The Attempt To Suppress Tyndale'S Translation
THE ATTEMPT TO SUPPRESS TYNDALE'S TRANSLATION
Tyndale's New Testament was available in London by the end of February 1526. Copies were openly being sold at a number of outlets, including “Master Garrett, Curate of All Hallows in Honey Lane, London.” England had few enough printers in the 1520s; none of them would have dared produce such a work in the face of the formidable “Constitutions of Oxford,” which explicitly prohibited the production of English Bibles, in whole or in part. The two most important English printers during the 1520s were Richard Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde, responsible for something like 70 percent of the English book market. They could not compete, however, with the quality of the products of foreign presses in Antwerp, Paris, and Venice. Some 17 percent of books sold around this time in England were imported from the Continent.
Antwerp was of special importance, not least on account of its geographical proximity to England. At least sixty presses were operational in this Flemish port city during the first decades of the sixteenth century. Some of these appear to have specialized in works destined for the English market, including Jan van Doesborch, Christoffel van Ruremund, and Matthaeus Crom. During the early 1520s, the imported works that sold best included liturgical service books, such as the Latin text of the Sarum rite, and educational textbooks, such as Cardinal Wolsey's Rudimenta Grammatices (“Basics of Grammar”), which continued to sell well after its author's fall from power and his death.
Although the English state protected many indigenous industries from foreign competition during the later Middle Ages by the simple means of prohibiting the import of many goods, the import of foreign printed works was tolerated to the point of encouragement. It seems that there was an assumption that English printers were simply not in a position to supply enough works to meet the demands of the market. During this remarkable period of free trade in books, perhaps lasting from 1490–1520, many Flemish printers set up offices in England to ensure a ready supply of their works, many of which were printed in English.
The situation changed radically during the 1520s, for two reasons. First, English printers began to lobby for protection against foreign competition. Antwerp printers had become adept at producing books in English, and were posing a real threat to the livelihood of the English printing industry. The second, however, was of greater importance. Whereas border controls effectively prevented Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther or Huldrych Zwingli from gaining entry to England, it proved impossible to staunch the flow of their published works. The desire to deny the English public ready access to the ideas of the Reformation led to lists of prohibited authors and works being drawn up by an increasingly anxious government. At some point between July 1520 and March 1521, Cardinal Wolsey specifically prohibited the importation or reading of any of Luther's works.
Most official anger was directed against Luther's books. Although there had been public condemnation of Luther's writing earlier in England, hostility toward his writings intensified early in 1526. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached a public sermon against Luther, and copies of Luther's works—including the German New Testament—were publicly burned. It may be asked why there was a market for Luther's German language works in a country notoriously poor at foreign languages. It needs to be recalled that there was a small German mercantile community in London at this time, based at the “Steelyard,” which kept itself up to date with the latest religious developments in Germany. It seems that some of Luther's works were initially imported for the personal use of this community. Thomas More organized a raid on the Steelyard in 1526, and it is likely that many of the Lutheran works publicly burned on this occasion had their origins in this community.
More himself was intensely hostile toward Luther. His anti-Luther writings betray a hostility that continues to shock and embarrass those who regard him as a gentle man of letters, given to erudition and elegance. Rabelais himself would have been impressed by the scatological tone of More's comments. Luther, we learn, is “a mad friarlet and privy-minded rascal with his ragings and ravings, with his filth and dung, shitting and beshitted,” preoccupied with “privies, filth and dung.” More also offers the following rather tasteless pun on the distinction between “prior premise” and “posterior argument” to his readers:
Since [Luther] has written that he already has a prior right to bespatter and besmirch the royal crown with shit, we will not have the posterior right to proclaim the beshitted tongue of this practicioner of posterioristics most fit to lick with his anterior the very posterior of a pissing she-mule until he shall have learned more correctly to infer posterior conclusions from prior premises.
While many of the early critics of Luther used crude language and images in their polemic against him, More's criticisms possess a unique degree of crudity and verbal violence that would later pass into More's critiques of Tyndale himself, as a sycophantic follower of the German heretic. Tyndale's New Testament was treated as a partisan Lutheran work, rather than as a serious and responsible attempt to translate part of the Bible into the English language.
Yet a far more dangerous threat to the English church emerged almost immediately. It was one thing for expatriate German merchants to read Luther's translation of the New Testament in their own language. After all, such a work was not going to galvanize the linguistically challenged English public. It soon became clear, however, that a well-produced octavo English New Testament was in circulation at the same time. And nobody had the slightest idea where it had come from. Its title page offered no clues. It soon became clear that the work was being imported from Antwerp, the source of many high-quality English-language publications.
