Book Description:
The Wycliffite Manuscript is a fifteenth century Middle English translation from the Latin of the New Testament made by Lollard disciples of John Wyclif (ca. 1330 1384). A distinguished teacher and scholar at the University of Oxford, Wyclif, through his theological studies and through his contacts with papal authorities, came to doubt the validity of Vatican authority and to urge that all Christians should instead follow the authority of 'God s law' itself, and to that end he called for vernacular translations of the Bible. Traditionally, the laiety received biblical information through the clergy, who, with the aid of Mother Church, decided what was appropriate for the laiety to know as well as providing the official explication of that knowledge. Ecclesiastical anxiety over laymen gaining direct access to the Bible in the vernacular was not acute through most of medieval times since books were too rare and expensive for many people to acquire, and literacy was limited to the clergy and a few in the highest ranks of society. But John Wyclif changed all that. There is no evidence that Wyclif himself translated the Bible (as was earlier thought to be the case); yet, this Bible no doubt owes its existence to the impetus of Wyclif s writings. The effect of the Bible may be measured by the Church s alarmed reaction in 1409, when Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, issued his Constitutions condemning Wyclif s teachings, concluding with the climactic charge that 'to fill up the measure of his malice, he devised the expedient of a new translation of the Scriptures into the mother tongue.' The Constitutions go on to forbid the translation of the Bible or the reading of such translations. Commentary by Fred C. Robinson, essay on handwriting in the Wycliffite Manuscript, searchable live text and original translation of the Middle English.
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