medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Just to add a bit more nuance: I've been working on this precise issue in
England in the early decades of the sixteenth century, and it's complicated. On
the one hand (regardless of 13th-century church councils cited by Richard
Landes), many unimpeachably orthodox laypeople of late medieval England had and
read copies of the English scripture, almost certainly in the Wycliffite
version, although they were equally almost certainly unaware of the "heretical"
origins of the translation (which itself was a quite literal rendition of the
Vulgate). Thomas More, for instance, was convinced there were two translations
in circulation, one a "good" translation and the other Wycliffite in origin. On
the other hand, unlike Germany, France, and other parts of Europe, there were
no printed vernacular scriptures in the early printing period, as the
association of vernacular scripture with Lollardy made such a venture a
problematic one that the early printers apparently didn't want to risk. And
even though some could openly hold vernacular bibles, other laypeople were
forced to abjure the possession of books of scripture, or indeed any English
religious book, as a heresy. Some scholars (such as Henry Hargreaves cited by
Steven Fanning) have leaned more on the former example, and suggested that the
possession of English scriptures in the early decades of the sixteenth century
was prima facie evidence for heresy, regardless of who was the possessor.
Others have leaned the opposite direction, suggesting that it was always
possible for laypeople to have access to vernacular scriptures. But neither
position explains the apparent contradictions: for some, bible possession was a
laudatory aspect of lay devotion, for others a heresy. My own suggestion is
that ecclesiastical authorities viewed the question of vernacular scripture
contextually, through a lens in which the "respectable" laity (i.e. those of
higher social station, gentry, urban elite) could hold such books without
suspicion, while those further down the social ladder were likely to do
heretical things with them. More importantly, charges of heresy for possessing
English scriptures and other books (e.g. Legenda aurea, Shepherd's Kalendar,
other perfectly orthodox devotional works) were always in the context of a
range of other "heretical" activities. And the ecclesiastical authorities were
right that the laity would do "heretical" things with them: they explicitly
used the books as a means of bypassing clerical authority ("this book speaks
better than any priest speaks in the pulpit"), and used particular bible verses
as a launch-pad for discussions refuting the real presence in the eucharist.
They even read the Legenda aurea as being a treatise against the worship of
images. In the 1520s and 1530s and well beyond (into the early 17th century)
the issue became even more complicated (there's a good article by Alexandra
Walsham in Past and Present, fairly recently) and obviously politicized. It was
in the interests of the Protestants to create the impression that the medieval
church, and their own contemporary Catholic opponents, opposed scriptural
translation, and this was indeed partly true: but not the whole story. Modern
discussions of translation in the Reformation period sometimes tend to fall
back on the easy black-and-white picture drawn by polemicists of the period
like Tyndale himself or John Foxe.
Shannon McSheffrey
Associate Professor of History
Department of History, LB-601
Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal, QC H3G 1M8
[log in to unmask]
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~shannon
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