DOUBLESPEAK: TRANSLATIONAL DOUBLING IN THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE AND

OTHER OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH BIBLICAL TEXTS

Matthew B. Diem

A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department
of English and Comparative Literature in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Chapel Hill
2022

Approved by:

Patrick P. O’Neill

Theodore H. Leinbaugh

Robert Babcock

Taylor Cowdery

Shayne Aaron Legassie

 © 2022
Matthew B. Diem
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ii
 ABSTRACT

Matthew B. Diem: Doublespeak: Translational Doubling in the Wycliffite Bible and Other Old
and Middle English Biblical Texts
(Under the direction of Patrick P. O’Neill)

This study examines the stylistic and semantic functions of translational doublets in

English prose translations of biblical texts from the late ninth to late fourteenth centuries.

Translational doublets are here defined as expressions in a translated text in which a single word

or phrase is translated by two alternative or complementary renderings joined by a conjunction

(“and” or “or”). Doublets common in medieval translations from Latin, and this study aims to

develop a taxonomy of doubling, based on the semantic relationship between the doublet’s two

members and between each member and the word they both translate, and apply it to a sample

corpus of related but chronologically and linguistically varied texts, in order to illustrate the

variety of uses to which doubling is put in medieval vernacular translation. Prose translations of

the Latin Bible are selected as a useful locus for examining doublets because the status of the

Bible as a sacred text, whose precise meaning was in the Middle Ages a matter both of extensive

scrutiny and often of official regulation, puts the relationship between translation and

interpretation into especially sharp relief. The chief texts examined are two Old English

interlinear biblical glosses, King Alfred’s translation of the first fifty Psalms, and the two

versions of the Wycliffite Bible, but the West-Saxon Gospels, the Old English Heptateuch,

Richard Rolle’s English Psalter, and two non-Wycliffite partial New Testaments of the late

fourteenth century are also considered.

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 It is argued that doublets fill an ambiguous position between literal translation and

explanatory gloss that can allow a translator to elaborate, clarify, or emphasize aspects of the

source-text’s meaning without resorting to intrusive exegesis. Doublets are almost always

associated with the “literal sense” of Scripture, but their widely varying use underscores how

capacious and divergent notions of “literalness” can be. Though modest in scope, the template

for doubling developed here thus helps elucidate the interpretive and translational approaches of

a range of different translations, underscoring how both exegesis and the cultural relationship

between Latin and the vernacular inform translators’ attempts to guide readers’ interpretation,

often for definite theological or ideological ends.

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In the end, if what follows is worth anything,

S. D. G.

v
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, I would like to thank my dissertation committee (Professors Patrick O’Neill,

Robert Babcock, Taylor Cowdery, Shayne Legassie, and Theodore Leinbaugh) for their various

contributions to the direction and development of the research which has culminated in this

dissertation project. I am particularly grateful to Prof. O’Neill, who has been a primary influence

on the shape of this project, regularly providing detailed feedback and suggestions on successive

drafts of both the dissertation itself and an article which grew out of it. Indeed, much of my

specialized vocabulary for translational doubling (including such key terms as lemma and

component) was adopted at his suggestion. Without his direction and attention, this would have

been a far different, far more amorphous project.

I would also like to extend thanks to Prof. Eric Downing, whose seminar on the history of

literary criticism in 2017 introduced me to several important sources on translation theory and

proved to be the occasion for my earliest work on doubling and related issues in biblical

translation (indeed, parts of my final paper for Prof. Downing’s course are reproduced in Chapter

I with only superficial modification), and to Mr. Andy Cappel, who drew my attention to Robert

Alter’s Art of Bible Translation, also a major source for this project.

If I were now to name everyone who provided moral support of one sort or another (often

without realizing it) over the last three years, the list would be tedious indeed. I will, however,

point especially to my parents, Conrad and Cindy Diem, who have always been there to hear me

voice both my exultations and my vexations over this dissertation project and to provide the

sensible perspective of two seasoned quondam graduate students.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS..........................................................................................................x

NOTE ON QUOTATIONS..........................................................................................................xiv

CHAPTER I: DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION OF TRANSLATIONAL

DOUBLING.....................................................................................................................................1

Outline of the Present Study..............................................................................................39

CHAPTER II: DOUBLING IN OLD ENGLISH BIBLICAL GLOSSES

AND TRANSLATIONS................................................................................................................46

(1) Double-Glossing in Glossed Latin Psalters and Gospel-Books...................................50

(1a) Synonymous Double-Glosses.........................................................................54

(1b) Non-Synonymous Double-Glosses................................................................61

(2) Doubling in the OE Heptateuch and the West-Saxon Gospels....................................70

(3) Doubling in King Alfred’s Psalter...............................................................................80

(3a) Synonymous Doublets....................................................................................83

(3b) Polysemous Doublets.....................................................................................92

(3c) Figurative Doublets........................................................................................98

(3d) Doublets Introducing Outside Commentary................................................105

Conclusion.......................................................................................................................117

CHAPTER III: DOUBLING IN NON-WYCLIFFITE ENGLISH BIBLICAL

TRANSLATIONS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.........................................................120

(1) Translational Approach in PE, EBV, and RRP..........................................................122

(2) Doubled Translations of Whole Sentences in RRP, EBV, and PE............................132

(3) “And,” “Or,” and Asyndetic Doublets in PE and EBV..............................................141

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 (4) Glosses and Alternative Translations Introduced by “That Is” in PE and EBV........151

Conclusion.......................................................................................................................161

CHAPTER IV: DOUBLING IN THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE—EARLIER VERSION.............165

(1) Synonymous Doublets................................................................................................176

(1a) Latinate-Germanic and Latinate-Romance Doublets...................................177

(1b) Doublets Explaining Difficult Expressions..................................................188

(1c) Other Synonymous Doublets........................................................................196

(2) Non-Synonymous Doublets.......................................................................................199

(2a) Polysemous Doublets...................................................................................200

(2b) Figurative Doublets: Rhetorical Tropes and Poetic Figures........................212

(2c) Figurative Doublets: Religious and Moral Expressions...............................233

Conclusion.......................................................................................................................242

CHAPTER V: DOUBLING IN THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE—LATER VERSION..................252

(1) The Purposes and Principles of the LV Revision.......................................................254

(2) Doublets in the Development of LV from EV...........................................................260

(2a) Differences between Versions......................................................................262

(2b) Variation within Versions............................................................................264

(2c) Literalism, Glossing, and Paraphrase...........................................................268

(3) Doublets in LV Retained from EV.............................................................................271

(3a) Doublets Copied from EV without Modification.........................................272

(3b) EV Doublets Modified in LV.......................................................................278

(4) Doublets Peculiar to LV.............................................................................................280

(4a) Synonymous Doublets..................................................................................281

