William Tyndale: A Great Martyr

It's always a little frustrating that you can't know all that I have learned about a subject. But the fact is, we must both be content with sharing a little of the books and articles that are read. And so, I come to this book about William Tyndale and Sir Thomas More (there's not enough space to discuss him as well) without knowing exactly how to take so little out of it, and make it palateable and worthwhile. Brian Moynahan's interesting book--God's Bestseller--has almost 400 pages; the chapters begin with Tyndale's youth and go through  political and social situations to his death. Even Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn were  involved!

Just about the time that Tyndale was through with Cambridge, Martin Luther, in his native Germany, was having an enormous effect on the minds of sincere and thoughtful priests and preachers. Luther was preaching the faults of the Catholic Church--"its greed and decadence, its shameless use of the 'threat of the stake and the shame of heresy' to terrify its critics, and the 'loose blabber' of its priests, prevented the faithful from understanding the manifest things of God." And the struggle to reach this conclusion caused Luther to "ponder his insights," and he said that he felt "as though I had been reborn altogether and had entered Paradise."


He then wrote that "the face of the whole of Scripture became apparent to me." Part of the truth he realized was that men did not need the clergy to tell them what the scripture said, when they could read it for themselves. With the help of the printing press, Luther began to publish his tracts and brochures on the differences in what the scripture said, and what the Catholic Church was doing. And with Gutenberg's printing of the Vulgate Bible in 1455, the ball was rolling toward a day of enlightment--not just with what the scripture said, but that anyone could access its truths without the aid of the clergy. Of course, this was heresy to the Catholic Church. This view of Luther shows the influence which he may have had on Tyndale.

Many thousand pamphlets written by Luther came off the German presses, and soon flooded into England. This alarmed the English Church, and they began to have book burnings. Now, pamphlets by Luther were not only plentiful, but cheap. Sir Thomas More rose up to defend the faith in England, just as Tyndale was at the beginning of his decision to translate the Latin Bible into English, so that every man could read God's word for himself. Luther was a reformer heard by many. Tyndale wasn't only a supporter of the kind of reforms Luther was proclaiming, but would live his life hidden and desperate to change the structure and influence of the Catholic Church for the good of the common man, and would eventually end his life at the stake. But not before presenting the world with the Bible in English.

To read the intrigues of Tyndale, More and the Catholic Church, you'll have to read the book. But you'll see that from a rather innocent beginning, where Tyndale attempted to get help from religious men, so that he could concentrate on his translating, to the awakening of the Catholic Church to the damage he could do is a long and arduous journey, involving the King of England and his mistress.

The pertinance of this became serious when Henry VIII asked the pope to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Moynahan says of this situation: "Henry VIII's long infatuation with Anne Boleyn--the king's 'great matter'--was of great good fortune to the evangelicals. The pope's refusal to annul Henry's marriage with Catherine of Aragon led to a break with Rome, and undermined Wolsey and More. Anne was herself reform minded. She had a copy of Tyndale's banned New Testament, and she marked passages, with her fingernail, in his book The Obedience of a Christian Man that she wished Henry to read, and 'besought his grace most tenderly to reade them'. But Tyndale failed to make use of her sympathy."

When the pope decided against Henry, their relationship fell apart and a new church was born. Sir Thomas More was arrested and put in prison, because he would not swear to serve the new church and its leader. But he was allowed books, pen and paper, along with as much freedom as a prison can afford. Moynahan believes that even after his imprisonment, More went after Tyndale.

Tyndale was eventually arrested, found guilty of heresy and stripped of his priestly dignity in August 1536. Moynahan gives this description under a woodcarving of Tyndale's death on October 6, 1536: "The execututioner strangles Tyndale moments before burning him at the stake in Vilvoorde. His last words--'Lord ope the King of England's eyes'--became part of Protestant mythology. Contemporaries noted no such words, however, only that the strangling was bungled and that he suffered terribly."

Throughout his adult life, Tyndale fought to give the scripture to the common people. Translating first the New Testament, and then parts of the Old Testament, he sought ways and means to get his translations published and into the hands of the people. His existence was spent with a single focus: to translate the Latin Bible into the English language--one the common people could understand. From his humble vision of translating the Bible to his betrayal, through the horrific conditions of his prison cell, and onto a stake where he was burned for telling the truth, Tyndale was a great martyr. We should thank God for him, and for all the men who gave their lives for us to read the Bible.

Just take what you can from this tribute to the martyrs and see their suffering and sacrifice as a price they paid for us. Brian Moynahan has given this book the vitality of a fiction writer, and it isn't at all dry. I enjoyed it very much, especially as it caused a change in my life. I hope you'll take a look at it.

Blessings...Mimi

Today: Anglican Church Feast Day for W. Tyndale 1494-1536

I find it ironic that I opened Moynahan's book at the end this morning and found that today is William Tyndale's Feast Day in Anglican churches! So I will honor Tyndale (1494-1536) with this information about what he accomplished. The statue in the picture is in Millennium Square in Bristol, England.

