(Dr Mishtooni Bose, Christ Church, Oxford; Dr Kantik Ghosh, Trinity College, Oxford; Dr Elizabeth Solopova, English Faculty, Oxford – the John Fell Fund Main Award Scheme, pump-priming grant, January-December 2010)

The coming 400-year anniversary of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible in 2011 reminds us that there is also an important medieval tradition of Biblical translation in English. We owe the first complete vernacular version of the Bible to the seminal work of the followers of John Wyclif. This project will focus on the manuscripts of this first full English translation, which, like the Authorised Version, was also perhaps produced in Oxford. The project will address an important scholarly need for we do not know the answers to some of the most fundamental questions about the Wycliffite Bible, an exceptionally influential and widely disseminated work, surviving in a much larger number of copies than any other Middle English text.

Perhaps the most important questions, which remain unanswered, are where, how and by whom the translation was made. A project of such unprecedented scale must have involved a large number of collaborators and required exceptional organization. The highly scholarly nature of the work demanded diverse expertise and access to a large number of books. All this makes Oxford, Wyclif’s residence until 1381, a particularly likely place of origin of the translation, but direct evidence for this is yet to be uncovered.

Another equally baffling and important question is how the Bible was disseminated. In a few cases we know who owned the manuscripts, but in almost no case do we know where or by whom they were made. The manuscripts, like the language of the translation, are extremely difficult to date or place linguistically and geographically, as if all the clues to their origin and provenance had been intentionally and thoroughly removed. This is partly a result of censorship following legislation, passed early in the 15th century, prohibiting the production and use of any unlicensed recent translations of the Bible. In this situation workshops, which produced and sold the manuscripts, and the owners of the Bibles were unwilling to leave their names on their copies. There is even evidence that dates were removed from some manuscripts and false dates added to others to make them appear pre-1380s and therefore permitted. Considering all this, it is very difficult to explain why many manuscripts of the Bible were nevertheless professionally and expensively produced, and frequently decorated.

The project will undertake a paleographic, codicological and textual analysis of a representative group of the manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian Library. It will uncover and systematically describe the evidence for the production, textual history, ownership and use of the Bible. This work will be undertaken by Dr Elizabeth Solopova. One of the aims will be to understand more correctly the economic and social circumstances that allowed the dissemination of this controversial text on an unprecedentedly large scale. The project will have a wide-ranging interdisciplinary impact, for the analysis of primary sources it will produce will influence historical, theological, linguistic and literary research.

MS. Bodl. 277, Bible (later Wycliffite version)English, [London?] c. 1415-1430

The project will be directed by Dr Mishtooni Bose and Dr Kantik Ghosh. Professor Anne Hudson, the author of the seminal work on Lollardy, will act as a consultant. The project will also aim to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and students in Oxford, interested in manuscripts of the Wycliffite texts and in late medieval religious and liturgical manuscripts. The award from the John Fell Fund includes funding for a series of seminars that will bring to Oxford leading researchers in this field. The project’s Advisory Group includes Dr Bruce Barker-Benfield (Bodleian Library), Dr Ian Forrest (History), Professor Vincent Gillespie (English), Professor Ralph Hanna (English), Professor Nigel Palmer (Modern Languages) and Dr Lesley Smith (History and Theology).