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 (4b) Non-Synonymous Bilingual Doublets.........................................................285

(4c) Polysemous Doublets: Increasing Difference between Components...........287

(4d) Figurative Doublets: Increasing Context-Sensitivity...................................290

(4e) Figurative Doublets: Simplification and Paraphrase....................................296

(4f) Doublets Influenced by Textual Scholarship................................................300

(5) LV and Fourteenth-Century Translation Theory.......................................................302

(5a) LV and Contemporary Debates about Translation.......................................303

(5b) Wycliffite Views of Scripture and Translation............................................310

Conclusion: Doubling and the Transmission of the Biblical Message............................319

WORKS CITED..........................................................................................................................328

Primary Sources...............................................................................................................328

Secondary Sources...........................................................................................................331

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 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BDB Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament

BT Bosworth and Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary

DC Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana

KJV King James Version

LSJ Liddell, Scott, and Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon

ME Middle English

MED Middle English Dictionary

MnE Modern English

OE Old English

OED Oxford English Dictionary

OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed.

PL Patrologia Latina

SV Biblia Sacra Vulgata, 4th ed. (Stuttgart Vulgate)

VSS John Wyclif, De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae

Abbreviations for Books of the Bible 1

Gn. Genesis

Ex. Exodus

Lev. Leviticus

1
For reasons basically aesthetic in nature, I have preferred to spell out the names of the biblical books in full when
referring to them in the main text, and employ these abbreviations only in tables and footnotes. Note also that, for all
books of the Bible, I have used the titles and numbering preferred by modern biblical scholarship, rather than those
used in the Middle Ages. Thus, rather than four Books of Kings, I speak of two Books of Samuel and two Books of
Kings. For references to the Psalms I give the modern chapter- and verse-numbers first, with the Septuagint/Vulgate
numbers listed second, in parentheses.

x
Num. Numbers

Dt. Deuteronomy

Jos. Joshua

Jdg. Judges

Rt. Ruth

1-2 Sam. 1-2 Samuel/1-2 Kings

1-2 Kg. 1-2 Kings/3-4 Kings

1-2 Chr. 1-2 Chronicles/Paralipomenon

Ezr. Ezra/1 Ezra

Neh. Nehemiah/2 Ezra

Tob. Tobit

Jdt. Judith

Est. Esther

Jb. Job

Ps. Psalms

Prv. Proverbs

Sg. Song of Songs/Canticle of Canticles

Ecc. Ecclesiastes

Wis. Wisdom

Ecclus. Ecclesiasticus/Sirach

Is. Isaiah

Jer. Jeremiah

Lam. Lamentations

xi
Bar. Baruch

Ezek. Ezekiel

Dan. Daniel

Hos. Hosea

Am. Amos

Ob. Obadiah

Jon. Jonah

Mic. Micah

Nah. Nahum

Hab. Habakkuk

Zeph. Zephaniah

Hag. Haggai

Zech. Zechariah

Mal. Malachi

1-2 Mac. 1-2 Maccabees

Mt. Matthew

Mk. Mark

Lk. Luke

Jn. John

Ac. Acts

Rm. Romans

1-2 Cor. 1-2 Corinthians

Gal. Galatians

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 Eph. Ephesians

Phil. Philippians

Col. Colossians

1-2 Thess. 1-2 Thessalonians

1-2 Tim. 1-2 Timothy

Tit. Titus

Phile. Philemon

Heb. Hebrews

Jas. James

1-2 Pet. 1-2 Peter

1-3 Jn. 1-3 John

Rev. Revelation/Apocalypse

“Joel” and “Jude” are consistently left unabbreviated.

xiii
 NOTE ON QUOTATIONS

All quotations from ancient, medieval, and early-modern texts are taken from the editions

cited in the bibliography, but I have modified them in the following ways. 1) For all texts from

before 1600, punctuation and capitalization have been freely altered. 2) In Latin quotations,

consonantal “u”/“v” is always written as “u,” irrespective of the practice of the edition cited.

3) In ME and early MnE quotations, use of “u”/“v” is regularized according to modern practice.

4) In ME quotations, I have altered vocalic “j” (in “ij” representing long /i/) to “i.” I have not

otherwise regularized spelling in either Latin or English quotations, except in the case of KJV,

for which modernization of spelling is common in present-day editions.

The reason for the difference in the handling of “u”/“v” between Latin and English is

that, in classical Latin, vocalic and consonantal “u” were phonetically related (representing /u/

and /w/) and so genuinely functioned as the same letter, whereas in English usage consonantal

“u” represented /v/ from the beginning (replacing the intervocalic “f” of OE orthography) and so

always functioned as a separate letter from vocalic “u.”

Latin biblical quotations are normally, unless otherwise specified, taken from SV, with

one major exception. When discussing English biblical translations in which the Latin source-

text is given alongside the translation (as happens with the OE interlinear glosses, Richard

Rolle’s Psalter, and the Pauline Epistles in CCCC MS. Parker 32), I cite the Latin as presented in

the edition of the relevant English text cited in the bibliography. This exception does not apply to

King Alfred’s Psalter for reasons explained in Chapter II, n. 31 (pg. 83).

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 CHAPTER I: DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION OF TRANSLATIONAL DOUBLING

Book I of John Lydgate’s Troy Book (1420), a Middle English verse translation of Guido

delle Colonne’s History of the Destruction of Troy (1287), opens with the line, “In þe regne and

lond of Thesalye.” As with most of Lydgate’s verse, there is nothing particularly interesting

about this phrase, but a comparison with Guido’s opening reveals one peculiarity. Where

Lydgate puts “regne and lond” before “of Thesalye,” Guido has simply regno Thessalie.

Lydgate’s phrase on the whole is close enough to Guido’s to be recognizable as a translation of

it, but the expansion of regno is clearly a sort of aberration, made only more remarkable by a

recognition that, in context, “regne” and “lond” mean roughly the same thing and that both work

as approximate equivalents of regno. Taken on its own, this might be dismissed as the sort of

metrical padding or tautology that is so common in medieval verse in general and Lydgate in

particular. In actual fact, however, this kind of “two-for-one” expansion in translation is peculiar

neither to the Troy Book nor to translations in verse. Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’s

Consolation of Philosophy (1360s), for instance, also makes frequent use of what I shall call

“translational doubling” (or simply “doubling”) in its renderings of both the prose sections and

the meters: e.g., “discussed and chased awey” for discussa (1.m.3), “establissed or cryed” for

indicta (1.pr.4).

Nor is this phenomenon a peculiarity of the ME period, as doubled translations are

prevalent also in the Old English translations of Latin texts attributed to King Alfred the Great

(see, e.g., Bately [1988] 125-126; Bately [2014] 137). For instance, at different points in the OE

version of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, conuulsa is translated as “onwend and

1
oferworpen” (qtd. Bately [1988] 125), and sterilis as “unwæsðmbære oððe ungefynde” (qtd.

