Printer's Error

by Rebecca Romney

  This time around, Tyndale played the part of fugitive seditionist better. In his first printing attempt, he conceived of a flashy quarto, a somewhat large format for a book, made when each sheet taken through the press is folded twice before binding, creating four printed leaves per sheet. In this format, the book generally ends up just a bit bigger and squarer than your average hardcover release today. Now Tyndale opted for a more subdued octavo, a book format that required folding the printed sheets once more before binding, thus producing eight leaves per printed sheet—and a smaller book. His octavo could fit in a pocket, making it easy for anyone to carry, read, and study it—also to smuggle, conceal, and sell it on the black market.

  There were no prologues to these smaller Bibles, no comments or glosses, few woodcuts, and no colophon. The first complete New Testament ever to be printed in the English language was created in Germany by a fugitive linguist and a rogue printer, who took great pains to cover their literary tracks. They were so successful, in fact, that the only complete copy of Tyndale’s 1526 New Testament wasn’t identified until 1996. In Tyndale’s time, the octavo Bibles could be purchased for six days’ wages of an unskilled worker. In 1994 the British Library purchased an incomplete copy for “a little more than one million pounds.” The Library has noted with chagrin that when a famous collector “bought it . . . in the 1700s, it had cost him just 20 guineas.”

  Tyndale spent more than a decade on the run. He published two editions of the New Testament and a translation of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), and he wrote, printed, and distributed numerous books, Testaments, introductions, and letters in defense of his person and beliefs. He moved around the Low Countries and was cautious about meeting anyone in person. He would not sit for portraits because they might be used to identify his face. As a by-product, almost five hundred years later, we don’t know what Tyndale looked like. There is a portrait hanging in a dining hall at Oxford University with an inscription that reads, “This picture represents, as far as art could, William Tyndale.” Translation: “Here’s a painting of a white European guy. Please pretend this is William Tyndale.”

  Was Tyndale just being paranoid? Well, judge for yourself: William Tyndale is “a hellhound in the kennel of the devil.” He discharges “a filthy foam of blasphemies out of his brutish, beastly mouth.” His English translation should be called “the testament of his master, Antichrist.” Tyndale “sheweth himself so puffed up with the poison of pride, malice, and evil, that it is more than a marvel that the skin can hold together.”

  These elegant pronouncements fell from the pen of the aforementioned statesmen Thomas More, who would prove to be Tyndale’s greatest enemy and the single most dangerous man in England next to beheading-obsessed Henry VIII. Whereas other Catholic zealots were content to humble the heretics, forcing them to recant on bended knee, More brought to bear all the powers of Church and State to hunt down these “demonic agents” and send them to the stake.

  Three years after Tyndale’s New Testament first spread throughout England, Thomas More became the country’s lord chancellor. A career politician, More was already famous for his brilliant and witty international best seller, Utopia, a satirical exploration of the perfect political society. Of course, you had to read Latin to gain literary entrance into that society; More prohibited Utopia from publication in English “lest it might fall into the hands of the simple and unlearned.” Even today, in some ways, access to this publication is limited to the uppermost classes of society. Early printings appear on the market these days for around $50,000 to $100,000, while the 1516 first edition last sold at auction, in 2005, for €210,000. To More’s posthumous dismay (we’re guessing), the first edition in English of his best-known work also commands prices of $50,000 to $100,000, even though it’s much later than the early Latin printings. It turns out that collectors actually like to read the text of the books they buy, and educated bibliophiles of the twenty-first century don’t often read Latin anymore.

  More was one of the most strident believers that heresy was a threat to an orderly and civilized society. He felt that conflicts such as the Peasants’ Revolt demonstrated how, when they were given access to too much information, the common people inevitably became a murderous mob. He could even point to evidence more recent than the 1381 English revolt: in 1524–25 a massive uprising occurred across Germany. Some of the leaders of this Peasants’ War cited Luther’s rebellion against the Church as a key influence. With More’s new promotion to primary adviser to Henry VIII, he enjoyed immense political and judicial power. In particular, it was the duty of the chancellor to protect the state from treason, sedition, and rebellion. Bible heretics were a threat not just to the Church, but also to the State itself. More held the keys to the racks and the pyres of England, and in the name of civilization, he developed an iron stomach for burning men alive.

