Читать книгу The Middle English Bible - Henry Ansgar Kelly - Страница 15

CHAPTER 5

The Provincial Constitutions of 1407

The Constitution on Bible Translation (Periculosa) and the Middle English Bible

The Oxford constitutions were passed in November 1407, and then, two further convocations later, were confirmed at the meeting in London in January 1409, after being discussed “by repeated promulgation” (repetita promulgatione) but left unchanged; in the following April, they were ordered by Archbishop Arundel to be put into effect throughout the province.¹ They have often been regarded as the sole work of Arundel himself; and Periculosa, the meaning of which should be very simple, has been interpreted as forbidding English translations altogether, “prohibiting scriptural translation on the authority of Jerome.”² We are told by one historian that in virtue of this legislation, “the Wycliffite translations of the Bible were outlawed,” and “for the next 125 years, it was illegal to make or own any Wycliffite Bible in England without special license, and anyone caught in possession of a copy could in theory be tried for heresy and burnt to death.”³ Others assure us that the legislation “banned the Lollard Bible,”⁴ or that “possession of the Lollard Bible was prohibited after 1409,”⁵ or that all English Bible translation and reading was forbidden,⁶ that the mere possession of an English Bible “was an offence punishable by death”⁷ or “sent people to the flames.”⁸ Advocacy of translating the Bible was “labeled outright heresy.”⁹ The constitution “categorically prohibited all disputation on this issue.”¹⁰ Even before this, we are told, “making a translation of the Bible from the official Latin Vulgate of Jerome was an act that challenged the authority of the church and initiated linguistic separation from the wider Latin-speaking church in Europe.”¹¹

Let us examine these claims in light of the actual text of the legislation, aided by Gasquet’s analysis, and then examine how the EV and LV should have fared, or actually did fare, if or when the mandate was enforced. Let me begin by quoting what Sir Thomas More said about the “constitution provincial” on Bible translation: “Many men talk of it, but no man knoweth it.”¹²

Periculosa reads as follows:

Periculosa quoque res est, testante beato Hjeronymo, textum Sacre Scripture de uno in aliud idioma transferre, eo quod in ipsis translationibus non de facili idem sensus in omnibus retinetur, prout idem beatus Hjeronymus, etsi inspiratus fuisset, se in hoc sepius fatetur errasse. Statuimus igitur et ordinamus ut nemo deinceps textum aliquem Sacre Scripture auctoritate sua in linguam Anglicanam vel aliam transferat per viam libri, vel libelli, aut tractatus, nec legatur aliquis hujusmodi liber, libellus, aut tractatus jam noviter tempore dicti Johannis Wicliffe sive citra compositus, aut in posterum componendus, in parte vel in toto, publice vel occulte, sub pena majoris excommunicationis, quousque per loci diocesanum, seu, si res exegerit, per concilium provinciale, ipsa translatio fuerit approbata. Qui vero contra hoc fecerit, ut fautor hereseos et erroris similiter puniatur.¹³

Here is Gasquet’s translation (I supply in brackets the parts that he omits; the italics are his):

It is dangerous, as St. Jerome declares, to translate the text of Holy Scripture out of one idiom into another, since it is not easy in translations to preserve exactly the same meaning in all things [and Jerome himself, even though he was inspired, admits that he has often been in error in this matter]. We therefore command and ordain that henceforth no one translate any text of Holy Scripture into English or any other language in a book (per viam libri), booklet, or tract, and that no one read any book, booklet, or tract of this kind lately made in the time of the said John Wyclif or since, or that hereafter may be made either in part or wholly, either publicly or privately, under pain of [major] excommunication until such translation shall have been approved and allowed by the diocesan of the place, or (if need be) by the Provincial Council. He who shall act otherwise let him be punished [similarly] as an abettor of heresy and error.¹⁴

In reprinting the 1894 article in the Old English Bible, Gasquet adds the Latin, and italicizes the adverb emphasizing the newness of the designated compositions: “jam noviter … compositus” (“now newly composed”). His comment on the mandate is:

Now it is obvious from the words of the decree that in this there is no such absolute prohibition as is generally represented. All that the fathers of the Council of Oxford forbade was unauthorized translations. The fact that no mention is made of any Wycliffite translation of the entire Bible is not without its significance, and in view of the Lollard errors then prevalent, and of the ease with which the text of Holy Scripture could be modified in the translation in any and every manuscript, so as apparently to be made to support those views, the ordinance appears not only prudent and just, but necessary.¹⁵

We note that it is the reading, not the possession, of a recent unlicensed translation that is prohibited.¹⁶ The literal translation of this clause is “nor is any such book to be read.” Moreover, the reading intended is not private perusal but formal reading, that is, lecturing or expounding, as in the Oxford statute, “unless he has read a book of the canon of the Bible or a book of the Sentences or of the Histories” (“nisi legerit aliquem librum de canone Biblie vel librum Sentenciarum vel Historiarum”),¹⁷ and as it was explained in the previous constitution, Quia insuper: no treatise from Wyclif ’s time onward “is to be read in schools, halls, hospices, or any other places” in the province, “or taught from it” (“legatur in scholis, aulis, hospitiis, sive aliis locis quibuscumque … sive secundum ipsum doceatur”) until approved for publication by university committee.¹⁸ This will be made clearer when we look at William Lyndwood’s explanation of the constitution.

We note too that a translation need be approved only once for each diocese (or for the whole province, by a council), meaning that copies of it would be thenceforward allowed; and there is no requirement to give licenses to individual readers. Perhaps the clergy, speaking in the archbishop’s name, had in mind a license in the book itself, like the modern nihil obstat and imprimatur, or the Censure and Approbation in the 1582 Rheims New Testament. We should also observe that conviction under this edict would not be of heresy, but, at most, of favoring heresy (as will be explained below). Hudson has characterized the effect of the legislation as forcibly closing down “debate about the legitimacy of biblical translation into the vernacular,”¹⁹ but, taken at its face value, it would seem to be rather an invitation to enter into such debate.

It might strike us nowadays that this mandate was very impractical and difficult to enforce. There would be difficulty first of all in trying to ascertain the date of any given translation in any given manuscript, and then determining whether another manuscript contains the same translation or whether the translation has been altered, since each copy would have different foliations (but of course the same capitulations). All very true, but these problems did not seem to occur to the legislators who formulated the process, or, if they did, they did not worry them. Gasquet in his comment cited above seems to assume that every copy of every translation would have to be inspected. But the constitution does not say so and implies otherwise.

We should also note that the fifth constitution, Similiter quia, approved of the traditional method used in elementary schools of explicating Scripture: “Ordinamus quod magistri … se nullatenus intromittant … de expositione Sacre Scripture nisi in exponendo textum prout antiquitus fieri consuevit” (“We ordain that teachers … not be involved in the explanation of Holy Scripture except in explaining the text as has been the custom from of old”). The authoritative canonist William Lyndwood in his Provinciale, which he released for publication in 1434, takes this to mean that they should stick to the grammatical level and not go into mystical or moral levels, since this is beyond the capacity of their students.²⁰ It also means that there was no prohibition against explaining the Bible in one’s native tongue.