviving manuscripts of the Middle English Bible contain lectionaries,⁹⁸ and Gasquet’s explanation is surely more plausible than Peikola’s suggestion that these tables were placed in the Bibles by Wycliffites to persuade the ecclesiastical authorities of their orthodoxy,⁹⁹ and that the practice was continued by orthodox bookmakers once the Wycliffites lost control of English Bible reproduction.¹⁰⁰

If a dispute over vernacular Scriptures did take place in 1388, it is certain that the current archbishop of York, Alexander Neville, did not participate in it, since he was not there; he was on the run from the Lords Appellant and was convicted of treason in absentia.¹⁰¹ His replacement as archbishop was none other than the chancellor, Thomas Arundel, bishop of Ely; the papal provision was granted on April 3,¹⁰² and it could hardly have reached England by June 4, when Parliament was dissolved.

The other parliament suggested by Hanna for the Bible debate, that of 1394, which was in session from January to March, conflicts with the final anecdote of Against Them, which is said to have taken place at the funeral of Queen Anne later that same year, at the end of July 1394.¹⁰³ In the former, the archbishops of Canterbury and York are said to have been opposed to Bible translation; in the latter, the archbishop of York at that time (1394), Thomas Arundel, identified as the current archbishop of Canterbury at the time of the writing of Against Them, is shown to be in favor of Bible translation. Here is the story:

Also the bishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, that now is, said a sermon in Westminster, there-as were many hundred people at the burying of Queen Anne, of whose soul God have mercy, and in his commendings of her he said it was more joy of her than of any woman that ever he knew, for notwithstanding that she was an alien born, she had on English all the four Gospelers, with the doctors upon them. And he said she had sent them unto him, and he said they were good and true, and commended her in that she was so great a lady and also an alien, and would so lowly study in so virtuous books. And he blamed in that sermon sharply the negligence of prelates and of other men, insomuch that some said he would on the morrow leave up his office of chancellor and forsake the world—and then it had been the last sermon that ever they heard.¹⁰⁴

Note the word “last” in the final line. In Dove’s base manuscript, the Wycliffite Trinity version, the text reads: “and 3an it hadde be the lest sermoun 3at euere 3ei herde.” This makes sense: if Arundel forsook the world, this sermon would be his last, and he would never preach another sermon. Deanesly accepted this reading, but Bühler and Dove adopt the reading of the other, non-Wycliffite, medieval manuscript (Morgan), which has best instead of lest, producing a clause that does not make syntactic or semantic sense: “and then it had been the best sermon that ever they heard.” It has been taken to mean: “it would have been the best sermon they had ever heard if Arundel had carried out his impulse to forsake the world and never preach again.” This is how Mary Dove reads it: “It is difficult to gauge the tone of these words, but presumably those who thought Arundel would ‘forsake the worlde’ judged it ‘the best sermoun that evere they herde’ because he would no longer be in a position to prohibit the English Bible.”¹⁰⁵ But this is just after they heard him praise Queen Anne to the skies for reading the Gospels in English! Rather, we must conclude that people thought it the best sermon they ever heard for two reasons: because he approved of the English Scriptures, and because he disapproved of unworthy clergy and laymen.¹⁰⁶

Gasquet cites John Strype’s acceptance of the historicity of this account, which shows, Strype says, that Archbishop Arundel “was for the translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue, and for the laity’s use thereof.”¹⁰⁷ This certainly seems to be the purport of the story, as told by our author. His account of Arundel’s sermon on this occasion was taken as historical by Herbert Workman in his exhaustive work on Wyclif,¹⁰⁸ and it is also accepted by Sven Fristedt,¹⁰⁹ and by Jonathan Hughes in his recent life of Arundel in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, reporting that the archbishop on this occasion expressed a desire to give up his chancellorship and to forsake the world.¹¹⁰ It is also taken as historical by Katherine Walsh, who says that “it is unlikely that the remarks made by Archbishop Thomas Arundel in his sermon at Anne’s funeral in 1396 [sic] were intended as a criticism of vernacular scriptures.”¹¹¹ She adds: “Anne had grown up in a climate of easy availability of vernacular bibles, she possessed her own and she belonged in a tradition of patronage of this genre by the House of Luxembourg—the most spectacular example is the six-volume, exquisitely illuminated German bible made at Prague in the court atelier between 1387 and 1405 and commissioned by Anne’s brother, the King of the Romans Wenceslaus of Bohemia.”¹¹²

Anne’s previous ownership of the Gospels in Czech, German, and Latin has been assumed from a passage in Wyclif ’s treatise De triplici vinculo amoris, in which he rails against the foolishness of those who damn writings as heretical because they are in English and deal sharply with the sins of their country. He then speaks of the possibility that Queen Anne had the Gospel set out in three languages, Bohemian, German, and Latin, and to hereticize her for this would be, implicitly, a Luciferian pride.¹¹³ Johann Loserth criticizes those who take this possibility as a statement of fact,¹¹⁴ and the same is true of Workman.¹¹⁵ Loserth also points out that the whole passage in defense of the vernacular is obviously out of context, “so that it must be looked upon as a note, which by some hasty transcriber has been inserted in the wrong place” in the treatise.¹¹⁶ What the passage says, in effect, is that criticizing the use of English in matters of religion would be like criticizing the new queen for having the Scriptures in her vernaculars of Czech and German—if she did.