Bately [2014] 121). Indeed, this sort of translational doubling is easily found in languages other

than English of the medieval period. Rita Copeland, for example, cites an instance in which Jean

de Meun’s Old French translation of the Consolation of Philosophy doubles a word from the

Latin original: soudre et deslier, which “provid[e] two metaphors...for the Latin ‘dissolvere’” at

5.pr. 3 (Copeland [1991] 148). 1 It would not be difficult to continue multiplying examples from

translated texts of all sorts, from various periods and in various languages. Rather, what is

needed at this point is not simply a further enumeration of instances of “translational doubling,”

but a more abstract and systematic explanation of what this concept entails. Clearly, in view of

the considerable chronological and linguistic spread of the examples provided so far, doubling is

more than an occasional and idiosyncratic tendency of individual translators. Even the mere

number of examples that can be adduced suggests that we are dealing with a more complex and

intentional phenomenon, and one that warrants closer examination as a feature of medieval (and

to some extent pre- and post-medieval) practices of translation.

Translational doubling is, in brief, the translation of a single word (or in some cases a

multi-word phrase) in a translation’s source-text by two complementary or alternative

translations, normally joined by a conjunction (typically “and” or “or”), yielding what I will call

a “doublet,” though other scholars have also used designations such as “repetitive word pair,”

“binomial gloss,” and “collocation.” 2 Doubling appears, as I have already suggested, in a large

number of English translations from Latin all throughout the Middle Ages, being particularly

1
Incidentally, the passage quoted by Copeland features a second case of doubling, when Jean turns Boethius’s sed
opinio potius incerta into “ainçois sera miex opinion et cuidance doubteuse” (qtd. Copeland [1991] 148).
2
Hans Sauer has also noted the lack of standard terminology for what I have just called doublets, other terms he lists
including “tautologic word-pairs,” “twin formulae,” “hendiadys,” “double synonyms,” and he finds that there is also
variation in what exactly belongs in each of these categories (Sauer 229).

2
notable in texts like the OE Bede and the works of John Trevisa. As will be apparent from the

examples cited above, the range of texts in which doubling appears is extremely wide and varied.

Despite this fact, which should be fairly obvious to anyone who has studied medieval practices

of translation, there has been little to no systematic study of the phenomenon of doubling in the

Middle Ages or any other period. No doubt this is in part because even a semi-comprehensive

examination of the issue would entail a very broad scope, but even studies of doubling in

particular translations have generally failed to systematize their observations in ways that would

make their insights clearly applicable to other texts. Bruce O’Brien aptly observes that scholarly

studies of medieval translation practices generally “often dealt with single points of translation: a

text, a manuscript, an encounter” rather than with large-scale trends (O’Brien 5-6), and this

seems to be especially true of doubling.

It shall be the aim of this study to address some of these limitations by developing a

taxonomy of doubling intended to have general validity, which will then be applied to a set of

English texts ranging in date from the late ninth century to the early fourteenth century. The

purpose of this relative breadth of scope is to lay emphasis on continuities and commonalities in

the use of doubling by different translators in different periods, while also acknowledging the

peculiarities of individual works and thus illustrating the possibilities for variation on shared

translational principles.

***

Despite the near-lack of systematic studies on the subject of translational doubling,

various insights into the nature of translational doubling can be gleaned from earlier scholarship

on several fronts. First, doubling may be considered in light of the idea, current among

translation theorists since ancient times, that, because no translation is absolutely definitive,

3
retranslation or the use of multiple translations of the same text may be necessary for a full

understanding of a given text. At its most basic level, doubling provides a translation of a word

followed by a retranslation, a microcosm of the operation usually represented by successive

translations of a complete text by successive translators. Second, doubling may, on another level,

be regarded as a form of explanatory insertion. It is in fact fairly common for scholars to treat

alternative translations as glosses, and certainly whenever a translation uses a doublet there has

been some sort of conceptual or stylistic elaboration on the part of the translator that is not

directly justified by the original. In any case, the permissibility of textual elaboration and the

place of explanatory comment have been the subject of various viewpoints throughout the

history of translation theory and have an obvious bearing on the status of translational doublets.

Finally, though doubling is seldom examined in depth, it has frequently been noted in studies of

particular texts (usually but not invariably from the Middle Ages), and these unsystematic

comments contain a number of insights which may help furnish the basis for a more thorough

study. We will take up each of these threads in turn.

At perhaps the most basic level, then, doubling functions as means of letting the reader

collate (whether contrastively or complementarily) multiple renderings of a single word in order

to understand the meaning of the relevant phrase more fully. The idea that multiple translations

can provide more insight than a single translation is an old one, whose classic formulation of this

principle of comparing different translations comes in Book 2 of the De Doctrina Christiana.

Here, Augustine suggests that collating multiple translations can help make up both for a

reader’s ignorance of the Bible’s original languages and for deficiencies in extant translations,

giving the example of Isaiah 58:7, which different Old Latin translators had rendered variously

as et domesticos seminis tui ne despexeris or et carnem tuam ne despexeris (DC 2.17). He

4
concludes that probabilior occurrit sententia proprie de consanguineis non despiciendis esse

praeceptum, quoniam domesticos seminis cum ad carnem retuleris, consanguinei potissimum

occurrunt (ibid.). In other words, if we take the two translations together, the first variant shows

that carnem in the second should be taken metaphorically, and the second emphasizes that

domesticos seminis tui in the first means close blood-relatives. According to Augustine’s way of

thinking, this collation thus provides a key to the full range of the original’s meaning. In the

Isaiah example, neither domesticos seminis nor carnem captures the Hebrew text’s (or, more

likely, Septuagint’s) full sense, which, to produce such divergent translations, must contain

elements of both and yet not be exhausted by either. 3 It is especially interesting to note that

Augustine seems to make no real distinction between elements of meaning derived from the

dictionary definition of the word being translated and elements of meaning based on contextual

figurative uses. Thus in the Isaiah example he is not particularly interested in deciding which

alternative, if either, more accurately preserves the meaning of the underlying Hebrew word, and

anything that helps the reader arrive at the ultimate sense of the text is taken as admissible.

For Paul Ricœur, the work of translation is a “work of mourning...applied to renouncing

the very ideal of the perfect translation” (Ricœur 23, emphasis in original) and so necessitates

constant retranslation (22-24). Despite the dubiously-useful Freudian vocabulary, this

observation in the end simply offers a corollary to Augustine’s realization that translations often

furnish mere approximations of their source-texts that can be corrected against other

approximations but are always defective. Certainly the view that constant retranslation can have

value and provide new insight into the text being translated is hardly new. Cecil Hargreaves, for

3
The obvious problem with this approach is its assumption that neither translation is a mistranslation. This is
brought home by Augustine’s next example in DC 2.17 (non intellegetis/non permanebitis at Is. 7:9), where one of
the translations he cites (non intellegetis) is simply wrong, though of course Augustine does not realize it.

