Lawrence Bedeman, otherwise Stevine, was an Oxford man, like his companions, being of Stapeldon Hall, afterwards Exeter College. It fared with him, in 1382, as with Aston. Brantingham, Bishop of Exeter, took proceedings against him for his conduct as an itinerant preacher in Cornwall. After making his submission, he became rector of Lifton, Devonshire and was there as late as 1410, ‘
Philip of Repyngdon was probably a native of Repton. He was educated at Broadgates Hall, Oxford, and before 1382 was an Augustinian canon of St. Mary de Pré, Leicester, Like Hereford, he was a vigorous upholder of Wyclif’s tenets in ser- mons at Oxford. When exposed to the same trial, he appears to have succumbed at once, becoming afterwards a great favourite with Henry 1v., with the style of ‘clericus specialissimus domini regis Henrici,’ and in 1404-5 being made Bishop of Lincoln. On Sept. 18th, 1408, he was created a cardinal by Gregory xt., and died in 1424.—See the articles by Of; Bingutord and R. L. Poole in the Dict, of Nat. Biography.
§ The glossa ordinaria, or ‘comune zlose,’ was the work of waletid Strabo, about ,p, 840. The interlinear gloss was ater.
|| Nicolaus de Lyra, so called from the place of his birth in Normandy, was a converted Jew. Hence the special value attached to his commentary on the Old Testament. He died at Paris in 1340.
the precise use and meaning of words and phrases. And yet once again there was a final scrutiny, by a committee, as we should say, when there were present ‘manie gode felawis and kynnynge at the correcting of the translacioun.’ * :
That the work, after so much preliminary care, was well and thoroughly done, need not surprise us. Purvey’s revision appears to have aimed chiefly at making the rendering more idiomatic, both in respect of the vocabulary and the construc- tion of sentences. In particular, too close an imitation of the participial construction of _the Latin had often led the earlier translators into difficulties. ‘ Wyclif’s own part,’ says a competent judge,t ‘offends less in this respect than Here- ford’s ; but the work of each needed anglicizing or englishing ; and this was the improvement Purvey set himself to carry out.’ A few examples will make this clearer. It should be premised that not only was the Vulgate the sole authority for the translation, but that, as Purvey himself says, the text of the Vulgate was then in a bad state. ‘The comune Latin biblis,’ he declares, ‘han more nede to be correctid, as manie as I haue seen in my lif, than hath the English bible late translatid.’? “This was particularly the case with the Psalms, St. Jerome’s version of which was not used in the services of the Church, ‘but another translacioun of othere men, that hadden myche lasse kunnyng and holynesse than Jerom hadde.’
In Ex 722 the malefici of the Vulgate is rendered ‘the clepers of deuels to doon yuel’ by Hereford ; ‘witchis’ by Purvey.
Jos 1017 ‘lurking in the spelunk of the cite’ (H.); ‘hid in the denne of the citee’ (P.).
Jg 523 Maledicite terre, ‘curse ye to the loond’ (H.); ‘curse ye the lond’(P.).
Ps 77 (78)7 De post fetantes accepit eum, ‘fro the after
berende blet he toc hym’ (H.); ‘he took hym fro bihynde scheep with lambren’ (P.).
Ps 1134 ‘The maumetis of Jentilis syluer and gold’ (H.); ‘The symulacris of hethene men ben siluer and gold’ (P.).
Lk 1415 “Whan sum man of sittinge at the mete had herd’ (H.) ; ‘And whanne som of hem that saten togider at the mete had herd’ (P.).
Ro 1311 “And we witinge this tyme, for hour is now, vs for to ryse of slepe’ (H.); ‘And we knowen this tyme, that the our is now, that we rise fro sleep’ (P.).t
Besides the general ‘ Prolog’ already spoken of, there are separate prologues, some of them very short, to most of the books of the OT and NT. These are usually translated _from St. Jerome. The order of books in the main follows the Vul- gate, but ‘Deeds’ (Acts) stands between Hebrews and James. The Epistle to the Laodiceans, in- serted after Colossians in the first version, was left out by Purvey.§ The later version has also a number of marginal glosses or notes in place of the short textual insertions common in the earlier, These glosses, it may be remarked, whether textual or marginal, are not of a controversial nature, They are simply explanatory. There does not appear to be any desire to use them for party purposes. Thus, on the passage relating the institution of the Lord’s Supper, a subject on which Wyclif’s views were elsewhere so strongly pronounced, there is no note at all. Neither is there on Mt 162”, with the exception of a textual
* Forshall and Madden, vol. i. p. 57. The General Prologue fills 60 pages in this edition. It is strictly a prologue to the OT, hardly mentioning the NT, to which Purvey may have intended to prefix a similar prologue,
+ J. W. Hales, in the article before quoted. By the publica- tion in a convenient form of The Book of Job, Psalms, . . . etc., from Hereford’s version as revised by Purvey (Oxford, 1881, 8vo), Skeat has made it easy for the ordinary reader to form an opinion of Hereford’s style, though not as he originally wrote.