The Murderous History of Bible Translations

by Harry Freedman

  A year later Thomas Hitton, a priest who had met Tyndale in Europe, was seized in Kent. His crime was said to be the preaching of heresy. He confessed to smuggling two printed Tyndale New Testaments into the country. They burned him alive, the first supporter of Tyndale to suffer such a fate. But only the first. A year later, the new bishop of London, John Stokesley, re-arrested Thomas Bilney and Richard Bayfield. They too were consumed alive in the flames. The murderous age of Bible translations had reached its peak.

  Meanwhile, in Europe, the hunt for Tyndale was on. His pursuers didn’t yet know it but he was hiding out with Miles Coverdale, a forty-two-year old priest from Yorkshire who had fled the country after preaching against the worship of images. There are conflicting reports about whether they were together in Hamburg or at the English House in Antwerp, which was Tyndale’s base from 1528,9 but what is certain is that they were collaborating on a further translation of the Bible. With Coverdale’s help Tyndale was now printing English copies of the Pentateuch, which he was, quite unexpectedly, translating directly from the Hebrew.

  Tyndale seems to have been the sort of man who always needs to push himself further. Once one project was over he needed another. So, when the New Testament translation was finished his natural next step was to make a start on translating the Old. Little matter that it required a knowledge of Hebrew; what he didn’t know he could soon learn. That is exactly what he did. And even though he was master of eight different languages, Tyndale’s grasp of biblical Hebrew is mind boggling.

  Tyndale’s achievements are so many that his astonishing competency in Hebrew is invariably overlooked. But when we consider that Hebrew bears no direct relation to any other European tongue, that its character set and method of transcription are wholly different, and that Tyndale came from a country where scholarship in the language was virtually unknown, the scope of his achievement comes into focus. Add to that the likelihood that he had no Hebrew teachers (although, as a result of Reuchlin’s advocacy of Hebrew study, there were now primers, dictionaries and grammars to assist him) and we can see that his accurate, fluent, readable and stylistic translation of the difficult text of the Pentateuch is an accomplishment rarely equalled in the history of literary scholarship.

  By 1530 Tyndale’s new Pentateuch was making its way to England. Despite the controversies still raging around his New Testament he now was sufficiently confident to introduce the prologue to Genesis with the words ‘W.T. to the reader’.

  Tyndale’s English Pentateuch eclipsed John Wycliffe’s earlier translation. Not just because it was printed and portable. Nor because the English language had evolved in the century and a half since Wycliffe wrote. Tyndale did more than simply translate the Bible. He did so with a stylistic elegance that laid the foundations for English literature as we still know it today. If any moment can be pinpointed as that in which, following centuries of gestation, English finally became one the world’s great languages, it must be the arrival of Tyndale’s New Testament in 1526.

  The Tyndale translation is as much a literary work as a religious text. Its prose exudes confidence, yet is imbued with simplicity. The stilted sentence construction of Wycliffe’s fourteenth-century, Latin-based translation was brought to life in a free-flowing composition, which reflected the original Greek and Hebrew more closely. Wycliffe’s ‘Light be made and light was made’ became Tyndale’s ‘Let there be light and there was light.’10 ‘Therefore yield ye to the Emperor those things that be the Emperor’s’ was transmuted to ‘Give therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar’s.’11 Tyndale’s phrases pepper the English language. ‘Under the sun’, ‘my brother’s keeper’, ‘apple of his eye’, ‘land of the living’ are all his, and many more besides. He even made up new words; scapegoat, long-suffering and busybody are among the best known.12 Even the Jewish festival of Passover owes its English name to Tyndale. Why? Because when he smote the Egyptian first-born the Angel of Death ‘passed over’ the houses of the Israelites.13

