13.1 Translating the Bible
Even major Renaissance thinkers believed that Latin was the language of the Bible. Thus Erazmus of Rotterdam was against translation of the book into vernaculars, and so too was Thomas More. With the Bible only available in Latin, churchmen were in control of how the scriptures were handed down to the people, and what interpretations were put on them. The fear was that if the Bible were available in English, the Church’s position as its interpreter would diminish; individuals would be able to interpret the Bible as they saw fit, and all kinds of heresy would result. This issue of ‘Church versus individual as interpreter of the scriptures’ was a central issue in the Catholic versus Protestant conflict.
It was the political dimension that Wyclif fell foul of when he and his Lollard colleagues (the Lollards were mentioned in 9.2.2) produced English biblical translations from Latin in the fourteenth century. Because of the Lollards’ politically dangerous doctrines, these translations were suppressed, and indeed it became illegal in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries for English people to read the Bible in English without permission.
But as we see in 13.2, there was great general pressure for important works to appear in vernaculars. Added to this, preachers like Tyndale believed that people’s ignorance of scriptures caused all kinds of hostility towards true religion. Tyndale’s English translations of the New Testament and other portions of the Bible, were the first to use Hebrew and Greek texts (Tyndale himself was something of a polyglot). They appeared in Germany in the 1530s, and were also the first English versions in the age of print. The Catholic Church denounced his work. Tyndale was accused of heresy, eventually captured and put to death.
There were other translations. In 1535, Miles Coverdale produced a complete Bible, and Henry VIII allowed this to be read. Then there was ‘Matthew’s Bible’ in 1537, produced by a friend of Tyndale. He was executed in the reign of Mary I, the fiercely anti-Protestant queen who persecuted the Protestants. Richard Taverner is mentioned in 13.2, and ‘Taverner’s Bible’ appeared in 1539. At one point he was sent to the Tower, but was one of the few in this story who managed to end his life naturally. In 1560 the ‘Geneva Bible’ was produced by Protestants living in Switzerland, well out of Mary’s clutches. This version was extremely popular, and had a huge readership, probably including William Shakespeare. These various versions, and others besides, preceded James I’s 1611 ‘Authorized Version’, which was heavily influenced by Tyndale’s earlier version.
William Maldon was a sixteenth-century protestant activist who learned to read just in order to have direct access to the Bible. He hid his English copy of the New Testament in his bed. He tells a story that well captures the linguistic issues associated with the Bible. He describes attending church services in his youth where at the front the official service was taking place in Latin. But at the back were the ‘poor men’ who ‘brought the New Testament of Jesus Christ, and on Sundays did sit reading in lower end of the church, and many would flock about them to hear their reading’. So the Bible was in Latin at the front of the church, and in English at the back.
You can tell from the number of executions mentioned, that the issue was highly contentious, and that when the Bible made its appearance in English, this was a very major blow to the status of Latin.
13.2 Eggs or eyren?
Here is an anecdote Caxton tells in the Prologue to his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. It relates to the fact that two words for ‘eggs’ were in use at the time: eggs and eyren (the singular word was ei – if you know German you will relate it to their word Ei meaning ‘egg’):
common English that is spoken in one shire varieth from another, insomuch that in my days happened that certain merchants were in a ship in Thames for to have sailed over the sea to Zealand, and for lack of wind they tarried at Foreland, and went to land for to refresh them. And one of them named Sheffield, a mercer [textile dealer], came into a house and asked for meat, and especially he asked after eggs; and the good wife answered that she could speak no French, and the merchant was angry, for he could speak no French, but would have had eggs, and she understood him not. And then at last another said, that he would have “eyren”; then the goodwife said that she understood him well. Lo, what should a man in these days now write, “eggs” or “eyren”? Certainly it is hard to please every man because of diversity and change of language.
This version is taken from Wikisource
13.3 The word-volley
Here is the passage, mentioned in 13.3, from Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The two men, Valentine and Thurio, are both courting Silvia.
Silvia: Servant, you are sad.
Valentine: Indeed, madam, I seem so.
Thurio: Seem you that you are not?
Valentine: Haply I do.
Thurio: So do counterfeits.
Valentine: So do you.
Thurio: What seem I that I am not?
Valentine: Wise.
Thurio: What instance of the contrary?
Valentine: Your folly.
Thurio: And how quote you my folly?
Valentine: I quote it in your jerkin.
Thurio: My jerkin is a doublet.
Valentine: Well, then, I’ll double your folly.
Thurio: How?
Silvia: What, angry, Sir Thurio? Do you change colour?
Valentine: Give him leave, madam; he is a kind of chameleon.
Thurio: That hath more mind to feed on your blood than live in your air.
Valentine: You have said, sir.
Thurio: Ay, sir, and done too, for this time.
Valentine: I know it well, sir; you always end ere you begin.
Silvia: A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off.
(2.4.8-33)
sad, serious |
haply, perhaps |
quote, observe |
said, spoken the truth |
Jerkins and doublets were articles of clothing.
According to Carroll (2004), the words quote and coat were pronounced the same. Hence, the reference to clothing.
Chameleons were reputed to feed on air.