The Triumph Of The Geneva Bible
THE TRIUMPH OF THE GENEVA BIBLE
But official opposition to the Geneva Bible could not prevent it from becoming the most widely read Bible of the Elizabethan, and subsequently the Jacobean, era. It may never have secured official sanction, yet it needed no such endorsement by the political or religious establishment to gain enthusiastic and widespread acceptance. Even though the book initially had to be imported from Geneva—English printings of the work having been prohibited by nervous archbishops—it still outsold its rivals. Throughout his long period as archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker (1559–75) was able to block any efforts by the Stationers' Company (The Worshipful Company of Stationers was a professional guild that controlled the publishing of manuscripts, and later printed books, in England) to print the Geneva Bible, and ensured that the monopoly for printing an officially approved translation (the Bishops' Bible of 1568) remained with Richard Jugge.
Parker was succeeded as archbishop by Edmund Grindal, with important consequences for the monopoly on Bible productions. Up to this point, Jugge, who held the office of “Queen's Printer,” had been able to rely on the support of the ecclesiastical establishment for his monopoly on the printing of English Bibles. With Parker's death, power shifted within the court. Sir Francis Walsingham—Elizabeth's secretary of state—and Grindal conspired to undermine Jugge's stranglehold on the market for Bibles. While allowing Jugge to retain his monopoly on large (e.g., folio) Bibles, Grindal allowed others to produce smaller (e.g., quarto) Bibles. Christopher Barker had produced a version of the Geneva Bible in duodecimo in 1575; he now published editions in quarto and folio, ensuring that the Geneva version was available in formats suitable for both private devotion and public worship in churches. The basic format of the original Geneva edition was generally followed, although later English and Scottish printings occasionally used “black letter” rather than roman type, perhaps reflecting the more conservative taste of a British readership. On Jugge's death in 1577, his monopoly passed to Barker. There was now no possibility that the Geneva Bible could be toppled from its position.
One of Barker's more significant innovations was the production of a composite version of the Geneva Bible, which included modifications to the translation of the New Testament, based on the work of Laurence Tomson, a member of the English community of Marian exiles, and his notes to the New Testament, which were in turn based on commentaries by the Genevan theologian Theodore Beza. The first such composite Bible appeared in 1578, and was followed by many editions over the period 1587–1616. Tomson produced few annotations and marginal notes to the Book of Revelation, and remedied this deficiency in 1594 with a set of notes to this book based on the writings of the Huguenot writer Franciscus Junius. By the turn of the century, there were, therefore, a number of variants of the text, all entitled to style themselves “the Geneva Bible.”
Barker's publishing extravaganza came to an end with the death of Grindal (1583). Anxious because of the growing influence of the Geneva Bible, which was now readily available in several formats, Grindal's successor John Whitgift ordered Barker to begin publishing more compact editions of the Bishops' Bible. Whitgift further commanded that only the Bishops' Bible was permitted to be used in the public services of the churches. Yet Whitgift's decrees had limited impact. Between 1583 and 1603, fifty-eight editions of the Bible were published in England—seven of the Bishops' Bible and fifty-one of the Geneva edition. There was no doubt about which version had secured the loyalty of English Protestants, whatever senior church figures had to say about it. Paradoxically the translation was so good that even establishment figures found themselves drawn to it. Having done all he could to limit the influence of the Geneva Bible, Archbishop Whitgift found himself using the Geneva Bible in his heated controversy with the Puritan writer Thomas Cartwright. The irony of this was lost on neither writer.
By 1600, the Geneva Bible had become the Bible of choice of English-speaking Protestants. It was entirely natural that John Knox, the moving light of the Scottish Reformation, should have pressed for the introduction of the Geneva Bible as the authorized version of the reformed Church of Scotland. Had not this Bible been translated in Geneva, by people he knew and trusted? And did not its marginal notes offer a theology of which he thoroughly approved?
As England's reputation as a Protestant nation became a matter of national pride, especially following the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the views of the Geneva Bible came to resonate ever more closely with the consciously Protestant national identity. England was a Protestant nation, and the Geneva Bible was its sacred book. It was natural that England's greatest living playwright, William Shakespeare, in penning his dramas, should make use of the Geneva Bible, rather than the official translations urged on the English people by the church authorities.
When James I came to the throne of England in 1603, having previously ruled a fiercely Protestant Scotland, many believed that the sales and influence of the Geneva Bible could only increase, eventually leading to radical changes in the English church and state. Perhaps the new king of England might even authorize the Geneva Bible, giving it the royal seal of approval? Might not the Geneva Bible become the King James Bible?
In fact, the new king of England had no interest in promoting the Geneva Bible. His secret agenda was to destroy, discredit, or displace it—whichever could be achieved most rapidly.