Dr. Daniell's "Bible in English:" Ch. 8--English Reformation

Daniell, David.  The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. http://www.amazon.com/The-Bible-English-History-Influence/dp/0300099304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385668294&sr=8-1&keywords=david+daniell+english+bible

 

          A long post, but worth digesting.  The cumulative force of the Professor's arguments are stunning and staggering. We bring notes with our musings. We'll give his conclusion first. The conclusion to the chapter is this: “The loss to understanding the English Reformation is great” (132).  Indeed, Professor, indeed.

Chapter 8: “The Reformation in England,” pages 120-132: An Extraordinary Chapter

Mr. Daniel had addressed the “pre-printing era” in English life: (1) the Bible in Britain to AD 850, (2) the Anglo-Saxon Bible in “glosses,” in limited regions and for Latin-illiterate audiences, (3) the extent of Wycliffism and his Bibles, (4) and the general environment of the 14^th and 15^th centuries around Wyclif.

Mr. Daniel then moves to the “print era.”  As noted in Chapter 7, Erasmus’ NT was the motor of reform issuing in a Continent-wide rush of vernacular Bibles in England, Germany, the Low Countries, French, Sweden, and Denmark.  England was awash in English Bibles after Queen Mary 1. Or, to switch the metaphor, once Erasmus squeezed the toothpaste from the tube, it couldn’t be put back.

Mr. Daniel turns to a quick 13-page overview of the English Reformation discussing: (1) Bible-based Protestant belief, (2) revisionist denials in the academic community [think Tractarians, anti-Reformationists like the ACNA, Romanist scholars, and secularists with one fear or another], (3) wider Reformation studies to include archives in eastern Europe (closed off during the Cold War, but opened up due to advances in digitalization and electronics), (4) the release of literary and cultural energies [think Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Bunyan and more], (5) the extensive publications of the English Bible, (6) Protestantism as expressed by the Bible, (7) the disappearance of the discussion of the Bible’s impact in courses on the Early Modern Period, and (8) English Reformation essentials.  As can be seen, Mr. Daniell offers a full course meal from 30,000 feet in the air.

Bible-based Popular Belief.  There was a “massive impact” after the 1^st complete translation of Tyndale’s NT in 1526.  We know that (Bp.) Fisher was reviling Luther, an episcopal voice for Henry VIII.  We know Cranmer was ensconced in his cozy and quiet academic life at Cambridge, trying to sort things out. But, “the Bible was leaking” into the nation and the Romanist ship was, in time, to list and sink in the English Channel—to the bottom.  Mr. Daniell points out the sheer numbers of print runs (120).  From 1520 to 1640, a mere 115 years, modest estimates based on official records indicate that 2 million were produced.  By comparison to any other print run, the classics, Ovid, Plutarch, Augustine or others—no comparison.  Put simply, “demand was high.”

The Bible was being read by individuals in homes, local gatherings and was “clearly and comprehensibly read in the services of the new Church of England” (121).  One charming story: an illiterate father has a literate son; he enjoins his son to read the Bible to him in the evenings; the father grows with substantial literacy, thought, and analysis, a simple man, but one brought face-to-face with the Triune God by God’s Self-Disclosure.  Stories could be replicated.  Though not all could read, the NT was read “clearly and loudly” in the churches three times per year (later reduced to two times per year).  The OT was read “loudly and clearly” once per year in the 9000 parishes of England (some, but few, dissenting). The Psalms were said or sung in English once per month.  A few contrasts suggest the impact.

Throughout the nation in the pre-Reformation period, the parishioner would hear a priest “murmuring in Latin at a distant altar [DPV: throw in a rood screen to keep the raffish lot enthralled and fenced out] with his back to the people” (121).  By contrast, in post-Reformation England, the minister faced the congregation, addressed them in English, read 3ish lessons from the English Bible, said or sang English Psalms, and, in their close midst, delivered an English sermon—while the people prayed together in the English Collects, the English Lord’s Prayer, the English versicles and canticles, and confessed their common faith in the English Creeds.  Quite a contrast.

