Lesson 3 - Tyndale's World (1495 - 10/6/1536)

• The World Scene
• Meet the Press
• Erasmus
• Martin Luther
• Henry VIII

The World Scene

When the midwife handed the infant William to Mrs. Tyndale I hope she said, "Welcome to the WORLD, Master Tyndale." If not, she should have! William Tyndale entered a world far, far different from the one Wycliffe left. In the century that separated these two the world had changed, radically changed!

A new spirit was in the air - a spirit of learning, inquiry, and emphasis on the value of each individual. People looked behind the long-held traditions of church and state, seeking the original sources to see for themselves why and how things are or should be. Today we call this the Renaissance or renewal. Back then they called it "life"! It seemed like the western world had entered its adolescence. No longer did "Because I said so!" satisfy "Why?" People had to see for themselves!

No one can put a specific date on the start of the Renaissance, but at some point in the 1400's Western culture started to move in new directions. The general characteristic of this time was a revival of classical learning. People pushed past accepted traditions to find the original sources in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew texts.

In 1453 the Turks captured Constantinople...Yes, this is important and it will be on the test! No, it's not an isolated fact. Without the Turks in Constantinople there would have been no Tyndale in Cambridge.

Constantinople, today's Istanbul, was the center of the Eastern Church and had an extensive library of Greek manuscripts. Many scholars fled west, bringing these documents with them. People had access to Aristotle, Plato, and Paul through Greek documents. They could set aside their Latin commentaries and see for themselves what these ancients had written.

Meet the Press (c. 1450)

New technology fed this desire for knowledge and helped spread new ideas. In 1455 Johann Gutenberg handed the world the first book printed with moveable type - a Latin Bible! He cast each letter as a separate entity and designed a frame to hold them in place. The frame was inked and a press forced a sheet of paper or vellum (fine leather) on top of the frame. One page at a time - an arduous process!

But it beat hand copying! A trained copyist could seldom produce more than four pages a day. And it was hard work! In a side note on a document, a 12th century scribe wrote -

If you do not know what writing is, you may think it is not especially difficult.... Let me tell you that it is an arduous task: it destroys your eyesight, bends your spine, squeezes your stomach and your sides, pinches your lower back, and makes your whole body ache.... Like the sailor arriving at the port, so the writer rejoices arriving at the last line. (Bobrick).

Now consider this! After the fall of Constantinople Pope Nicholas V gathered up many of the manuscripts that the refugee scholars brought with them and had them copied for his library. At his death Nicholas left a library of over 5000 hand-copied volumes! O, my aching back!

Among the classics were copies of the Greek and Hebrew scriptures. What was a rariety in Wycliffe's day became common in Tyndale's - people studied Greek and Hebrew in universities!

What an amazing world the young Master Tyndale entered! The general spirit was one of personal inquiry into the origins of - everything! The fall of Constantinople, among other things, provided thousands of documents far closer to the originals than anything seen before. The printing press made these documents and the discussions about them available to all who could read.

One of the "powers-that-be" was the Church, and people wished to look behind the scenes to see if what it said was really true. Across Europe people needed access to the Bible, access in their own languages.

Now, at the risk of really over simplifying as far as the English Bible goes - here are three main characters in this part of the drama -

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Erasmus (1469-1536)

OK - let's try to outline some of the major players on the world stage during Tyndale's life. Enter Stage Right - Erasmus of Rotterdam!

Who?

Ah, the ravages of time. Today Erasmus is an unknown, but in his time he was one of the world's leading scholars. He, like Luther, argued for Church reformation in his many writings. Thanks to the printing presses, he works had a wide influence.

His most influential publication, as far as we are concerned, came off the press in 1516 - the world's first published Greek New Testament! The official Church condemned him for this, claiming that the Latin Vulgate was more authoritative than the Greek.

Erasmus based his work on a few Greek manuscripts that were available in Basel, and they were not complete. In some cases he supplied the Greek by retranslating the Vulgate! In any event, his Greek Testament shook the theological world. Now educated people could get closer to the original Word, and the closer they got, the worse the Church looked.

Erasmus couldn't resist writing commentaries that pointed out major differences between the Greek and the Latin. Consider this point Erasmus made on Matthew 3:1-2. The Vulgate has John the Baptist urging his audience to "do penance" rather than "repent."

It may sound like the same idea to us, but "penance" in that day was a public act, an official Church function involving confession to a priest, acts of contrition, and priestly absolution of sin. "Repentance" is personal, a change of mind, between an individual and God that required no church heirarchy or involvement.