5
instance, notes that “all the indications are that [Thomas] Cranmer was keen on periodic re-

translation of the Scriptures, and saw the work of English biblical translation in his day, and his

encouragement of it, as a natural follow-on from earlier translations of parts of the Bible into

Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman” (Hargreaves [1993] 44). A similar attitude is voiced in the

following century by the preface to the King James Bible (hereafter KJV). Often this has more to

do with diachronic changes in language (retranslation is needed as language changes make older

translations unintelligible), but, as both Augustine and Ricœur make clear, a synchronic need for

new translations arises from the imperfection of any existing translation. In other words, the

imperfection of particular translations is not a practical problem but a matter of theoretical

necessity. The ultimate reason for this is that every translation is faced by conflicting directives,

and, as Augustine implies but does not say, there is no single method of translating that can be

considered absolutely correct, definitive, or authoritative.

Indeed, it may fairly be called a foundational axiom of translation theory that there are

different types of translation, and different writers have established such “types” in any number

of different ways. Some have focused on types of lexical correspondence between source-text

and translation. Along these lines, Eugene Nida famously lays out a basic distinction between

“formal equivalence” and “dynamic equivalence,” where the former “focuses attention on the

message itself, in both form and content,” such that the translator “is concerned that the message

in the receptor language should match as closely as possible the different elements in the source

language” (Nida 159), while the latter “aims at complete naturalness of expression, and tries to

relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture” (ibid.).

Others have opted to emphasize the intended purposes of works of translation at the level of the

text as a whole. This kind of thinking yields, for instance, the conventional distinction between

6
“academic” or “technical” translation and “literary” translation: i.e., translations whose purpose

is to inform the reader of the content of the original as precisely as possible, and translations

intended to possess literary value in their own right. Others have emphasized the relation

between the translated text and its original. Thus, for instance, James Holmes draws a distinction

between “primary translations,” which bring in features of the source-text that are new to the

receptor language, and “secondary translations,” which make the translated text conform to the

conventions of the receptor language (Holmes 108), a distinction drawn in similar terms by

Copeland (Copeland [1991] 93-94).

As should be clear from the significant overlaps between these different ways of

classifying translations, their differences of emphasis belie a more fundamental congruence.

George Steiner convincingly makes the case that, despite the apparent innovations of translation

theory in the modern period, “the classical polarities remain unchanged. All that happens is that

the dichotomy between ‘letter’ and ‘spirit’ is transposed into the image of the appropriate

distance a translation should achieve between its own tongue and the original” (Steiner 266). The

best-known expression of the “classical” binary Steiner describes comes from Jerome’s famous

letter to Pammachius on biblical translation: ego enim non solum fateor sed libera uoce profiteor

me in interpretatione Graecorum, absque scripturis sanctis ubi et uerborum ordo mysterium est,

non uerbum e uerbo sed sensum exprimere de sensu (Epistle 57.5)—the last phrase usually being

paraphrased non verbum pro verbo sed sensus pro sensu. 4 Lawrence Venuti, citing but

significantly recasting the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher, systematizes this into a basic

opposition between “domesticating” and “foreignizing” translation (Venuti 15). “Domestication”

is thus “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to receiving cultural values, bringing the

4
See Copeland (1991) 20-25 on the genealogy of this phrase, which Jerome based on Cicero and which is also
echoed in Quintilian.

7
author back home,” while “foreignization” is “an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to

register the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad”

(ibid.). In the specifics of Venuti’s formulation, we are worlds away from Jerome’s manner of

expression, but the underlying point is basically the same. On the one hand, there is a form of

translation which seeks an underlying or transcendent meaning and adapts this into the receptor

language’s native forms of expression; on the other, a form of translation which seeks to

transform the source-text’s forms of expression as little as possible, relying mainly on simple

lexical substitutions. Attempts to establish a ternary or quaternary division usually represent only

an unnecessary subdivision of the accepted binary: e.g., when O’Brien distinguishes between

“transcription” (i.e., use of an unmodified loanword), “etymological translation,” and “cultural

equivalence” (O’Brien 197), the former two are really just different degrees of “foreignization.”

Perhaps no modern practitioner of translation has explored this dichotomy more lucidly

than Robert Alter. Certainly none has expressed the basic points more forcefully. For Alter, what

Nida called “formal equivalence” is the only valid basis for translation properly speaking:

anything else is “explanation.” Alter is primarily interested in biblical translation and is quite

forthright in regarding KJV as the greatest work of translation in the history of the English

language. Moreover, his grounds for this assessment are “its inspired (not divinely inspired)

literalism. The seventeenth-century translators worked with the theological conviction that every

word of the Bible was revealed to humankind by God and that one didn’t play games with God’s

words” (Alter [2019] 3). By contrast, he criticizes most modern translators for their impulse to

“represent biblical terms with what we understand to be philological precision according to their

shifting contexts” (10) and “explain everything for the English reader in purportedly crystal-clear

terms” under the “conviction that the word always has to have a context-specific meaning and

8
needs to be rendered in English in that light” (21). One of the reasons Alter gives for calling this

approach “misconceived” is that “the Bible itself does not generally exhibit the clarity to which

its modern translators aspire: the Hebrew writers reveled in the proliferation of meanings, the

cultivation of ambiguities, the playing of one sense of a term against another, and this richness is

erased in the deceptive antiseptic clarity of the modern versions” (10). Thus “The general

commitment...to eliciting clarity from much that is obscure has the unfortunate consequence for

translation of introducing clarifications that compromise the literary integrity of the biblical

texts” (11).

In Alter’s account the “literary integrity” of the text is thus bound up with the dictionary

definitions of its words. At one point he directly invokes Nida’s concept of “dynamic

equivalence” expressly to condemn it on the grounds that it “inevitably entails a palpable degree

of misrepresentation of the Bible’s literary vehicle” (23). He remains open to the possibility that

some literary texts might validly be translated according to a scheme that prioritizes

“explanation,” but sees the Bible at least as a case in which verba and sensus are inseparable, as

“the biblical writers...are so sparing in their use of language that the choice of single words is

constantly telling, and if the translator gets one word wrong, it may throw an episode off-balance

or even altogether misrepresent it” (46). Those translators who engage in “domestication” (in

Venuti’s lingo) or “dynamic equivalence” (in Nida’s) “are unwilling to trust the Hebrew and

repeatedly feel the need to explain it or in some way embellish it” (58). Alter goes so far as to

call the principle that the translation of a word must always be tailored to context—a basic axiom

of “sense-for-sense” translation—a “misguided assumption” (62). It should be emphasized,

moreover, that the kinds of “explanation” to which Alter objects are not limited to obviously

9
distortive forms of paraphrase, but include such standard translations as “soul” for ‫[ ֶנ ֶפשׁ‬nepeš], 5 4F

whose various meanings in Hebrew “reflect a rather different conception of the living human

body” than does the post-Platonic concept of an immaterial soul (48). He likewise takes

exception to translating Hebrew idioms involving the word for “hand” with phrases that

substitute an abstract term (“such notions as power, control, responsibility, and trust”) for which

“hand” is understood to stand in (Alter [1997] xiv-xv).

