§ 42. WYCLIF AND THE SCRIPTUKES. 343
A manuscript preserved in the Bodleian, Forshall and Madden affirm to be without question the original copy of Hereford himself. These editors place the dates of the versions in 1382 and 1388. Purvey was a Lollard, who boarded under Wyclif's roof and, according to the contemporary chronicler, Knighton, drank plentifully of his instructions. He was imprisoned, but in 1400 recanted, and was promoted to the vicarage of Hythe. This preferment he resigned three years later. He was imprisoned a second time by Archbishop Chichele, 1421, was alive in 1427, and perhaps died in prison.
To follow the description given by Knighton in his Chronicle, thegift_of_Jli£Englisl^^
contemporaries as both a novel act and an act of desecration.^ The irreverence and profanation of offering such a translation was likened to the casting of pearls before swine. The passage in Knighton, who wrote 20 years after Wyclifs death, runs thus : —
The Gospel, which Christ bequeathed to the clergy and doctors of the Church, — as they in turn give it to lay and weaker persons, — this Master John Wyclif translated out of the Latin into the Anglican tongue, not the Angelic tongue, so that by him it is become common, — vulgare, — and more open to the lay folk and to women, knowing how to read, than it used to be to clerics of a fair amount of learning and of good minds. Thus, the Gospel pearl is cast forth and trodden under foot of swine, and what was dear to both clergy and laity is now made a subject of common jest to both, and the jewel of the clergy is turned into the sjjort of the laity, so that what was before to the clergy and doctors of the Church a divine gift, has been turned into a mock Gospel [or common thing].i
The plain meaning of this statement seems to be that Wyclif translated at least some of the Scriptures, that the translation was a novelty, and that the English was not a proper language for the embodiment of the sacred Word. It was a cleric's book, and profane temerity, by putting it within the reach of the laity, had vulgarized it.
The work speedily receiverl rfiprobation at the hands of the
1 Commune ceternum. It is hard to give the exact rendering of these words. Knighton goes on to refer to William of St. Amour, who said of some that they changed the pure Gospel into another Gospel, the evangelium <xternum or evangelium Spiritus sanctL Knighton, Chronicle, II. 151 sq.
344 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Church authorities. A bill presented in the English parliament, 1391, to condemn English versions, was rejected through the influence of the duke of Lancaster, but an Oxford synod, of 1408, passed the ominous act, that upon pain of greater excommunication, no man, by his own authority, should translate into English or any other tongue, until such translation were approved by the bishop, or, if necessary, by the provincial council. It distinctly mentions the translation " set forth in the time of John Wyclif." Writing to John XXIII., 1412, Archbishop Arundel took occasion to denounce " that pestilent wretch of damnable memory, yea, the forerunner and disciple of anti-christ who, as the complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the Scriptures into his mothertongue." ^
In 1414, the reading of the English Scriptures was forbidden uponpain of forfeiting-" nf land, cattle, life and goods from their heirs forever," Such denunciations of a common English version were what Wyclif's own criticisms might have led us to expect, and quite in consonance with the decree of the Synod of Toulouse, 1229, and Arundel's reprobation has been frequently matched by prelatical condemnation of vernacular translations of the Bible and their circulation down to the papal f ulminations of the 19th century against Bible societies, as by Pius VII., 1816, who declared them " fiendish institutions for the undermining of the foimda^ijm-Qf-jeligion," The position, taken by Catholic apologists, that the Catholic hierarchy has never set itself against the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular, but only against unauthorized translations, would be adapted to modify Protestantism's notion of the matter, if there were some evidence of only a limited attempt to encourage Bible study among the laity of the Catholic Church with the pages of Scripture open before them. If we go to the Catholic countries of Soutliern Europe and to South America, where her sway has been unobstructed, the very opposite is true.
In the clearest language, Wyclif charged the priestly author-
^ Novm adsuce malitice complementum Scripturarum in linguam maternam translationis practica adinventa. Wilkius, III. 350.