Middle English Bible translations

Middle English Bible translations (1066-1500) covers the age of Middle English, beginning with the Norman conquest and ending about 1500.

The most well-known and preserved translations are those of the Wycliffean bibles.

Between two and four Middle English translations of each book of the New Testament still exist, mainly from the late 1300s, and at least two vernacular Psalters, plus various poetic renditions of bible stories and translations of verses in published sermons and commentaries.

Times
Aside from the decades of the late 1300s this was not a fertile time for Bible translation, especially the Old Testament.

English literature was limited because from 1066 to c. 1400 Anglo-Norman French was the preferred language of the elite who could fund book production, synthetic Anglo-Saxon Old English had broken down and was transitioning to analytic Middle English with a Frenchified vocabulary, and Latin was the preferred literary and church language throughout Medieval Western Europe.

In the 1400s in England, new unauthorized translations were banned, following the Lollard violence, but Middle English then transitioned to Early Modern English.

Early partial translations
The Ormulum, produced by the Augustinian friar Orm of Lincolnshire around 1150, includes partial translations and paraphrases of parts of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles from Latin into the dialect of the East Midlands. The manuscript is written in the poetic meter iambic septenarius.

Sample from the Ormulum (Luke 1:5):


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Amang Judisskenn þeode, & he wass, wiss to fulle soþ, Ȝehatenn Zacariȝe, & haffde an duhhtiȝ wif, þhat wass, Off Aaroness dohhtress; & ȝho wass, wiss to fulle soþ, Elysabæþ ȝehatenn.
 * An preost wass onn Herodess daȝȝ
 * }

Paraphrases of many biblical passages are included in the Cursor Mundi, a world chronicle written about 1300.

Richard Rolle of Hampole (or de Hampole) was an Oxford-educated hermit and writer of religious texts. In the early 14th century, he produced English glosses of Latin Bible text, including the Psalms. Rolle translated the Psalms into a Northern English dialect, but later copies were written in Southern English dialects.

Around the same time, an anonymous author in the West Midlands region produced another gloss of the complete Psalms — the West Midland Psalms.

In the early years of the 14th century, a French copy of the Book of Revelation was anonymously translated into English.

Anna Paues (1904) edited a 14th century translation of most of the New Testament: the Epistles and part of the Gospel of Matthew.

Margaret Joyce Powell (1916) edited the non-Wycliffean Middle English commentary and translation of the Gospels of Mark and Luke, and the Pauline epistles, dating them to the late 1300s.

Another non-Wycliffean commentary and translation of Matthew's Gospel exists in two manuscripts.

Wycliffean Bibles
In the late 14th century, the first complete English language Bible was produced, with some connection to John Wycliffe as inspiration or instigator or glossator or translator — hence it often called Wycliffe's Bible. This New Testament was completed in 1380 and the Old Testament a few years later. It is thought that a large portion of the Old Testament was actually translated by Nicholas Hereford. Some 30 copies of this early version (EV) Bible survive.

Books containing Lollard material, such as the so-called General Prologue of some manuscripts, were eventually banned. From the time of King Richard II until the time of the English Reformation, Lollards who owned Wycliffe's Bible with Lollard material, or read from that material publicly, could be prosecuted.

Wycliffe's Bible was revised in the last years of the 14th century, perhaps by John Purvey. This late version (LV) was subject to the same ban and was more popular than the first. Some 130 copies exist, including some belonging to the British royal family. All dated copies are dated before the ban.

Sample of Wycliffe's translation: Be not youre herte affraied, ne drede it. Ye bileuen in god, and bileue ye in me. In the hous of my fadir ben many dwellyngis: if ony thing lasse I hadde seid to you, for I go to make redi to you a place. And if I go and make redi to you a place, eftsone I come and I schal take you to my silf, that where I am, ye be. And whidir I go ye witen: and ye witen the wey. (John 14:1-4)

Since the Wycliffe Bible conformed to Catholic teaching, it was considered to be an unauthorized Roman Catholic version of the Vulgate text but with heretical preface and notes added. This view was held by many Catholic commentators, including Thomas More.

Later partial translations
William Caxton translated many Bible stories and passages from the French, producing the Golden Legend (1483) and The Book of the Knight in the Tower (1484). He also printed The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ by Pseudo-Bonaventure, translated by Nicholas Love, OCart.

Legacy
All translations of this time period were from Latin or French. Humanism of the Renaissance made popular again the study of the classics and the classical languages and thus allowed critical Greek scholarship to again become a possibility. Greek and Hebrew texts would become more widely available with Johannes Gutenberg's development of the movable-type printing press, with his first major work an edition of the Latin Vulgate, now called the Gutenberg Bible, in 1455. In the early 16th century, Erasmus published a single volume of the Greek texts of the New Testament books and continued publishing more precise editions of this volume until his death. The availability of these texts, along with renewed interest in the biblical languages themselves, enabled scholars to debate knowledgably about their sources.

The other great event of that same century was the development of Early Modern English, making English a literary language, leading to a great increase in the number of translations of the Bible in that era.