Middle English Bible translations
Encyclopedia
Middle English Bible translations (1066-1500) covers the age of Middle English
, beginning with the Norman conquest and ending about 1500. Aside from Wycliffe's Bible, this was not a fertile time for Bible
translation
. English literature was limited because French was the preferred language of the elite, and Latin
was the preferred literary language in Medieval Western Europe.
There were several dialects of Middle English, and it was not considered a written language before the time of Chaucer
.
, produced by the Augustinian monk
Orm of Lincolnshire
around 1150, includes partial translations of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles
from Latin
into the dialect of East Midland
. The manuscript is written in the poetic meter
iambic septenarius.
Translations of many biblical passages are included in the Cursor Mundi
, written about 1300.
Richard Rolle
of Hampole (or de Hampole) was an Oxford
-educated hermit
and writer of religious texts. In the early 14th century, he produced English gloss
es of Latin Bible text, including the Psalms
. Rolle translated the Psalms into a Northern English dialect, but later copies were written in Southern English dialects.
Around the same time, an anonymous author in the West Midlands
region produced another gloss of the Psalms — the West Midland Psalms.
In the early years of the 14th century, a French copy of the Book of Revelation
was anonymously translated into English.
produced the first complete English language Bible — often called Wycliffe's Bible. His New Testament
was completed in 1380 and the Old Testament
a few years later. It is thought that a large portion of the Old Testament was actually translated by Nicholas Hereford
. Some 30 copies of this Bible survive, despite the fact that it was banned. From the time of King Richard II
until the time of the English Reformation
, Lollards who read Wycliffe's Bible were persecuted. Wycliffe's Bible was revised in the last years of the 14th century, perhaps by John Purvey
. This edition was also banned and became even more popular than the first. Some 130 copies exist, including some belonging to the British royal family. All dated copies are dated before the ban.
Sample of Wycliffe's translation:
Since the Wycliffe Bible conformed fully to Catholic teaching, it was mistakenly thought to be an unauthorized Roman Catholic version of the New Testament. This view was held by many Catholic commentators, including Thomas More
.
translated many Bible stories and passages from the French, producing the Golden Legend
(1483) and The Book of the Knight in the Tower
(1484). He also printed The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ
by Pseudo-Bonaventure
, translated by Nicholas Love
, OCart
.
and Hebrew
texts would become available with the development of the Johann Gutenberg's movable-type printing press which coincided with the development of Early Modern English, making English a literary language, and would lead to a great increase in the number of translations of the Bible in the Early Modern English
era.
In the century just after Wycliffe's translation, two great events occurred which bore heavily on the spread of the Bible. One was the revival of learning, which made popular again the study of the classics and the classical languages. Critical and exact Greek scholarship became again a possibility. Under the influence of Erasmus and his kind, with their new insistence on classical learning, there came necessarily a new appraisal of the Vulgate as a translation of the original Bible. For a thousand years there had been little new study of the original Biblical languages in Europe. The Latin of the Vulgate was regarded nearly as sacred as was the Bible itself. But the revival of learning threw scholarship into debate regarding the sources of the text. The Catholic Church promoted, then as now, the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, but Erasmus regarded it as corrupt and Dean Burgon in the 1880s showed exactly why listing the thousands of corruptions in his research book, The Revision Revised.
However during the 20th Century there were more than one hundred English translations, and they were all based heavily on the Vaticanus Greek text in opposition to the New Testament Greek text that Erasmus viewed as pure and traditional.
In the early 16th century Erasmus published a single volume of the Greek texts of the New Testament books, and republished more precise editions of this volume until his death. He used only a few Greek manuscripts since in his view some Greek texts were more corrupted than others and demonstrated many changes by comparison with the traditionally received Greek N.T. texts. After decades of travel, writings, correspondence and studies to better prepare and present a worthy challenger to the Vulgate he had spent his life becoming the world's best textual critic. Since Erasmus was a world renowned scholar of his day as well as the chief reviser of the Latin Vulgate, other competing texts of the Greek Testament were not widely received and Erasmus's work was viewed as authoritative. Erasmus life work of commentating and eventually re-writing a Latin New Testament (prior to publishing the one volume Greek New Testament) disturbed the Vulgate's position as a final version. Erasmus did not want versions in the first place for serious study. He presented the Greek New Testament to the world so as to give a standard for all Bible students and teachers lest another version of the Bible (in other languages like Latin) would arise and seem to have similar if not equal authority to the traditional Greek New Testament manuscripts.
