The Caxton collection contained also the first edition issued in the city of Rome in 1471, as well as the wonderful Polyglot of the great Cardinal Ximenes, and the Polyglot Psalter of Bishop Giustiniani with the first sketch of the life of Columbus. The Bible issued as a standard by Pope Sixtus V. in 1590 is represented by Mr. Stevens, most strangely, as “the first complete Latin edition published by papal authority.” He does not tell us in what respect the previous Latin Bibles were incomplete, or explain how none of them had any papal authority. This Sistine edition was contributed by Earl Spencer, as well as a copy of the edition issued under Pope Clement VIII., 1592, and the edition of the Septuagint from the Codex Vaticanus, issued at Rome in 1586. The Rhemish New Testament, 1582, and the Old Testament printed at Douay in 1609-10, were also there, but Mr. Stevens is clearly in error in saying: “It is a remarkable circumstance that, though these volumes bear the dates of 1609 and 1610 they had not reached the hands of the translators of the 1611 version when their long preface was written. There is distinct allusion to this work, as if to disclaim any knowledge of it.” Yet there is intrinsic evidence that they availed themselves of it before they put their own to press. Readings both in the Old and New Testament which had been preserved through the series of Protestant translations were abandoned in the King James Bible, and Douay renderings substantially, if not literally, adopted.
The King James Bible, of course, figures in the collection. But the question as to which is the editio princeps, the standard for those who bow down to that version, is a knotty one. There is a “Great He Bible” and a “Great She Bible”—two issues of the same year 1611 distinct through every leaf. Catholics will wonder at this distinction of sex in Bibles, and it may be well to state that in the endeavor to determine which of the two was the one originally issued by the translators, scholars found a discrepancy in Ruth iii. 15, one reading: “He measured six measures of barley, and laid it on her, and He went into the city,” while the other reads, “She went into the city”; and as each of these, although varying from each other in many places, was taken as a standard for subsequent editions, these Protestant Bibles are all He and She Bibles to those who wish to know from which of the two 1611 editions they sprang. Mr. Stevens decides that the He Bible, evidently incorrect in its rendering, was the original one.
He sets at rest another point in regard to this King James Bible, and that is the myth or fable of calling it “The Authorized Version.” He says: “We do not find any authority for calling it the Authorized Version, the words ‘appointed to be read in churches’ meaning not authorized, but, as explained in the preliminary matter, simply how the Scriptures were pointed out or ‘appointed’ for public reading.” In other words, to make the Bible go down with the people of England, who still clung to many old Catholic ideas, the epistles and gospels for the Sundays and many of the holidays of the year, as read from time immemorial in the Mass, were indicated or appointed in this Bible. This makes the King James Bible, whether a “Great He Bible” or a “Great She Bible,” a document to prove how slow the English people were to go over to the Reformers, and how they clung to what little they could grasp of their old Catholic faith and devotion. Mr. Stevens does not like it for this very reason, and wants the title purified by leaving out “appointed to be read in churches”; but leaving it out now will not destroy the force of the phrase as it stands on both the He and She Bible of 1611. He claims the King James as the Bible of all English Protestant churches. It has become so; but it was not so originally. He is historically wrong when he says: “It never was any more the Bible of the Church (i.e., of England) than of the Puritans.” It certainly was. Unfortunately there was no copy in this Caxton celebration of “The Souldier’s Pocket Bible: Printed at London by G. B. and R. W. for G. C., 1643,” or we could refer him to that constant companion of Cromwell’s soldiers to show that the Puritans stuck to the Geneva Bible as late as the time of the Commonwealth, and left the King James and the Bishop’s Bibles to the malignants. He knows the early writings of his own New England divines too well not to be aware that their sermons and tracts quote the Geneva and not the King James. The incorrect editions of the Geneva, and the appointment of king’s printers in the reign of Charles II. with the exclusive right of printing Bibles, stopped the issue of any but the King James, and it thus superseded the Geneva, and people took it as a matter of necessity, not of choice or preference. It is simply absurd to make it appear that the King James version was at once accepted and adopted generally.
The collection did very little in showing the various modifications of the Douay Bible. After the edition of 1635 there was scarcely anything in the Caxton exhibition—no copy of Nary’s New Testament, which is certainly remarkable enough. The first edition of the Protestant Bible printed in Ireland dates only from 1714, and certainly a Catholic Testament printed, in spite of penal laws and persecution, in 1719, only five years later, ought to have found a place there. There was no copy of Witham’s New Testament or of Challoner’s first Testament, or of the first edition of his Bible. Nor does Geddes appear. America is not at all represented. Not a copy of Eliot’s Indian Bible, or of Sauer’s German Bible, or the Congress Bible, or the first Catholic Bible of 1790; the Bay Psalm Book stands almost alone.
The Bibles sought for on account of curious renderings or strange blunders were pretty well represented, such as Matthews’ Bug Bible: “Thou shalt not nede to be afraid for any bugges by nyghte,” Ps. xci. 5. The second Genevan, 1562: “Blessed are the place-makers,” Matt. v. 9. Bishop’s Bible, 1568: “Is there no tryacle in Gilead?” Jerem. viii. 22. The Wicked Bible, London, 1631: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Cambridge Bible, 1638: “Whom ye may appoint,” Acts vi. 3, for we. The Vinegar Bible, 1717: “The Parable of the Vinegar.” Oxford Bible, 1807: “Purge your conscience from good works,” instead of “dead,” Heb. ix. 14. Oxford Bible, 1810: “Hate not ... his own wife,” for life, Luke xiv. 26. Still these are of no value except as cautions against typographical blunders. But among the curious Bibles and Testaments we were surprised to see no copy of the now rare negro English Testament, published in London in 1829, Da Njoe Testament va wi Masra en Helpiman Jesus Christus. The Rev. Sydney Smith immortalized it, and Notes and Queries in 1864 devoted some space to it. Renderings like these from a copy before us: St. Matthew, vi. 7, “En effi oeni beggi, oene no meki soso takkitakki, leki dem Heiden, bikasi dem membre, effi dem meki foeloe takkitakki, Gado so harki dem,” or vi. 11, “Gi wi tideh da jamjam va wi,”[[86]] are certainly as curious as anything exhibited.
An ingenious gentleman like Mr. Stevens might perhaps have deduced from it a proof that Caxton was a follower of Wickliffe, or that the Catholic Church showed no respect for the Word of God.
A catalogue of books such as we have taken up seems to afford little scope for any but dry bibliographical notes, but the Caxton celebration has its lessons that can be gleaned even from a catalogue, and if our readers have followed us we think that they will admit that the attempt to make Caxton other than a pious Catholic was a delusion; and the exclusion of the Catholic element, and the attempt to make Caxton a fulcrum for the exaltation of Protestantism, a failure.[[87]] As Catholics we may be grateful for the unintentional evidence the collection afforded of the fact that the Catholic Church protected and preserved the Bible, made men esteem and desire it, gave it to the newly-invented art of printing as the first work to issue, fostered the publication of the original texts, the authentic Vulgate, and of translations in the vernacular; as well as incidentally of proof that the Luther romance was a figment, and proof that the Reformation was forced on the English people, that they clung to the Bible, liturgy, and dogmas of the Catholic Church with the utmost tenacity, and that they lacked only the courage of Ireland and Poland to have maintained their country Catholic.
MALCOLM, KING OF SCOTLAND, TO HIS WIFE, ST. MARGARET.
I.
God speed thee, sweet, in all thy tasks of love,