We can sum up by saying that even though Richard Ullerston’s treatise in favor of translating the Bible into English may have been associated with the debate on the subject that was taking place at the beginning of the century, he may have added further reasons after the bishops and other clergy passed the requirement, in 1407 and again in 1409, that new translations had to be approved by local bishops. This legislation likely sparked a new flurry of debate on the subject, of which Ullerston’s hastily supplemented treatise was an early manifestation. The author of the English tract took advantage of it and freely drew on his arguments to make many of the same points, and then went off on his own to denounce a Dominican opposer of translation, John Tille, who tried to persuade the bishop of London and a hundred other listeners that St. Jerome himself was against biblical translation. Our author then recounted that the two archbishops and other clergy back in the time of Richard II were indeed against the Bible translations then in circulation, but that their efforts were opposed by John of Gaunt and the other laity, represented by the Lords and Commons of Parliament. And finally he recalled that a subsequent archbishop of York, who was now archbishop of Canterbury, expressed warm approval of the Gospels in English with commentaries that Queen Anne had submitted to him for his inspection. (This sounds like a complete set of Glossed Gospels; if so, it has not survived.) The author of Against Them would be affirming that these translations were already approved, and that any newer translations would simply have to be submitted to just the sort of episcopal inspection that Arundel performed for Queen Anne.

Dives and Pauper and the Longleat Sunday Gospels

The dialogue Dives and Pauper¹¹⁷ was composed by a friar, perhaps a Franciscan, who reveals that he is writing in the year 1405.¹¹⁸ He presents one of his interlocutors, the affluent layman Dives, as complaining that people are saying that the Bible should not be read by the unlearned laity, not even to teach it to their children (I modernize spelling and verb forms): “Reason giveth that men should teach their children God’s Law and good thews [morals], and for to take heed to God that made us of nought and bought us so dear. But now men say that there should no lewd [uneducated] folk intermit them of [involve themselves in] God’s Law, nor of the Gospel nor of Holy Writ, neither to ken it nor to teach it.”¹¹⁹ The other dialoguist, Pauper, who like his author seems very friarlike, responds that this is not right: “That is a foul error and well perilous to man’s soul, for each man and woman is bound after his degree to do his business to know God’s Law, that he is bound to keep. And fathers and mothers, godfathers and godmothers, are bound to teach their children God’s Law, or else do [cause] them be taught.”¹²⁰ Later on, Dives says that “God’s Law is forgotten and defended [prohibited], that men shall not ken it, nor have it in their mother tongue,”¹²¹ and this time Pauper lets the complaint pass by, without comment or correction. Dives’s words have regularly been taken to refer to the provincial constitutions that were enacted at Oxford in 1407 and promulgated in 1409, and the dialogue consequently dated to 1410 or so.¹²² However, there is good reason to think that Dives is not referring to any official restrictions against English Bibles. As I have stated before, and as we shall see in detail in Chapter 5, the constitutions did not forbid the translation of the Scriptures into English.

We should come to the same conclusion about a later work of the Dives author, which we can call the Longleat Sunday Gospels, that it too was written before the constitutions were issued.¹²³ The work consists of a new English translation of each of the Sunday Gospels and an explication of the text. The author says here that the teaching of the Gospel in English is prohibited, but only by some prelates (“thoghu it be these dayis defendit and inhibight be somme prelatis that men schulde techin the Gospel in Englich”),¹²⁴ which means that he is not referring to any legislation passed by all of the prelates of the southern province. He goes on to say, addressing the layman to whom he sends this compilation,

Lief [dear] friend, sith it is leaveful to preach the Gospel in English, it is leaveful to write it in English, both to the teacher and to the hearer, if he ken [knows how to] write. For by writing is most secure examination of man’s speech; and by writing, God’s Law may best be couth [known] and best kept in mind. And therfore, lief friend, although some prelates have defended [forbidden] me to teach the Gospel and to write it in English, yet none of them hath defended you, nor may defend you, to ken the Gospel in English, that is your kindly [natural] language.¹²⁵

This has been taken to mean that the reader had a “privileged position … apparently beyond the reach of episcopal enquiry even though the preacher himself might be persecuted.”¹²⁶ The conclusion is based on the supposition that the constitution regulating Bible “reading” is already in force. But the author says at the beginning of his comment that reading the Bible in English is lawful to anyone who can read. He himself, unfortunately, has been specifically prohibited by certain bishops from teaching the Gospel and producing an English translation of the Gospel, but no bishop, he says, would be able or permitted to impose such a prohibition upon his reader.

