2. The Rise Of English As A National Language
2
THE RISE OF
ENGLISH AS A
NATIONAL LANGUAGE
The struggle for an English Bible was long and complex, reflecting the entrenched and vested interests of the medieval Church, and the caution and conservatism of politicians. Yet it also rested on a hesitancy on the part of many concerning the merits of the English language. It is not generally realized that the languages of the elite in English society in the early fourteenth century were French and Latin. English was seen as the language of peasants, incapable of expressing anything other than the crudest and most basic of matters. English was just fine when dealing with spreading dung on fields. But how could such a barbaric language do justice to such sophisticated matters as philosophy or religion? To translate the Bible from its noble and ancient languages into English was seen as a pointless act of debasement.
The story of the King James Bible cannot be told without an understanding of the remarkable rise of confidence in the English language in the late sixteenth century. What was once scorned as the barbarous language of plowmen became esteemed as the language of patriots and poets—a language fit for heroes on the one hand, and for the riches of the Bible on the other. Gone were any hesitations about the merits of the English language. Elizabeth's navy and armies had established England's military credentials; her poets, playwrights, and translators had propelled English into the front rank of living European languages. The King James Bible consolidated the enormous advances in the English language over the centuries, and can be seen as the symbol of a nation and language that believed that their moment had finally arrived.
The growing tide of nationalism that broke out in the late fifteenth century, and which helped shape the massive political and religious upheavals that lay ahead in the sixteenth, gave a new significance to regional languages. National identity was both molded and sustained by its cultural achievements. The growth of a literature in living European languages was widely seen as essential to the formation of national identities in France, Spain, and England. This development was viewed with dismay by those who wanted Latin to be the language of a new cosmopolitan European culture, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Sir Thomas More. Yet it proved to be irresistible.
What can be termed a “rhetorical nationalism” came to develop across Europe, including England. In his 1589 Art of English Poesy, written at the height of the Elizabethan Age, George Puttenham declared that English was just as sophisticated as Greek or Latin, and perfectly capable of expressing the full range of human emotions and thoughts.
And if the art of Poesy be still appertaining to utterance, why may not the same be with us as well as them, our language being no less copious pithy and significative as theirs, our conceits the same, and our wits no less to devise and imitate than theirs were?
To write in English—or translate into English—was a political act, affirming the intrinsic dignity of the language of a newly confident people and nation. And why should not that nation have its own Bible in its own language?
If any nation managed successfully to suppress demands for a Bible in its own language during the fifteenth century it was England. A German Bible was published at Strasbourg in 1466. An explosion of translations (always based on the Latin Vulgate text) followed, so that by 1483 nine printed translations were accessible. Martin Luther's German translation of the New Testament (1522) was built on a solid tradition of translation stretching back for two generations. French Bibles were available by 1500. But the translation of the Bible into English, in whole or in part, remained illegal under a decree of 1408 known as the “Constitutions of Oxford.”
Some essentially fictional works of devotion, which some people—unfamiliar with the original texts of the gospels—might assume to be translations of part of the gospels were indeed in circulation in English at this time. These were carefully vetted to ensure that they were acceptable to the church authorities of the day. Direct knowledge of the biblical text was still regarded as far too dangerous a thing to be permitted to the laity. In any case, some argued, English was too crude and unsophisticated a language to cope with the great themes of the Christian religion.