John Wycliffe's New Testament

Summary. The cathedral library has a John Wycliffe New Testament (MS Lich 10) dated c.1410. It is a handwritten translation from the Latin New Testament to Old English by one of Wycliffe’s students.

     John Wycliffe,[1] c. 1331[2]–84, was a priest and professor at the University of Oxford. Through sermons and writings, he advocated the translation of the Latin Bible, Vulgate version, into Middle English so that ordinary people could read the Bible for themselves. At one time it was thought he translated the whole Bible, but it is now thought he completed the Gospels and some of the New Testament and his followers worked on the Old Testament.[3] The ‘Wycliffite Bible’ was the first complete translation of the Bible, and was finished by 1382[4]. The first version was more literal, difficult to read and had some awkward translations; an early book is in the British Library.[5] Updated, easier to read versions followed in the next thirteen years translated by his friend John Purvey with the help of others.

Artistic impression of John Wycliffe from a book by C. C. Savage 1856. 

 

          The bible was never used in church services, but circulated widely amongst clergy until 1538 when Henry VIII enforced his Great Bible on every parish. The significance of Wycliffe’s translation is that it laid the foundation for the reforms of the 16th-century and eventually the rise of Protestantism. Wycliffe saw God’s wisdom lay in words set out in the gospels and not as taught doctrinally and variably by priests in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1409, a provisional council of the English Church banned further translations of the Bible into English. In 1415, Wycliffe was posthumously condemned by the church as a heretic and his bones were dug up, burned and thrown into a river.

 

                                                      Wycliffe New Testament in the cathedral library

           The cathedral possesses a Wycliffe New Testament (MS Lich 10). It was bequeathed by Prebendary Ernest R.O. Bridgeman, Rector of Blymhill, and placed in the library around 1941. Dated c. 1410, it has 124 bi-folios, each 270 mm x 207 mm, and is handwritten in iron gall ink on vellum. The text appears in two columns and there are numerous decorated initials at the start of prologues and chapters.

Part of a decorated page

 Around 250 manuscripts of the Bible in varying states of completeness exist. It is strange more Wycliffe Bibles of the early 15th-century exist than do the orthodox versions of this time. About 150 manuscripts, complete or partial survive, containing the updated translation in its revised form. The irony of Wycliffe’s provocative distribution of a readable Bible was that it was banned in all its forms by episcopal authority, yet vernacular translations of scripture were freely available in France, Germany, Italy and the Low Countries by the time of the Reformation.[6] Furthermore, there were texts based on the gospels written in the vernacular and acceptable to own.

              

AI gen, John Wycliffe translating

Woodcut of Wiclef, 17th-century, in National Portrait Gallery

[1] His name has been spelt in at least twenty different ways. He came from a wealthy family with known ancestry and has been linked with the parish of Wycliffe, near Richmond, Yorkshire.

[2] Dates of 1324, 1328 and 1331 have been given He was in Oxford by 1345.

[3] Some historians believe Wycliffe played a minor role in the translations and a leading role in making the vernacular Bible known to many. He is known to have translated the Apocalypse in 1356, entitled ‘The last age of the church’, which could have reflected his view of the church. It was also eight years after the Black Death and with much loss of clergy, those taking their place were seen to be inferior. His next work included extracts taken from other authors.

[4] Bede was translating the Gospel of John into Old English in the 8th-century at the time of his death. Various Mercian texts were translations of parts of the Psalter and other commentaries, see M. P. Brown, ‘Mercian manuscripts: The implications of the Staffordshire Hoard, other recent discoveries, and the New Materiality'. E. Kwakkel (ed.) Writing in Context: Insular manuscript culture 500--1200. (Leiden: 2013), 23--66. The first six books of the Bible were translated for the Old English Hexateuch in the 11th-century. Short translated commentaries were published by others previous to Wycliffe. Therefore, the idea of having a translated bible for all to read was not new, but it was Wycliffe that enabled it to happen.

[5] Egerton MS 617.

[6] P. Marshall, Heretics and Believers. A history of the English Reformation. (New Haven and London: 2017), 117. 

Early settlers?