Someone pressed the panic button. Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of London, worked out—it is still not known how—that the translation was the work of Tyndale and Roye. On October 24, 1526, he issued an injunction against the work. The next day, he summoned London's booksellers—including Francis Byrckman, Peter Kaetz, and Henry Pepwell, all of whom were based in St. Paul's Churchyard—and warned them against stocking or selling the work; two days later, he preached a sermon against the translation, claiming that he had identified two thousand translation errors. Having gathered as many copies of the work as he could find within his diocese, Tunstall arranged yet another public burning of books.
Meanwhile, Wolsey had been busy. After briefing the bishops on the threat posed by the new translation, a decree was promulgated demanding that all “untrue translations” should be burned. On November 21, 1526, Wolsey instructed the English ambassador to the Lowlands to act against any printers or booksellers who were in any way associated with the work. Yet the trade proved impossible to regulate. Books could be—and were—smuggled into England with relative ease. A pirate sextodecimo edition of Tyndale's translation was published at Antwerp by Christoph van Endhoven, further adding to the confusion of the English authorities, and the ease with which the translation circulated.
There are accounts in personal diaries and court records of individuals buying the work, allowing us a good idea of its appeal and cost. We read of John Pykas, a baker from Colchester, buying a copy for four shillings in 1526; Robert Necton sold five to Sir William Furboshore for “seven or eight groats” each, and one copy to Sir Richard Bayfell for 3s 4d. A German merchant offered to sell several hundred copies “of the biggest” (presumably the Worms octavo edition) or “of the small volume” (presumably the Antwerp sextodecimo edition) for 9d. There is no doubt that the work achieved a wide circulation, and that there was little that could be done to prevent it.
England was a mercantile nation, and hence imported a substantial quantity and variety of legitimate goods. Smugglers were thus offered a rich choice of means by which contraband could be clandestinely brought to England. Port officers discovered all manner of means by which books could be concealed. A large cask of salt concealed books and other religious papers. Barrels of oil were built with hidden watertight compartments, and chests constructed with false bottoms. The smuggling of books was made much easier through the practice of supplying unbound books in the form of printed sheets, which could easily be concealed in cargoes of hides, or bales of cloth or other fabric.
Perhaps the most bizarre scheme devised by the English Church to stifle the new translation is set out by Edward Hall in his chronicle entitled The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548). In this chronicle, Hall relates how Tunstall, in the course of a 1529 visit to Antwerp, met a merchant by the name of Augustine Packington. Tunstall mentioned how anxious he was to burn as many of Tyndale's New Testaments as possible, upon which Packington informed the bishop that he would—for a price—be able to get hold of as many copies as the bishop wanted. He was a personal friend of the merchants involved, and well placed to obtain large quantities of the work. Packington promptly informed Tyndale of the deal. Tyndale was delighted. He would profit from the deal, and be able to invest heavily in producing even more accurate editions of the work. As Hall concluded his story: “forward went the bargain: the bishop had the books, Packington had the thanks, and Tyndale had the money.”
A NOTE ON PAPER SIZES
Books dating from this period are often described in terms of the size of its pages. A single large sheet of printing paper would be folded to give pages of various sizes. The simplest procedure was to fold the sheet once. This created two “leaves” of paper, each of which could be printed on both sides to give four printed pages. This is known as a “folio” edition. A “quarto” edition involved folding the original large sheet twice, giving eight printed pages. An “octavo” edition involved folding the original sheet of paper to give sixteen printed pages, and a “duodecimo” edition twenty-four. As the same size of paper was used for each, the overall result was a radical reduction in page size. An octavo edition (whose pages measure roughly 8×5 inches) is thus approximately one quarter the size of the full folio edition.
Name
Number of folds
Leaves per sheet
Number of printed pages
Folio
1
2
4
Quarto
2
4
8
Octavo
3
8
16
Duodecimo
4
12
24
Sextodecimo
5
16
32
Folio-sized works were ideal for placing on lecterns or reading stands of some kind; duodecimo and sextodecimo were easier to carry around, and thus best-suited for personal use. They were also easier to smuggle into England.
