Middle English Bible translations
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Middle English Bible translations (1066–1500) covers the age of Middle English, beginning with the Norman Conquest and ending about 1500.
The most well-known and preserved translations are those of the Wycliffean bibles.
Between two and four Middle English translations of each book of the New Testament still exist, mainly from the late 1300s, and at least two vernacular Psalters, plus various poetic renditions of bible stories and translations of verses in published sermons and commentaries.
Sources of Scripture
[edit]| Oral | Interspersed in written works | Collated | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Words, Terminology | Dialect, custom, sermons | Interlinear, Glossed (e.g. Wycliffite Glossed Gospels) | Word-for Word translation (e.g., Wycliffite Early Version) |
| Poetic | Prayers, dramas, song, recited poems | Alliterive (e.g., Ormulum) and metrical (e.g English metrical homilies from manuscripts of the fourteenth century[1]), Book of Hours | Psalters, Metrical (e.g., Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament) |
| Prosodic | Sermons, memorized passages, sayings, stories | Scholarship, commentary, written sermons, histories,literature | Gospel Books, New Testaments (E.g. Paues' Middle English Fourteenth Century New Testament),[2] Bibles (e.g., Wycliffite Later Version), Gospel harmonies, Life of Christ paraphrases |
Times
[edit]Early Middle English biblical literature was limited because
- from 1066 to c. 1400 Anglo-Norman French was the official language of courts and government in quadilingual England, and the preferred language of the elite who could fund book production,
- synthetic Anglo-Saxon Old English had broken down[3] and was transitioning to analytic Middle English with a Frenchified vocabulary,
- a smaller, portable Bible format intended for personal use, the Paris Bible, was only developed in the 13th century by the preaching orders, and
- Latin was the preferred literary and church language throughout medieval Western Europe.
The Norman Conquest caused a suppression of Anglo-Saxon and the influenced the development of Middle English.[4] A psaltery glossed with Anglo-Norman exists from about 1160. "About the middle of the fourteenth century — before 1361 — the Anglo-Normans possessed an independent and probably complete translation of the whole of the Old Testament and the greater part of the New."[2]: xvii
However, the 1300s was the only fertile time for Middle English Bible translation, as Middle English became useable in courts, and gained vocabulary and respectability under the influence of writers such as Chaucer.[6]
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
[edit]Early
[edit]The Ormulum, produced by the Augustinian friar Orm of Lincolnshire around 1150, includes partial translations and paraphrases of parts of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles from Latin into the dialect of the East Midlands, perhaps intended as declaimed sermons. The manuscript is written in the iambic septenary meter.
Sample from the Ormulum (Luke 1:5):
An preost wass onn Herodess daȝȝ
Amang Judisskenn þeode,
& he wass, wiss to fulle soþ,
Ȝehatenn Zacariȝe,
& haffde an duhhtiȝ wif, þhat wass,
Off Aaroness dohhtress;
& ȝho wass, wiss to fulle soþ,
Elysabæþ ȝehatenn.
Paraphrases of many biblical passages are included in the Cursor Mundi, a world chronicle written about 1300.
Mid
[edit]- Richard Rolle of Hampole (or de 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 Psalms.[7][8]
- In the early years of the 14th century, a French copy of the Book of Revelation was anonymously translated into English.
Historian Mary Dove noted "Neither arguing in favour of an English Bible, nor assembling a collection of writings in favour of an English Bible, were intrinsically Wycliffite activities."[9]
- Anna Paues (1904) 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.[10]
- The Paues book also discusses other manuscripts, such as MS. Pepys 2498 (Magdalene College, Cambridge) which has a Life of Jesus (or Gospel harmony) formed from Middle English translations of the 112 readings from the church evangeliary, perhaps itself though a French translation.[2]
- Margaret Joyce Powell (1916) edited the non-Wycliffean Middle English commentary and translation of the Gospels of Mark and Luke,[11] and the Pauline epistles,[12] dating them to the late 1300s.[13]
- Another non-Wycliffean commentary and translation of Matthew's Gospel exists in two manuscripts.[14][9]
Wycliffean Bibles
[edit]In the late 14th century, the first (known, extant) complete (Middle) English language Bible was produced, with some connection to John Wycliffe as inspiration or instigator or glossator or translator — hence it often called Wycliffe's Bible. This New Testament was completed in 1380 and the Old Testament a few years later. It is thought that a large portion of the Old Testament was actually translated by Nicholas Hereford. Some 30 copies of this early version (EV) Bible survive.
