In the 12th century the same gospels were again copied by pious hands into the Kentish dialect of the period.
The 13th century, from the point of view of Biblical renderings into the vernacular, is an absolute blank. French—or rather the Anglo-Norman dialect of the period—reigned supreme amongst the upper classes, in schools, in Anglo-Norman Period. parliament, in the courts of law and in the palace of the king. English lurked in farms and hovels, amongst villeins and serfs, in the outlying country-districts, in the distant monasteries, amongst the lower clergy, amongst the humble and lowly and ignorant. There were certainly renderings of the Bible during the 12th, 13th and early 14th centuries, but they were all in French. Some of these translations were made in England, some were brought over to England and copied and recopied. Amongst the latter was the magnificently illuminated Norman Commentary on the Apocalypse, some of the earliest copies of which were written in an English hand. In fact before the middle of the 14th century the entire Old Testament and the greater part of the New Testament had been translated into the Anglo-Norman dialect of the period. (MSS. Bibl. Nat. fr. 1, 9562, Brit. Mus. Reg. I.C. iii. Cf. S. Berger, La Bible française au moyen âge, Paris, 1884, pp. 78 ff.)
When English finally emerged victorious, towards the middle and latter half of the 14th century, it was for all practical purposes a new language, largely intermixed with French, differing from the language of the older period in sound, flexion and structure. It is evident that any Old English versions which might have survived the ravages of time would now be unintelligible, it was equally natural that as soon as French came to be looked upon as an alien tongue, the French versions hitherto in use would fail to fulfil their purpose, and that attempts should again be made to render the Bible into the only language 14th-century renderings. intelligible to the greater part of the nation—into English. It was also natural that these attempts should be made where the need was most pressing, where French had gained least footing, where parliament and court were remote, where intercourse with France was difficult. In fact in the Northern Midlands, and in the North even before the middle of the 14th century, the book of Psalms had been twice rendered into English, and before the end of the same century, probably before the great Wycliffite versions had spread over the country, the whole of the New Testament had been translated by different hands into one or other of the dialects of this part of the country.
At the same time we can record only a single rendering during the whole century which originated in the south of England, namely the text of James, Peter, 1 John and the Pauline Epistles (edited by A.C. Paues, Cambridge, 1904).
Of these pre-Wycliffite versions possibly the earliest is the West Midland Psalter, once erroneously ascribed to William of Shoreham.[7] It occurs in three MSS., the earliest of which, Brit. Mus. Add. 17376, was probably written between 1340 and 1350. It contains a complete version of the book of Psalms, followed by the usual eleven canticles and the Athanasian Creed. The Latin original is a glossed version of the Vulgate, and in the English translation the words of the gloss are often substituted for the strong and picturesque expressions of the Biblical text; in other respects the rendering is faithful and idiomatic. The following two verses of the first psalm may exemplify this:—
MS. British Mus. Add. 17376.
(i. 1.) Beatus uir, qui non abijt in consilio impiorum, & in uia peccatorum non stetit, et in cathedra ·i· iudicio pestilencie ·i· falsitatis non sedit. Blesced be þe man þat ȝede nouȝt in þe counseil of wicked, ne stode nouȝt in þe waie of sinyeres, ne sat nouyt in fals iugement. (2) Set in lege domini uoluntas eius, & in lege eius meditabitur die ac nocte. Ac hijs wylle was in þe wylle of oure Lord, and he schal þenche in hijs lawe boþe daye and nyȝt.
Before the middle of the century Richard Rolle (q.v.), the hermit of Hampole (+ 1349), turned into English, with certain additions and omissions, the famous Commentary on the Psalms by Peter Lombard. The work was undertaken, Richard Rolle. as the metrical prologue of one of the copies tells us (MS. Laud. misc. 286), “At a worthy recluse prayer, cald dame Merget Kyrkby.” The Commentary gained immediate and lasting popularity, and spread in numerous copies throughout the country, the peculiarities of the hermit’s vigorous northern dialect being either modified or wholly removed in the more southerly transcripts. The translation, however, is stiff and literal to a fault, violating idiomatic usage and the proper order of words in its strict adherence to the Latin. The following brief extracts may exemplify the hermit’s rendering and the change the text underwent in later copies.[8]
| MS. Univ. Coll. 64. | MS. Reg. 18 B. 21 |
| (i. 1.) Blisful man þe whilk oway ged noght in þe counsaile of wicked, and in þe way of synful stode noght, & in þe chaiere of pestilens he noght sate. (2) Bot in laghe of lord þe will of him; and in his laghe he sall thynke day & nyght. | Blessed is þat man þat haþ not gone in þe counsell of wicked men, and in þe weye of sinfull men haþ not stonde, and in þe chaire of pestilence sat not. 2. But in þe lawe of our lorde is þe will of him; and [in] his lawe we shall þinke day and nyght. |
Approximately to the same period as these early renderings of the Psalter belongs a version of the Apocalypse with a Commentary, the earliest MS. of which (Harleian 874) is written in the dialect of the North Midlands. This Commentary, for a long time attributed to Wycliffe, is really nothing but a verbal rendering of the popular and widely-spread Norman Commentary on the Apocalypse (Paul Meyer and L. Delisle, L’Apocalypse en Français au XIIIe siècle, Paris, 1901), which dates back as far as the first half of the 13th century, and in its general tenor represents the height of orthodoxy. The English apocalypse, to judge from the number of MSS. remaining, must have enjoyed great and lasting popularity. Several revisions of the text exist, the later of which present such striking agreement with the later Wycliffite version that we shall not be far wrong if we assume that they were made use of to a considerable extent by the revisers of this version.