Or, the poor chaps in the parishes of pre-Reformation England would hear their cleric say, Petite et dabitur vobis; querite et invenetis; pulsate et aperiteur vobis.  By contrast, the parishes in post-Reformation England heard in a ringing, loud and clear voice: “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.”  Significant on a national, or, macroscopic, level.  England would be awash with English Bibles. Even more remotely, but indicatively, ships in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, during Raleigh’s and Drake’s travels would have two divine services per Sabbath—with the old English BCP, Bible lections and Psalm-singing.  Yet, many modern historians appear to not be concerned about these matters.  What’s up with that?

Revisionist denials.  Mr. Daniell complains of the decades before 2000 (is if something must have happened since then?).  He claims that Catholic (his term for Romanist) historians “dominated the field” (121). They offered up “as new” an old argument of “Catholic continuity.” To them, the national courts of Tudor England “barely touched the English population” which was “overwhelmingly Catholic” (121).  Gone were the older explanations of a real Reformation in England. It came from the “political bullying” by some figures in the courts of Henry VIII and Edward VI.

Students, he tells us, in these decades were taught that the English Reformation “was a failure” (122). One could only write about the Reformation after “many attempted reformations.” This was held and advocated in spite of powerful objections. 

Objections to Roman and Tractarian revisionists.

1.      These tend to view the Reformation through a political lens. We’ve observed this with Tractaholics in particular.

2.      There is a failure to compare and contrast the two centuries: hostile repressions in the 15^th century (previously elaborated) by Rome and Canterbury compared to the dominance of English Protestantism by the close of the 16^th century.

3.      Failure to fully account for the new print culture: England was awash with English services and Bibles.

4.      Failure to account for the “new thinking” in the two universities of Oxbridge. Failure to account for the 100s of new volumes coming to the press.

5.      Serious evidence that the revisionists are selective and “cherry pick” the evidence.  For example, Eamon Duffy’s Stripping of the Altars studied some congregations in East Anglia, committed to Recusancy, and extrapolated his findings to an entire nation.  Surely, there were Recusancy hold-outs, notably in the remote districts in the north.  Of course, committed Recusants existed.  No surprises there. Nonetheless, 9000 churches as we’ve previously noted with English services, an English Bible, an English BCP, English and Calvinistic Articles, and English sermons including English Homilies.  

6.      Failure to answer one big question by the historian, Patrick Collinson: how did England, so strongly under the Italian bishop [think the 1401 Act of De Haeretico Comburendo, the 1407 Provincial Council of Oxford, the 1409 Canterbury Constitutions and the Council of Constance] become so permanently Protestant?

7.      Furthermore, how does one explain basically the Protestant Wars of Religion in the 17^th century, ones in which England was thoroughly Protestant?  Protestant v. Protestant?

8.      Furthermore, how does one explain the “enormous bulk of literature” that was “officially, aggressively and massively Protestant” (122)?

9.      Some background and then a question.  The Italian bishop, Gregory XIII, excommunicated Queen Elizabeth 1 in the 1570s. Jesuit priests, like Campion, were “smuggled in” and held Latin Masses in barns and some homes, some well attended, especially, in remote areas in the northwest.  Question: what about 9000 parishes with English Bibles, English services, printed Prayer Books with Calvinistic Articles, and the Homilies?  If we assume 100 Prayer Books per parish, this indicates 900,000 printed Prayer Books.  We believe this is low; we would like statistics here. There were 500,000 English Bibles in Elizabeth’s reign.

10.  Furthermore, what was the national response to the massacres of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572?

11.  Furthermore, what was the response to the murderous behaviors of the Spanish King, Philip II, in the Low Countries?  Think 1566 while Elizabethan minds were still freshing "grieving as nation" about the Marian burnings. These things were known in England.

12.  Furthermore, what do the Henrician, Marian and Elizabethan Injunctions teach?  Show? Especially, the Elizabethan Injunctions; one thing clearly emerges: Roman doctrine had no place in England, period.

