The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions (review)

Extant in more than 250 manuscripts, the Wycliffite Bible was the most widely circulated vernacular book in late-medieval England. Despite its evident popularity—or perhaps because of the complex textual problems created by its popularity—there have been no sustained studies of the English translation since Margaret Deanesly’s influential The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Versions, first published in 1920. Mary Dove’s impressive reassessment of the versions of the Wycliffite Bible goes a long way toward remedying this scholarly neglect. As its title suggests, Dove’s study is alive to both the textual and contextual problems surrounding the two Wycliffite versions of the English Bible.

To this end, the book begins with a brief survey of the scholarly debates on translation of the scriptures into the vernacular in the late-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries that ultimately resulted in the prohibition of Wycliffite translations of the Bible in the episcopal legislation of 1407–09. The second chapter addresses the effects of this legislation on the subsequent production and circulation of the Wycliffite versions of the Bible. Although possession of the Bible cast suspicion on one’s orthodoxy, Dove demonstrates that the Wycliffite versions maintained a largely orthodox readership throughout the fifteenth century and that possessing one was “suspicious only if there [were] grounds for suspecting the owner of heresy” (p. 41). Moreover, Dove shows that many Wycliffite Bibles include markers suggesting both liturgical use and public reading. In elucidating such uses, Dove offers an important revision of prevalent histories of vernacular Bible use and reading.

In the third chapter, Dove turns from the larger contexts and uses of the Wycliffite Bible to its translators. Dove first argues that Wyclif initiated the translation project and supervised the group of translators working on it. The next three chapters take up the text of the Wycliffite versions, focusing on the translators’ concern with an accurate translation of the source text (the Latin Bible), the composition and role of the English prologues, and the glosses and interpolated materials. Dove concludes by briefly examining the effects and legacy of the translation, reconsidering in particular the role of the Wycliffite Bible in laying the groundwork for the English Reformation and serving as the textual basis for later English translations of the Bible.

Dove admits throughout that she is working with limited evidence and that many aspects of any study of the Wycliffite Scriptures remain largely within the realm of speculation: Who were the translators? What is the relationship between the two versions of the English Bible? Dove sets forth cautious but convincing answers for such questions. However, in her care and caution, Dove sometimes understates the larger significance and novelty of her findings. For example, the book demonstrates (but does not state the case as strongly as one might hope) that the influence of Arundel’s 1407–09 legislation censuring vernacular Scriptures, religious writings, and theologizing has been greatly overstated by much recent scholarship. However, as a whole, the book is an extraordinarily useful one. Especially helpful are the book’s four appendices and indices, which provide detailed surveys of the contents of the versions of the Wycliffite Bible, additions and emendations to Forshall and Madden’s 1850 edition of the Wycliffite Bible, codicological descriptions of manuscripts containing Wycliffite Scriptures, and a full list of manuscripts containing the Bible or excerpts from it. One can only hope that other scholars will make use of the careful work that Dove has done in the archives. This is a book that will certainly be a valuable resource for students of Lollardy, fifteenth-century religious reading and practice, and the history of the transmission and translation of Scripture.