Moynahan says that William Tyndale was never sainted and that his feast day is kept by few churches. And his honors are few, especially in comparison to his great adversary, Sir Thomas More, who has been honored repeatedly with his name on schools, colleges, housing estates and streets, and with statues and momuments, as well as the film "A Man for All Seasons." And in 2000, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Sir Thomas More the patron saint of politicians.

What exactly did William Tyndale accomplish? Tyndale translated much of the Bible, beginning with  the New Testament. And I quote Moynahan: "In 1535, Miles Coverdale had published the first complete English Bible, dedicated to Henry VIII, and probably printed at Zurich. Coverdale based this on Tyndale and the Vulgate, translating the outstanding Old Testament books from Luther and Zwingli, and with reference to the Vulgate." Other Bibles were printed, including a "definitive Tyndale Testament," which Moynahan says is "fitting of Tyndale's ultimate triumph that the first English printer to put his name to a Tyndale testament, in 1548, should have lived where so many Tyndale bibles had been burnt."  

And finally, Moynahan gives this information: The title page of the King James Bible of 1611 says that it was newly translated out of the original tongues, but very little of it actually was. It is a memorial to Tyndale that more than four-fifths of the New Testament is directly his, and three-quarters of the Old Testament are books that he translated. So our King James Version of the Bible--the authorized version of 1611--amounts to the New Testament being 83.7 % Tyndale's and the Old Testament is 75.7% Tyndale's. For his efforts, Tyndale was betrayed, and then not only burned at the stake, but was hung at the same time, in order to satisfy the laws of the Catholic Church in regard to heretics. The date was October 6, 1536.

Thank God for men like Martin Luther, John Huss, John Wycliffe and William Tyndale. They lived and died for their faith.

Blessings...Mimi

Gutenberg Bible 1455

First book published with moveable type.

God's Bestseller ~ by Brian Moynahan

John Wycliffe 1324-1384

God's Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible--A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal by Brian Moynahan

This book is an illustration of what reading a book can do to change and enhance a person's life. I don't recall why I bought the book, except that it sounded so interesting, but it has had a profound effect on me. I believe one reason is my age--older and wiser so to speak. But if you have any inclination toward an understanding of the past sacrifices that have been made, so that we can have access to reading the Bible, then I advise you to read this book.

After reading half of it--sometimes in tears for the suffering of people who loved the Word of God--I made a promise to myself that I would do my best not to let a day go by without reading, listening, or in some way focusing on God's word. Now this may not sound like a big deal to you, but the strength of the energy which compelled me to make the commitment was a big deal to me! And you may think that as a Christian, I was already doing just that. But it was different to commit myself fully to doing so. So I want to share with you some of the contents of this book about the martyrs, the world they lived in, and the world they died in so wretchedly.

This book begins with the 1426 ceremony for John Wycliffe, a priest and rector who had died 44 years earlier, after suffering a stroke. The ceremony took place after the Pope had declared Wycliffe's posthumous condemnation as a heretic. The Catholic Church went so far as to curse his soul, damning it to eternal separation from God. The Catholic Church itself couldn't carry out a burning, but the high sheriff had the executioner exhume his bones, burn them, and his ashes scattered in the waters of the Swift, ridding the world of all physical trace of the heretic.

Moynahan says that Wycliffe was "a fierce and blunt-spoken Yorkshiremen, and a fine scholar." He had become master of Balliol at Oxford College in 1360 at the age of 30. He says that "Generations of scholars had paid lip service to the Bible, of course. They  mined it for individual texts to use in debates and sermons, and they wrote copious notes and glosses on passages within it. But their approach was logical and scholastic; they did not think of it as a work that was alive and breathing, like the God who had created it. It was a priestly text, dusty, locked up in Latin, safely beyond the reach of the English at large. Religion had come to mean the Church itself, and its traditions." But John Wycliffe was determined to change all of these conditions.

Wycliffe declared the Bible and not the Catholic Church as the "highest authority for every Christian, and the standard of faith and all human perfection." And he made personal faith in Christ more important than obeying the merits of the Catholic Church. He also said that this faith flowed from reading the scripture, and that the decadence of churchmen was an obstacle to it. He continued to rail against the clergy, and the Pope's ownership of the greater part of England. Then he argued that the Bible should be translated from Latin into English, so that the rudest man could learn his duty. The common people were banned from reading the Bible by order of Rome. And before this time, there had never been a complete translation of the Bible. Wycliffe completed his translation of the Vulgate into vernacular English in 1382, and it became known as Wyclif's Bible. He was also the founder of the Lollard movement--a Christian religious Order and preaching movement--which was the precursor to the Protestant Reformation. Because of this, he is often called "The Morning Star of the Reformation."

I really want to talk about Tyndale, but I wanted first to give a little information about some of the thoughts and attitudes before there was a translation of the Bible from Latin into English. So next time, I'll say more about Tyndale and his work. 

Blessings...Mimi