Books containing Lollard material, such as the so-called General Prologue of some manuscripts, were eventually banned. From the time of King Richard II until the time of the English Reformation, Lollards who owned Wycliffe's Bible with Lollard material, or read from that material publicly, could be prosecuted.
Wycliffe's Bible was revised in the last years of the 14th century, perhaps by John Purvey. This late version (LV) was subject to the same conditions and has more manuscript copies than the earlier. Some 130 copies exist, including some now belonging to the British royal family. All dated copies are dated before the ban.
Sample of Wycliffe's translation (changed with v instead of u):
Be not youre herte affraied, ne drede it. Ye bileven in god, and bileve ye in me. In the hous of my fadir ben many dwellyngis: if ony thing lasse I hadde seid to you, for I go to make redi to you a place. And if I go and make redi to you a place, eftsone I come and I schal take you to my silf, that where I am, ye be. And whidir I go ye witen: and ye witen the wey. (John 14:1-4)
Since the Wycliffe Bible conformed to Catholic teaching, it was considered to be an unauthorized Roman Catholic version of the Vulgate text but with heretical preface and notes added. This view was held by many Catholic commentators, including Thomas More.
Later partial translations
[edit]William Caxton translated many Bible stories and passages from the French, producing the Golden Legend (1483) and The Book of the Knight in the Tower (1484). He also printed The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ by Pseudo-Bonaventure, translated by Nicholas Love, OCart.
Legacy
[edit] | This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2024) |
All translations of this time period were from Latin or French. Humanism of the Renaissance made popular again the study of the classics and the classical languages and thus allowed critical Greek scholarship to again become a possibility. Greek and Hebrew texts would become more widely available with Johannes Gutenberg's development of the movable-type printing press, with his first major work an edition of the Latin Vulgate, now called the Gutenberg Bible, in 1455. In the early 16th century, Erasmus published a single volume of the Greek texts of the New Testament books and continued publishing more precise editions of this volume until his death. The availability of these texts, along with renewed interest in the biblical languages themselves, enabled scholars to debate knowledgably about their sources.
The other great event of that same century was the development of Early Modern English, making English a literary language, leading to a great increase in the number of translations of the Bible in that era.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Small, John (1862). English metrical homilies from manuscripts of the fourteenth century. Edinburgh: W. Patterson.
- ^ a b c d Paues, Anna C. (Anna Carolina) (1902). A fourteenth century English Biblical version : consisting of a prologue and parts of the New Testament. Cambridge : University Press.
- ^ "Middle English – an overview". OED.
- ^ "The eleventh century, with its political convulsions resulting in the establishment of an alien rule and the partial suppression of the language of the conquered race, was hostile to literary efforts of any kind in the vernacular."[2]: xvi
- ^ Marsden, Richard (1 January 2016). "(Review) Approaching the Bible in medieval England". Reviews in History.
- ^ Historian Richard Marsden notes a mediated bible: "Although it is true that there was almost no direct translation of the Bible into the vernacular before the Wycliffites, we simply cannot ignore the astonishingly large and varied corpus of Bible-based vernacular works which had begun to appear from the very early years of the 13th century onwards, under ecclesiastical influence (largely in response to the demands of the Lateran Council of 1215 for a more proactive approach to educating the laity in spiritual discipline). They included universal Bible histories (Poleg mentions one of these, the Cursor mundi), metrical paraphrases of Old Testament biblical books, devotional texts, versions of the Psalms, Gospel narratives (canonical and apochryphal), and so on."[5]
- ^ Psalms Through the Centuries, Volume One, Susan Gillingham, John Wiley & Sons, Mar 28, 2012
- ^ Midland Prose Psalter, Middle English Compendium, University of Michigan
- ^ a b Kraebel, Andrew (2014). "Middle English Gospel glosses and the translation of exegetical authority". Traditio. 69.
- ^ Selwyn Coll. Cambridge 108 L.1, Parker 434, CUL Dd.12.39, Bodleian Douce 250, Holkham Hall 672
- ^ ms. Parker 32, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge folios 1r–56v and 57r–154v
- ^ ms. Parker 32, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge folios 155r–208v
- ^ Powell, Margaret Joyce (9 May 2016). The Pauline Epistles Contained in ms. Parker 32, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Palala Press. ISBN 978-1-356-13429-8.
- ^ mss. London, British Library Egerton 842, folios 1r–244v, and Cambridge, University Library Ii.2.12, folios 1r–167v