Middle English Bible translations

Times

Linguistic diversity and flux

Factors against vernacular translation into Early Middle English

• the synthetic Anglo-Saxon Old English dialect continuum had broken down and was transitioning inconsistently to the analytic Middle English dialect continuum, in part with simplifications from Anglo-Norse in the Danelaw, with a duplicate Frenchified vocabulary,
• from 1066 to c. 1400 Anglo-Norman French was the official language of courts and government in quadrilingual England, and the preferred language of the elite who could fund vernacular book production,
• Latin was the preferred classical, academic and church language throughout medieval Western Europe,
• poetic forms suited for oral transmission were more relevant to the partly-literate general population than prose,
• even by the late 1300s, writers doubted the expressiveness of Middle English: the writer of Chastisyng of Goddis Children preferred but did not insist on the view that biblical passages may not be translated into any vulgar word as the word stands without great circumlocution after the feeling of the first writers, which translated into Latin by the teaching of the Holy Ghost; and
• Cost. Even in the new, small Paris Bible format, over 50 animal skins were needed for the New Testament alone. Some historians see a rise of a literate middle class following the Black Death: this increased wealth and independence may have promoted demand for personal Bibles after the 1350s.

Format

• In and before the 1000s, most Bible codexes were the enormous corporate Great Bibles in Latin suited for display and public reading even at night.
• The 1100s saw the development of personal breviaries in Latin containing only readings in the liturgy.
• The 1200s saw an explosion of Bible production, in the Latin, in Europe as copying moved from being a monastic enterprise to also a commercial one. A pandect Bible format intended for personal use, the Paris Bible, was developed by the relatively new preaching orders and frequently copied as small, portable "pocket Bibles."
• However, the 1300s was the only fertile time for Middle English Bible translation, as now-stable Middle English became usable in court pleadings, and gained vocabulary and respectability under the influence of writers such as Chaucer.
• In the 1400s in England, publication of new unauthorized translations were banned, following the Lollard violence, and Middle English then transitioned to Early Modern English.

Partial translations

Early

Mid

• Richard Rolle of Hampole was an Oxford-educated hermit and writer of religious texts. In the early 14th century, he produced English glosses of Latin Bible text, including the Psalms. Rolle translated the Psalms into a Northern English dialect, but later copies were written in Southern English dialects.
• Around the same time, an anonymous author in the West Midlands region produced another gloss of the complete Psalms: the West Midland Prose Psalter.
• In the early years of the 14th century, a French copy of the Book of Revelation was anonymously translated into English.
• Prose works such as the Book to a Mother exist which are largely composed of biblical material.

Late

• Anna Paues edited a 14th century translation of most of the New Testament: the Epistles, Acts and part of the Gospel of Matthew which does not seem to be derived from the Wycliffite versions. She subsequently published yet another translation of the Catholic epistles. Historian Andrew Kraebel has suggested that the material was in part collated from various prior translations of individual books, as the main translator found works that would relieve his effort.
• The Paues book also discusses other manuscripts, such as MS. Pepys 2498 which has a Life of Jesus formed from Middle English translations of the 112 readings from the church evangeliary, perhaps itself though a French translation.
• Margaret Joyce Powell edited the non-Wycliffean Middle English commentary and translation of the Gospels of Mark and Luke, and the Pauline epistles, dating them to the late 1300s.
• Another non-Wycliffean commentary and translation of Matthew's Gospel exists in two manuscripts.

Psalms

Primer Psalms

Complete translations

• The New Testament was initially completed by around 1380 and the Old Testament a few years later. It was a word-for-word translation of the Vulgate suited for scholarly reference. Some 30 copies of this Early Version Bible survive, with some variation.
• * The authorship is controversial among scholars. Traditionally, there was held to be some connection to John Wycliffe as inspiration or instigator or glossator or translator — hence it often called Wycliffe's Bible or Wycliffite Bibles. It is thought that a large portion of the Old Testament was translated by Nicholas Hereford.
• The EV was revised into more idiomatic Middle English suited for devotional use in the last years of the 14th century, perhaps by John Purvey. This Later Version has more manuscript copies than the earlier: some 130 copies exist, including some now belonging to the British royal family.
• *In the 1500s, the Wycliffean LV text was transcribed into Scots but the version was lost until recently.
• Modern scholars such as Henry Ansgar Kelly and Anne Hudson —following a view held by several earlier Catholic commentators including Thomas More and Francis Aidan Gasquet— argue that there is no evidence that these Middle English Bibles were heterodox products of Wycliffe and followers of his theology.
• * Proponents of this view suggest that they were orthodox Catholic translations that were "Wycliffied" over the years by partisan academics who uncritically accepted as legitimate and definitive the problematic so-called "General Prologue" that is found in only 8% of extant manuscripts.

Example

1400s requirement for authorization

Legacy