1. Opposition to the Bible in English
D Hay Fleming
Though James V wished the morals of his clergy to be improved and the pride of his prelates to be lessened, he steadily opposed Lutheranism. By doing so he won the esteem and favour of the popes. He had been installed as king on 26 July 1524, when he was little more than 12 years old.
Pope Clement VII, in sending his good wishes to the young monarch, wrote on the 11 January 1526: “Dearest son of ours, we have added to the singular and peculiar affection that we deeply felt before to your serene highness as a Christian king, as we ought, because you have kept your kingdom without injury from the perfidious Lutheran heresy, although it is flourishing in the nearest country. While this was altogether in accordance with your piety and duty, and advantageous to all your subjects, and especially to you
1The first part of a chapter in Hay Fleming’s The Reformation in Scotland: Causes, Characteristics, Consequences (1910). It has been edited. The original title of the chapter was: “Primary Causes – the Word of God”. The author was a noted church historian, writing from a Reformed standpoint.
as an individual, and tending also to the tranquillity of your kingdom, yet we, as in duty bound, took it as a most pleasant and welcome thing, and we have extolled your virtuous conduct and your diligence more than once with great and deserved praises. . . . And, dearest son, we exhort and request you, by every feeling of charity and in the Lord our God, that you be willing to perform and accomplish in the future that same thing in honour of God . . . especially since no staggering blow can be struck at the Catholic faith in your kingdom without your authority being at the same time overturned.”
Clement was, no doubt, delighted with the Act, passed by the Scottish Parliament on 17 July 1526, prohibiting the importation of Lutheran books, and forbidding the repeating of Lutheran opinions except to confute them. In his reply of 1 January 1527, James assured Clement that, as he had already opposed the damnable doctrine of Luther with all his might, so “for the future, by the favour of God . . . we will endeavour to devote ourselves with all zeal to the Catholic religion, and to the defence of the liberty of the Church, so that our territories shall not be invaded either by that most wicked Lutheran heresy or by any similar one. And that venerable religion, so long kept unshaken and unstained by our ancestors, shall remain unpolluted in order that we may deserve to rejoice increasingly . . . in the most ancient privileges granted to us and our predecessors by the Holy Roman Church, and to glory elsewhere [that is, in heaven] as the true and lawful heirs of Abraham.”
Paul III, in sending . . . by a papal chamberlain, a consecrated sword and hat to James, in January 1537, exhorted him to oppose heresy. The King, having just married the eldest daughter of Francis I, the French King, was then in France. On meeting the messenger in February, James manifested the greatest satisfaction at this demonstration of the Pope’s regard, desired to receive the gift with the usual ceremonies, and expressed his gratitude with as many words as he could say in French. Henry VIII was reported to be displeased with James for accepting the gift, as the sword was intended to be used against the English.
James had done something to merit the Pope’s confidence and goodwill, for not only had he promised to do what he could to prevent the spread of Lutheranism; he had warned the Pope against James Melville; had re-enacted, with additions, the Act of 1525 against Lutheran books and heresies; and had delighted the Pope by his fidelity to the holy see.
It was much easier to burn Protestants or drive them into exile than to prevent the introduction and circulation of their books and pamphlets. Before breaking with Rome, Henry VIII and his abettors experienced considerable difficulties in trying to suppress heretical books, many of which were printed abroad and smuggled into England. Lists of them were given in proclam-
ations issued against them. In a proclamation at Paul’s Cross, in London, in 1531, no fewer than 30 works are listed, which the people were forbidden to buy, sell, or read. Of these, some attacked the Papacy, its doctrines and corruptions; others set forth the way of life. Some of them no doubt found their way into Scotland, as did the once-famous book, Unio Dissidentium.
One of the crimes for which Sir John Borthwick was condemned in his absence, in 1540, by Cardinal Beaton was that he had a copy of the heretical book called Unio Dissidentium. John Lambert, who was burned in Smithfield in 1538, defended the doctrine that “faith only doth justify and work salvation, before a man do any other good works”. In doing so, he said that this was shown “by many authorities, both of Scripture, and also of many holy fathers in a treatise called Unio Dissidentium, which I would to Christ, as it is in French and other languages, we had it truly translated into English”.