The trouble with all this is that, though verbum and sensus or “translation” and

“explanation” can be disambiguated theoretically, in practice the dichotomy is seldom so neat.

Even a hardline partisan of “formal equivalence” like Alter cannot escape “explanation” (Alter is

right, for instance, to criticize “soul” for nepeš, but his alternatives are all contextual, falling prey

to what he elsewhere condemns as a fault). Franz Rosenzweig expresses the foundational

problem with oracular bluntness in saying that “To translate means to serve two masters. No one

can do so” (Rosenzweig 749 6). Those “two masters” are, of course, the source-text author and

the reader of the translation, the former being the originator of the text’s words, while the latter is

primarily interested (in theory at least) in understanding its sense. As Ricœur observes,

Rosenzweig’s formulation turns the work of translation into a “paradox” (Ricœur 22), resulting

in a situation in which no translation can be definitive because the directives of the two

“masters” conflict. This has consequences especially for “foreignizing” translation. Steiner

contends that, in effect, “serious alternity of meaning and expressive form” (Steiner 393) is

nearly impossible whenever translator and audience have any particular preconceptions about or

cultural familiarity with the original. In such a case, the translator can still endue the translation

5
That this is the accepted “basic” English translation for this term is reflected even by the lexicons: in BDB, for
instance, “soul” is the first definition listed for ‫ ֶנ ֶפשׁ‬.
6
All translations from German sources are, unless an English translation is listed in the bibliography, my own.

10
with “resistant difficulty,” but, at the same time, “The apparatus of critical comparison, cultural

familiarity, immersive identification with which he works proliferates and can do so

unconsciously” (392). The source-text contains both the sensus and the verba, and so any

translator who has any notions about the sense that go beyond the immediate definitions of the

words will almost inevitably transmit both sense and words even if on balance he prioritizes one

over the other.

This is where Schleiermacher’s famous images of “leav[ing] the writer as much as

possible [möglichst] at rest and mov[ing] the reader toward him” and “leav[ing] the reader as

much as possible [möglichst] at rest and mov[ing] the writer toward him” (Schleiermacher 218)

become conceptually useful, as these make the “motion” of foreignizing and domesticating

relative. Schleiermacher’s own insistence that “The two are so entirely distinct from one another

that, throughout, one of the two must be followed as strictly as possible [so streng als möglich],

but a highly unreliable result necessarily proceeds from any mixture” (ibid.) ironically

underscores the naturalness of such a mixture by its weakness. In particular, one is struck by the

triple repetition of concessive möglichst/so...als möglich. Rosenzweig explicitly picks up on this

weakness in Schleiermacher’s argument when he suggests that the dichotomy between the two

types of translation should be taken “not as an either-or, but as a means of un-blending the

blended reality” (Rosenzweig 750).

Thus while there are unquestionably extreme cases (e.g., interlinear glossing clearly

favors foreignization, paraphrase domestication), a single translation may go in different

directions in different words or phrases. O’Brien points out that Jerome’s own practice shows

more blending of verbum pro verbo and sensus pro sensu than his theoretical statements usually

acknowledge (O’Brien 41-43). In fact, Jerome himself cannot totally avoid such

11
acknowledgment in all cases, and he seems to affirm this “blended reality” in the prologue to his

translation of Job. Here he reiterates the distinction between verbum and sensus but softens the

opposition between them, remarking that his translation of this book nunc uerba, nunc sensus,

nunc simul utrumque resonabit (SV 731). He associates this need to blend types of translation

with Job’s peculiar difficulty, 7 but grounds this difficulty in the fact that the book often aliud

loquitur, aliud agit (ibid.), something that occurs any time figurative language is used, not only

in Job.

What is of particular interest for our purposes is the binary nature of the conflict between

the different approaches to translation. As we shall see, doubling in medieval texts often reflects

exactly the kind of dichotomy between dictionary meaning and contextual or figurative meaning

that underlies Jerome’s opposition of verbum and sensus. This opposition is likewise at least

implied in the opposition between different linguistic registers commonly manifested in

translational doublets. In other words, a translation may “domesticate” by using a word more

formal or less formal than its source-text equivalent yet without abandoning the literal meanings

of the source-text’s words. That is why, for instance, Alter condemns not only translations that

“miss the nuance, or even the actual meaning, of Hebrew words” (Alter [2019] 7) but those

which “represent legal, medical, architectural, and other terms from specific realms of

experience in purportedly precise modern technical language when the Hebrew by and large

hews to general terms” (11). Thus a doublet may simultaneously foreignize and domesticate at

the level of register as well as that of meaning. 8 At any rate, it becomes plain that what are

7
As he further explains, apud Hebraeos totus liber fertur et lubricus et quod Graece rhetores uocant
ἐσχηματισμένος (SV 731).
8
The fact that this binary opposition between foreignization and domestication can operate on multiple levels
explains why a simple binary can in some cases produce more than two alternative translations. There may, for
instance, be a vacillation between foreignizing and domesticating both at the level of register and at the level of
meaning, as when superstitio is translated “supersticioun or veyn religioun or honour” in the Wycliffite Bible (see

12
commonly regarded as bases for two different types of translation are not so much separable

paradigms as conflicting directives that present a constant dilemma for any translator (and in its

most basic form it is a dilemma). Because different forms of speech do not map perfectly onto

one another, any restatement, whether in the same language or a different one, will have to

privilege certain aspects of meaning over others. Though Augustine does not explore the point in

theoretical depth, this is what underwrites his belief in the usefulness of collating multiple

translations, and that in turn provides the most obvious justification for translational doubling.