The money, if such indeed was its source, was well used. In January 1530, copies of a new work began to appear in England, again smuggled in from Antwerp. The new work was Tyndale's English translation of the book of Genesis, the first section of a translation of the entire Pentateuch. Tyndale's style in this work is robust and colloquial. We read of Pharaoh's “jolly captains” being drowned in the Red Sea (Exodus 15:4), and learn that Joseph was a “lucky fellow” (Genesis 39:2).
Yet the most important product of Tyndale's later period was the 1534 revision of the translation of the New Testament. Some five thousand alterations were introduced, generally to the improvement of the original. Tyndale's final translation of the Parable of the Good Samaritan can still be read today with little difficulty.
A certain man descended from Jerusalem in to Jericho, and fell in to the hands of thieves, which robbed him of his raiment and wounded him, and departed leaving him half dead. And by chance there came a certain priest that same way, and when he saw him, he passed by. And likewise a Levite, when he was come nigh to the place, went and looked on him, and passed by. Then a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came nigh unto him, and when he saw him, had compassion on him, and went to and bound up his wounds, and poured in oil and wine, and put him on his own beast, and brought him to a common inn, and made provision for him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence and gave them to the host, and said unto him: Take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will recompense thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell into the thieves' hands? And he said: he that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him: Go and do thou likewise.
The revision was undertaken in the full knowledge that the religious situation in England was changing, radically and possibly irreversibly. Henry VIII was now alienated from the Pope, and Thomas More—Tyndale's most severe critic—had resigned as lord chancellor over Henry's refusal to recognize papal authority. Thomas Cromwell was rising in the royal favor, and was rumored to be sympathetic to the cause of the Reformation in general, and a vernacular Bible in particular. With Cromwell as vice-regent, the possibility of further reform was considerable.
In the end, despite their personal antagonism and totally different views on matters of religion and biblical translation, More and Tyndale shared a common fate. Both were executed, victims of the religious tensions of the period that neither could control, yet each, in his own way, had helped create. More was executed at the Tower of London on July 6, 1535, on a charge of high treason. More had incurred Henry's dislike for a number of reasons, including his continued support for papal authority in England, and his refusal to attend Henry's wedding to Anne Boleyn in 1533.
Tyndale had fled England, fearing for his safety on account of his Protestant religious views and his commitment to bringing biblical translation to England. He settled in the house of Thomas Pointz in the port city of Antwerp, which by then was beginning to gain a reputation as a place of toleration for Protestant ideas. It was also the center of an extensive publishing trade, with well-established links with English booksellers. It was an ideal location for Tyndale to continue his work of biblical translation. In addition to revising existing translations, he was in a position to extend this work to additional Old Testament works. Yet Antwerp was close to the staunchly Catholic centers of Brussels and Louvain. There was always a risk that Tyndale would be abducted by those anxious to end his activities.
In the event, Tyndale was betrayed. The motives for the betrayal remain puzzling. Henry Philips, an impoverished Englishman who detested Lutheranism, appears to have been bribed by someone in London to induce Tyndale to leave the safety of Pointz's house on the pretext of inviting him to dinner. While the identity of this person remains unclear, suspicion naturally falls upon certain senior English churchmen, who felt their positions threatened by Tyndale's activities. Tyndale was arrested in May 1535. Vigorous protests from the English government, especially Thomas Cromwell, fell on deaf ears. Tyndale was strangled in October 1536, and his dead body then burned at the stake. Tyndale's fate is an important reminder that biblical translation was more than just a scholarly challenge in the early sixteenth century—it was, in Tyndale's case, illegal, dangerous, and ultimately fatal.
Tyndale might have been eliminated from the scene; yet his New Testament had created pressure for a vernacular Bible that was proving increasingly difficult to resist. The changing religious situation in England meant that there were now many in high places who were more than open to this possibility. Tyndale's biblical translations of the 1520s had opened floodgates that could no longer be closed, such was the force of the torrent flowing through them. It was merely a matter of time before an English Bible was published—but this time, with royal authority. As it happened, the first crack in the establishment appeared a few months before Tyndale's arrest.
In December 1534, the Convocation of Canterbury—representing the clergy of the southern province of the Church of England—petitioned Henry VIII to rule that “the Holy Scripture should be translated into the vulgar English tongue by certain good and learned men, to be nominated by His Majesty, and should be delivered to the people for their instruction.” The English clergy had pointedly turned their backs on Tyndale's translation, but they had conceded the need for an officially sanctioned English Bible, which could be freely distributed and read within England. A vital corner had been turned.
1536 depiction of the Execution of WilliAM Tyndale