Tyndale

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

WILLIAM, memorable in the history of the English Bible; born in Gloucestershire, England, about 1484; was educated first at Oxford-at Magdalen Hall, says unvarying traditionand graduated B. A. in 1512. In the spring of 1524 he went to Hamburg, probably made his way thence to Wittenberg, next in the autumn of 1525 to Cologne, and there, with the help of a Franciscan friar named William Roye, and another, began with Quentel in 1525 the printing of his English New Testament in an impression of 3,000 copies in quarto size. This had not proceeded beyond the Gospels of Matthew and Mark when the officious intrigues of Cochlæus forced Tyndale to flee to "Philosophical Magazine" "Discoveries in Worms, where, instead of completing Magnetism." He was elected a Fellow Quentel's unfinished work, Peter Schoeffer printed for him another impression of 3,000 copies in a small octavo size, without prefaces to the books or annotations in the margin. Tunstall and Warham denounced the book, hundreds of copies were bought up and burned by their authority, but in both forms it made its way by the summer of 1526 to the hearts of Englishmen, and the strong simplicity and homely vigor of its style established a standard of Biblical translation into English, and bequeathed its phrase imperishable to all posterity. Meantime Tyndale continued to toil indefatigably at the labor of his life. In 1530 he published at Malborow (Marburg) by Hans Luft his version of the "Pentateuch" (reprinted by Rev. J. I. Mombert, 1885), where the marginal glosses, almost all original, contain many violent attacks on the Pope and the bishops, full of rich satire, irony, and even humor. Once again before the end Tyndale revised his Testament (1535), this time without the marginal notes, but with the innovation of headings to the Gospels and Acts, but not the Epistles. But now it wanted only the crown of martyrdom to consecrate the lifelong devotion of Tyndale to his task. He was arrested and lodged in prison in May, 1535. Tyndale's protracted trial was apparently not begun till 1536; on Friday, Oct. 6, of that year he was first strangled, then burned. Foxe tells us that at the stake he cried: "Lord, open the king of England's eyes!" Eight years before he had written, "If they shall burn me, they shall do none other thing than that I look for There is none other way into the kingdom of life than through persecution and suffering of pain, and of very death, after the example of Christ." Tyndale's chief original works were "A Parable of the Wicked Mammon" (1527); "Obedience of a Christian Man," his most elaborate book (1528); and "Practice of Prelates" (1530), a pungent piece of controversial polemic, called forth by Sir Thomas More's "Dialogue" (1529), which he met formally with his plain and pointed "Answer" (1531). More followed next year with the first part of his long and intemperate "Confutation," a work unworthy of its author's reputation.