The primates of England and a body of Oxford and Cambridge divines, called together by Henry VIII, not only condemned a number of books printed in foreign regions as containing dangerous errors and blasphemies, but concluded that it was not necessary for the common people to have the Scriptures in their hands in English, which ought rather to be expounded to them by preachers. It was intimated that, if in future the people abandoned their perverse opinions, the King intended to cause an English translation to be made by “great learned and Catholic persons”; and that in the meantime all translations in circulation should be given up. This proclamation was made in June 1530. The last part struck at Tyndale’s translation, which had been in circulation for four years.
It has been supposed that the Act of the Scottish Parliament of 1535, against Lutheran books and heresies, was intended to exclude the English Bible, although it is not named in the Act. If so, it must have been aimed at Tyndale’s translation, not at Coverdale’s, as the Act was passed in the month of June, and Coverdale’s translation – the first complete printed Bible in the English language – was not issued until the following October. Tyndale’s New Testament “was smuggled into England, and found no lack of purchasers, who were obliged to keep it in secrecy. But every effort was used by authority to put it down. Copies were bought up by the bishops in the hope that the whole printing would be destroyed; and there was more than one burning of the books in St Paul’s Churchyard. But the effect was only to encourage Tyndale to print off further copies and extend the scope of his labours; for he went on to translate some books of the Old Testament from the Hebrew.”22
The influence of Patrick Hamilton’s converts, of the Lutheran books and
22Quoted from James Gairdner in The Cambridge Modern History, vol 2, p 465.
of Tyndale’s Testaments, was beginning to tell in Scotland; hence the acknowledgment in the preamble of another Act of that Parliament in 1535, that “the damnable persuasions of heretics and their perverse doctrine gives occasion to [despise] the processes of cursing and other censures of Holy Kirk”. Whether the Act against Lutheran books and heresies was intended to strike against English translations of the New Testament or not, the Scottish bishops had already prohibited the reading of it in English. Against this prohibition, Alexander Alesius3 directed his appeal to James V.
Cochlaeus, a leading German opponent of Martin Luther, defended the decree of the bishops. He not only condemned Tyndale’s translation and Luther’s, which he denounced as corrupt, but also objected to any translation into the common language, no matter how faithfully it might be done. If the King wished to preserve among his people the ancient harmony in piety and divine worship with all the blessings of ecclesiastical discipline, Cochlaeus said, the King should “cease from this business of translation, especially at this time, because far more evil and ruin, than good or edification, will result from it. For the Lutherans will abuse the best and most undoubted translation for their contentions and questions about the faith, in opposition to the bishops and monks, whom they make the people to suspect as persons that do not teach the truth, but for the sake of their belly suppress it and unjustly keep it back. Thus, taking whatever translation in the native language you give them, they will point out to the people many and various passages of Holy Scripture that seem, according to the letter, to read in favour of the Lutheran doctrines, or if they do not read so, still with a wrapping of subtleties, they will wrest it to that sense which they wish.”
In his own estimation, Cochlaeus sufficiently proved that the decree of the bishops, to which Alesius objected, was in conformity with God’s law, with the ordinance of Christ and the Church, with civil and canon law, and with the right and most ancient practice of Christians, namely, that “the laity should hear the law of God and the gospel of Christ from the mouth of the priest in the church, rather than read them at home, with wicked contention to the destruction of themselves and others”.
This pamphlet evoked a response from Alesius. The King promised to do what he could for Cochlaeus, and thanked Erasmus4 and Ferdinand,5 who had commended him to James. In commending Cochlaeus, Erasmus praised James for repelling Lutheranism, and this praise seems to have given the recipient special pleasure. Alesius’ pamphlets were probably consigned to the flames.
3A Scot who became a Protestant and was later a Divinity professor on Germany.
4A Dutch scholar of the Reformation period who remained a Roman Catholic.
5Holy Roman Emperor from 1556 till 1564.
At all events, Cardinal Pole, in writing to James a few years afterwards, expressed satisfaction at his having burned heretical books sent to him.
The decree of the Scottish bishops was not a dead letter. Not only had Henry Forrest suffered, as Knox alleges, for having “a New Testament in English”; but Lord William Howard and Bishop Barlow, writing from Edinburgh in May 1536, affirmed that the reading of God’s Word in English had lately been prohibited by open proclamation. And writing from Berwick on 29 March 1539, the Duke of Norfolk says, “Daily come unto me some gentlemen and some clerks [churchmen], which do flee out of Scotland, as they say, for reading of Scripture in English; saying that if they were taken, they should be put to execution”.