John Wyclif's Translation

Fivarzy the great work, which the translations of Caedmon, Bede, and all the other English scholars who had labored over the Bible from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries but foreshadowed, was accomplished; the whole Word of God was open to all who knew the English tongue. No more were the peasants and burghers to be at the mercy of an ignorant and oftentimes unscrupulous priesthood. Although the actual transformation took centuries, the common people were at last freed from a slavish dependence upon the clergy.

The seed through which this emancipation was chiefly effected lies in the work of John Wyclif. If Jerome is to be honored as the author of the Latin Vulgate, Wyclif deserves equal praise as the man who gave English-

33 men their Vulgate. For he is fully of the stature of Jeromé. While his scholarship may not have been so profound as was that of Jerome, it must be remembered that many advantages which the Roman enjoyed were denied him. Certainly his figure looms in a heroic way just as large. Wyclif stands in the vanguard of English reformers. The chief scholar of his time, he defied with dauntless courage all authority that sought to oppress his mind and spirit. Church images, the temporal authority of the pope, the Romish ceremony of the mass, the doctrine of transubstantiation — all these were questioned by the clear, strong analysis of his penetrating mind. Such was his winsome personality and his purity of life that almost the whole University of Oxford from the Chancellor down to the humblest student rallied to his support against the censure of the primate and the crown. When persecuted most bitterly, when the powerful Lancastrian party had deserted him, Wyclif, 34 with calm courage, said, “I believe that in the end the truth will conquer.” Then he sought his most powerful weapon. Tract after tract came from his pen, and as speedily as written was spread broadcast by bands of lowly priests who soon came contemptuously to be known in the vernacular of the time as “Lollards.’* Crowds of these poor preachers, in coarse clothes and bereft of worldly goods, went up and down the land spreading the heretical doctrines. Soon the whole country was aflame. Half of London was Lollard..

At this juncture, LWyclif set about the work which he was called of God to do. The tracts and controversial writings were of outstanding importance, because they were written not in the Latin of the learned clerks but in the speech of the common people. It was this that gave them their enormous influence. And now Wyclif determined

1The probable meaning of this term was “idle babbler”; it was confused with loller (“one who is sluggish”).

35 to open the Bible to his countrymen. (He realized that his contentions against the ecclesiastical abuses of the time were supported by the Word of God. If he could but put this Book before the people, if he could but free it from its Latin prisonhouse, no opponents, however strong, could prevail against him. All of his arguments resolved themselves into the great premise that the Bible is the sole authority in things pertaining to the church and to the spirit. Accordingly he began the greatest of all his tasks. In the hard work of translation he was assisted by his friend, Nicholas Hereford. The year 1378 saw the appearance of the New Testament in his+drornmatic and vigorous English. A few years later his labors resulted in the rendering of the whole Bible in the mother tongue. And finally in 1388, four years after his death, John Purvey, his favorite pupil and his curate at Lutterworth, brought out a corrected and revised edition of his master’s work.

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(T he inaccessibility of the originals, combined with Wyclif’s slight knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, caused him to translate directly from the Vulgate. Such a procedure

was inevitably attended by many errors)

Yet these cannot obscure the decisive worth of his achievement. [Certainly the fact that his knowledge of Greek and of Hebrew was limited is no indictment of the soundness of his learning. During the middle ages the scholar who knew both of these languages was rare indeed. Just how far Wyclif succeeded is best shown by the com aes remarks of some of his enemies, “Master John Wyclif,” said one, “by Teste Sipe the Bible into English, has laid it more open to the laity than formerly it was to the most learned of the Clergy.” Another, speaking with some heat, said, “In this way the Gospel pearl is cast abroad and trodden under foot of swine,”

As a literary figure Wyclif is not only important, he is commanding. He was the

37 first great writer of English prose, no mean distinction surely. With Geoffrey Chaucer he will be venerated as one of the parents of English literature. It is a commonplace of our literary history that, as our poetry is said to have been founded by Chaucer, so Wyclif may be called the founder of English prose. His style, especially in the translation of the Bible, is marked by great vigor and terse simplicity. He wrote bluntly in the language of the plain people who were seeking their freedom in such outbreaks as Wat Tyler’s Rebellion. Not striving for rhetorical adornment, he nevertheless put on paper phrases of deathless beauty. Occasionally his translation expresses the thought of the original with the finality ef perfection. No~one, not even a Tyndale, could attempt to improve upon such consummate renderings as “‘the deep things of God” and “a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” Indeed some of the most beautiful portions of the King James Version can be

38 traced directly to John Wyclif’s Bible, The following passage from Psalm 46 is a fair specimen of its style:

“Oure God, thou art refuyt, and vertu; helpere in tribulacions, that han founde vs greetly. Therfor we schulen not drede, while the erthe schal be troblid; and the hillis schulen be borun ouer in to the herte of the see. The watris of hem sowneden, and weren troblid; hillis weren troblid togidere in the strengthe of hym. The feersnesse of flood makith glad the citee of God; the hi3este God hath halewid his tabernacle. God in the myddis thereof schal not be moued; God schal helpe it eerli in the grey morewtid.””

?Forshall and Madden’s edition of Wyclif’s Bible. (Purvey’s Revision.)