An Official English Bible: The Great Bible Of 1539
AN OFFICIAL ENGLISH BIBLE: THE GREAT BIBLE OF 1539
GRAFTON was to be disappointed. A feature of Matthew's Bible that he believed to be a selling point became instead a sticking point. Grafton had included a large number of marginal notes in his Bible, following a precedent set by a highly successful French Protestant translation of the Bible produced earlier in Geneva. Perhaps it was inevitable that the notes accompanying the text reflected the strongly Protestant outlook of Pierre-Robert Olivétan, who had originally written them. They might well have won universal favor in Protestant Geneva; England, however, was simply not ready for such strong Protestant meat. While Rogers's translation was broadly acceptable across theological divisions within the English church, being seen as neither especially Protestant nor Catholic, the notes caused difficulties for some senior English clergy. They were still nervous about allowing the laity to read the Bible in English; the marginal notes could well lead to the Bible being read in a radical Protestant manner.
This perception of a strong Protestant bias was reinforced by an additional factor. The ordering of the books of the New Testament in Matthew's Bible followed the early Lutheran practice of placing Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation at the end of the New Testament, in a category of their own. This reflected Luther's personal doubts concerning their canonicity—doubts not shared by other reformers, such as John Calvin, or by the Catholic opponents of the Reformation. If a Bible was to be authorized for public use in church, it was argued, it must treat all the New Testament works as canonical.
Matthew's Bible failed to gain the acceptance that Grafton had expected. Thomas Cromwell realized that a new translation was needed. To begin from scratch would have taken an enormous amount of time, whereas the political situation demanded the rapid production of a completed text. The simplest solution was adopted. Cromwell asked Coverdale to revise Matthew's Bible, with such changes as were required to keep influential churchmen happy. The new translation—which contained no offensive marginal notes—appeared in April 1539 from the presses of Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch, and rapidly became the favored Bible for use in churches. It was this Bible that became known as “the Great Bible.” It included both the canonical and apocryphal books, mistakenly referring to the latter as the “Hagiographa.” The New Testament works were printed in the order set out by Erasmus in his 1516 Greek New Testament, with the four works regarded by Luther as being of doubtful authority—Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation—fully integrated into the text. The pattern set by the Great Bible became normative for English Bibles, and is reflected in the presentation and ordering of the text in both the Geneva Bible and the King James
Bible. The work was reissued with revisions in April 1540, and included a new preface by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury.
The translation of the text offered by the Great Bible is best seen as a judicious blend of Tyndale and Coverdale, with the offending notes of Matthew's Bible removed. Although Coverdale intended to include an appendix of “certain godly annotations,” it seems that this was omitted at a late stage; Coverdale's Protestant views, however moderately couched, would inevitably have offended some in England, and reduced the appeal of the Bible. The lesson to be learned from the failure of Matthew's Bible was that Protestant annotations were unacceptable—for the moment, at any rate.
The title page of the work is itself a remarkably revealing piece of reformist iconography, and is worth studying carefully (see the illustration on page 96). It represents a powerful visual statement of the place of the Bible in Tudor England, and brings out the close link between church and state that existed throughout this important period in English history. It also firmly identifies Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer as the central figures, apart from Henry VIII, in the production of the English Bible.
The central figure of the illustration, located directly above the work's title, is Henry VIII. At his right hand is Thomas Cranmer, along with his fellow bishops. Cranmer is depicted as gratefully receiving the Bible from the king, thus stressing the mutual commitment of church and state to the Christian gospel, and especially to the Bible as the textual embodiment of that gospel. Immediately beneath, we see Cranmer passing the Bible on to a priest of the Church of England. Cranmer's coat of arms is placed alongside this scene, to allow easy identification of the central figure of this cameo. In the cameo immediately beneath this scene, we see the same clergyman preaching to his congregation. To emphasize the harmonious relation of church and state, the pulpit is inscribed with the words Vivat Rex! “Long live the king!”
The other side of the title page deals with the secular aspects of the matter. Henry VIII is here depicted as passing a copy of the Bible to Thomas Cromwell, the Vice-Regent, in the presence of members of the Privy Council. The cameo immediately below this depicts Cromwell distributing the Bible to members of the laity; Cromwell's coat of arms accompanies this illustration. Finally another group of laity are depicted below this, apparently milling around in a rather aimless way—in contrast to the rapt attention with which the group on the left are listening to a sermon.
The title page of the Great bible. Note how the arms of Thomas Cromwell have been erased, following his fall from royal favor.
The title page of the Great Bible is to be seen as a classic example of image-making. The image projected is that of a unified nation, united under the monarch and the Bible, in which church and state work harmoniously together. The church upholds the monarchy—recall the Vivat Rex! of the pulpit—and the monarchy defends true religion. It is an icon of a godly state and church under their supreme head, who in turn acknowledges his obligations to God, expressed in the Bible. The social ordering of England was thus affirmed every time the Great Bible was opened on a church lectern.
This was an icon that, despite its confident and harmonious portrayal of the English state and church, could not entirely mask the real, and rather more fragile, state of affairs. After Cromwell's spectacular fall from grace in 1540, one central theme of the title page was now problematic. If Cromwell was no longer persona grata, how could his image be removed from the design? The simple expedient was to remove his coat of arms, so that the third and subsequent editions displayed a blank space. This allowed the identity of the figure to whom Henry passed a copy of the Bible to remain vague—perhaps a senior government figure? The massive disruption to the English state and church caused by the radically different religious and political agendas of Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I made something of a nonsense of the idealized scheme portrayed by the Great Bible.
But there is little doubt that the scheme that it depicted corresponded well with the self-understanding of a later monarch—James I. For James, political and religious unity were to be achieved through the person of the monarch, and a single version of the Bible, issued with royal authority. With serious religious tensions growing in England at the time of his accession to the throne (1603), the image of the king giving the Bible to his people was more than a piece of religious theater; it was the essential means by which national unity might be secured at a time of potential fragmentation.
The importance of this point was brought home to James I, as it was to many others in earlier years, by a new translation of the Bible, which demonstrated the power of a printed Bible to evoke demands for religious and political change. The Geneva Bible broke new ground and set new standards in biblical translation, illustration, and layout. Its numerous features—such as the marginal comments—propelled it to the forefront of English Bible translations. By the time the King James Bible was published, the Geneva Bible was the undisputed market leader. The Great Bible and its officially inspired successors were powerless to meet the challenge posed by this new translation, which was the product of private enterprise and religious enthusiasm on the part of a small group of English Protestant exiles in the city of Geneva.
From the moment of its publication in 1611, the major challenge faced by the state-sponsored King James Bible was to displace its older and privately produced Geneva Bible.