Owning an English Bible Outlawed

When the Bible Became Evidence

In 1409 the archbishop of Canterbury made it an offense in the church's law to translate the Bible into English, or to own or read any English translation made since the days of John Wycliffe, without a bishop's license. The Constitutions of Oxford did not forbid Scripture in Latin, which only the educated could read. They forbade the Word in the language of the farmer, the weaver, and the mother. For more than a century afterward, an English Gospel found in a house could be used to prove its owner a heretic, and heresy in England was punished by fire.

The law drew on two centuries of regional church rulings against Scripture in the common tongue, and it anticipated a general Roman policy in the age of printing. Yet it did not destroy the English Bible. It drove it underground, into kitchens and workshops, until a later generation set it in every parish church. The story raises a question for every generation: to whom does the Word of God belong?