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The Earliest Translations of Luther into English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

William A. Clebsch
William A. Clebsch
Affiliation:
Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, Texas
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Extract

During the 1520's Luther's Latin writings were well known to scholars in England. But the realm was officially as loyal to the Catholic cause as any the popes of that decade might have named. The few clerics and theologians who dedicated themselves to the rediscovered gospel were hunted out and severely punished. Only by escape to the continent might they save their lives, in relative safety study evangelical teachings, and find literary expression for their convictions. Moreover, it was clear by 1525 that only through translating the scriptures and evangelical thought into English might the realm be reformed. Among the small circle of English Protestant writers, William Tyndale led the field by turning the New Testament into his mother tongue (1525–1526). He was guided by Luther's German New Testament not only in framing that translation but also in drafting the prefaces to it and to its individual books. Perhaps Tyndale had translated Bugenhagen's Epistola … ad Anglos into English, and perhaps MS. copies of this translation were circulated, but extant published copies date back only to 1536. Certainly Tyndale was the first translator of a Luther tract to have his work preserved to us.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 1963 , pp. 75 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1963

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References

1 W.A., 7, 705–778Google Scholar. Frith translated the portions found Ibid., pp. 722–772 and part of the last paragraph p. 778.

2 Wilkins, David, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (4 vols., London,1737), III, 707Google Scholar. Much confusion reignsover the Henrician lists of condemned books,confusion which in large measure is attributable to the gross inaccuracies of Steele, Robert R., Notes on English Books Printed Abroad, 1525–48 (London, 1912; reprinted from Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, XI, 189–236Google Scholar).

3 Fols. [vi]r, A.ijr.

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5 Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises …(Cambridge, 1848), p. xxxvii.Google Scholar

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9 Fol. Civ line 11-fol. C.ijv line 8.

10 Mozley, J. F., William Tyndale (London, 1937), p. 345Google Scholar. Mozley's confident judgment that Exposition of 1 Cor. 7 on the (presumably contemporaneous) “lists of books is also called The Matrimony of Tyndale” (idem.) was incorrect. No such list named Exposition and “also called” it Matrimony. Both titles appeared separately in three Henrician lists, Exposition without Matrimony in one, Matrimony without Exposition in none. Identification of the two works as one has the single attractive feature of disposing of Matrimony which otherwise seems to have escaped identification.

11 Tyndale, op. cit., p . 39.Google Scholar

12 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, I, 588;Google Scholar Letters and Papers … of Henry VIII, vol. III, 1760.

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22 Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments (fourth edn., ed. Pratt, Josiah, 8 vols., London, 1877), V, App. X;Google Scholar probably through some confusion authorship was attributed to Tyndale, and the entry came from the 1532 provincial synod's condemnation of Burgenhagen's Commentarius … in quatuor capita epistolae ad Corinthos.