He again contrasts his position with that of his reader, saying that though he himself is in danger for translating the Gospel, no bishop may forbid his friend from reading it: “Sith I have written the Gospel to you in well great dread and persecution, ye that be in such secureness that no prelate may let you nor disease you for kenning nor for keeping of the Gospel, ken it and keep it with good devotion, as ye will answer to Christ at the Day of Doom.”¹²⁷ It is unlikely that he is speaking only of his friend, and suggesting that he is of such high standing that no bishop would dare to risk his displeasure. Rather, he would seem to be saying that there is no rule against laymen reading biblical translation and no grounds for lawfully imposing such a rule.

One thing we can be certain of: he has never heard of a general mandate from the archbishop and the other bishops of the province of Canterbury forbidding anyone from reading (whether lecturing upon or simply perusing) a new English translation of the Scriptures until it has been approved by his or her local bishop.

He goes on to speak of an attempt, undoubtedly again on the part of some bishops, to place unwonted restrictions upon preaching, and also, surprisingly, to make them venerate statues and pictures more than is proper:

And as ye may hear, now preaching and teaching of the Gospel and of God’s Law is arted [restricted] and letted more than it was wont to be, therefore take goodly the teaching that cometh to you freely. And though the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian be now newly begun to let teaching and preaching of God’s word and God’s Law and to compel men to worship graven images of stone and of tree, stand ye stiff in the faith, and worship ye yon God above all thing. And think that imagery and paint is but a book to the lewd people for to steer them to think on God and other saints and to worship God above all thing, and saints in their degree, as the Law showeth well, De Cons., D. 3, c. Perlatum.¹²⁸

It may be, however, that he is saying that the strictures against preaching and teaching are equivalent by counteracting the true purpose of religious art. The canon of Gratian that he cites, Perlatum, an excerpt from Pope Gregory the Great’s letter to Bishop Serenus of Marseilles, can be read as authorizing literate persons to read the Bible:

It is reported to us that, fired by inconsiderate zeal, you have destroyed images of saints under the alleged excuse that they should not be adored. We praise you for forbidding them to be adored, but we rebuke you for breaking them up. Tell me, brother, what priest has ever done or been heard of doing what you did? It is one thing to adore a picture and quite another to learn from the story the picture tells what is to be adored. For what writing [or: Scripture] does for those who read it, a picture does for uneducated people who look at it, for in it the ignorant see what they should follow, reading it even though they know not letters. Therefore, especially for the multitude of people, the picture takes the place of reading.¹²⁹

The Longleat commentator ends by recommending that his friend not only read the Sunday Gospels in the following pages, but also the Gospels generally and the other books of the Bible:

And sometime, when ye may, read of the Gospel and of God’s Law, that ye may the more know your God and the more love Him and wit the better when ye do well and when amiss. Therefore read in books of God’s Law, for not only they be blessed that hear God’s Word and keep it, but also the teachers and the readers of God’s Word be blessed of God. And therefore St. John saith in the Book of God’s Privities, Beatus qui legit et qui audit verba prophecie hujus et servat ea que in ea scripta sunt, “Blessed be he that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy and of God’s Law and keepeth things that be writ therein” (Apoc. 1.3).¹³⁰

The Longleat author tells us in one of his Sunday commentaries, on the Gospel of the Good Samaritan, that many bishops and other churchmen are opposed to the idea of allowing the laity to have easy access to the Scriptures, and he gives a reason for it: they themselves are so ignorant about fundamentals that they want to keep the people in deeper ignorance so that they might seem wise: “Many prelates and men of Holy Church be so lewd that they ken not answer, nor they ken well hear [the] Creed, and therefore they defend [prohibit] English books of God’s Law, and suffer books of the Fiend’s law…. They love no multiplication of God’s Law, for they would not be asked nor opposed. And, for many of them be well lewd, therefore they would keep the people in overdone lewdness, that themselves in their lewdness might seem wise.”¹³¹ Once again, this is clearly not said in the context of a general provincial prohibition.

The upshot of this chapter is that there was no prohibition on translating the Scriptures into English at the turn of the fifteenth century, though some scholars and preachers and even bishops (to judge from the Longleat author) were beginning to think it advisable. Another testimony to this notion is found in The Chastising of God’s Children, written around this time. The author, addressing a nun whom he is directing, says that some are against it, because of the inadequacy of English, but he allows it:

Many men reprove it to have the Matins or the Psalter or the Gospels or the Bible in English, because they may not be translated into vulgar, word by word as it standeth, without great circumlocution, after the feeling of the first writer, the which translated that into Latin by teaching of the Holy Ghost. Nevertheless, I will not reprove such translation, nor I reprove not to have them on English, nor to read on them where they may stir you more to devotion and to the love of God. But utterly to use them in English and leave the Latin, I hold it not commendable, and namely in them that be bound to say their Psalter or their Matins of Our Lady.¹³²

This antitranslation movement, however, was of recent vintage, and it inspired some strong opponents, notably Richard Ullerston and his vernacular inheritor in the treatise Against Them, who cited prominent lay supporters, led by John of Gaunt, and also Thomas Arundel, the current archbishop of Canterbury, when he was archbishop of York and chancellor of England.