Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 22 October 1914, Page 21

Current Topics

History as She is' Taught : A State History Card

The State, it may be admitted, undertakes a somewhat difficult tasK when it undertakes, in mixed community, the i teaching and compilation of history—me difficulty arising partly from uncertainty and dispute as to the facts, and partly from ' the religious passions, the prejudices, and the ignorance which men and women bring to the subject. What widely different estimates. have been formed, for example, of the character of Henry VIII. and of Luther, of Cromwell and of Elizabeth; and what legends and absurdities have been put forward as history in connection with such incidents as the Gunpowder Plot and the Spanish Armada. There are three principles, it appears to us, which the compilers of school histories might fairly be expected to follow, and the observance of which would minimise if it did not entirely remove the sense of grievance and injustice so often experienced by one or other section of the community. (1) They should consult, as far as possible, State papers and official documents, and when that cannot be done, they should follow those authorities who have the highest reputation for scholarliness and impartiality. A writer is not a historian merely because he calls his book a ‘ history,’ and no one with the true historic sense would think of following an author who writes on historical subjects merely because he happens to have achieved distinction for his literary style. (2) They should make an honest attempt to confine themselves to well ascertained and indisputable facts. Doubtful statements, comments, and opinions should be carefully eschewedthey are not history, and are out of place in a manual for children. (3) Where controverted questions must be touched upon, the compiler should avoid all trace of partisanship ; and even if a particular view be adopted, at least the point of view of both sides in the controversy should be indicated.

In a card which has been brought under our notice —published by the N.Z. Education Department and distributed by it both to Catholic and State schools in the Dominionall three of these principles are violated or ignored. The card is No. 30 of a series of pictorial representations of English history, is entitled ‘John Wyclif sending out the Poor Priests,’ and purports to give a summary of the life and doings of the Lollard leader. (a) The card betrays, in the first place, an utter lack of judicial temper and of the sense of proportion which is so absolutely necessary to the correct pourtrayal of historical characters. It is disfigured throughout by gross over-statement and exaggeration. It - has only two colors in its palette —-.gold leaf for Wyclif and his followers, and tarand feathers —for the monks and friars. ‘ During the early part of his life,’ the children are told, ‘Wyclif had seen how monks and friars, who had taken vows of poverty, had gathered riches and lived lives of luxury and ease, caring little for the poor and their sufferings. So he preached against these indolent monks, and, of course, earned their hatred.’ Doubtless not all the monks and friars lived up to the full spirit, of their high vocation ; but it is equally certain that this sweeping and unqualified condemnation is a gross libel on the great body of the monastic Orders. On this point the situation may be fairly summed up, in the words of. the Protestant Brewer, whose intimate knowledge of this period of English history is admitted on all hands ; ‘ That in so large a body of men, so widely dispersed, seated for so many centuries in the richest and fairest estates of England, for which they were mainly indebted to their own skill, perseverance, and industry, discreditable members were to be found (and what literary chiffonier, raking in the scandalous annals of any profession, cannot find filth and corruption?) is likely enough, but that the corruption was either so black or so general as’ party

