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by Rebecca Romney

  54gnawed his way through them with his molars: Jonathan Sumption, The Age of Pilgrimage: The Medieval Journey to God (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003), 41.

  54“a few of my neighbors”: Quoted in Preserved Smith, The Life and Letters of Martin Luther (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 43.

  55“printed and circulated far beyond my expectation”: Quoted in ibid., 44.

  55“had I known what was going to happen”: Quoted in ibid.

  55printing in the common German tongue: Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 164.

  56“Heralded on all sides as a ‘peaceful art’”: Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 319.

  56could that mule have been crucified: Brian Moynahan, God’s Bestseller (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014), 10.

  56what was actually written in the Bible: S. L. Greenslade, “Epilogue,” in Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. Greenslade (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 485.

  56“did not know how many Commandments there were”: W. M. S. West, “John Hooper and the Origins of Puritanism” (Zurich dissertation, 1955), 45.

  57“a boy that driveth the plough”: Quoted in David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 1.

  57“Arthur Cobbler” or “Hans Hoe”: A vicar called the Bible in English “the book of Arthur Cobbler,” as quoted in G. R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 27; “Hans Hoe” was the German nickname, a translation of “Karsthans” in German: Mark U. Edwards Jr., Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), 61.

  57crime punishable by death: This was the end result of laws that combined the judgments of spiritual courts with the enforcement by governmental courts: Parliament’s 1401 passage of De heretico comburendo (allowing burning at the stake as lawful punishment for heretics) and Archbishop Arundel’s 1407–9 passage of Constitutions, or religious regulations, one of which forbade the ownership or circulation of any written translation of scripture into English. See Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum 70, no. 4 (October 1995): 822–64.

  57“not the light of the world, but its darkness”: Quoted in Moynahan, God’s Bestseller, 156.

  57“indeed women and simple idiots”: Johannes Cochlaeus, quoted in ibid., 33.

  57“cartload of hay for a few sheets of St. Paul”: Ibid., xix.

  58sold his looms and shears to purchase a copy: Brigden, London, 89.

  58“advised me to seek in London”: Quoted in Daniell, Tyndale, 85.

  59encouraged printers to issue more pirated editions: J. F. Mozley, William Tyndale (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 115–19.

  59vernacular translations of the Bible were widely available: John L. Flood, “The History of the Book in Germany,” in The Book: A Global History, ed. Suarez and Woudhuysen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 370.

  59“vagabond or religious eccentric”: Anne Hudson, ed., Selections from the English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 8.

  59“Ten Worst Britons” poll: “‘Worst’ Historical Britons Named,” BBC News, December 27, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/4560716.stm.

  59legally enforce these spiritual rulings: Legal enforcement of spiritual courts against heretics began in 1401, with the passing of De heretico comburendo. See note on page 57.

  60sixty manuscript copies of Chaucer’s English masterpiece: De Hamel, The Book, 187.

  60heresy . . . with sedition: Richard Rex, “Thomas More and the Heretics: Statesman or Fanatic?” in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More, ed. George M. Logan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 95.

  61their beloved English New Testaments tied around their necks: De Hamel, The Book, 186.

  61“to the end without moving”: Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 4:688.

  61“not God’s body”: Ibid., 3:238.

  61capitalist innovators and Lollard heretics: E. G. Rupp, Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 8.

  62bales of cloth: David Daniell, “William Tyndale, the English Bible, and the English Language,” in The Bible as Book, Vol. 3: The Reformation, ed. Orlaith O’Sullivan (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000), 43. Thomas More also learned the trick with the bales of cloth—through the interrogation of George Constantine, a colporteur known as a major distributor of English New Testaments. Some scholars have suggested that Constantine first began circulating rumors about extreme treatment of prisoners by More in order to account for the large amount of information Constantine betrayed during his questioning. See Brad C. Pardue, Printing, Power, and Piety: Appeals to the Public During the Early Years of the English Reformation (Boston: Brill, 2012), 108–9. For the works Tyndale used in his translation, see Daniell, Tyndale, 108–15.

