If this account be correct, it equally vindicates Arundel from the charge of prohibiting the Scriptures, and Queen Anne from that of Lollardism on the ground of reading them, for it will be observed the copy she used had been first submitted to the archbishop’s approval, and his formal permission had been obtained. We have also another interesting testimony to the existence of these earlier versions, and an explanation of the decree against those of the Lollards, in the words of Sir Thomas More, who, in his Dialogue, notices the prohibitory Constitution of Arundel in the following terms:—
“Ye shall understand that the great arch-heretic, Wickliffe (whereas the Holy Bible was long before his time by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people, with devotion and soberness, well and reverently read) took upon him, of a malicious purpose, to translate it anew. In which translation he purposely corrupted the Holy Text, maliciously planting therein such words as might in the reader’s ears serve to the proof of such heresies as he went about to sow; which he not only set forth in his own translation of the Bible, but also in certain prologues or glosses, which he made hereupon. So that after it was perceived what harm the people took by the translations, prologues, and glosses of Wickliffe’s, and also of some others who after him helped to set forth his sect, then, for that cause, it was at a council holden at Oxford provided, upon great pain, that no man should henceforth translate the Scriptures into the English tongue upon his own authority by way of book or treatise, nor no man should read such books as were newly made in the time of Wickliffe, or since, or that should be made any time after, till the same translation were by the Diocesan or Provincial Council approved. But that it neither forbade the translations to be read that were already well done of old before Wickliffe’s time, nor condemned his because it was new, but because it was naught, nor prohibited new to be made, but only provided that they shall not be read if they be made amiss, till by good examination they be amended; except they be such translations as those of Wickliffe and Tindal, which the malicious mind of the translator hath so handled that it were lost labour to go about to mend them.”
He goes on to say that he has seen, and, if necessary, could show, copies of English Bibles, “fair and old,” approved by the Diocesans, which have been left with lay men and women, and used by Catholic folk with soberness and devotion, and that the clergy never kept any Bibles from the laity save those that were “naught,” and not so approved; that is, those in which heretical corruptions of the text had been introduced, or to which were attached the pernicious Lollard glosses. And he explains how it was that no printer had yet ventured to print an English Bible, a great and expensive undertaking, which might, after all, have been unsaleable, through the question which might have been raised whether it were printed from a version made before or since the days of Wickliffe. The whole passage is sufficiently explicit, both as to the fact of approved English versions of the Scriptures existing before the time of Wickliffe, and also as to the received interpretation of Arundel’s decree. We have the very explicit testimony of Cranmer to the same effect. “It is not much above a hundred years,” he writes, “since Scripture hath not been accustomed to be read in the vulgar tongue within this realm; many hundred years before that it was translated and read in the Saxon tongue, and when that language waxed old and out of common usage, because folks should not lack the fruit of reading it, it was translated again into the newer language.”[294] It is, however, by no means easy in all cases to distinguish these early versions from their later imitations. All the translations of the Scriptures preserved in manuscript in the Oxford libraries have been commonly assigned to Wickliffe, although Dr. Thomas James is of opinion that a close examination of some of them would show them to be of much more ancient date. He is also disposed to think that one of the prologues ordinarily assigned to one of Wickliffe’s disciples belongs to an earlier translation. Lewis, in his “History of the English Translations of the Bible,” supposes this prologue to have been written in 1396 by John Purvey, one of Wickliffe’s most learned followers; but its allusions to the care taken to consult St. Jerome, and the gloss of Nicholas de Lyra, do not seem to harmonise very well with this theory. Dr. James considers that the copies preserved in the Bodleian Library, and in Christ Church Library, are of ancient Catholic versions, that in Queen’s College Library alone being properly assigned to Wickliffe. Lewis opposes this view, yet he admits that the Bodleian and Queen’s College versions are different from that of Christ Church. Warton claims one of these for John of Trevisa, and Weever assigns one to the Venerable Richard of Hampole, an Austin hermit, who lived about the year 1349, near the Monastery of Hampole in Yorkshire, and, according to Camden, wrote many books full of “heavenly unction,” and whose translation of the Psalter is still preserved. Whatever may be the real history of these three versions (and it is evident that critics are by no means unanimous as to their authorship), several fragments exist of different books of Scripture which are admitted to be of ancient date. In the library of Bennet College, Cambridge, a translation is preserved of two of the Gospels and St. Paul’s Epistles, with a gloss, written in the English spoken after the Conquest. In Sydney Sussex College are portions of the Old Testament commented on in like manner. A translation of the Psalter, with a gloss, is in the Harleian Library, besides the Psalter of Richard of Hampole, mentioned above, to which is prefixed a prologue, in which the author explains that he has sought no strange English, but only that which was commonest and easiest, and has been careful to consult the holy doctors. There are also, according to Lewis, other translations extant of the Psalter, the New Testament, and the Church Lessons and Hymns, all made before the time of Wickliffe. It must be borne in mind that the manuscripts preserved in our libraries are mere fragments accidentally saved from destruction, and can scarcely be taken as evidence of what existed in England before the Reformation. The pious visitors of Edward VI., in their zeal to purify the university of Popish service books, destroyed every manuscript they could lay hands on, which exhibited illuminations or other ornaments, without the slightest reference to its contents. Whole libraries were then sold for waste paper, and bought by bakers to feed their ovens, or for other base purposes. But among the scanty relics that escaped the hands of these worse than Vandals, stray leaves are to be found of sermons, treatises, and mutilated hymns, many of which are in the vernacular English of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. One of these interesting fragments has been printed by Messrs Wright and Halliwell in the Reliquiæ Antiquæ, and is assigned by them to the fourteenth century. The preacher appears to have been familiar with some English version of the Canticle of Canticles, and introduces a passage which may be quoted as a beautiful specimen of our ancient English idiom:—“Behold my derlyng speketh to me; arys, come nerre my beautiful, now wynter is passid; that is, the coulde wynd of worldly covertise that mad me hard y-froze as yse: the floures scheweth them on erth, the voys of the tortel is herd in our herber; that is, the soule that the kyng of heven has y-lad to his vyne celler, syngeth chast songes of mornyng for hir sinnes and for deth of Christ hir mate: she will no more sette on grene bows lovynge worldlye things, bote fedeth hir with love of Christ, the clene white corne, and fleeth up to the holes of His five woundes, lookyng with sympel eyne into the cler waters of holie writ.”
