The Middle English Bible. Henry Ansgar Kelly
and complete retreat in Second Maccabees. It is clear that an up user came on the scene at this point in the translation, exerted his influence, and then departed.
The fortunes of up in the EV New Testament are very intriguing. In the Gospels of the EEV (Oxford, Christ Church College 145) there is no use of up, but in EV (Douce 369.2) there is an intrusion of ups into Luke and a few into John.71 This may remind us of the intrusion of eithers into EV Luke. The either user could have been Simple Creature, but not the up user (since he shows no use of up in GP). However, there is a marked use of prepositional up in the rest of the New Testament in EEV, which is entirely followed by EV.72 It indicates a change of personnel in the translation of EEV after the Gospels.73
In the LV, there seems to be a complete lack of up as a preposition in the Old Testament, except for a flurry of uses in a single book, 2 Samuel.74 It is also completely missing from the four Gospels and the rest of the LV New Testament.75 This is a sobering thought for those who believe that Simple Creature is speaking for the LV translators.
The statement made by Simple Creature about the alternative translations of secundum reveals an unawareness on his part of what actually happened in the transition from the EV Old Testament to the LV: there was a massive rejection of after in favor of by in the translation not only of secundum but also of juxta, when it means the same thing. However, after remained in favor in the LV New Testament.76
Summary Judgment on Simple Creature
Let us make some interlocutory conclusions here on the basis of Simple Creature’s translational practices and personal style in GP, which has been taken as written after the whole of LV was finished (except for Forshall and Madden, who believe that it may have been written before the LV New Testament was done):77
1. He says that the Latin preposition ex can be translated not only by of but also by by; but it is almost never translated by by in either EV or LV, even though LV greatly expands the use of by for other Latin prepositions.
2. He specifies that the Latin preposition secundum can be translated not only by after, but also by by and up. He does not realize that the LV Old Testament actively boycotted after and replaced it with by, while the LV New Testament kept after. Further, he does not know that, while the preposition up had found some favor in some parts of EV, especially in the New Testament Epistles, it had been entirely purged from LV.
3. It might seem that his recommendation to translate Latin autem otherwise than by forsooth was put into practice in the LV New Testament, but he seems oblivious of the continued use of forsooth throughout the LV Old Testament.
4. Furthermore, he shows no awareness that his recommendation of translating Latin enim by either forsooth or forwhy, which was the practice of the EV New Testament, was not followed in the LV New Testament (except minimally for forwhy).
5. Finally, while Simple Creature’s personal style of favoring either over or was adopted for the LV Old Testament, it found favor only in LV Acts and Revelation and two minor Epistles (James and 1 Peter), and abortively in Luke (seen in EV’s changes from EEV).
Thus, while one might be persuaded to see Simple Creature’s hand in one or another section of EV or LV by resorting to one of these criteria, by taking all of them together we must conclude that his profile is not matched in the Middle English Bible and that his claim to be the sole or main translator is overstated, to say the least. If he did participate at any stage, he was not able to impose all of his preferences, except perhaps in a few later books of the New Testament.
Other Wycliffite Connections Disallowed
Forshall and Madden believe that in the EV phase the New Testament was translated first, assuming that the renderings of the Gospels found in the Wycliffite Glossed Gospels, which they take to be by Wyclif himself, were extracted and used in EV.78 The assumption nowadays is the reverse: that the Wycliffites responsible for the glosses use the already-finished EV text.79 However, the Swedish scholars Sven Fristedt and Conrad Lindberg continue to favor Wyclif ’s participation. Lindberg believes that Simple Creature is reporting Wyclif ’s translational principles in GP chapter 15.80
Forshall and Madden then identify the translator of the Old Testament as Nicholas Hereford, at least the first five-sixths of it, up to the middle of Baruch 3.20, where the fifth and last hand of MS Bodley 959 suddenly breaks off, because another manuscript, Douce 369.1, says at this point, though not in the hand of the scribe, “Explicit Nicholay de herford.”81 They argue that Douce was copied from 959 before the extensive corrections found in 959 were added.82 Lindberg dates MS 959 to around 1400, and he thinks the ascription of this part of the Old Testament to Hereford to be likely, and probably the rest of the Old Testament as well. He estimates that the project would have taken Hereford around twenty years, beginning while he was still an adherent to Wyclif ’s doctrines, and continuing after his reconciliation to the Church authorities, which occurred by 1391.83 Anne Hudson regards the interpretation placed on this ascription with skepticism, not necessarily doubting that Hereford might have been involved, but rejecting the notion that the work of translation was that of one man.84
Forshall and Madden are convinced that the translation of EV after Baruch 3.20 changes noticeably,85 but Lindberg concludes that there is no material difference.86 One example that Forshall and Madden give, that Hereford uniformly translates Latin secundum as after, whereas later it is frequently rendered as up, has been shown above to be true of only some books.
As noted earlier, John Purvey’s role as the chief mover behind the LV translation was elaborated from earlier conjectures to a harder hypothesis by Forshall and Madden. It was brought to the peak of respectability and certainty by Margaret Deanesly, who holds, in her monograph of 1920, that Purvey was not only the author of LV and GP but of the Glossed Gospels and various other tracts.87 Cardinal Gasquet’s protest of 1894 went unheeded, but claims for Purvey were dismissed by most scholars after Hudson’s article of 1981.88 It would be tempting to keep Purvey available as the Wycliffite prologuist Simple Creature,89 since his recanting of Lollard doctrine came only in 1401, whereas Hereford’s was a decade earlier. Purvey came originally from northern Buckinghamshire (the village of Lathbury, by Newport Pagnell), which may have been a region of either speakers, and he does not seem to have been a scholar, since there is no record of him at Oxford90—which, of course, would fit with SC’s ignorance of Oxford customs. In 1414, however, he was found to be in possession of a Bible (presumably Latin), a separate copy of the Gospels and a copy of the Pauline Epistles and other Latin works connected with the Bible, especially commentaries on the Epistles (by Lyre, “Bede,” and “Parisiensis”); and he also possessed the two main collections of canon law, Gratian’s Decretum and Gregory IX’s Decretals.91
A Trial Scenario for Simple Creature
Let us first consider the possibility that Simple Creature, a native of either country (perhaps somewhere in Buckinghamshire away from the Oxford environs), came to his biblical scholarship late, well after EV was finished and when LV was just wrapping up. He managed to join the New Testament team in time to contribute to the revising of four books, namely, Acts, James, 1 Peter, and the Apocalypse.
It is possible that at some point Simple Creature turned his hand to work with fellow either speakers on the Glossed Gospels, even though EV was used throughout. These compilations are entirely derivative in content, and, except for some quasi-treatises on special topics, they show little or no Lollard bias.92 The author of the Prologue to Short Matthew uses only either, at least in one of the two manuscripts that contain it (Mary Dove’s editions do not take note of either/or variants), and calls himself Simple Creature.93 The body of the work also uses only either in the excerpts given by Hudson.94