13.  How does one account for the massive popularity of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments?  Extensive print runs? High demand?

14.  What does Mr. (Dr. Prof.) Diarmaid MacCulloch mean when he says that the English Reformation was a “howling success” by the end of Elizabeth’s reign?

15.  How do the revisionists deny reports “from the ground” described by William Tyndale or Simon Fish?  Or Chaucer and William Langland? Chaucer’s Summoner or Pardoner are replete with descriptions of corrupt ecclesiastics. Or, even reports by the Pope in the 1520s or, later, Bellarmine that the church was corrupt, top to bottom?  More on that one later from Charles Hardwick's History of the Articles.

16.  Furthermore, why do the revisionists fail to account for the Bibles—widely bought and used—in the Reformation?  Failure to account for this point alone indicates “perversity” if not a “hilarious perversity” (124).  Revisionists seem to sweep the Bible out of the narrative. It was more than a movement foisted on a nation by “Protestant guerillas,” but was a “massive, complex, successful and deeply rooted movement” (124).

Protestant Beliefs, page 125.

1.      It was not a “watered-down version” of Christianity.  Protestantism, contrary to what the ever-facile-REC-Chameleon-Forked-Tongue-Ray Sutton would have it, was not “Catholic Christianity gone wrong” (125).  Rather, it was a clean-up operation.

2.      Gone was purgatory, the cult of the saints, mandatory and auricular confession, mandatory priestly celibacy, justification by complexes of works of various sorts, necromancy and invocation of saints, invocation of and attribution of divine attributes to Mary the Queen of heaven…gone was bread-worship, cannibalism and Ubiquitarianism…gone were indulgences, meritorious pilgrimages, and meritorious and propitiatory Masses for the living and the dead. Gone.  Gone was Petrine supremacy. This was not some “nibbling at the edges of Christian practice” (125). As Tyndale noted in The Obedience of the Christian Man (1528), “The pope’s Church sold for money what Christ gave freely.”

Energy and Cultural Achievements, 125-126.

1.      The released energies “were colossal” (125). A new nation emerged as a consequence of Protestant forces: the USA, for one, in a further effort at freedom. It was distinctively Protestant in large measure.

2.      If one looks at the Geneva presses themselves, a beehive of activity for scholars, a flood of books were “edited, translated and printed” by scholars in the new University of Geneva, founded for theology and classical studies.  There was a widening internationalization of studies. Poor Laud would (repeatedly, aggressively, and with hostility) whine like a howling French poodle, or childish imperialist, or sick narcissist about Reformed theology in England;  he wasn’t half the man of any of the Reformed scholars; Tractarians still howl about this influence from the Continent.

3.      Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, complains about the cultural disaster.  Revisionists act like the Reformation was “quite an unheralded bolt out of the blue” (126).  We’ll say more about this later.

4.      Sacred art flourished with the Drurers and Cranachs in Germany or Hans Holbein in England.  We will continue to review this front in other places.

5.      Musical influences were influenced too. Psalm-singing was widely popular. Think Handel in a later period, English Bible, while the Romanists were still putting Latin services forward—until 1965ish in America.  Think JFK’s funeral service.

6.      Mr. Daniell reminds us of the rise of a supreme literature of poets and prose writers, e.g. Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton and others.  It was a golden period.  This is Mr. Daniell’s area of expertise as a Ph.D. in English literature.

English Bibles, 126.  10 new English versions of the entire Bible or NT were issued from Tyndale’s work until the 1611 KJV.  To the Romanists, this would be a “cultural disaster.” To Protestant and Reformed Churchmen, yeah Americans of any stripe, this was 180 degrees out from the Romanist putdowns of "heretical translations." Again, 500,000 copies sold during Elizabeth’s 42-year reign.

Protestantism and the Bible, 127-128. The Reformation is a wide and complex movement, trans-national in reach and consequences. Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517, attacking indulgences, leading to his excommunication in 1521, set the Romanist barn on fire. Luther’s German Bible in 1522 had huge sales. The complex intersection of Lutheranism, the Church of England, the Swiss Churches, and the Dutch Churches is that—complex.

