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Authors: Brian Moynahan
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collapse and ecstasy, a divider of families, a breaker of kingdoms. ‘We will try everything by the touchstone of the gospel,’ Melanchthon said, ‘and the fire of Paul.’ Read in that light, the Bible was a force with the power of apocalypse.
What was not in it was quite as important as what was. Readers found that many powerful institutions and beliefs were not directly blessed by God at all, but only by tradition and the Church. The Bible made no mention of the papacy, or of bishops or hierarchies. It was silent on the celibacy of priests. It did not state that the sacramental bread and wine was ‘transubstantiated’ into the body and blood of Christ at communion. It did not encourage the cult of saints and relics, from which the Church derived much income and prestige; on the contrary, it warned that: ‘Thou shalt not make any graven image, nor bow down to it, nor worship it.’ It made no promise that a pilgrimage or a cash payment to a pardoner would result in the forgiveness of sins. The word ‘purgatory’ appeared nowhere in it; it was a twelfth-century invention. Yet, to escape its supposed clutches, men and women left large sums to chantry priests to perform ‘trentals’, series of thirty intercessionary masses for their souls. Henry VII had made special efforts to avoid purgatory; the old king ordered ten thousand masses for his own soul at 6d apiece, twice the standard fee.
Anyone who went through the scriptures in the 1520s was certain to remark on these and other omissions, all of which appeared to reflect badly on the Church. Radicalism was in the air – the English authorities cited ‘the malignity of this present time, with the inclination of people to erroneous opinions’ as an additional reason for banning translations – and readers knew what to look for. It was a fact, not a papal invention, that a widely read Bible was a danger to the Church. Serving Catholic priests – a categorythat covered both Luther and Tyndale – lost their faith simply by reading it. One such was Menno Simons, a twenty-eight-year-old who had ‘never touched’ the scriptures during his first three years as a priest. While handling the bread and wine in the mass, however, Simons had the troubling notion that they were not the flesh and blood of Christ. He attributed this to the devil trying to separate him from his faith. ‘I confessed it often, sighed, and prayed,’ he wrote, ‘yet I could not come clear of the ideas.’ He spent his time drinking, playing cards and brooding.
‘Finally, I got the idea to examine the New Testament diligently,’ he said. ‘I had not gone very far when I discovered that we were deceived …’ He was ‘quickly relieved’ to find that his doubts were justified, finding no evidence that the bread and wine were anything but mere symbols of Christ’s passion. He heard of a new sect, the Anabaptists, who rejected infant baptism and were rebaptised as adults. ‘I examined the scriptures diligently and pondered them earnestly,’ Simons wrote, ‘but could find no report of infant baptism.’ He realised that his new beliefs on baptism and the sacraments now made him a heretic in the eyes of his Church. He had become so, he wrote, ‘through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, through much reading and pondering of the scriptures, and by the gracious favour and gift of God …’ The experience was overwhelming. Simons abandoned the lusts of his youth and his search for ‘gain, ease, fame and the favour of men’; he was a hunted fugitive until his death. He thought it a bargain, for ‘if I should gain the whole world and live a thousand years, and at last have to endure the wrath of God, what would I have gained?’
Tyndale had that same exhilaration. He wrote of being embraced by the light of ‘Evangelion (that we call the gospel) … a Greek word and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad and maketh him sing, dance and leap for
What was not in it was quite as important as what was. Readers found that many powerful institutions and beliefs were not directly blessed by God at all, but only by tradition and the Church. The Bible made no mention of the papacy, or of bishops or hierarchies. It was silent on the celibacy of priests. It did not state that the sacramental bread and wine was ‘transubstantiated’ into the body and blood of Christ at communion. It did not encourage the cult of saints and relics, from which the Church derived much income and prestige; on the contrary, it warned that: ‘Thou shalt not make any graven image, nor bow down to it, nor worship it.’ It made no promise that a pilgrimage or a cash payment to a pardoner would result in the forgiveness of sins. The word ‘purgatory’ appeared nowhere in it; it was a twelfth-century invention. Yet, to escape its supposed clutches, men and women left large sums to chantry priests to perform ‘trentals’, series of thirty intercessionary masses for their souls. Henry VII had made special efforts to avoid purgatory; the old king ordered ten thousand masses for his own soul at 6d apiece, twice the standard fee.
Anyone who went through the scriptures in the 1520s was certain to remark on these and other omissions, all of which appeared to reflect badly on the Church. Radicalism was in the air – the English authorities cited ‘the malignity of this present time, with the inclination of people to erroneous opinions’ as an additional reason for banning translations – and readers knew what to look for. It was a fact, not a papal invention, that a widely read Bible was a danger to the Church. Serving Catholic priests – a categorythat covered both Luther and Tyndale – lost their faith simply by reading it. One such was Menno Simons, a twenty-eight-year-old who had ‘never touched’ the scriptures during his first three years as a priest. While handling the bread and wine in the mass, however, Simons had the troubling notion that they were not the flesh and blood of Christ. He attributed this to the devil trying to separate him from his faith. ‘I confessed it often, sighed, and prayed,’ he wrote, ‘yet I could not come clear of the ideas.’ He spent his time drinking, playing cards and brooding.
‘Finally, I got the idea to examine the New Testament diligently,’ he said. ‘I had not gone very far when I discovered that we were deceived …’ He was ‘quickly relieved’ to find that his doubts were justified, finding no evidence that the bread and wine were anything but mere symbols of Christ’s passion. He heard of a new sect, the Anabaptists, who rejected infant baptism and were rebaptised as adults. ‘I examined the scriptures diligently and pondered them earnestly,’ Simons wrote, ‘but could find no report of infant baptism.’ He realised that his new beliefs on baptism and the sacraments now made him a heretic in the eyes of his Church. He had become so, he wrote, ‘through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, through much reading and pondering of the scriptures, and by the gracious favour and gift of God …’ The experience was overwhelming. Simons abandoned the lusts of his youth and his search for ‘gain, ease, fame and the favour of men’; he was a hunted fugitive until his death. He thought it a bargain, for ‘if I should gain the whole world and live a thousand years, and at last have to endure the wrath of God, what would I have gained?’
Tyndale had that same exhilaration. He wrote of being embraced by the light of ‘Evangelion (that we call the gospel) … a Greek word and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad and maketh him sing, dance and leap for
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