The other great event of that same century was the invention of printing
with movable type. It was in 1455 that Johannes Gutenberg printed his first major work, an edition of the Latin Vulgate, now called the Mazarin Bible
. These developments would lead to the more fertile time for English translations in the Early Modern English period.
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, beginning with the Norman conquest and ending about 1500. Aside from Wycliffe's Bible, this was not a fertile time for Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
. English literature was limited because French was the preferred language of the elite, and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
was the preferred literary language in Medieval Western Europe.
There were several dialects of Middle English, and it was not considered a written language before the time of Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
.
Early partial translations
The OrmulumOrmulum
The Ormulum or Orrmulum is a twelfth-century work of biblical exegesis, written by a monk named Orm and consisting of just under 19,000 lines of early Middle English verse...
, produced by the Augustinian monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
Orm of Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
around 1150, includes partial translations of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles
Acts of the Apostles
The Acts of the Apostles , usually referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; Acts outlines the history of the Apostolic Age...
from Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
into the dialect of East Midland
East Midlands
The East Midlands is one of the regions of England, consisting of most of the eastern half of the traditional region of the Midlands. It encompasses the combined area of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Northamptonshire and most of Lincolnshire...
. The manuscript is written in the poetic meter
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...
iambic septenarius.
Translations of many biblical passages are included in the Cursor Mundi
Cursor Mundi
Cursor Mundi is an anonymous Middle-English historical and religious poem of nearly 30,000 lines written around 1300 AD. The poem summarizes the history of the world as described in the Christian Bible and other sources, with additional legendary material drawn primarily from the Historia...
, written about 1300.
Richard Rolle
Richard Rolle
Rolle is honored in the Church of England on January 20 and in the Episcopal Church together with Walter Hilton and Margery Kempe on September 28.-Works in print:*English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Edited by George Perry...
of Hampole (or de Hampole) was an Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
-educated hermit
Hermit
A hermit is a person who lives, to some degree, in seclusion from society.In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Christian who lives the eremitic life out of a religious conviction, namely the Desert Theology of the Old Testament .In the...
and writer of religious texts. In the early 14th century, he produced English gloss
Gloss
A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....
es of Latin Bible text, including the Psalms
Psalms
The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...
. Rolle translated the Psalms into a Northern English dialect, but later copies were written in Southern English dialects.
Around the same time, an anonymous author in the West Midlands
West Midlands (region)
The West Midlands is an official region of England, covering the western half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. It contains the second most populous British city, Birmingham, and the larger West Midlands conurbation, which includes the city of Wolverhampton and large towns of Dudley,...
region produced another gloss of the Psalms — the West Midland Psalms.
In the early years of the 14th century, a French copy of the Book of Revelation
Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. The title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalupsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation"...
was anonymously translated into English.
Wycliffe's Bible
In the late 14th century, John WycliffeJohn Wycliffe
John Wycliffe was an English Scholastic philosopher, theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformer and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. His followers were known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached...
produced the first complete English language Bible — often called Wycliffe's Bible. His New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
was completed in 1380 and the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
a few years later. It is thought that a large portion of the Old Testament was actually translated by Nicholas Hereford
Nicholas Hereford
Nicholas of Hereford was an English theological scholar, and advocate of the English reform movement within the Roman Church. He later recanted his unorthodox views and participated in the repression of other reformers. He collaborated with John Wycliffe on the first complete English translation...
. Some 30 copies of this Bible survive, despite the fact that it was banned. From the time of King Richard II
Richard II of England
Richard II was King of England, a member of the House of Plantagenet and the last of its main-line kings. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince, and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
until the time of the English Reformation
English Reformation
The English Reformation was the series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church....
, Lollards who read Wycliffe's Bible were persecuted. Wycliffe's Bible was revised in the last years of the 14th century, perhaps by John Purvey
John Purvey
John Purvey was one of the leading followers of the English theologian and reformer John Wycliffe during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He was probably born around 1361 in Lathbury, then in Buckinghamshire, England. He was ordained a priest in 1377 and was a great scholar in...
. This edition was also banned and became even more popular than the first. Some 130 copies exist, including some belonging to the British royal family. All dated copies are dated before the ban.
Sample of Wycliffe's translation:
Since the Wycliffe Bible conformed fully to Catholic teaching, it was mistakenly thought to be an unauthorized Roman Catholic version of the New Testament. This view was held by many Catholic commentators, including Thomas More
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
.
Later partial translations
William CaxtonWilliam Caxton
William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...
translated many Bible stories and passages from the French, producing the Golden Legend
Golden Legend
The Golden Legend is a collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de Voragine that became a late medieval bestseller. More than a thousand manuscripts of the text have survived, compared to twenty or so of its nearest rivals...