Seven issues emerged:

1.      Canonical issues.

2.      The establishment of Hebrew and Greek texts.

3.      The inspiration and authority of the Scriptures.

4.      Exegesis, especially of “the hard places” (127).  While the perspicuity, clarity and sufficiency of the Scriptures was held forth [think Cranmer’s Preface to the “Great Bible”], extraordinary efforts ensued to expound the Scriptures, e.g. the complex and detailed notes in the Geneva Bibles, largely lexical, translational and, at points, doctrinal.  Also, think too of this as a period of Grand Protestant Creedalism and Confessionalism throughout the nations: Scots, French, Belgic, Swiss and English.

5.      Vernacular Bibles everywhere; this cannot be under-estimated; this would be one major contrast between Latin Masses versus Protestant vernacular services.

6.      Printed Bibles for all churches.  This remains a concern for Wycliffe Bible Translators.  There are 6000 languages in the world.

7.      A hefty and large industry of scholarship and circulation of aids to Bible study, prefaces, marginal notes, concordances not just of the vernaculars but the original languages, encyclopedias, atlases, Psalters, hymns, Prayer Books and sermonic materials.  The Reformation unleashed a reformation in Biblical studies.

Disappearance, 128—130.

1.      The influence of the English Bible has “disappeared from the sight of scholars of Early Modern History” (128).  There is an occasional remark that the “Geneva Bible failed” because the “notes were objectionably Calvinistic” (128).  This was not true until Mr. (Canterbury) Bancroft’s time in 1604, but that’s another story. The Geneva Bible had a 100-year run in England and a longer one in the US. Even Lancelot Andrewes, the darling of Laudians, used it for his sermons.

2.      Sometimes “major textbooks about the English Reformation fail to mention the English Bible at all” (128).  This surely needs further review and testing. We would believe it is mentioned, but not developed. We will be on the lookout to test this proposition.

3.      Mr. Daniell argues that the English Bible is “privatized and fenced off” in Early Modern History studies with “acres out of bounds” along with the typical wave-off that the English Reformation from 1530-1600 was “all top down” (128).  Bye, bye English Bible. We’ve heard that too, but largely from Tractaholics grousing about Protestant bullies and guerillas…as if Tractarians weren’t that themselves.  More generally, we’ve seen that this subject is little discussed.  Yet, it fails to account for the widely printed, reprinted, used and read Geneva Bibles and Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. More narrowly, we are reminded of two situations. (1) The poor English sheriff of a shire upon his initial acquaintance with the English Bible and 1 Cor. 9.5.  He learned that the apostles were married men. He exclaimed, “The Bible is heresy.”  Earthly “purging” (“purgatory” and “refining fires” on earth through Biblical exposition) was on-going with exposure to the Bible. (2) Poor Queen Bess probably never, on our view, quite acclimated herself to 1 Cor. 9.5.  Although the Bible was the clear Bible on this issue, she tolerated married Bishops and Presbyters, but she was a tad rude to Mrs. Grindal, the wife of her second Canterbury.  Our theory?  Poor Bess was psychologically affected—adversely—by the grievous matrimonial resume of her despotic father, the murder of her mother, and the persistent insistences that she be turned into a “Royal breeding mare” for dynastic purposes, but we digress.

4.      Mr. Daniell repeats the claim, warranting appreciation: “For the English Bible was formidably present” (129). 10 new translations of the Bible, by contrast, while a few fresh translations of Ovid, Plutarch and Augustine. 211 English Bibles or New Testaments were “freshly edited and produced” during Shakespeare’s 52-year life. We are not sure how Mr. Daniell is using his numbers 10 or 211. But this will more fully develop: Tyndale, Coverdale, 3 Geneva Bibles, Great Bible, Bishops’ Bible, and more.

