ABSTRACT
Translation, an act and art of creation, throws into sharp relief vexing questions about the interpretability of language. In early modern England it was also a daring, often perilous enterprise. Although in the twenty-first century we have daily familiarity with political violence fueled by religious controversy, it is worth noting some identifying markers of early modern debates about belief and language. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Arundel’s Constitutions (1408) had outlawed “vernacular theology” as heresy unless approved by the highest levels of the clergy. 1 Clerical surveillance was a fact of early modern cultural existence, as was the public reinforcement of the risk of transgression. “Official” English reaction to Luther furnishes an instructive example of the theatricality and rhetoric of clerical control, a control usually pronounced in English. The campaign against Luther began with a ceremonial public burning of a selection of his works by Cardinal Wolsey in 1521, followed by a sermon in English by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Fisher had had to translate Luther in order to mount his vernacular offensives against him. Moreover, at a time when there was not an agreed-upon text of the English Bible, the “endless glossing” between Thomas More and William Tyndale illustrates both the real dangers of translation and the fierce battles it could instigate. 2 With the publication in Germany of Tyndale’s secret English translation of the New Testament in 1525, the confrontation between him and Henry’s Lord Chancellor began in earnest. More’s Dialogue Concerning Heresies and Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christen Man and his later Answere were textual touchstones in the fray. In reply to More’s satire on Tyndale’s position that the literal sense was the truly spiritual one, Tyndale volleyed back:
Master More declareth the meninge of no sentence he describeth the propir signification of no worde ner the difference of the significations of any terme but runneth forth confusedly in unknowen wordes and general termes. And where one worde hath many significations he maketh a man some time believe that manye thinges are but one thynge and some time he leadeth from one signification unto another and mocketh a mans wittes. 3
As sobering codas to these verbal skirmishes we should remember that More was executed for treason in 1535 and Tyndale for heresy the next year.