(1483) and The Book of the Knight in the Tower
The Book of the Knight in the Tower
The Book of the Knight of the Tower is a book commenced by Geoffroy IV de la Tour Landry in 1371, and which he continued writing at least until 1372...
(1484). He also printed The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ
The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ
The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is an adaptation/translation of Pseudo-Bonaventura's Meditationes Vitae Christi into English by Nicholas Love, OCart, the Carthusian prior of Mount Grace Priory, written ca...
by Pseudo-Bonaventure
Pseudo-Bonaventura
The Pseudo-Bonaventura, or Pseudo-Bonaventure is the name given to the authors of a number of medieval devotional works which were believed at the time to be the work of Saint Bonaventure: "It would almost seem as if 'Bonaventura' came to be regarded as a convenient label for a certain type of...
, translated by Nicholas Love
Nicholas Love (monk)
Nicholas Love, also known as Nicholas Luff, was the first prior and fourth rector of the Carthusian house of Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire . Love translated the "Meditationes Vitae Christi" Nicholas Love, also known as Nicholas Luff, (died c. 1424) was the first prior and fourth rector of the...
, OCart
Carthusian
The Carthusian Order, also called the Order of St. Bruno, is a Roman Catholic religious order of enclosed monastics. The order was founded by Saint Bruno of Cologne in 1084 and includes both monks and nuns...
.
Legacy
All translations of this time period were from Latin or French. GreekGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
texts would become available with the development of the Johann Gutenberg's movable-type printing press which coincided with the development of Early Modern English, making English a literary language, and would lead to a great increase in the number of translations of the Bible in the Early Modern English
Early Modern English Bible translations
Early Modern English Bible translations are those translations of the Bible which were made between about 1500 and 1800, the period of Early Modern English. This was the first major period of Bible translation into the English language including the King James Version and Douai Bibles...
era.
In the century just after Wycliffe's translation, two great events occurred which bore heavily on the spread of the Bible. One was the revival of learning, which made popular again the study of the classics and the classical languages. Critical and exact Greek scholarship became again a possibility. Under the influence of Erasmus and his kind, with their new insistence on classical learning, there came necessarily a new appraisal of the Vulgate as a translation of the original Bible. For a thousand years there had been little new study of the original Biblical languages in Europe. The Latin of the Vulgate was regarded nearly as sacred as was the Bible itself. But the revival of learning threw scholarship into debate regarding the sources of the text. The Catholic Church promoted, then as now, the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, but Erasmus regarded it as corrupt and Dean Burgon in the 1880s showed exactly why listing the thousands of corruptions in his research book, The Revision Revised.
However during the 20th Century there were more than one hundred English translations, and they were all based heavily on the Vaticanus Greek text in opposition to the New Testament Greek text that Erasmus viewed as pure and traditional.
In the early 16th century Erasmus published a single volume of the Greek texts of the New Testament books, and republished more precise editions of this volume until his death. He used only a few Greek manuscripts since in his view some Greek texts were more corrupted than others and demonstrated many changes by comparison with the traditionally received Greek N.T. texts. After decades of travel, writings, correspondence and studies to better prepare and present a worthy challenger to the Vulgate he had spent his life becoming the world's best textual critic. Since Erasmus was a world renowned scholar of his day as well as the chief reviser of the Latin Vulgate, other competing texts of the Greek Testament were not widely received and Erasmus's work was viewed as authoritative. Erasmus life work of commentating and eventually re-writing a Latin New Testament (prior to publishing the one volume Greek New Testament) disturbed the Vulgate's position as a final version. Erasmus did not want versions in the first place for serious study. He presented the Greek New Testament to the world so as to give a standard for all Bible students and teachers lest another version of the Bible (in other languages like Latin) would arise and seem to have similar if not equal authority to the traditional Greek New Testament manuscripts.
The other great event of that same century was the invention of printing
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
with movable type. It was in 1455 that Johannes Gutenberg printed his first major work, an edition of the Latin Vulgate, now called the Mazarin Bible
Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press, and marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of the printed book. Widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities, the book has an iconic status...
. These developments would lead to the more fertile time for English translations in the Early Modern English period.
See also
- Wycliffe's Bible
- English translations of the BibleEnglish translations of the BibleThe efforts of translating the Bible from its original languages into over 2,000 others have spanned more than two millennia. Partial translations of the Bible into languages of the English people can be traced back to the end of the 7th century, including translations into Old English and Middle...