  Betrayal

  Things were changing in England. The row between Henry VIII and Rome over the question of his intended divorce was hotting up. Wolsey was dead, but not before he had been stripped of political office by a king impatient with his failure to obtain an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Thomas Cromwell was Henry VIII’s right-hand man and, as anyone who has read Hilary Mantel’s magnificent historical novels knows, his skill at political manipulation puts anything practised in the twenty-first century to shame. In an attempt to bring the dispute with Rome to a resolution, Cromwell drew Henry’s attention to Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man and How Christian Rulers Ought to Govern. Written in 1530, Tyndale’s intention was to show how the practices of the Roman Church were driving people away from their faith. The faith itself was not to blame; in Tyndale’s eyes it was the papacy which was culpable: it had usurped its authority and taken on powers which were reserved for lay people and kings. This was exactly the sort of thing that Henry wanted to hear; his quarrel was with the authority of the Pope, rather than with Catholic articles of faith. Cromwell suggested that Tyndale be rehabilitated, and Henry told him to see to the matter.

  Cromwell contacted Stephen Vaughan, a London-based merchant whom he trusted to run sensitive errands. He asked Vaughan to go to the Continent, find Tyndale and persuade him to come home. But finding Tyndale, let alone convincing him, was not so easy.

  Vaughan speculatively addressed letters to Tyndale in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Marburg. Unsurprisingly, none of them reached him. Eventually he received information that Tyndale was most probably in Antwerp, but as soon as he started rooting around there he came up against a wall of silence. None of Tyndale’s friends were prepared to divulge the translator’s presence to an envoy of the king’s fixer, not after all the trouble Tyndale had already been through. Vaughan, undaunted, left messages at the English House in Antwerp, and generally made a nuisance of himself. Eventually Tyndale, worn down by people telling him that an English agent was looking for him, decided to meet the man. But he’d been hunted for so long that caution was almost instinctive. Not knowing anything about the mission on which Cromwell had sent Vaughan, he feared that the English envoy would arrive with armed men, ready to arrest him. He decided the best course of action would be for Vaughan to be invited to a secret meeting, in an undisclosed location, without being told whom he would meet.

  Vaughan was led to a field outside Antwerp. There he met a man who claimed he was authorized to negotiate on Tyndale’s behalf. It wasn’t until Vaughan had reassured him that his intentions were honourable that his interlocutor told him that he was in fact talking to none other than Tyndale himself. But no deal was done. Tyndale offered to come back to England only if the king agreed to authorize the printing of an English Bible. Vaughan had no authority to agree to that and when the matter was eventually reported to Henry, he turned the idea down flat, despite Cromwell trying to convince him otherwise. Vaughan returned home empty-handed, Henry flew into one of his rages and Tyndale continued his life in exile.

  Tyndale’s decision not to accede to Henry’s advances was not the wisest of his life. The next envoy sent from London had instructions not to negotiate with Tyndale but to arrest him. And even though the envoy, Thomas Elyot, despite spending a fortune on bribes, couldn’t find Tyndale, as far as the translator’s future was concerned, the writing was on the wall. (That’s not one of Tyndale’s phrases; he didn’t translate the book of Daniel.)

  Meanwhile, a fourth edition of Christopher von Endhoven’s pirated version was being prepared. The printer had engaged an English priest, George Joye, to oversee the work. Joye, like so many others, had been accused of heresy and fled England. Although he was no outstanding intellect, Joye had pretensions to greater knowledge than he actually had. He knew hardly any Greek yet took it upon himself to ‘correct’ Tyndale’s translation by comparing it with the Latin Vulgate, which was itself of course a translation from Greek. Even more controversially, he even tinkered
with Tyndale’s theology, removing over twenty references to resurrection. To make matters worse, he did not sign his name on the title page of the pirated copy, implying that all the amendments were Tyndale’s. Tyndale, who had just completed a revision of his New Testament translation, making use of new linguistic insights garnered from his ongoing Hebrew studies, had never previously commented on the pirated version. He’d believed it was beneath his dignity to do so. But when he heard how Joye had both plagiarized and bowdlerized his work he was thunderous. He took advantage of the publication of his revised version to write a new prologue sharply criticizing Joye.