Still, while writers like Alter and Venuti (see also Evans [1994] 26-27) have objected to

the various forms of “sense-for-sense” translation (more commonly cast in the modern day as

“idiom-for-idiom translation”) on the grounds that “To remove an original idiom...is to remove

an indispensable vehicle of meaning” (Hargreaves [1993] 17), in general some concession to

clarity of meaning, even at the expense of literalness, is deemed appropriate in a translation. Karl

Barth reflects a common set of priorities when he remarks of the English translation of one of his

own books, “Though a translation, however skilfully made, must be in some degree a

transformation of the original, yet I feel certain that those who think and speak English will have

before them what I wished to say” (Barth [1965] v). Unusual as it is to find an author

commenting on a translation of his own work in the language of that translation, there is nothing

atypical in Barth’s idea of a good translation. The view that Cecil Hargreaves attributes to

Chomskian linguists is essentially that of most translators, both modern and pre-modern: “Words

were seen as the important, formal and explicit vehicle to carry the meaning, but the key element

to be identified and conveyed in any clear and full communication was seen to be the meaning

Chapter IV, section 2c). Here, “supersticioun” is opposed to both of the other translations in its Latinity and
closeness to the term all three alternatives translate, but means approximately the same thing as “veyn religioun;”
meanwhile, “veyn religioun” and “[veyn] honour” differ from each other in meaning, with the former closer to the
basic denotation of superstitio and the latter perhaps suggesting a contextual extension of the sense.

13
itself, or ‘semantic content’, including that implicit or underlying meaning behind the surface

words” (Hargreaves [1993] 54). 9 It should be immediately obvious how this view, combined

with the principle of “moving the text to the reader,” can justify elaboration of the text. This is

what Steiner means when he says that “the mechanics of translation are primarily explicative,

they explicate,” though it is significant that he immediately follows this by criticizing the idea of

“‘meaning’ as dissociable from and augmentative to ‘word’” (Steiner 277). What this

juxtaposition emphasizes is that, while it is natural or even inevitable for a translation to

“explicate (or, strictly speaking, ‘explicitate’)” (ibid.), any kind of amplification, no matter how

grounded in the source-text, can be held suspect as “reading into” the text inappropriately.

Conventionally, these issues have been most prominent in connection with the Bible, and

are perhaps most famously illustrated by the controversy surrounding Martin Luther’s addition of

the word allein [“only”] before durch den glauben [“through faith”] at Romans 3:28 in his

German translation of the New Testament (1522). 10 This addition was, by Luther’s own account,

broadly criticized as adding to the biblical text to make it conform with the translator’s

soteriological views, but Luther refused to concede the point. In his 1530 Open Letter on

Translating, he insists that allein is demanded by the sense of the verse, as well as German

idiom. On the latter front, he contends that Das ist...die art unser deutschen sprache: wenn sie

ein rede begibt von zweyen dingen, der man eins bekennet, und das ander verneint, so braucht

man des worts solum (“allein”) neben dem wort “nicht” oder “kein” [“It is...the style of our

9
W.V. Quine explicitly associates this kind of thinking with practices of translation in his concept of “radical
translation” (translation between languages that have no connection, either etymological or cultural-historical),
suggesting that such translation can be initiated by establishing real-world “stimulatory situations” that are shared
between speaker and interpreter and examining what utterances the speaker produces in response to those situations
(see Quine 28-30).

Original Greek: Λογιζόμεθα γὰρ δικαιοῦσθαι πίστει ἄνθρωπον χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου. Luther: Wir halten, das der
10

mensch gerecht werde on des gesetzs werck allein durch den glauben.

14
German language: when there is talk of two things, one of which is affirmed and the other

denied, then the word solum (‘alone’) is used alongside (i.e., in correlation with) the word ‘not’

or ‘no’”] (Luther 800). 11 He further argues that, on conceptual grounds, the addition is an

inconsequential amplification of what is stated otherwise in the same verse. Indeed he concludes

that what Paul did write gives a fuller expression to what Luther’s insertion suggests than does

the insertion itself: Ists nicht viel ergerlicher, das S. Pauls selbs nicht sagt “allein durch den

glaube,” sondern schuttets wol gröber eraus und...spricht “on [i.e., ohne] des gesetzs werck?”

[“Is it not more offensive that St. Paul himself does not say ‘only through faith,’ but rushes out

far more bluntly and...says ‘without works of the law?’”] (810).

That Luther’s opponents maintained that the addition did affect the sense of the text, or

that later German Bible translators have agreed with Luther’s opponents that the added word is

not demanded by the Art der deutsche Sprache, is neither here nor there. What is of interest for

our purposes is not the correctness of Luther’s arguments, but (only) the premises on which he

grounds them. For him, explanatory additions can be justified on either (or in this case both) of

two suppositions: the added material is a) unambiguously implied by its context in the source-

text, or b) demanded by the idiom of the receptor language. In fact, it appears from Luther’s

discussion that even his opponents did not reject either justification in principle, 12 and these are

essentially the terms in which explanatory insertions in “literal” translations are usually framed,

11
As evidence, he cites a few bits of conversational German whose rusticity is calculated to lend them authority as
authentically ordinary speech: Der Bäur bringt allein korn und kein geldt. Nein, ich hab warlich ytzt nicht geldt,
sondern allein korn. Ich hab allein gessen und noch nicht getruncken [“The farmer brings only grain and not money.
No, I really don’t have money now, but only grain. I have only eaten and not yet drunk”] (Luther 800).
12
Note, for instance, that several other words in Luther’s translation of the contested verse have no direct
equivalents in the source-text and yet pass without comment: wir, das, durch, and the definite article before mensch,
gesetz, and glauben. Being merely function-words, of course, these can all readily be dismissed as inconsequential,
though der before mensch can also be construed as inappropriately restricting Paul’s indefinite statement (einen
Mensch would be the more precise equivalent for ἄνθρωπον without an article). Nevertheless, the argument from
idiomatic necessity is here so self-evident that neither Luther nor his opponents suppose that it needs to be
formulated.

15
both in the Reformation period and beyond. Nevertheless, the theoretical straightforwardness of

the dual appeals to implication and idiom clearly does little to prevent disagreement about

implementation in particular cases.

Such controversies were no more new in the sixteenth century than they are now. Jerome,

for instance, complains in his preface to Joshua that, in the Latin translations of Scripture extant

in his day, unusquisque pro arbitrio suo uel addiderit uel subtraxerit quod ei uisum est (SV 285).

Though Jerome tries to distance himself from these earlier translators, he also finds it impossible

not to engage in some explanatory non-literalism. He even admits in his prologue to Judith that,

for this book, unam lucubratiunculam dedi, magis sensum e sensu quam ex uerbo uerbum

transferens (SV 691), and, while he insists that he does so only because Judith is apocryphal,

nothing about the Vulgate Judith suggests a radical departure from the translation procedures of

the rest of the Latin Bible. Certainly Jerome’s remarks about Job (see above) leave room for

conscious expansion in the translation of a canonical book. Here, at any rate, we see that the

foundational translator of the Western Christian tradition is (perhaps intentionally) vague and

dithering about the status of “explicative” elaborations in biblical translation. In effect, it appears

that Jerome considers such elaboration to be impermissible in principle but unavoidable in fact.