  In the streets of London there were plenty of heretical activities that could be branded treasonous. According to one scholar, “Destroying images, posting bills, singing seditious ballads, spreading forbidden books, hiding those on the run from the authorities, taunting priests, meeting in secret conventicles, planning daring escapes, preaching in spite of persecution, the first followers of the new doctrines marked themselves as rebels as well as heretics.” Lacking only the asthmatic mask and red light saber, More became singularly obsessed with hunting down that rebel alliance.

  In the twenty-five years that he served in the English Parliament, More had learned well the power of the printed word. Around 1521 he edited (and to some extent authored) Henry VIII’s attack on Martin Luther, entitled Assertio septem sacramentorum (Defense of the Seven Sacraments), which won Henry the title of Fidei defensor (“Defender of the Faith”) from the pope. Martin Luther didn’t care at all for that assertio, so he published one back, stating that Henry was “a pig, dolt and liar who deserved, among other things, to be covered in excrement.”

  King Henry knighted Thomas More that same year and asked him to respond to Luther on his behalf. Presumably More would be free to print the types of things that were below the station of the king of England. Here is a highlight reel from Responsio ad Lutherum, published in 1523:

  “Martin Luther is an ape, an arse, a drunkard, a piece of scurf [dandruff], a pestilential buffoon, and a dishonest liar . . . Someone should shit into Luther’s mouth, he farts anathema, it will be right to piss into his mouth, he is filled with shit, dung, filth, and excrement; look, my own fingers are covered with shit when I try to clean his filthy mouth.”

  Wow. One eighteenth-century commentator described More’s tirade as “the greatest heap of nasty language that was perhaps ever put together.” That man had never seen a YouTube comment section, but point taken. To make matters worse, More was a saint—not at the time, obviously, but he would be canonized in 1935 and later, in 2000, declared the patron saint of statesmen and politicians by the Vatican. This is the same man whom scholars stop to examine for his “obsessive anality.” Congratulations, Saint Thomas, there are very few saints from whom Latin students can learn such a variety of filthy Renaissance curse words.

  Between 1526 and 1535, Thomas More and William Tyndale declared war on each other. Their battles didn’t take place in fields and valleys, but on the pages of the printing press. It was a power struggle embodying the conflict of the whole of England. In order to convince the British people that he was right, More even broke form and began publishing in the common tongue. And when he jumped into the English printing pool, he cannonballed, producing a staggering half-million-word corpus of vitriol aimed at Tyndale and other heretics. Between these two men, three-quarters of a million words were written, producing one of the greatest theological debates ever printed in the English language. More and Tyndale bickered over the usual topics, such as the role of the pope, and the king’s love life, but their main fight centered on the printing and distribution of Tyndale’s English-language Bible, the humble octavo that had come to divide the p
owers of heaven and earth.

  MORE CLAIMED that he would support a carefully screened English translation of the Bible, but that Tyndale’s translation contained as many errors as the sea had water. It is worth noting that the committee of scholars tasked by King James I to create the authorized version of the Bible in 1611 found that Tyndale’s translation was almost entirely accurate and faithful to the original texts. In reality, More’s beef with Tyndale’s New Testament came down to three words. Out of 138,000 words describing the life and works of Jesus of Nazareth—three were objectionable. Yet, to More, anything above zero was enough to make men burn.

  Congregation. Elder. Love.