  63“in short time be Lutheran”: Quoted in Daniell, Tyndale, 109.

  63“devil in the habit of a monk”: The Edict of Worms, 1521.

  64wasn’t identified until 1996: See Eberhard Zwink, “Confusion About Tyndale: The Stuttgart Copy of the 1526 New Testament in English,” Reformation 3, no. 1 (1998).

  64purchased for six days’ wages: Pardue, Printing, 19.

  64“cost him just 20 guineas”: “Tyndale New Testament,” British Library, http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/sacredtexts/tyndale.html.

  65would not sit for portraits: Moynahan, God’s Bestseller, 54.

  65“hellhound in the kennel of the devil”: Quoted in Thomas More, Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, vol. 8 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. Louis A. Schuster, Richard C. Marius, and James P. Lusardi (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 226, 135, 358. Thomas More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, vol. 6 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. Thomas M. Lawler, Germain Marc’hadour, and Richard C. Marius (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 424.

  65all the powers of Church and State: Though a layman, More was commissioned by the bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, to fight against heresy with publications in English. See Eamon Duffy, “‘The Comen Knowen Multitude of Crysten Men’: A Dialogue Concerning Heresies and the Defence of Christendom,” in Logan, ed., Cambridge Companion to Thomas More, 194.

  65“the simple and unlearned”: Quoted in Daniell, Tyndale, 69.

  66Peasants’ War cited Luther’s rebellion: More argues that the Peasants’ War was an “inevitable outcome” of Luther, noted in Duffy, “Defence of Christendom,” 209.

  66“rebels as well as heretics”: Bridgen, London, 120.

  67to some extent authored: For more on More’s contribution to Henry VIII’s pamphlet, see Peter Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More (New York: Nan A. Talese, 1998), 226.

  67“covered in excrement”: Quoted in ibid., 227.

  67“shit, dung, filth, and excrement”: Quoted in ibid., 230–31. Ackroyd does a lovely job of providing both the Latin and the English terms for any readers who would like to expand their Latin vocabulary.

  67“the greatest heap of nasty language”: Ibid., 227, quoting Francis Atterbury. These references feature in a chapter of Ackroyd’s book called “XXI: I Am Like a Ripe Shit”—named for a quote from More, naturally.

  67“obsessive anality”: Daniell, Tyndale, 277. As a counterpoint, note Richard Rex’s criticism of characterizing More’s writings based on these passages: “His Responsio ad Lutherum delves into the dungheap on perhaps a dozen occasions, two or three of them spectacularly revolting. But this is not typical of a text which amounts to about 350 pages in its critical edition.” Only a dozen occasions! Rex, “Statesman or Fanatic,” 104–5.

  68accurate and faithful to the original texts: Moynahan
, God’s Bestseller, 104. For a discussion of what the committee of scholars making the King James translation owed (and didn’t owe) to Tyndale, see Adam Nicolson, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 221–23.

  68came down to three words: More, Dialogue, 285–86. See also Richard Duerden, “Equivalence or Power? Authority and Reformation Bible Translation,” in O’Sullivan, ed., The Bible as Book: The Reformation, 12.

  70international mecca for printing: Dr. F. de Nave, “Antwerp, Dissident Typographical Centre in the Sixteenth Century: General Synthesis,” in Antwerp, Dissident Typographical Centre, ed. Gilbert Tournoy, Dirk Imhof, and Francine de Nave (Antwerp: Snoeck-Ducaju and Zoon, 1994), 11.

  70“farthest out of danger”: Rev. R. Demaus, William Tyndale, a Biography, rev. Richard Lovett (London: Religious Tract Society, 1886), 319

  70surpassing the pope: In Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man (Antwerp: Merten de Keyser, 1528).

  70unusually competent ruler: See David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).

  70“failure in the home”: David O. McKay, in Family Home Evening Manual, ed. the Council of the Twelve Apostles (Salt Lake City, UT: The Council, 1968), iii.

