William Tyndale and His Followers
The time was due for a man, made of the stuff of which martyrs are made and endowed with great literary skill, who could bring to maturity the seed which Wyclif had planted and which the faith of the people coupled with the labors of consecrated scholars had kept alive. This man, for he finally appeared, is the subject of a warning which one Edward Lee, almoner of King Henry VIII and later Archbishop of Canterbury, addressed to his sovereign. “Please it your Highnesse to undrestand,” he wrote while in France, “that I ame certainlie enformed, as I passed in this contree that an Englishman, your subject, at the sollicitacion and instance of Luther, with whome he is, ‘ hathe translated the Newe Testament in to English, and within fewe dayes entendethe
49 to arrive with the same emprinted in Englond. I neede not to advertise your Grace what infection and daunger maye ensue heerbie, if it be not withstonded. This is the next way to fulfill your Realme with Lutherians. For all Luthers perverse opinions bee grounded opon bare words of Scriptur not well taken nor undrestonded, whiche your Grace hathe opened in sondrie places of your royall Booke. All our forfadres, governors of the Churche of Englond, hathe with all diligence forbed and exchued publication of Englishe bibles;” the king should continue this tradition; “as God hathe endued your Grace with Christen courauge to sett for the the standard against thies Philistees and to venquish them.... This tealme of Fraunce hathe been somewhat tooched with this sect.... And yet, blessed be God, your noble Realme is yet unblotted.’” Such was the attitude of eccle-
*J. J. Jusserand, “A Literary History of the English People,” Vol. II, p. 204.
50 siastical authority toward the reading of the Scriptures by the common people, a curious combination of bigotry and flattery of the none-too-righteous monarch.
The man, who, “hathe translated the Newe Testament into English,” was William Tyndale. Born about 1490 in a little Gloucestershire village and brought up under church influences, he took Franciscan orders. He was at an early age a close student of the Bible; at twenty-five he is reputed to have translated portions of the New Testament. That his scholarship was influenced by the best phase of the Renaissance is probable. Erasmus visited England for the second time in 1509-1514, and Tyndale may have heard some of his Greek lectures during this period.
At a time when intolerance was prevalent, Tyndale’s community was noted for its bigotry. The narrowness and the arrogance which he saw reflected in the local church irritated him greatly. His decided opinions, which he was not at all careful to conceal,
51 led him into frequent controversies. It is said that he once brought a well-known churchman to overwhelming defeat in theological discussion. Thereupon the churchman cholerically exclaimed, ““We were better to be without God’s law than the Pope’s.”’ This was more than Tyndale could bear; he could not forgo an audacious reply. “I defy the Pope and all of his laws,” he said; ‘‘and if God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the scriptures than thou dost.” In the light of this incident it is easy to see why Tyndale was forced to leave Gloucestershire. A church embroiled in political warfare and vacillating between independence and allegiance to Rome was in no mood to tolerate bold heretics.
Tyndale went to London. There, in 1523, he presented to Bishop Tunstall his plans for putting the Bible into the vernacular. But the Bishop was not responsive. Tyndale approached other prelates, meeting
52 nothing but rebuff in each case. Finally he realized that he could never accomplish his mission in England; that if his work were to cause the “boy that driveth the plow” to know more of the Scriptures than the clergy, it must be done abroad.
He found refuge in Wittenberg. Here in the heart of Germany, working amid dauntless spirits like himself, he devoted his life to the task which he had resolved to accomplish. The first-fruit of his labor was published at Worms in 1525-1526; it was an English New Testament. The following year, copy after copy of it was smuggled into England. Four years later, in 1530, his translation of the Pentateuch appeared.
But Tyndale never completed his work. Hounded like a common felon, he lived in obscurity, poor yet infinitely rich. It was not long before his enemies found him. Like the Master whom he served, he was betrayed by a faithless disciple. The wretched traitor delivered him to the imperial authorities at Antwerp. He was condemned for heresy. In 1536 at Vilvorde, near Brussels, he was publicly strangled, and his body was later committed to the flames. His last utterance was, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!”
Tyndale did not perish in vain. At the very moment of his martyrdom, his testaments were being read in every county of England. The Scriptures were accessible even to the ploughboy. All the royal power and all the influence of an intricately organized ecclesiastical system could not prevent England from reading. The people had tasted the water of life; no other fountain could quench their thirst. The church began to sanction good translations. The crown set its seal of authority upon the version of Miles Coverdale, Tyndale’s successor and the man who completed his work. Archbishop Cranmer sponsored the version of John Rogers, one of Tyndale’s companions, the stout-hearted Rogers who went to the
54 stake in 1555, a martyr under the persecution of Queen Mary. His Bible, bearing through a publisher’s trick the name of Thomas Matthews as translator, appeared in 1537. Through the cleverness of the printers, the royal license and exclusive privileges of publication were obtained, and “Matthew’s” Bible thus became the first “authorized” version. In 1539 appeared the “Great” Bible, a ponderous tome, that well deserved its name. It was prepared under the supervision of Thomas Cromwell, and had in subsequent editions the sanction of Archbishop Cranmer. Royal decree caused this book “to be set up upon every Church door.” Contemporary writers tell of the joy with which the people received this announcement. At St. Paul’s in London six copies were chained for reading to as many desks. Multitudes assembled round these ponderous volumes and listened in hushed silence while one of their number read aloud. Aged folk learned to read so that they could understand
55 for themselves the things of God. Little boys left their games and flocked to hear the Bible read. So complete was the triumph of the Scriptures that less than two decades after Tyndale had been driven into exile by the persecution of his countrymen, the name of the very Bishop of London who had scorned his plans appeared on the title page of the Great Bible.