From what has been said, it may be gathered that before the time of Wickliffe, the Scriptures were in no sense shut up from the laity; that considerable portions of them were rendered into English, and are known to have been actually in the possession of lay persons, and that it was not until the corrupt versions and glosses of the Lollards were made instruments of disseminating pernicious errors, that any decrees were made on the subject. Even then the restrictions were not prohibitions: the laity were still allowed to read approved Catholic versions: though it is very probable, that at a time when so large a portion of the population was infected with Lollardism, and when there was a disposition to make the Sacred Text, interpreted by each man’s whim, the rule of each man’s belief, the private reading of the English Scriptures by lay persons was not greatly encouraged. In fact, prohibitions or restrictions of this sort were never promulgated by the ecclesiastical authorities, until rendered necessary by the perverse misuse of the Sacred Volume by heretics. Thus, in France no such restrictions existed until 1229 when the extravagant doctrines which the Albigenses pretended to adduce from Scripture, obliged the Council of Toulouse to forbid the translation of the Sacred Books, the use of which had, up to that time, been freely permitted. In no case was the Latin Bible withdrawn from the laity,[295] and it must be remembered that in those days the majority of those who could read at all, could read Latin. Lewis, indeed, would have us believe that before Wickliffe’s time, even the Latin Bible was not allowed in common use; and gravely assures us, that the monks and friars collected copies and laid them up in their libraries, not (as one might suppose) for the obvious purpose of reading them, but “to imprison them from the curates and secular priests, and so prevent them from preaching the Word of God to the people.” Nonsense of this sort is scarcely worth refuting, though it finds a place in very grave writers, and by certain readers is often enough believed. Bibles were, of course, comparatively rare and expensive books, and not within reach of every poor curate’s purse. But so far from any conspiracy existing to make them rarer, it was a common devotion among those who possessed such a treasure, to bequeath it by will to some public church, there to be set up and chained, ad usum communem. This practice is often supposed to have originated with the Reformers, and a modern artist has depicted, with great skill, the grey-haired peasant approaching the chained Bible set forth by order of his sacred majesty king Edward VI., and turning over its pages with pious awe. It was, however, a good thought stolen from the ancients, as there is abundant evidence to show. Thus, in 1378 a Bible and Concordance were left by will by Thomas Farnylaw, to be set up and chained in the north aisle of St. Nicholas’ Church, Newcastle; and in 1385, a Bible and Concordance were to be found chained in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.
These Bibles were, of course, copies of the Latin Vulgate, for it is not pretended that any effort was made to place a version of the Scriptures, in the vulgar tongue, at the command of the unlettered laity. The Catholic system of education did not aim at enabling every poor man to read his Bible, but rather at making him know his faith. Nevertheless, so true is it that a strong Scriptural element has always predominated in the teaching of the Church, that the first attempts to provide the poor with cheap literature of any sort were called Biblia Pauperum, or the Bibles of the poor. They were rude engravings of Scriptural subjects, or stories of the saints, taken off carved wooden blocks, and accompanied with texts of Scripture, or pious verses. These were known as block-books, and were reproduced at a much cheaper rate than books written out by hand. Of course they were not Bibles, but they show that even in the age most tainted by the Lollard heresy, there was a disposition on the part of Catholic teachers to supply the people with instruction into which a certain Biblical element had been infused. The block-books were likewise used to strike off small school manuals of grammar, and a book of this sort was technically called a “Donatus.” If the grammars were welcome boons to schoolboys, the Bibles of the poor were not less convenient for the use of preachers, who could not carry so cumbrous a volume as a whole Bible into the pulpit, and were often glad to help their memory by a selection of suitable texts. Specimens of these block-books are preserved as curiosities by modern bibliopolists, and the contrivance seems to have been the immediate forerunner of the more important invention of printing. But in mentioning them we are somewhat departing from the order of time, as they can hardly be assigned an earlier date than the beginning of the fifteenth century.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE RED AND WHITE ROSES.
A.D. 1386 TO 1494.