  71transmute the religious landscape of England: To complicate matters, in 1527 Catherine’s nephew Charles V had recently sacked Rome, reducing the pope to a mere puppet during a crucial period of the “Great Matter.”

  71she was a fan: For an examination of the sources describing Anne Boleyn’s reformer leanings, see Thomas S. Freeman, “Research, Rumour and Propaganda: Anne Boleyn in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs,’” The Historical Journal 38 no. 4 (December 1995): 797–819.

  71connections in the smuggling market: Bridgen, London, 128.

  71“servants were all encouraged to read”: Reported by Boleyn’s confessor, Latimer, quoted in Moynahan, God’s Bestseller, 295.

  71presented Henry with her favorite passages: Ackroyd, Thomas More, 283, referencing Foxe.

  72allow an English translation: Daniell, Tyndale, 212.

  72“I did but warn his grace”: Quoted in ibid., 213.

  73“Forbidden Book of the Month Club”: See Patrick Collinson, “William Tyndale and the Course of the English Reformation,” in Reformation 1, no. 1 (1996): 72–97.

  73lurked More’s network: Ackroyd, Thomas More, 300.

  73Facing rumors of torture and indefinite confinement: Moynahan, God’s Bestseller, 208. While there is ample documentation for the sustained imprisonment of suspects—John Petyt died while imprisoned in the Tower of London, even though they had no incriminating evidence of his crimes—it’s worth noting that More asserted that he never tortured his prisoners. Personally, given how seriously he took the threat of religious fanatics, we’re inclined to believe it’s because he considered his “advanced interrogation techniques” necessary for the safety of the state.

  73burn everyone he detained: In the two and a half years of his chancellorship, six heretics were burned. Of these, the cases of three were pressed through specifically by More. See Rex, “Statesman or Fanatic,” 94.

  74“Tree of Truth”: See Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 4:698. Apologists claim, understandably, that Foxe is not the most impartial source for More. Yet we do know that the rumors were common enough that More himself felt obliged to address them.

  74“bodily harm done him or foul word spoken”: Thomas More, Apology, in English Prose, Vol. 1: Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century, ed. Henry Craik (1916).

  76“liberation of language itself”: David Daniell, “No Tyndale, No Shakespeare,” paper presented at the Tyndale Kirtling Meeting, Suffolk, April 16, 2005.

  76path blazed by Tyndale: Pardue, Printing, 209.

  76came from his mind: Daniell, Tyndale, 1.

  76Inquisition “in the Spanish manner”: Prof. Dr. G. Latré, “William Tyndale in Antwerp: Reformer, Bible Translator, and Maker of the English Language,” in Antwerp, Dissident Typographical Centre, ed. by Gilbert Tournoy, Dirk Imhof, and Francine de Nave (Antwerp: Snoeck-Ducaju and Zoon, 1994), 64.

  77the man who doomed Tyndale: Daniell, Tyndale, 368–69.

  78closely matches Thomas More’s profile: Richard Rex scorns the idea that More could have orchestrated the arrest from his prison in the Tower. He does acknowledge that the targets of this new Protestant movement were “More’s kind of people,” the educated upper classes. See Rex, “Statesman or Fanatic,” 111.

  78“consumed at last with lice”: Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 5:129.

  78petitions caused delays: Daniell, Tyndale, 376.

  78“above all other powers”: Miles Coverdale, preface to The Bible, That Is the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament, Faithfully Translated into English (Antwerp: Merten de Keyser, 1535), sig. +iiv.

  79the name of a heretic: David Daniell, The Bible in English (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 193.

  79Tyndale’s translation would account for: Jon Nielson and Royal Skousen, “How Much of the King James Bible Is William Tyndale’s?,” in Reformation 3, no. 1 (1998): 49–74.

  80“forgotten ghost of the English language”: Collinson, “William Tyndale,” quoting from Philip Howard, “Philip Howard Column: Tyndale’s Language of the Common Man Is the Bedrock of English Literature Today,” in The Times, April 29, 1994.