During the short reign of Edward VI, publication of the English Bible was encouraged. However, when his Catholic sister, Mary, took the throne, the country was plunged for a few years into a state of intolerance even more bitter than the hatred that had caused Tyndale’s exile and martyrdom. Churches by the score reverted to Catholicism. Bibles were everywhere collected and publicly burned in great quantities. Protestant printing presses were seized. Scholars like Rogers perished in the flames. Those who escaped fled abroad as did Coverdale. Despite it all, thousands of the common
56 people clung to the Bible, keeping their precious books hidden away from the prying eyes of bishops and priests.
Persecution invariably leads to renewed vigor of the hated cause. Amid the horrors of a reign that made the queen infamous by the title “Bloody Mary,’ another great translation was produced. A number of Puritan and Presbyterian fugitives fled to Geneva in Switzerland. Under the guidance of their great leader, John Calvin, they made, in 1557-1560, their own version of the Scriptures. In the actual work of translation, a certain William Whittingham had a large part. He was assisted by Miles Coverdale and other English scholars. Calvin himself wrote the introduction. The whole assembly of exiles contributed most bountifully, and the version appeared beautifully printed from types of pure silver.
When Elizabeth took the throne after the death of ‘Bloody Mary,” the persecutions ceased. The fugitives returned, bringing
57 back to England the new Geneva Bible, published, not in bulky volumes suited only to be chained to pulpits, but in small, convenient quartos. Its success was immediate. Everyone began to read it. Soon it was the popular version. The success was merited. Whittingham and his co-workers produced a translation of notable scholarship and beauty. Moreover, they made important innovations that have been followed to this day. The apocrypha, or the extra-canonical books, were for the first time omitted. Marginal readings, excellent albeit Calvinistic, were introduced; and, most important of all, individual chapters were divided into verses. In subsequent editions a helpful Bible dictionary was included. These things did much to make the Geneva Version the most influential of all the translations issued from the time of Tyndale to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Until the publication of the Authorized Version, it had but one rival. This was the Bishops’ Bible, a meri-
58 torious rendering made with the encouragement of the Archbishop of Canterbury and approved by the Church. But it never won the hearts of the people as did the Geneva Bible.
Meanwhile even the Roman Catholics, the erstwhile tormentors of the martyred Tyndale and Rogers, began to realize the value and the necessity of English Bibles. Perhaps they saw the menace to their doctrines which lurked in the ever increasing number of Protestant translations. Perhaps they understood how their communicants were continually tempted to read these translations. At any rate some of their scholars who had been driven to France by the English reforms produced the Douai Version, begun with an annotated New Testament published at Rheims in 1582 by John Fogny and finished by the publication of the Old Testament at Douai in 1609. Translated as it was directly from the Vulgate, it contains many of the peculiarities of the Latin.
In style it must be commended for the dignified sonority with which the words sometimes march along in measured and stately periods. It has its place in the provenance of the Authorized Version, for the Jacobean translators occasionally referred to it. By the Catholic Church it is considered the standard English rendering.
For over thirty years the Geneva Bible and the Bishops’ Bible shared the supremacy throughout England — the former among the common people and the latter in the Church. Then came the consummation of the work of hundreds of years. The Authorized Version appeared. The origin of this outstanding translation embraces centuries, reaching back past the troubled life of Tyndale, the Renaissance when Erasmus labored, the middle ages when Wyclif spoke out so boldly, the time of King Ethelbert when Englishmen lived in tribes, the years when monasteries were the only libraries and hooded monks the only guardians of learning, even past
60 the days of the Vulgate to the third century before Christ when the Septuagint was made. As Rome was not built in a day, so the Authorized Version was not made in the months in which the group of selected scholars toiled over its pages. It is the glorious summary of a long process of literary evolution — the outcome of patient searching after exact and careful renderings of God’s truth.
In the later years of this evolution no group of men exerted a wider influence than William Tyndale and his followers. Coverdale, Rogers, Whittingham, and their colleagues — these men, by adding translation to translation, each one surpassing in some particular its predecessor, laid the firm and massive foundation for the great version that was to crown their efforts. Above them all stands William Tyndale. Great translators are far more rare than great poets, for translation requires a certain combination of literary gifts, a blending of delicate perception of word values with great facility in
61 alien languages, that is unusual wherever it appears. These gifts Tyndale, undeniable literary artist that he was, possessed. His is the ruling influence on the Authorized Version. The flower of its beauty lies in his renderings. Phrase after phrase of his simple and musical English is reproduced in the Bible which we read to-day. Listen to his translation of Luke II: 8-10:
“And there were in the same region shepherdes, abydinge in the felde and watching their flocke by nyght. And loo! the angell of the Lorde stode harde by them and the brightnes of the Lorde shone rounde about them; and they were soore afrayed. And the angell sayd vnto them, Be not afrayed; beholde! I bringe you tydinges off greate ioye, that shall come to all the people. For vnto you is borne this daye in the cite of David, a saveoure, which is Christ the Lorde.”
* Bosworth and Waring, “The Gospels — Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Wyclif, and Tyndale Versions.”
Froude, paying high tribute to the King James Bible, justly wrote: “The peculiar genius, if such a word may be permitted, which breathes through it; the mingled tenderness and majesty; the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur, unequalled, unapproached in the attempted improvements of modern scholars — all are here, and bear
the impress of one man, and that man was William Tyndale.”