  But when compared to what was to come next, Joye was merely an inconvenient distraction. In 1535 a young, spoilt patrician, Henry Phillips, found himself in financial trouble. He had stolen money that his father had entrusted to him, and gambled away his fortune. Unable to return home he fled to the Continent, turning up in Antwerp where he presented himself as an extremely prosperous man of the world. Brian Moynahan14 suggests he had been bribed by friends of Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor of England and lifelong opponent of Tyndale, who was now languishing in the Tower of London.

  Phillips was dissolute and disreputable, yet charming. He insinuated his way into the social life of the English merchants in Antwerp, among whom Tyndale moved freely. Tyndale seems to have found Phillips entertaining for, despite uncertainty voiced by Thomas Pointz, Tyndale’s host in the English House, the two became companions. Tyndale invited Phillips one evening to go out to dine with him. As the two were leaving the English House, Phillips gesticulated to two thugs whom he had instructed to lie in wait at the doorway. They were officers of the Procurator General. Tyndale was seized and imprisoned in Vilvoorde castle, eighteen miles from Antwerp. It was the end. Tyndale never left.

  Tyndale’s arrest sent shock waves through the English expatriate community. They were furious, not just because they believed he had been guaranteed safety in Antwerp, but also because the English House was searched, the Procurator General’s men trampling over their presumed diplomatic privileges. Thomas Pointz led a campaign to have Tyndale released, writing letters, riding to Maastricht and Brussels to present petitions, and travelling to England to enlist the help of Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell was only too aware that the Procurator General had provided the Holy Roman Emperor with a prize catch and was fuming at his inability to deprive him of it. But in this matter at least Cromwell was impotent and Pointz’s campaign came to an abrupt end when Phillips turned on him, accusing him of heresy by helping Tyndale. Pointz was arrested. He escaped after three months but lost his business, his wealth and even his family; his Flemish wife would not bring the children to join him in England. He died impoverished, having destroyed his life for his friend.

  In August 1536 Tyndale was found guilty by the Procurator General’s investigating commission of heresy. He was stripped of his priesthood in a humiliating ceremony and handed over to the secular authorities for execution.

  On 6 October 1536 William Tyndale was tied up at the stake. As a former churchman, the executioner was instructed to strangle him before burning his body, to save him pain. The strangulation failed. He died in the flames. Medieval accounts of burnings tell us that an immolation victim could take up to three days to expire. His contemporary biographer John Foxe wrote that Tyndale’s final words were ‘Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.’

  Aftermath and Backlash

  As it happens, the king’s eyes were already opening. The first glimmer of light had been his agreement that Stephen Vaughan should meet Tyndale. His final awakening came when his mistress, Anne Boleyn, became pregnant, forcing his hand over the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In 1534 the Act of Supremacy declared the English Church an independent entity, with Henry at its head. In the same year the bishops of the Canterbury Convocation petitioned for an English Bible. Pressurized by his bishops, and badgered by Thomas Cromwell’s not-so-gentle urging, the king assented. When Miles Coverdale, the fugitive English priest who had collaborated with Tyndale in Hamburg, dedicated a translation of the Bible to the king, there was no objection.

  Although Coverdale’s bible has gone down in history as the first, full English Bible, most of the credit for it goes to others. Coverdale’s skills as a linguist were not particularly sophisticated. He relied on other translations, including the Vulgate and Luther. But the text he made the most use of was Tyndale’s. Coverdale’s Bible was really Tyndale’s, with Coverdale making use of his other sources to fill in those parts of the Old Testament which Tyndale had not managed to complete.

