The "Wycliffite" Bible

Title: The Wycliffite Bible (Middle English)

(c. 1380s-1390s)

Author: John Wycliffe (attributed), Nicholas Hereford (attributed), John Purvey (attributed), Wycliffite circle at Oxford University

Sources: St. Jerome’s “Vulgate” Latin Bible

The Wycliffite Bible is a perfect example of the kinds of literary and political change that can occur through the act of translating a text into another language. People died for owning and using this Middle English translation of Jerome’s “Vulgate” Latin Bible. What we and medieval writers have called the “Wycliffite” or “Wycliffe” Bible is a group of translations of the Latin “Vulgate” Bible into Middle English. The “Wycliffite” of the title comes from John Wycliffe, an Oxfordian scholar working around the mid-to-late fourteenth century. The group of translations was attributed to him in the later English Middle Ages and Early Modern period, but it is now generally thought to have been a group effort among Wycliffe’s colleagues at Oxford who supported his radical theological and political ideologies. The translation is also at times referred to as the “Lollard Bible,” after the group of religious dissenters (“Lollards”) who were influenced a number of Wycliffe’s teachings and beliefs.

John Wycliff argued against the privileged status awarded to members of the clergy and thought that Scripture was a Christian’s most direct access to religious doctrine and spiritual truths. Arguing that Christ himself taught in a language understood by his followers, Wycliffe advocated for the translation of the Latin Bible into a language his fellow English men and women could read and meditate upon without the need of clerical intermediaries. Along with the Peasants Revolt of 1381, the popularity of and controversy surrounding the Wycliffite Bible was a symptom of larger national uneasiness about class inequalities. Wycliffe’s teachings were accused as heresy in 1382, and he withdrew from his position as rector at Oxford and died just two years later.

The translations that became the Wycliffe Bible were emerging during these same years. This was a very literal translation of the Bible’s source text, providing word-for-word translations of the Latin in the exact same word order. English and Latin have different sentence word orders: Latin is a subject-object-verb language while English’s sentences are structured subject-verb-object. Thus, a word-for-word literal translation necessarily resulted in sentences that are awkward, confusing, or even simply incorrect. This is surely not the most comprehensive way to create an English translation; however, it may reflect an attempt by the translators to present the text exactly as it appeared in the Latin Vulgate so as to not appear to be changing or interpreting the meaning of the source. Additionally, it seems clear that many readers and users of the Wycliffite Bibles were using the text alongside the Latin Vulgate; each might help lead insight into the other. The problem, it seems, arose from the fact that many people treated the Middle English translation as a proper stand-in for the Latin Bible, not simply as an aide to help understand the Latin.

In the last years of the fourteenth century, the texts were revised, possibly by John Purvey, an assistant to Wycliffe. Ths later revised translation focused on creating a more idiomatic rendering of the Latin Vulgate’s meaning into Middle English, recognizing that the literal, word-for-word translation could not possibly sustain itself as a useful spiritual guide. The prologue that was attached to these later versions reveals the translator’s thoughts and strategies in approaching the act of translation. The translator divides the project of translating a text, or the steps one must go through, into four steps. First, the translator must identify and collect all the Latin manuscripts containing the texts he wanted to consult. The second step was to judge the validity of the texts that he had collected, choosing which versions were to be ultimately consulted and which were to be treated as spurious. The third important step was to consult any dictionaries in order to learn or clarify any words that the translator did not know in the source language and to clarify any opaque or difficult passages. Fourth and finally, the translator was to produce the translation, not word for word, but sense for sense, remaining aware of the meaning of the source text as a whole.

By the late 1400s, the Wycliffite Bible was circulating widely, and suspicions about the text and its resulting lack of trust in the clergy continued to grow, and by 1409 all Wycliffite translations of the Latin Bible were completely outlawed in England (without prior permission). The punishment for making or owning such a translation could result in the accusation of heresy and even execution. Due to the controversy surrounding the illegal text, and the political power wielded to stifle its increasing popularity, the book became a symbol of the rights of common men and women to read the Bible in their own language.

Academic Sources and Further Reading:

de Hamel, Christopher. The Book: A History of the Bible (London: Phaidon Press, 2001), 166-189.