  Congregation, a seemingly harmless word, in fact undermined an entire power structure. This word appears only three times in the New Testament, but its placement had profound implications for the pope. In a particular verse in the Book of Matthew, Jesus appears to be making his disciple, Peter, the steward of his “Church.” For hundreds of years, popes claimed to have inherited this charge, thereby serving as the rightful heirs to the leadership of all Christianity. By changing the word Church to the more abstract (but equally accurate) congregation, Tyndale dissolved that papal authority. In a single word, the pope was created, and in a single word the pope could be erased. This was not a trivial translation choice, either, but a serious power play. An entire sect of Christianity, Congregationalists, subsequently sprang up around this word.

  Tyndale also chose to change the word priest to senior or elder. This created obvious threats to the current authorities. Should the Church be run by priests and bishops, or by senior members of the congregation (presbyters)? The Presbyterians arose from this word’s translation.

  There is a slight linguistic difference between the words love and charity, but theologically, they are light-years apart. Tyndale argued that New Testament “love” was unattached to good works, or gifts, or charitable donations that would flow to the clergy and the Church. Because of this debate, the lord chancellor of England came to view the word love as synonymous with “heresy.”

  Goodnight, my husband More’s wife could have said. I love you.

  What did you say, Alice?

  Oh, right. I meant, good night, husband. I feel charitable toward you in a way not independent of good works or the rightful claim of papal authority over the believers of Christ.

  Simple words are not so simple. How we interpret a word depends on who says it, and why. The reformers whom More called “seditious” were using these words as weapons against those in power. They were proverbial torches thrown through the window of the Church, threatening to destroy it from the inside.

  IN 1529, the same year that More was elevated to the lord chancellorship, Tyndale made his last move, to Antwerp (in modern Belgium), a haven for Protestant writers. Along with Paris and Venice, Antwerp was an international mecca for printing. It was a thriving trade city, with large amounts of capital and solid distribution networks. From the ports in Antwerp, books were being smuggled across the North Sea into England. Tyndale could blend in, write to his heart’s content, and, as long as he wasn’t too brazen about his illegal activities, relax a bit. After four years on the lam, his new lifestyle was becoming second nature. Sir Thomas Elyot, an ambassador from England, launched an eight-month investigation attempting to arrest and deport Tyndale, but he came up empty-handed and deeply in debt. “As far as I can perceive,” he wrote to the Duke of Norfolk, “hearing of the king’s diligence in the apprehension of him, [Tyndale] withdraweth into such places where he thinketh to be farthest out of danger.” The frustrated ambassador soon resigned his position and returned to England.

  Henry VIII was not happy with Tyndale, even despite Tyndale’s public support of him as the highest authority in England, surpassing the pope. This was important because, at the time, Henry and Pope Clement VII were in serious disagreement over the king’s marital affairs.

  More than twenty years prior, Henry had married Catherine of Aragon, a Spanish princess. Catherine was an unusually competent ruler. She previously served as the first female ambassador in European history, played a major command role in the Battle of Flodden (the largest between England and Scotland), and championed women’s education and care for the poor. Yet, no matter how adept she was in the field or at the negotiating tables of Europe, “no other success can compensate for failure in the home.” And by that standard, Catherine was a goddamned disaster. Forget sensitive compromises with Spain or giving food to the needy; if you can’t make male babies that live longer than a month and a half, your value as a woman is forfeit. So, the king went looking elsewhere for a male heir, and he found that elsewhere in the fancy bits of the ambitious twenty-four-year-old Anne Boleyn.

  The wooing, engagement, and eventual royal marriage to Anne Boleyn was known as the king’s “Great Matter.” The Catholic Church refused to recognize Henry’s marriage annulment. Making up euphemisms such as “Great Matter” or “fancy bits” didn’t seem to make much difference, either. Resistance from the Church made it exceedingly difficult for someone to drop his old wife and run off with a younger, prettier secretary . . . er, lady-in-waiting. Though it was framed in admittedly more diplomatic terms, it was over this issue that Henry VIII and Pope Clement VII locked themselves in a struggle that would transmute the religious landscape of England.