In true Renaissance fashion Erasmus made the original source available to all who could read so each individual could decide for himself. He continued revising the Greek testament, publishing new editions in 1522 and 1527. Luther and Tyndale would base their translations on his work.

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Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Which brings us to our second "Name in the News" - Martin Luther. He did not set out to be a reformer or separate from the Catholic Church, but that's what he became. When, in 1515, he nailed his 95 points of disputation on the Wittenburg door, he thought he was simply setting the stage for a formal theological debate that would be of little interest.

Enter the printing press, stage left. You guessed it. His challenges were published and widely circulated. So great was the general desire for reformation, for individual freedom, that he soon became the leader of reformation and, ultimately, separation.

Luther quickly recognized the power of the press and wrote a large number of religious pieces, many of them in German. Printers quickly produced hundreds of copies which circulated among the people. Thus the lay people learned the details of Luther's criticism of the Church.

Two ideas, McGrath writes, were foundational to Luther's critique of the church and his proposals for reform -

1. The Church has lost sight of the basic New Testament idea that salvation is given by God as a gift, not earned as a reward.
2. That the key to the reform and renewal of the Church was to put the Bible in the hands of lay people.

With the Greek and Hebrew texts available to him, Luther plunged into this work, completing the New Testament in 1522. With this and his other publications Luther helped do for the German language and culture what Tyndale was to accomplish for the English.

Unfortunately, Luther's reformation ran afoul of the same problem as Wycliffe's - Rebellion! In Germany, though, the rebellion was an actual Peasants War that lasted almost two years. Over 50,000 died in the conflict.

The ecclesiastical reformation Luther sponsored seemed to knock the lid off a pressurized boiler of German peasants' resentment against over taxation, political repression, and many other valid grievances. Luther frequently dipped his pen in the ink of vehement language, and many of the radicals were reformist preachers.

True, Luther turned against the radicals and wrote Against the Murdering Thieving Hordes of Peasants. How's that for a Pulitzer Prize winning title? Yes, the radicals went far beyond Luther's teaching. Some of them even rejected the authority of the written Word for the call of an inward Word that only they heard.

None the less, the Peasant's Revolt shocked the European nations, especially England, and made "Lutheran" reformation ideas completely unacceptable. Among these ideas - putting the Bible into the language of the people.

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Henry VIII (1491-1547)

And now our final name - Henry VIII who ruled England from 1509-1547. Most people know of his six wives -

• Catherine of Aragon (1509) - mother of Mary Tudor. Divorced.
• Anne Boleyn (1533)- mother of Elizabeth I. Executed for infidelity
• Jane Seymore (1536) - mother of Edward, Henry's sole male heir. Died in childbirth.
• Anne of Cleaves (1540) - an arranged marriage to the German princess, quickly annulled
• Catherine Howard (1540) - executed for infidelity
• Catherine Parr (1543) - survived the aging king (whew!)

There's far more to Henry's role, however, than this.

Consider that initially Henry was staunch, effective defender of the Church. He personally wrote learned rebuttals to Luther's works. In political gratitude the Pope awarded him the title "Defender of the Faith."

The Pope, Clement VII, had other problems. Back in Rome he was politically captive to Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Charles V. Charles, in turn, was the nephew of Catherine! Meanwhile French armies were fighting with Charles to see who'd control Italy and the Church.

Are you still with me?

OK - Henry needs a Church-authorized divorce from Catherine and through Thomas Cardinal Wolsey he petitions the Pope to grant it. The Pope, however, is under the control of Charles, the Queen's nephew. The Pope wants Henry to move against France, but he cannot alienate Charles. For his part, Chuck is willing to allow the divorce if Henry will accept his control of Italy.

And you thought US politics was convoluted!

In any event, the Pope did send a high-level delegation to London to hear Henry's request. During the hearings Charles defeated the French and assumed full control over Italy and the Pope. End of discussion - no church divorce.

Henry now had to seek other means to gain his marital freedom. This meant turning from the Church to Parliament and, in the process, allowing reformation ideas and books into England - chief among them - English translations of the Bible!

In the next lesson we will see how William Tyndale found himself at the "pointy end" of the English Reformation spear. Even as he was being executed in the Netherlands Henry and his advisors were working out the details of bringing English Bibles into England. They sought to control translation and distribution, but they and their successors were swallowed up by the flood they unleashed.

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