  Chapter 4: Making the Round World Flat

  83sent to the Arctic by none other than King Arthur: For a full narration of this episode see Thomas Green, “John Dee, King Arthur, and the Conquest of the Arctic,” The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe 15 (October 2012).

  83“put into writing all the wonders”: Letter from April 20, 1577, from Mercator to Dee, quoted in Nicholas Crane, Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014), 242–44.

  84legally owns the moon: We don’t actually own the moon. Cf. the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which incidentally reads almost like a Star Trek script.

  84“pygmies whose length in all”: The description on the map itself reads, “Pygmei hic habitant / 4 ad summum pedes longi.”

  84“most salubrious of the whole of Septentrion”: Hic insula optima est et saluberrima totus Septentrionis.

  85“discovered than in five thousand years before”: Andrew Taylor, The World of Gerard Mercator (New York: Walker and Company, 2004), 36.

  85“info-lust”: Ann M. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 6.

  85“swarms of new books”: Seneca and Erasmus both quoted in ibid., 15 and 55.

  87Columbus carried a copy of the Geographia: Taylor, World of Gerard Mercator, 14.

  88Jerusalem . . . lay at its center: Norman J. Thrower, Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 42.

  88“maps of Scriptural dogma”: Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), 101.

  88groats per viertel: Crane, Mercator, 14.

  88strictly forbidden: In some areas, dissections were allowed, but only infrequently and under extremely strict conditions. During this same period the famous anatomist Andreas Vesalius was forced to grave-rob and scavenge for bodies to autopsy in service of his revolutionary pedagogical anatomy book De humani corporis fabrica (1543).

  88booksellers who went from town to town: Ibid., 34.

  89“began to doubt the truth of all philosophers”: Our translation. Quoted in Latin in Jean Van Raemdonck, Gérard Mercator, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres (St. Nicholas, Belgium: Dalschaert-Praet, 1869), 25.

  89“Let it be said in a whisper”: Quoted in J. H. Parry, ed., The European Reconnaissance (London: Macmillan, 1968), 180.

  89cartographic revolution was a reaction: Thrower, Maps and Civilization, 58.

  90shaping that morass: “Printing diffused more broadly than ever before existing techniques for managing information and encouraged experimentation with new ones, inc
luding new layouts, finding devices, and methods of composition.” Blair, Too Much to Know, 14.

  90alphabetization: This section relies on Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2000), 184–87.

  91After print: “Print” referring, in this case, to the development of illustration techniques used alongside or in conjunction with movable type: relief (woodcut) and intaglio (engraving).

  91“a globe of exquisite beauty”: Crane, Mercator, 67.

  92“frivolous distraction”: Ibid., 61.

  93Taprobane, the world’s largest fake island: Ibid., 72. It should be noted that this fake island is different from the other fake island required by Ptolemy, and a mainstay of maps for centuries to come: the Great Southern Continent, not definitively disproved until the voyages of Captain Cook in the late eighteenth century.

  94reduced to a mere abbreviation: Taylor, World, 204.

  95Mercator wall paneling: Although it would almost certainly have to come from a map originally issued in a book—maps produced for hanging on walls tend not to survive because they are exposed to the elements more than those hidden between leather covers.

  94“instruments of rule” . . .”science of princes”: Michael Biggs, “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory and European State Formation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 2 (1999): 380; and J. B. Harley, “Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe,” Imago Mundi 40 (1988): 59.

  94punishable by death: Harley, “Silences and Secrecy,” 61.

  94“secrets not fit to be published”: Quoted in Roger M. McCoy, On the Edge: Mapping North America’s Coasts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 74.

  95“knowing is half the battle”: “GI Joe: A Real American Hero,” animated TV series (1985–86). PSAs can be accessed at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/GI_Joe-Knowing_is_Half_the_Battle_PSAs.

  95were classified as state secrets: Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 113.