  Already fiercely antipapal, Tyndale was only too happy to declare the word of the king above that of the pope. But he was also anti-leaving-your-wife-for-a-younger-woman, which put him in a bit of a moral quandary.

  Anne Boleyn knew of William Tyndale. In some ways, you could say that she was a fan. When you’re engaged to a king like Henry, you don’t give two Thomas More shits which books are banned by the bishops of England. You read whatever you want, whenever you want. And Anne apparently had connections in the smuggling market. Today, the British Library owns her personal copy of Tyndale’s 1534 New Testament, which was not only perused at her leisure but also reportedly “kept . . . open on her desk in her chamber, [and] which her servants were all encouraged to read.”

  Anne consumed Tyndale’s works, including The Obedience of a Christian Man, which, among other things, told the Catholic Church to keep its grubby mitts out of sovereign state business. Not surprisingly, Anne was particularly partial to this tract, and some accounts say she presented Henry with her favorite passages to read. At one point, Henry even reached out to Tyndale, asking him to give in on a few theological points and return to England in the king’s full favor. Tyndale agreed to do so—in fact, he agreed never to write another polemic again—if the king would only allow an English translation of the Bible. But that, apparently, was too much for Henry to promise—for the time being, anyway.

  William Tyndale was a revolutionary and a highly intelligent man, but he was also entirely uncompromising in his views. While this moral fiber makes for honorable Reformation heroes, when it comes to politics it makes for lumbering clodpates. Rather than embracing his immensely powerful new ally, Tyndale could find no justification in the Bible for divorce, and in 1530 he published The Practice of Prelates, wherein he publicly denounced the union between Henry and Anne. In a meeting with the king’s agent, Tyndale expressed surprise at Henry’s reaction: “I am informed that the king’s grace taketh great displeasure with me . . . specifically for the book name The Practice of Prelates: whereof I have no little marvel, considering that in it I did but warn his grace of the subtle demeanor of the clergy.” A little political sense would have gone a long way for Tyndale. Of course, “long way” probably should be read as “six years.” After repeating Catherine’s mistake of failing to produce baby boys, Anne herself was cast aside for a newer model. Her marriage to Henry was declared the result of witchcraft (sortilege), and after charges of adultery and incest floated around the English courts, Henry officially separated from Anne by separating her head from her body.

  THOUGH BITTER enemies, William Tyndale and Thomas More did agree on one point: Henry’s divorce
from Catherine of Aragon was a crime against God. This was a dangerous position for anyone to take, but especially the king’s closest adviser. The danger was compounded exponentially when Henry finally broke from the Catholic Church and declared himself the “Supreme Governor of the Church of England.” This step was just too far for More. He resigned as lord chancellor, and like Tyndale, his life was now in danger for his religious beliefs.

  More’s resignation didn’t necessarily stop his heretic crusade. This was a man who had built up a shadow army of informers that stalked the streets of London at night searching for that most pernicious of crimes against humanity: Bible study groups. Anyone who’s had to sit through a particularly bromidic Sunday school instructor might be inclined to agree, but in the early 1530s, those tedious lessons would have been the very height of political intrigue. Groups with heretical sympathies would meet at night to read aloud from English translations of the Bible, a criminal organization that one scholar calls the “Forbidden Book of the Month Club.” On the other side of the candlelight-flickering walls lurked More’s network—effective, brutal, quietly stealing names and rumors and unshielded comments in the dark.

  Charges of heresy were not easy to beat. The accusers were often anonymous, and the definitions of “heresy” elusive and subjective. There were laws that protected heretics, which dated back to Henry IV in 1401. For example, a suspect could be held for only ten days before being delivered to an ecclesiastical authority. A bishop couldn’t hold a suspect for more than three months before trial. If the accused was acquitted, he could not be arrested on the same charges again. Six weeks after becoming lord chancellor, however, More took those laws and figuratively punted them into the English Channel. Facing rumors of torture and indefinite confinement, some people recanted and surrendered themselves to whatever punishments More could bring to bear.