5.      Mr. Daniell affords some comparisons between Germany and England. Between 1517—1520, Luther’s publications “sold well over 300,000” works.  Some of those got to Cambridge’s White Horse Inn, Henry VIII, and Bp. Fisher. By 1522, Luther’s “September Bible” sold 5000 copies in the first weeks of publication. Now, who bought those?  What were the effects of that? By 1572, Luther’s main publisher, Hans Lufft of Wittenberg, retired after printing 100, 000 Germany Bibles.  Same questions.  Influences? Who and where?  Meanwhile, Rome was grousing and whining…and conducting Latin Masses for Latin-illiterate throngs.  Yet, England had far more vernacular Bibles in print that Germany.  No one doubts there was a Reformation in Germany with vernacular Bibles; nor should it be denied in England. 500,000 Bible were circulating in Shakespeare’s lifetime.  “Geneva Bibles in particular gripped the nation” (129). This was the Bible of the poet and prose writers into the 17^th century. The analogy of “airbrushing” this history “is particularly apt here” (129).  The Victorian so-called “High Churchmen,” whatever that was and whoever they were, Mr. Daniell reports, disliked the Geneva Bible.  (We wonder about Dean Burgon or Bp. Westcott, both High Churchmen.) There were 274 editions of the Psalter before 1616—Steinhold and Hopkins. Again, 9000 English parishes were using English services, Bibles and were singing Psalms.  The failure to deal with this subject—academically—“beggars belief” (129).

English Reformation Essentials, 130-132.

1.      The Protestant mind “thought, wrote, and spoke English” (130). There was an “overwhelming” body of “printed matter in English.” Latin plays remained at Cambridge and Oxford—150 were performed between 1550 and 1650.  Latin services were authorized for collegiate and Cathedral churches for the Latin-literate, but this was the exception and not the rule.  Suddenly, England had English literature that was “full and bursting at the seams and overflowing” (131).

2.      Protestant Anglicanism “was an intellectual movement in England” powered by university men.  New historical and Protestant studies emerged in “huge volumes” (131).  Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall’s Chronicles alongside Foxe’s Acts were found in many homes, giving an account of the upheavals in England and Europe. Foxe’s books had huge sales and had high demand. There was also a serious uptick of volumes of the Latin and Greek Churchmen during Elizabeth’s reign. One is reminded of John Jewel’s patristic learning or William Whittaker’s at Cambridge. There were 2 editions of Foxe, 1563 and 1570, consisting of 28,000 pages.  A significant number were purchased and “chained in churches” (131). Many passages were used in English sermons and lectures. Drake, floating around the Spanish naval assets, would capture Spaniards and read passages of Foxe to them. Yet, Early Modern syllabi and courses lament a handful of Jesuit priests put to death during Elizabeth’s reign while failing to account for the 100s of murdered Lollards or English Reformers…matters that were fresh to “Elizabethan and Jacobean minds” (131).  We would add that these fears were strongly stoked when James II, a devout Romanist, was on the throne in the late 17^th century. 

3.      There was a new sense of “liberty.”  Elizabeth had her censors, but, Mr. Daniell argues, this was more about sedition than heresy (this is unconvincing actually).  Rather than being a “cultural disaster,” English plays were being put on and attended, afternoon by afternoon, in “state-of-the-art theaters.”

4.      Upshot: English Bibles were everywhere and English worship services were conducted nationwide. "For the English Bible was formidably present."

The Puzzle, 132.

Again, Mr. Daniell draws a comparison between Germany and England.  Germany had just a few different editions of the vernacular German Bible between 1565 and 1616. England had 211 different and revised editions in that period.  Yet, for Mr. Daniell (and us), the silence amongst academics is “puzzling.” Mr. Daniell offers some theories.  (1) Academic timidity at the thought of the daunting task needed for a careful analysis of 211 different editions, a warrantable timidity given the voluminous English efforts and concerns. (2) Or, there are “fears” or “embarrassments” about being called a “Bible thumper.”  (3) Or, calling attention to these varied facts would imply that Bible reading “has been too Protestant a thing for Catholics to do” (132)

The conclusion to the chapter is this: “The loss of understanding the English Reformation is great” (132).  

Indeed, Professor, indeed.