Summary. Archaeology at Cross Keys, 2005-6, revealed two early buildings, one possibly 6th or 7th-century and another 8th-century. Was this an early settlement in Lichfield?

     A plot of known Anglo-Saxon settlements on the map of England shows a frontier line running north-south along the Trent washlands of south-west Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. There are many settlements to the east of this line and very few to the west, Catholme is exceptional. Yet coins and graves have been found west of the line. This suggests in the 6th and early 7th century Lichfield would have been on a marginal border and the inhabitants pioneer colonists. 

Conjectured map of England in the 7th-century.

    Several reasons for this ‘invisibility of settlements’ in the West Midlands have been given. Perhaps, by the beginning of the 7th century people had not migrated across middle England and settled. Perhaps, their dwellings were unlike the timber buildings of the east (post, post in trench and sunken featured buildings) and they left no trace in any excavation; instead, they were erecting turf, cobble or loose stone and rubble buildings. Did they prefer to move around in temporary buildings (including tents) which could be dismantled and moved on? Have soil stains, ground depressions, floors and even stake holes not survived so well in the wetter, western climate? It has been argued settlement patterns were largely a consequence of environmental factors, such as the influence of climate, soils and hydrology, and the patterns of natural topography.[1] The drier east was more conducive to survival. It is no surprise for a paucity of Early Medieval settlements in the West Midlands and particularly around Lichfield.

 

Before a two-storey car park was built on Cross Keys Road, an excavation was conducted at the end of 2005 and into 2006. Two remarkable buildings were found. The north end of a two-chambered building was uncovered around a rectangular pit around 0.4 m deep. Walls contained Roman masonry with yellow mortar attached and bonded together with boulder clay. A twig in the mortar was carbon dated to 89–334. The floor contained rye and wheat grains and there were traces of barley, small mammals and fish bones. A twig in this detritus was carbon dated to 436–636. Charcoal was also found dated to 604–683. Mud plaster on the walls, 10 mm thick, suggested it was possibly a dwelling. The grains suggested it might have become a store and the charcoal hints it was destroyed by fire.

 

AI rendition of possible terrain.

On its south side was a 7th to 8th-century timber building around a new pit and cut deeper into the ground. Post-holes suggested a dwelling similar to those found at Catholme, but larger. Supporting posts were in the corners and along the middle line of the building. Wattle and daub looked to have been used for infill. A twig found near the wattle was dated to 688–868.

 

AI rendition of layout of the two buildings.

    Sargent[2]  using notes from the archaeologist,[3] described the early building as unique in Britain. Being stone built and mud plastered suggested a monastic cell, however, the position of the putative doorway, little wear of the floor and its sunken pit does not entirely fit. Sargent compared it with the sunken crypt at Repton and even the possibility it was a funerary mausoleum. It might have pre-dated the early church. Sargent reappraises the many conjectures on how the polyfocal area of Lichfield grew from early times. He noted[4] that early to mid-Anglo-Saxon (Early Medieval) pottery sherds, 5th to 9th-centuries, were found during excavation of a site to the north of Sandford Street supporting an early medieval occupation around the northern end of Bird Street.[5]

Imagined Licetfelda Mynster on a sandstone outcrop north of a river and wetlands stood an early stone cathedral-church close to standing crosses, a saint's shrine chapel (which came later), and a small cemetery church, Close by were dwellings. It was isolated for worship, not far from old Roman roads, and had the attributes needed for settlement and features needed for baptism and spiritual reflection.  

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[1] T. Williamson, Environment, Society and Landscape in early medieval England: Time and Topography. (Woodbridge: 2015).

[2] A. Sargent, ‘Early medieval Lichfield. A reassessment’. Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society Transactions, (2013), 1–32.

[3] N. Tavener, Cross Keys Car Park, Lichfield, Staffordshire. Level 3 archive report on an archaeological excavation and watching brief. (unpub. report, Nick Tavener Archaeological Services) (2010).

[4] See Sargent (2013), 5.

[5] K. Nichol and  S. K. Rátkai, Archaeological Excavations on the North Side of Sandford Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire, 2000 (unpub.report, Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit) (2002), 14.