Editing the Wycliffite Bible

CHAPTER 19 Editing the Wycliffite Bible

Anne Hudson

1 Editions Before Forshall and Madden

The first printing of any material that is traditionally regarded as being part of WB is John Gough’s The dore of holy scripture published in London in 1540 without any attribution, printing what is now known as the General Prologue in somewhat modernized language; he seems to have used a manuscript no longer extant, though his modifications make that difficult to prove.1 Ten years later Robert Crowley printed the same GP under the clearer title of The true copye of a prolog wrytten . . . by J.Wycklife; his text was not taken from Gough’s but from a manuscript now Mm.2.15.2 The fact that both these editions printed the most contentious part of what is generally thought of as WB could be regarded as significantly distorting the subsequent critical analysis of this enterprise: WB is associated with the radicalism of later Lollardy, and the overwhelming orthodoxy of the translation is forgotten—this is not to dissociate WB from Wyclif and his immediate disciples, let alone to argue with Gasquet that what we know as WB is a pre-Wyclif translation,3 but to try to see the production of WB, its versions and its accompanying apparatus without the distorting lenses of hindsight. The association of the translation with Wyclif himself began, as chapter 7 above has outlined, within a few years of its appearance. Consequently interest in the text becomes quickly tangled with enquiry into Wyclif’s life: John Bale’s Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae Catalogus published in Basel in 1557–9 ensured that the claim that Wyclif had translated

1 See Revd.STC 25587.5, and A. Hudson, Lollards and their Books (London, 1985), pp. 240–2. Since Gough stated that he modernized the text, it is difficult to identify the manuscript used (sig.A3v). He also altered a number of readings in the contentious parts of GP to remove criti- cisms of a secular ruler whilst retaining those of prelatis. 2 Revd.STC 25588. Crowley states that the text derives from ‘an olde English Bible bitwixt the olde Testament and the Newe. Whych Bible remaynith now in ye Kyng hys maiesties Chamber’ (sig.A1); this fits Mm.2.15 and the readings of the text confirm it is ‘a careful tran- scription’ of this manuscript (Dove (2010), p. xxix; Forshall and Madden (1850), 1:liv–lv). 3 For a summary of Gasquet’s case see Dove (2007), pp. 44–6, 55, 64–7 and references there given; Gasquet’s chief publications on the matter are collected in his The Old English Bible and other essays (London, 1897).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi ��.��63/9789004328921_021 Editing the Wycliffite Bible 451 the whole Bible was disseminated along with any biographical details or history of the Lollard movement.4 The account here does not attempt to deal with the attribution, and only aims to cover editions which treat the translation as a text for scholarly enquiry. In 1719 John Russell proposed an edition of WB using Linc.Col.lat.119 for OT and the copy now Harley 5017 for NT; a copy of the advertisement for this is pasted into the Lincoln manuscript. No publication followed, though Madden mentions the transcript from those manuscripts that are in London, British Library, Add. MSS 5890–5902.5 The first edition of WB proper, or rather of its NT section, that actually appeared was by John Lewis in 1731:6 he printed the gospels from a manuscript he owned himself, now Gough Eccl.Top.5, and the remainder of the NT from a copy then owned by Sir Edward Dering but more recently by the British and Foreign Bible Society as MS 155.7 Both these copies are LV. This came some years after his biography of Wyclif was published (1720); following this Lewis had worked on Bible translations more generally, and refers to a number of other manuscripts of WB.8 His notes towards the biography, history and edition surviving in what is now MS Bodl. 905 show how assiduously Lewis had worked both from numerous manuscripts and also from the listing of Bale.9 Lewis continued to collect relevant material after the publication of the edition. Lewis’s wide knowledge of copies convinced him that there were two versions of the translation; but he had been much influ- enced by Daniel Waterland’s more speculative investigations and followed him

4 See J. Bale, Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae catalogus, 2 vols (Basel, 1557–9), 1:416, though Bale’s main source, John Leland’s De uiris illustribus (ed. J. Carley (Toronto, 2010)), no. 427 does not provide the information. 5 Madden’s Journal, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Eng. hist. c.163 dated 14 Jan. 1850. 6 Ed. J. Lewis, The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Translated out of the Latin Vulgate (London: Page, 1731); see Dove (2007), pp. 75, 288, 300. 7 Currently CUL Add.10068 (listed by Dove as MS 1, 2 in London). 8 See Dove (2007), p. 75; see his biography The History of the Life and Sufferings of the Reverend and Learned John Wicliffe (London: Knaplock, 1720 and reprinted 1725), and A Complete History of the Several Translations of the Holy Bible . . . into English . . . (London, 1731), 2nd edn (London: Woodfall, 1739), 3rd edn (London: Baynes, 1818). A brief review is given in M. Peikola, Congregation of the Elect: Patterns of Self-fashioning in English Lollard Writings (Turku, 2000), pp. 43–5. 9 A more detailed study of Lewis’s work could be illuminating: his references to manuscripts are often full, but depend upon shelfmarks that in many cases are no longer those current. Dating Lewis’s notes in relation to his publications is also unclear: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawl. C. 979 (Summary Catalogue, no. 28396) presents material apparently intended for a new edition of the Life but also includes much material on biblical translation.