  In 1537, a year after Tyndale’s death, a second printed Bible appeared in England. It purported to be the work of a ‘Thomas Matthew’, a pseudonym designed to conceal the true identity of the translator. Matthew’s Bible, as it came to be known, had been compiled by John Rogers, a friend of Tyndale. He had come across some unpublished translations of the Old Testament among Tyndale’s papers. Rogers made a few editorial changes to Tyndale’s translations, often losing the poetic sense of the original,15 but compensated by including more of Tyndale’s notes and annotations than had previously been published. Two-thirds of Matthew’s Bible was the work of Tyndale.16

  The printed English Bible was finally granted complete legitimacy in 1539 when Henry VIII decreed that every parish should obtain a copy of the Bible, of the largest possible size, placed in a public location where people could see it. Cromwell engaged Miles Coverdale to produce a standardized text. He had it printed in Paris, where it was nearly destroyed by the French Inquisitor General. Coverdale transferred the printing to England and the Great Bible, known as such due to its large size, became the first authorized, mandated scripture in England. Cromwell took advantage of the first edition of the Bible for a spot of self-publicity. The title page carries a woodcut by Hans Holbein, dominated by an image of Henry on his throne handing the Bible to Cromwell. But Cromwell did not keep his place in the Bible for long. By the time the fourth edition appeared just over a year later, the king’s great manipulator had been arrested, tried and executed; brought down by the many enemies he had made. On the frontispiece of the Great Bible’s second edition, the king sits alone in regal majesty. Tyndale did not live to see the day.

  The Great Bible was sanctified through kingly approval but it didn’t mark the end of the translated Bible’s woes. The beliefs and loyalties of ordinary people are far more complex than the politics of state and religion. even though the English Church was now independent of Rome, many of its bishops were still uncomfortable with the popularization of the Bible. In 1540, not long after Cromwell had been booted out of power, into the Tower of London and finally onto the scaffold, a backlash against the Great Bible began. No more copies were printed and in 1543 an Act was passed forbidding unlicensed people from publicly reading the Bible, and the ‘lower’ classes from reading it altogether.

  Things got worse in 1546 when the king proclaimed that nobody was to possess a copy of Tyndale’s Bible, nor of Coverdale’s. The Great Bible remained in the churches but the bishop of London ordered all other versions to be burned at St Paul’s.17 And despite a brief restoration of the translated bible’s fortunes during Edward VI’s short reign, with a flurry of new translation activity, the respite was brief. Catholic Queen Mary I came to the throne, the Protestant Reformation faltered and, for a short while, the translated Bible in England was done for.

  But not quite. The champions of the translated Bible translation could not be brushed aside so easily. Bible translation went underground. The most assiduous scholars relocated abroad, out of Mary’s reach. An English translation, the work of fiercely anti-royalist Calvinists, was produced in Geneva in 1560. Based on a 1540 translation by Robert Olivetan, a cousin of Calvin, it received its final version at the hands of a committee in 1588. French and Italian versions were produced in Geneva during the same period, the translators in each of the three tongues drawing simultaneously upon the scholarship and erudition which suffused t
hat Calvinist city in the mid- to late sixteenth century.

  Smaller, cheaper, well printed and published with comprehensive notes, maps, summaries and tables, the Geneva Bible was immediately popular. It was also controversial. It made no attempt to conceal its translators’ antipathy to monarchic rule. The English aristocracy hated it, but their distaste for its political agenda did not dent its popularity. New editions were published every year for the next half-century.18

  The success of the Geneva Bible threw up a new kind of challenge. In England, the only land in Europe where the monarch was supreme head of the Church, a fiercely anti-royalist Bible had won the hearts of the masses and cornered the market. It felt, to the monarchy and the English Church, like a mockery and a provocation.

  It would take the English Establishment half a century until they came up with an effective, enduring alternative to the Geneva Bible. Meanwhile, in Catholic Europe, the advocates of Bible translation were beginning to sense the early flushes of success.

  7

  Confound Their Strife

  The Catholic Vernacular

  Tyndale’s translation was bold, and Luther’s a significant contribution to the success of the Reformation. But they were only the best known among the translations of the sixteenth century. A trickle of undercurrents gradually swelled into a frenzy of activity; all at once it seemed as if translations of the Bible, which had been supressed so rigorously and for so long, were being produced in every corner of Europe, and in every tongue.