spirit would have us believe, is contrary to all analogy, and is unsupported by impartial and contemporary evidence.' Equally exaggerated, in the opposite direction, is the card's rose-tinted picture of a faultless and flawless Wyclif. It is true that Wyclif was a man of pure moral character— the narrower sense of the term—but it is equally true that he held and taught doctrines which were not only dangerous to society, but which were, in some instances, flat and unredeemed blasphemies against the "Deity. ■ . * (b) But worse even than the sins of exaggeration and of omission which must be laid to the charge of this ' history ' card is its positive and outright false statement in regard to one of the plainest and best attested facts of English history. ' The great work of Wyclif's life,' runs the card legend, ' was the translation of the Bible into English. . .This teas the first complete translation of the Bible that was ever made in English.' Behind this statement there lies, of course, the implication that hitherto the Bible had been withheld from the people in the vernacular, and\ that they had had no opportunity of becoming familiar with its contents until the advent of this ' morning star of the Reformation.' Both the statement of alleged fact and its implication —and can be shown to —absolutely false and any compilation which promulgates this nowexploded fable stands at once condemned as unscholarly and unhistorical. Let us cite some witnesses. But first of all we may remark that it is now regarded as entirely beyond question that Wyclif did not translate the whole of the Scriptures; and the latest and best authorities hold strongly that his share in the translation which has been popularly called ' Wyclif's Bible' was a very humble one, if, indeed, he had part or lot in the work at all. ' There is scarcely any contemporary evidence except that of his bitterest opponent,' says the learned Protestant Blunt, in his Plain. Account of the English Bible, 'that Wyclif was really -the author of this translation, but there can be no doubt that tradition is to be believed when it associates his name with it. .•.■--.. The popular idea of Wycliffe sitting alone in his study at Lutterworth, and making a complete new translation of the whole Bible with his own hands, is one of those many popular ideals which will not stand the test of historical inquiry' (pp. 17-19). 'The name of John Wyclif,' he says again, ' has been used as a peg to hang many a work upon with which the owner of the name had nothing whatever to do' {lbid, p. 17). Mr. Thompson, chief librarian of the British Museum, after pointing out that recent criticism has rejected Wyclif's claim to the authorship of a number of works attributed to him, goes on to say that as to Wyclif's concern with the English Bible the New Testament portion alone can be said to be even ' probably ' due ' to the hand of Wycliffe' (Wycliffe Exhib. B. Museum, p. xvii). Mr. A. W. Pollard, M.A., Fellow of King's College, London, and author of Books About Books, the 'Globe' Chaucer, etc., in his tercentenary volume, Records of the English Bible, goes further, ■■ and expresses the frank belief that the reformer had no personal share whatever in the translation attributed to him. Under the heading ' The Wyclif Bibles,' he says (p. 1) : 'A version was made, about 1380-3, and.some years later this was revised and substantially rewritten in a simpler style by another hand. That the reformer himself took any personal share in either of these versions which pass popularly under his name is unlikely, and in the case of the second is not seriously contended. We know from a manuscript at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, that Nicholas of Hereford, who, up to the time of the final., defeat of Wycliffe's cause at Oxford (June, 1382), figured as one of his strongest supporters at the University, was the author of the first version as far as Baruch 111., 20, where it breaks off in the manuscript abruptly, presumably because of Hereford's flight. ~ The authorship of the rest of this version is unknown, and being unknown has been ascribed to Wycliffe himself, with more

piety than probability, since the master does not often take up the work of the disciple, and, Wycliffe, after June, 1382, was both old and ill.* These.are all Protestant authorities of high standing. The learned Catholic writer, Dr. Gasquet, who ranks among the highest as an authority on this period of English history, has long promulgated a similar view.

