to forsooths (to mention a couple of features that we have noticed above). The other master gathered a group to handle the New Testament. They doubtless took to themselves whatever copies of EV happened to be at hand, doubtless in various states of correction or revision—whether or not acting in consultation with EV’s original translators. Once again, the whole enterprise need not have taken a great deal of time.
The terminus ante quem for EV is 1397, because of the Egerton Bible found to have been in the possession of Thomas of Gloucester at his death.105 What is the terminus a quo? Most of those who believe it to be “the Wycliffite Bible” date its beginnings to around 1380; but Conrad Lindberg, taking Simple Creature’s schedule as authentic, traces its beginnings, as we have seen, to Wyclif ’s first arrival at Oxford in 1354, when he would have begun to prepare the Latin edition, with glossing beginning around 1360, with EV produced around 1370–80 and LV finishing around 1390.106 If, on the other hand, we take EV to be a simple and quick translation, with no necessary involvement by Wyclif, our speculations can be wide-ranging, even ante tempus dicti Johannis Wyclif. As we will see below, “the time of John Wyclif” was defined as dating from when he began to disseminate his heresies.107
CHAPTER 4
Oxford Doctors, Archbishop Arundel, and Dives and Pauper on the Advisability of Scripture in English
Let us turn our attention now to various positions on the allowability or advisability of translating the Bible into the vernacular, specifically English. We will begin with works by three Oxford doctors of theology, namely, Thomas Palmer, a Dominican friar, William Butler, a Franciscan friar, and Richard Ullerston, a secular priest (like Wyclif and Hereford).
Thomas Palmer, OP: Partially for, Partially Against Translation
The prominent Dominican friar Thomas Palmer produced a treatise called De translacione Sacre Scripture in linguam barbaricam, which has usually been considered to be later than the others that we are considering here, but the recent researches of Cornelia Linde have called that judgment into question.1 The work was edited by Margaret Deanesly in her Lollard Bible with some mistakes and with a misleading title, putting Anglicanam rather than barbaricam.2 Linde establishes the correct title and finds no reason to doubt Palmer’s authorship (which has been considered questionable in the past). Palmer mentions the Lollards adversely twice, but because of his mild treatment of them, Linde suggests that the exchange it details may have taken place comparatively early, perhaps in the 1380s.3 The academic structure of the treatise might suggest that it was completed while he was still at Oxford, where he achieved his doctorate in theology by 1393, the year that he was appointed provincial of his order in England.4 It was also in 1393 that he allegedly defended the recently reconciled Nicholas Hereford from a Lollard critic, but I judge that this response was written by Hereford himself.5 However, when Palmer wrote in defense of images in 1398, he still cast his treatise in academic form, specifying that it was a determination made “in the schools of St. Paul, London.”6
The treatise on translation begins, like most scholastic exercises, with a question favoring the “wrong side”: “Utrum Sacra Scriptura in linguam anglicanam vel in aliam barbaricam sit transferenda,” that is, “Whether Sacred Scripture should be translated into the English or any other barbarous tongue,” and it opens with eighteen arguments for the affirmative, Quod sic videtur (we can call this part 1),7 followed by another eighteen Ad oppositum (part 2),8 corresponding to the Sed contra arguments that one finds in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. But then Palmer complicates the form by positing thirteen “other truths” (aliae veritates), of which the first is in favor of translation and the others against, or at least against translating all of Scripture (part 3).9 Next comes a brief reply to some of the veritates (part 4),10 followed by a Responsio on “not giving what is holy to dogs” (part 5).11 Finally, there are answers to the original eighteen arguments in favor of translation (part 6).12 Some parts are in rougher shape than others, and Linde suggests that it is to some extent a reportatio of an actual debate, which was not put into final form.
The bald distinctions “for” and “against” in this summary obscure Palmer’s own point of view, which emerges throughout the treatise: he agrees that essential portions of the Bible should be translated, but believes that other portions should not be translated, and, in fact, he holds that some portions cannot be translated adequately into a barbaric vernacular like English, which lacks the necessary sophisticated elements of style and structure to accommodate the scriptural meaning. His position is summed up in the final argument of the treatise, where the expectation is that he will refute the eighteenth argument in favor of translation, which is this: “According to the rule of reason, we understand that all things are conceded that are not prohibited; but there is not found anywhere in Scripture that it is forbidden to be translated into a barbaric idiom.”13 But the response to argument 18, which constitutes the end of the treatise, addresses an argument against translating any part of Scripture, and refutes this argument:
To the 18th, where it was argued thus: “The main reason why Scripture cannot be translated into a barbarous tongue seems to be that it is not ruled by grammatical rules and figures, with[out] which Sacred Scripture cannot be preserved from falsity and incongruity. But for this reason, no part of it should be translated, whether concerning things necessary for salvation or otherwise, because these rules, tropes, and figures are equally common in all parts of Sacred Scripture.” To this the opposite should be said.14
His refutation is as follows:
To this I respond by denying that these rules, tropes, and figures are equally common to all parts of Scripture, for some parts are seen to be true without them, and some are not. But the precepts of the law and those things that are necessary to salvation are open and plain. “For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.” And points of morality are, as it were, from natural law and are easy of belief, as the Psalmist says: “Your testimonies have become exceedingly believable.” And therefore there is no need for them to be preserved from falsity and incongruity by means of figures and tropes or other means, as there is for other difficult things contained therein.15
Let us look at his references to the Lollards. The first of the eighteen arguments against translation is that many things in Scripture are inutilia, “because they would harm rather than profit” (“quia nocerent plusquam prodessent”).16 The second is that not every truth should be written in English, because many truths are not useful; but, according to the Lollards, “Every truth is contained in Sacred Scripture, because it contains the First Truth, which contains all other truths.”17 It has been suggested that he is hereby attributing to the Lollards a sola Scriptura doctrine, namely, that all necessary truths are in Scripture and none in tradition.18 This, however, was not a usual Wycliffite view.19 Rather, he must mean that, because the Lollards believe that all truths are somehow contained in Scripture,20 they should all be made available to the general public.
The eighteenth argument against translation is that the Jews killed Jesus because they did not understand the spiritual meaning of his sayings. “How then,” Palmer asks, “would simple uneducated persons not err, if they had it in the vernacular alone? Nowadays do not those who know only grammar, because of the bad understanding of Lollards and simple folk, persecute the disciples of Christ for expounding it spiritually? The answer is clearly yes.”21 We see that Palmer is accusing the Lollards, not of mistranslating Scripture, but of missing its true meaning in being overly literal.
William Butler,
