Of a somewhat later date is the celebrated Rushworth Version of the Gospels (MS. Bodl. Auct. D. ii. 9), which contains an independent translation of the Gospel of St Matthew, and a gloss on those of St Mark, St Luke and St John, founded upon the Lindisfarne glosses. From a note Rushworth Version.in the manuscript we learn that two men, Færman and Owun, made the version. Færman was a priest at Harewood, or Harwood, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and to him the best part of the work is due. He translated the whole of St Matthew, and wrote the gloss of St Mark i.–ii. 15, and St John xviii. 1-3. The remaining part, a mere transcript, is Owun’s work. The dialect of the translation of St Matthew is Mercian.[1]
A further testimony to the activity which prevailed in the field of Biblical lore is the fact that at the close of the century—probably about the year 1000—the Gospels were rendered anew for the first time in the south of England. Of this version—the so-called West-Saxon GospelsWest-Saxon Gospels.—not less than seven manuscripts have come down to us. A note in one of these, MS. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 140, states, ego Ælfricus scripsi hunc librum in Monasterio Baðþonio et dedi Brihtwoldo preposito, but of this Ælfric and his superior nothing further is known.[2]
The Lord’s Prayer is rendered in the following way in these gospels:—
West-Saxon Gospels.—MS Corpus 140.
Matthew vi. 9. Eornustlice gebiddað eow ðus; Fæder úre þu þe. eart on heofonum; si þin nama gehalgod (10) to-becume þin ríce; gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. (11) úrne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg, (12) ⁊ forgyf us úre gyltas swa swa wé forgyfað úrum gyltendum. (13) ⁊ ne gelaéd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soþlice.
Towards the close of the century the Old Testament found a translator in Ælfric (q.v.), the most eminent scholar in the close of the 10th and the opening decades of the 11th century. According to his own statement in De vetere testamento, written about 1010, he had at that period translated the Pentateuch,Ælfric. Joshua, Judges, Kings, Job, Esther, Judith and the Maccabees.[3] His rendering is clear and idiomatic, and though he frequently abridges, the omissions never obscure the meaning or hinder the easy flow of the narrative.
Dietrich, Ælfric’s most competent biographer (Niedner’s, Zeitschrift für historische Theologie, 1855–1856), looks upon the Pentateuch, Joshua and Judges as a continuation of his Lives of Saints, including as they do in a series of narratives the Old Testament saints. Genesis is but slightly abridged, but Job, Kings, Judges, Esther and Judith as well as the Maccabees are mere homilies epitomized from the corresponding Old Testament books. Judith is metrical in form.
The 11th 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 unfavourable to literary efforts of any kind in the vernacular. With the exception of Ælfric’s late works at the very dawn of the century, we can only record two transcripts of the West-Saxon Gospels as coming at all within the scope of our inquiry.
In the 12th century the same gospels were again copied by pious hands into the Kentish dialect of the period.
The 13th century, from the point of view of Biblical renderings into the vernacular, is an absolute blank. French—or rather the Anglo-Norman dialect of the period—reigned supreme amongst the upper classes, in schools, in parliament, in the courts of law and in the palace ofAnglo-Norman Period. the king. English lurked in farms and hovels, amongst villeins and serfs, in the outlying country-districts, in the distant monasteries, amongst the lower clergy, amongst the humble and lowly and ignorant. There were certainly renderings of the Bible during the 12th, 13th and early 14th centuries, but they were all in French. Some of these translations were made in England, some were brought over to England and copied and recopied. Amongst the latter was the magnificently illuminated Norman Commentary on the Apocalypse, some of the earliest copies of which were written in an English hand. In fact before the middle of the 14th century the entire Old Testament and the greater part of the New Testament had been translated into the Anglo-Norman dialect of the period. (MSS. Bibl. Nat. fr. 1, 9562, Brit. Mus. Reg. I.C. iii. Cf. S. Berger, La Bible française au moyen âge, Paris, 1884, pp. 78 ff.)
When English finally emerged victorious, towards the middle and latter half of the 14th century, it was for all practical purposes a new language, largely intermixed with French, differing from the language of the older period in sound, flexion and structure. It is evident that any Old English versions which might have survived the ravages of time would now be unintelligible, it was equally natural that as soon as French came to be looked upon as an alien tongue, the French versions hitherto in use would fail to fulfil their purpose, and that attempts should again be made to render the Bible into the only language 14th-century renderings. intelligible to the greater part of the nation—into English. It was also natural that these attempts should be made where the need was most pressing, where French had gained least footing, where parliament and court were remote, where intercourse with France was difficult. In fact in the Northern Midlands, and in the North even before the middle of the 14th century, the book of Psalms had been twice rendered into English, and before the end of the same century, probably before the great Wycliffite versions had spread over the country, the whole of the New Testament had been translated by different hands into one or other of the dialects of this part of the country.
At the same time we can record only a single rendering during the whole century which originated in the south of England, namely the text of James, Peter, 1 John and the Pauline Epistles (edited by A. C. Paues, Cambridge, 1904).
Of these pre-Wycliffite versions possibly the earliest is the West Midland Psalter, once erroneously ascribed to William of Shoreham.[4] It occurs in three MSS., the earliest of which, Brit. Mus. Add. 17376, was probably written between 1340 and 1350. It contains a complete version of the book of Psalms, followed by the usual eleven canticles and the Athanasian Creed. The Latin original is a glossed version of the Vulgate, and in the English translation the words of the gloss are often substituted for the strong and picturesque expressions of the Biblical text; in other respects the rendering is faithful and idiomatic. The following two verses of the first psalm may exemplify this:—
MS. British Mus. Add. 17376.
(i. 1.) Beatus uir, qui non abijt in consilio impiorum, & in uia peccatorum non stetit, et in cathedra ·i· iudicio pestilencie ·i· falsitatis non sedit. Blesced be þe man þat ȝede nouȝt in þe counseil of wicked, ne stode nouȝt in þe waie of sinyeres, ne sat nouyt in fals iugement. (2) Set in lege domini uoluntas eius, & in lege eius meditabitur die ac nocte. Ac hijs wylle was in þe wylle of oure Lord, and he schal þenche in hijs lawe boþe daye and nyȝt.
Before the middle of the century Richard Rolle (q.v.), the hermit of Hampole († 1349), turned into English, with certain additions and omissions, the famous Commentary on the Psalms by Peter Lombard. The work was undertaken, as the metrical prologue of one of the copies tells Richard Rolle.us (MS. Laud. misc. 286), “At a worthy recluse prayer, cald dame Merget Kyrkby.” The Commentary gained immediate and lasting popularity, and spread in numerous copies throughout the country, the peculiarities of the hermit’s vigorous northern dialect being either modified or wholly removed in the more
- ↑ See Stevenson, Waring and Skeat, op. cit.
- ↑ W. W. Skeat, The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, &c. (Cambridge, 1871–1887); J. W. Bright, The Gospel of Saint Luke in Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1893); for earlier editions see Cook, op. cit, p. lx.
- ↑ C. W. M. Grein, Ælfrik de vetero et novo Testamento, &c.—Bibl. d. Angels. Prosa (Cassel and Göttingen, 1872), p. 6; E. Thwaites, Heptateuchus, Liber Job, et Evangelium Nicodemi; Anglo-Saxonice (Oxon., 1698).
- ↑ K. D. Bülbring, The Earliest Complete English Prose Psalter (E.E.T.S., No. 97), part i. (London, 1891); cf. A. C. Paues, A Fourteenth-Century Engl. Bibl. Version (Upsala Diss.) (Cambridge, 1902), p. lvi.
