How the Bible Came to England
SEEMINGLY insignificant occurrences sometimes influence amazingly events apparently unrelated to them in time and in place. Such an occurrence was the birth about the year 540 A.D. of a son to one of the patrician families of Rome. Given the finest social and educational advantages, the boy became a lawyer. At the age of thirty-one he was made praetor of Rome by the Emperor Justin IJ. His father died. He inherited wealth. Following the admonition that Jesus gave to the rich young ruler, he distributed his money to the poor. Seven monasteries, one in Rome and six in Sicily, were founded through his fortune. He resigned the praetorship, bestowed all of his robes, his gold, and all his precious stones
26 upon the needy, and devoted himself to the service of God. Only the most humble duties could satisfy his longing to serve; choosing a lowly life rather than exalted position, he refused the headship of a convent.
It was at this time in the life of Gregory — for he is known by this name — that a beautiful incident took place. We today know of it because the Venerable Bede, foremost writer of Anglo-Saxon England, set it down upon parchment in his Ecclesiastical History. In one of the slave markets of Rome, Gregory one day saw some golden-haired youths. He was struck with their beauty and intelligence. When he inquired whence they came and who they were, he was told that they were ‘“‘Angles,”’ and that they had come from a heathen island across the sea. To Gregory these youths seemed fair enough to be called of a truth “Angels”; and he straightway made a resolve to convert their native land to Christianity. Tradition has it that he set out upon this mission
27 at once, but that the voice of the people called him back to tasks at Rome.
From thence on Gregory’s rise was great. At last he became Pope, and as Gregory the Great he will long be remembered as one of the wisest and most just rulers early Christendom ever had. In spite of his high position, he did not forget the golden-haired youths whom he had admired years before. He charged Augustine in 596 to go to England as a missionary, and gave him two copies of the Latin gospels’ to take with him. The following year Augustine landed on the island of Thanet.” King Ethelbert re-
*The Anglo-Saxon translations show that Gregory gave to Augustine the old Latin version of the Gospels (Vetus Italica), not the Vulgate.
? Augustine was not, however, the first to bring Christianity to the British Isles. Even before the time of St. Patrick (? 389-461) missionaries are said to have visited Ireland. In 563 St. Columba with twelve friends set sail from Ireland in a wicker boat covered with hides. He landed at Iona (I-colum-alle) off the coast of Scotland. After much opposition from the Druids he finally secured this island as a gift from the king. On it he founded the
28 ceived him and his companions in friendly fashion. And in a short time Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Thus Christianity came to England.)
The two little books which Gregory gave to Augustine were of the highest importance. As quickly as the English became Christian, their thirst for the word of God grew. The Gospels were copied over and over again. Soon they were translated into the vigorous speech of the Anglo-Saxons. Who did this work, who first gave the Scriptures to Englishmen in their own tongue, we do not know. We know only that, by the beginning of the eighth century, the translations of the Gospels had penetrated even to the northern Abbey of Wearmouth in Durham where lived the Venerable Bede. That other parts of the Bible were soon brought into England is evident, for in the seventh cenhistoric monastery that proved so influential in bringing some knowledge of Christianity to the Pictish inhabitants of Scotland,
29 tury the poet Caedmon put some of the stories from Genesis into Anglo-Saxon verse. Yet it is the Gospels, based upon the Latin texts sent by Gregory to England, that stand first in the long line of version upon version, rendering upon rendering, that has given us our most beautiful and our most precious piece of English literature.
The following paragraph illustrates the primitive language in which the Gospels were made English by these early folk. It is the first seven verses of the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John.
“And he cwep to his leorning-cnihtum, Ne sy eower heorte gedréfed;... ge gelyfap on God, and gelyfapb on me. On mines feder huse synd manega eardung-stowa; ne sede ic eow, hyt ys lytles wana, det ic fare and wylle eow eardung-stéwe gegearwian. And gif ic fare, and eoweardung-stéwe gegearwige, eft ic cume, and nime eow to me sylfum, det ge syn, der ic eom. And ge witon, hwyder ic fare, and ge cunnon done weg. Thomas cwep to him, Drihten, we nyton hwyder du ferst,
30 and hi mage we done weg cunnan? Se Hélend cwep to him, Ic eom weg, and sépf eestnys, and lif; ne cymp nan to feeder, but on purh me. Gif ge cidon me, witodlice ge cidon minne feder; and heonon-forp ge hyne gecnawap, and ge hine gesawon.’”*
As additional evidences of the high value which the rude and warlike people of ancient England placed upon the Bible, the metrical adaptations of Aldhelm, the versions prepared at the instance of King Alfred, and the renderings of Aelfric have come down to this day. Well on into the thirteenth century, translations of portions of the Latin Bible were still being made. Orm in the Ormulum paraphrased the Gospels and the Acts. William of Shoreham and Richard Rolle put the Psalter into the vernacular. But despite the labors of these scholars, no English translation of the entire Bible was
*Quoted from Bosworth and Waring, “The Gospels — Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Wyclif, and Tyndale Versions
31 available. Only to those who could read Latin — and these were very few indeed, for none but a little group of churchmen and scholars were really educated — were the complete Scriptures accessible.