But what we are principally concerned to establish is the absolute falsity of the statement that the socalled ‘ Wyclif’s Bible was the first complete translation of the Bible that was ever made iii English.’ On this point we will cite the plain, direct, and explicit testimony of four authoritative and entirely unimpeachable witnesses. (1) The translators of the Authorised Version of 1611, in their Preface,’ referring to previous translations of the Scriptures into the language of the people, make the following important statements. After enumerating many converted nations that had the Vernacular Scriptures, they come to the case of England, and include it among the others. ‘ Much about that time,’ they say (1360), ‘even in our King Richatd the Second’s days, John Trevisa translated .them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age. ... So that, to have the Scriptures in’ the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up, either by the Lord Cromwell in England (or others) . . . but hath been thought upon, and put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any nation.’ This testimony, from the Preface, (too little known) of their own Authorised Bible, ought to carry some weight with welldisposed Protestants, and even with a State Education Department. (2) The ‘ Reformed ’ Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, in his preface to the Bible of 1540, bears similar testimony: ‘ If the matter should be tried by custom,’ he says, ‘ we might also allege custom for the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and prescribe the more ancient custom. For it is not much above one hundred years ago, since Scripture hath not been accustomed to bo read in the vulgar tongue within this realm; and many hundred years before that, it was translated and read in the Saxon tongue, which at that time was our mother tongue: whereof there remain yet diver’s copies found lately in old abbeys, of such antique manner of writing and speaking, that few men now be able to read and understand them. And when this language waxed old and out of common usage, because folk should not lack the fruit of reading, it was again translated into the newer language whereof yet also many copies remain and be daily found.’ (3) Foxe, the martyrologist, it is needless to say, had no bias in favor of the Catholic Church. His name is a very household word for everything that is hostile to the ancient Church of England, yet, so notorious was the fact of the existence of an English Bible before Wyclif’s time, that he writes thus in his dedication to Archbishop Parker, of his edition of the Saxon Gospels: ‘ If histories be well examined We shall find both before the Conquest and after, as well before John Wycliffe was born as since, the whole body of the Scriptures was by sundry men translated into our country tongue.’ (4) Finally, there remains the classic, unanswered, and unanswerable testimony—several times repeated—of the Lord High Chancellor of England, Sir Thomas More : ‘ The whole Bible,’ he says, ‘ long before Wyclif’s day was by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English (tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read ’ ( Dialogues 111.). And again he says; ‘ As for old oxxes (translations) that were before Wyclif’s days, they remain lawful and be in some folk’s hands. Myself have seen, and can show you, Bibles, 'fair and old, which have been known and seen by the Bishop of the Diocese, and left in laymen’s hands and women’s too, such as he knew for good and Catholic folk, that used them with soberness and votion A writer in the .Encyclopaedia Britannica (tenth edition) thus deals with the attempt to explain away this testimony: The ‘/many copies” which remained when Cranmer ; wrote in 1540 have doubtless disappeared in the vast and ruthless destruction of libraries which took place within a few years

after that date.' And Blunt disposes of it in the same conclusive mariner/ He writes: 'More, Granmer, and Foxe were acute menV not' likely to be deceived into mistaking Bibles of a recent for those of an ancient date. More, particularly, who doubtless thought " Wycliffe's Bible" "naught," was a critic of much literary excellence. While Cranmer speaks of early English Bibles, in 1540, being in old abbeys, in just the same way as a writer of the fourteenth century said in 1398 that they wire there. That they have not come down to us, is, doubtless, owing to the fact that in Edward Vl.'s reign all old libraries were ruthlessly destroyed. The University 'Library of Oxford, the Library of Merton College, that of Guildhall, London, and those of the dissolved monasteries, were packed off as waste paper to anyone who would buy them, and the very shelves and benches of the first-named library were sold for firewood. The earlier the English in which old books were written, the iisss intelligible and the more pernicious the;/ would seem to flu- silly vandals who wrought such destruction.' (Plain Account of the English Bible, note, p. 28). Thus perishes, in the light of the well authenticated facts of history, the once popular myth regarding ' Wyclif Bible'—a piece of historical romance that is entirely devoid of solid foundation, and the perpetration of which is altogether unworthy of any up-to-date official Education Department. * We have treated this subject at some length because, if it had to be dealt with at all, it was necessary for us to give full chapter and verse for every position taken. Not all Catholic schools have received the card to which we have drawn attention, but some, we know,, have had it sent to them. On the ground that it accepts without qualification, Wyclif's biassed and one-sided estimate of the monks and friars, and still more on the ground that its main statement is absolutely inaccurate and unhistoric, the Catholic teachers who have been recipients of the compilation might very well make it the subject of a temperate protest and expostulation to the Department. It may be that our New Zealand authorities have merely accepted and adopted the card as already in use in the English., elementary schools. If that is the case, it only furnishes an additional reason why a check should be placed on its further dissemination. We have only to add, for the benefit of children in country districts who often, as a matter of necessity, have to attend the State schools, that there is a conscience clause in regard to history, and no child is obliged to attend history lessons to which his parent offers any objection. ■ . '