The English language during the middle ages had a serious struggle with the church of its time. Church officials supported that the Bible should only be published in Latin. This led to a large number of people having no idea what was happening during a worship service. Even though church attendance was mandatory.

One response to this problem was the development of “mystery plays.” These were theatrical performances based on the bible. The topics ranged from Genesis to Revelation and were performed in local languages. However, watching pseudo-movies and reading the text for yourself are widely different experiences.

This post will look at the role of several prominent people’s response to the suppression of English in religious text.

John Wycliffe

The lack of scripture in the English language led to John Wycliffe translating the Latin Vulgate into English. Naturally, this was illegal and Wycliffe faced significant trouble over doing this. Despite this, his translation was one of the first translations of the Bible into what was called at the time a “vulgar” language.

Wycliffe’s translation was not from the original text but rather from the Latin. This means it was a translation of a translation which nearly destroys the comprehensibility of the text.

William Tyndale

William Tyndale attempted to deal with the challenges of the Wycliff translation by translating the bible from the original Greek and Hebrew. Tyndale’s translation heavily influences the English language as he literally had to create words to capture the meaning of the text. Such phrases as “scapegoat”, “sea-shore”, and “my brother’s  keeper” were developed by Tyndale to communicate ideas within the bible.  For his work, Tyndale was put to death.  It took him about

Naturally, many were not happen with what Tyndale had accomplished. For his work, Tyndale was put to death.  It took him about four years to complete his work

King James Bible

However, the move away from Latin to English was made complete with the development of the 1611 King James Bible. The KJV is named as King James the I of England who sponsored the translation of the bible for political reasons.  By the 17th century, there were so many versions of the bible that scholars wanted a definitive translation and King James I sponsored this.

Over fifty scholars worked on this translation for five years. Despite all this work, the 1611 KJV is 60-80% based on Tyndale’s work a century prior. This makes Tyndale’s work all the more amazing that he did the work of 50 scholars in the same amount of time. From this moment English became know as the language of the preacher

Conclusion

The role of English in religious matters today is due in part to the work of Wycliffe, Tyndale, and the scholars of the KJV. Their efforts led to supplanting Latin as the language of worship while also contributing many idioms to the English language