Certainly when Jerome’s opposition between “word” and “sense” was picked up by medieval

translators, his proviso about the special status of Scripture translation was usually ignored and

“sense for sense” generally championed even in translating the Bible. 13 For instance, the General

Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible declares, “If þe lettre mai not be suid in þe translating, let þe

sentence evere be hool and open, for þe wordis owen to serve to þe entent and sentence and ellis

13
Marsden goes so far as to call the concept of sense-for-sense translation “Jerome’s main legacy to later
translators” (Marsden [1991] 327) even though Jerome invokes the principle in order to reject it.

16
þe wordis ben superflu eiþer false” (Forshall and Madden 1.57), and the permissible liberties that

the Prologue enumerates include the addition of words implied from context.

To this day, it is common for manuals on biblical translation put out by missionary

organizations to refer to Revelation 22:18: “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words

of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the

plagues that are written in this book” (KJV). 14 Nevertheless, addition continues to seem

inevitable, and justification is, as we have seen, not difficult to find. The trouble, not necessarily

obvious when a translation is examined on its own but manifest when different translations are

compared, is that there are different views about what is essential to determining what constitutes

the “sense.” Copeland and Inneke Sluiter, for instance, explain that “Through grammatical

theory, ancient and medieval readers could move from questions of signification to questions of

meaning, from signs to semantics, and ultimately to questions of literary representation, that is,

the relationship of poetic language to different kinds of truth, including the possibilities that the

poetic language of Scripture offered to speculative theology” (Copeland and Sluiter 14), whereas

we have already seen that some modern theorists consider such ready separation of “meaning”

from “signification” untenable.

It is virtually a commonplace of translation studies that “there can be no translation

without interpretation” (Ng 325), and in the case of scriptural translation specifically Daniel

Arichea is right to assert that “the task of translating the Bible is necessarily a theological task,

and anyone engaged in Bible translation should, by necessity, be concerned with theological

issues primarily as they relate to translation itself” (Arichea 40). This becomes particularly

14
Given that this quotation appears in a discussion of difficulties in translation, it seems only appropriate to give the
original Greek as well: Μαρτυρῶ ἐγὼ παντὶ τῷ ἀκούοντι τοὺς λόγους τῆς προφητείας τοῦ βιβλίου τούτου· ἐάν τις
ἐπιθῇ ἐπ’ αὐτά, ἐπιθήσει ὁ θεὸς ἐπ’ αὐτὸν τὰς πληγὰς τὰς γεγραμμένας ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τούτῳ.

17
obvious in the case of explanatory additions, but it is striking that, at least in the Middle Ages,

textual additions were often marked as interpolations even in secular works, where the ipsissima

verba are obviously less crucial than in the Bible. For instance, in ME translations like Chaucer’s

version of the Consolation of Philosophy and Trevisa’s version of the Polychronicon, we find a

clear demarcation between “text” and “gloss” or between source-author’s text and translator’s

additions. Likewise, at several points in the Troy Book, Lydgate inserts passages which condemn

the misogyny of material translated from his source-text, explicitly distinguishing between what

Guido says and what he himself believes. 15 In this, we see a strong hesitance to blend translation

with interpretation, regardless of how important the latter is to the former.

At the same time, as W. Schwarz observes, it is a “traditional view” of biblical translation

to suppose that the translator must “preserve the meaning of the context of the Bible as well as

the meaning derived from the text by interpretation” (Schwarz 50). While we have seen that

Jerome nominally held that with Scripture one should not attempt sensum exprimere de sensu,

Peter Kirk is clearly right to say that “even in early Christian times it was realized that a good

Bible translation need not necessarily be a literal one” (Kirk 90), and this often entails

explanatory additions. Indeed, something like this “traditional” view can be traced in all periods

of the history of biblical translation. Dave Brunn, for instance, discusses a passage in the New

American Standard Bible (1971) in which the translators insert a name absent from the Greek

source-text but known from an Old Testament narrative to which it alludes: as Brunn explains it,

“The NASB translators concluded, at least in this case, that it is acceptable for translators to add

words or phrases that may be implied from the historical context even if those words are not

15
We can, however, easily find exceptions: e.g., the OE translation of Boethius traditionally attributed to King
Alfred, which contains several passages with no basis in the Latin Consolation of Philosophy that are in no way
marked off from the rest of the text. A modern example is discussed in the next paragraph.

18
included in the original text” (Brunn 95). More significantly, Susan Bassnett finds that, though

sixteenth-century translators sought to “reduce the extent to which the scriptures were interpreted

and re-presented [sic] to the laypeople as a metatext,” they also aimed to “clarify points of

dogma” (Bassnett 59). We have already seen one example of how this played out among early

Protestant biblical translators, and it is significant that doctrinal clarification did, in Luther’s

case, specifically involve a “clarifying” (or rather narrowing) insertion into the text.

The King James Version (1611) provides an especially interesting case-study here,

particularly in view of its preface (“The Translators to the Reader”), which addresses some of

these issues directly in connection both with KJV itself and with earlier translations. The

translators’ attitudes toward explanatory elaboration are perhaps most evident in their discussion

of the Septuagint, wherein they express a striking ambivalence toward the Greek translators’

liberties with the Hebrew Bible. On the one hand, they remark that these translators “did many

things well, as learned men; but yet as men they stumbled and fell, one while through oversight,

another while through ignorance, yea, sometimes they may be noted to adde to the Originall, and

sometimes to take from it.” The similarity of this assessment to Jerome’s remarks about Latin

Bibles of the fourth century is unmistakable and likely not accidental. Certainly the reader is left

with no doubt of the Septuagint’s imperfections, 16 to which the translations of Aquila,

Symmachus, and Theodotion are presented as correctives needed because the Septuagint “did not

fully content the learned, no not of the Iewes.” On the other hand, the KJV translators go on to

assert that, although “the translation of the Seventie dissenteth from the Originall in many places,

16
Here the KJV translators are directly responding to an old tradition, endorsed by authorities such as Epiphanius
and Justinian, that the Septuagint translators were “not onely...Interpreters, but also...Prophets in some respect” and
“were as it were enlightened with propheticall grace.” Against this, the KJV preface unilaterally asserts, “Yet for all
that, as the Egyptians are said of the Prophet to bee men and not God...so it is evident, (and Saint Hierome affirmeth
as much) that the Seventie were Interpreters, they were not Prophets.”

19
neither doeth it come neere it, for perspicuitie, gravity, maiestie,” nevertheless it fully deserves

“the appellation and name of the word of God.” The Septuagint is, of course, a special case as

the biblical translation used by the authors of the New Testament, but “The Translators to the

Reader” extends its defense of imperfect translations to others that lack similar justification.

At the same time, there is a degree of hesitant conservatism in the actual process of

translation manifested in KJV. We have already seen that Alter considers KJV admirable for its

close adherence to the idiom of its source-text, 17 and he is plainly right to connect the translators’

theologically-motivated literalism with their well-known practice of using a different typeface

(Roman type in the early blackletter printings, italics in later editions) for words lacking direct

equivalents in the source-text (Alter [2019] 3). In a similar vein, consider the preface’s

comments on “varietie of sences...set in the margine.” This discussion begins with the

translators’ response to a hypothetical opponent who wants the translation to be exegetically

precise and definitive. The translators reject such precision because “it hath pleased God in his

divine providence, heere and there to scatter wordes and sentences of that difficultie and

doubtfulnesse...that fearefulnesse would better beseeme us then confidence,” and inter alia they

cite the passage from Augustine discussed above to justify the proposition that “diversitie of

signification and sense in the margine, where the text is not so cleare, must needes doe good,

yea, is necessary.” Nevertheless, the boldness with which the preface sarcastically asks, “is the

kingdome of God become words or syllables? why should wee be in bondage to them if we may

be free, use one precisely when wee may use another no lesse fit, as commodiously?” is undercut

by actual practice. There certainly are alternative readings and explanatory comments in the

17
Though Alter considers only the OT and its Hebraisms (and Aramaisms), much the same can be said about
Hellenisms in the NT. Note, for instance, such un-English constructions as “which is to say, being interpreted” (ὃ
λέγεται μεθερμηνευόμενον) at Jn. 1:38 and “for it is the power of God unto salvation” (δύναμις γὰρ θεοῦ ἐστιν εἰς
σωτηρίαν) at Rm. 1:16.

20
margins, and there certainly is variation in how individual words are translated, but the

(unmentioned) use of italics for imprecise translations and the marginal placement of explanatory

glosses show uneasiness about departing from “the letter” even when this is openly

acknowledged as needed to convey the sense.

What Schwarz calls the “traditional view” is, however, most commonly discussed in

connection with medieval approaches to Scripture, and that is our immediate interest here. It is

well known—to the point of exaggeration and caricature—that in the Middle Ages biblical

translation was often controversial. The trouble was generally not with biblical translation per se

but with the move toward popular dissemination of the Scriptures without ecclesiastical control

over interpretation. As E.H. Robertson explains it, in the Middle Ages, “The understanding of

Scripture was felt to belong to the priest by virtue of a special grace, which he received at his

ordination. Lay people did not have this grace and a translation would impart only the views of

the translator, not the sacred teaching of the Church through the Scriptures” (Robertson 29). This

formulation is at least right to emphasize that exegetical interventions into the text were perhaps

the greatest fear of those who condemned vernacular translation of the Bible. It is not incidental

that condemnations of biblical translation in the medieval period often arose as part of the

official reaction to heretical movements, such as Waldensianism (see Robertson 29-30) and

Lollardy (see Chapter V). As late as the time of Thomas More (d.1535), one of the chief

grievances voiced against the Wycliffite Bible was that Wyclif (its supposed author) “plant[ed]

therein such words, as might...serve to the proof of such heresies as he went about to sow” (qtd.

Deansely 6). These accusations are groundless, but illustrate how, as Bassnett puts it, “the

problem of the fine line between what constituted stylistic license and what constituted heretical

interpretation was to remain a major stumbling block for centuries” after the creation of the

21
Vulgate (Bassnett 56). Flora Ross Amos in fact contends that “The translator who left the narrow

path of word for word reproduction might, in this early period, easily be led into greater

deviations from the source, especially if his own creative ability came into play” (Amos 6).

What all these conflicting currents generally led to was an emphasis on commentary. In

Lynne Long’s formulation, “It was [the] idea of the ‘naked text’ that the medieval church found

so difficult to come to terms with” (Long 48), since “To detach the text from its commentary

was...to peel away a layer of its authority” (72). The difficulty for a translation is, then, not that it

is explicative but that it may be explicative in the wrong way. Barth puts the case more strongly,

considering it “essential and important for the Roman Catholic system that it should reject this

alleged narrowing down of revelation to its biblical attestation, putting a definite element in

Church life which is given the name of divine revelation, the so-called tradition, side by side

with Holy Scripture” (Barth [1956] 546), and this manifests itself in virtually all medieval

vernacular presentations of Scripture by way of different forms of explanatory comment. “The

process of translation is an opportunity to clarify and define meaning in a way that has not been

seen as necessary before. Defining meaning for the purposes of commentary need not involve the

transference of syntax from one language to another; paraphrase can be used to avoid restricting

the meaning of a word, individual words need not be defined,” as Long says (Long 87). Even so,

an examination of vernacular Bible translations 18 and documents that discuss Bible translation

will show that Schwarz is in general correct to say that “the method of word-for-word translation

was considered to be the surest safeguard against any alteration of the original thought”

18
Here I am restricting my remarks to texts that present themselves actually being the words of Scripture and are
based on direct verbal correspondences with the Latin Bible. My basic reason for this is that, although modern
scholars are apt to include other types of paraphrase and adaptation, such as verse retellings of biblical narratives,
under the rubric of “vernacular biblical translation,” in the medieval period itself controversies over “translation”
largely left these latter untouched and treated translation in the narrow sense as a separate category.

22
(Schwarz 51); even Barth acknowledges that the idea of the biblical text as self-sufficient “was

no novelty” in the Counter-Reformation period (Barth [1956] 548).

The resulting ambivalence is, in medieval writing about translation, perhaps nowhere

more clearly expressed than in Ælfric’s preface to his OE translation of Genesis (early 11th

cent.). On the one hand, he insists, “We ne durron na mare awritan on Englisc þonne þæt Liden

hæfþ, ne þa endebirdnisse awendan” (Marsden [2008] 7). On the other hand, he immediately

follows this statement with the proviso “buton þam anum þæt þæt Leden and þæt Englisc nabbað

na ane wisan on þære spræce fadunge,” 19 and his earlier declaration that “seo boc is swiþe deop

gastlice to understandenne and we ne writaþ na mare buton þa nacedan gerecednisse. Þonne

þincþ þam ungelæredum þæt eall þæt andgit beo belocen on þære anfealdan gerecednisse, ac hit

ys swiþe feor þam” (4) implicitly demands that explanatory framing be worked into the text itself

even while it explicitly insists on sticking to “the naked meaning.” What is particularly

interesting about Ælfric’s phrasing in both places is that he sets up an opposition between both

kinds of liberty with the source-text (idiomatic and conceptual) and translation that contains “na

mare” than does the Latin, implying that a translation which takes such liberties will necessarily

add to the text. Moreover, a comparison of Ælfric’s Genesis with the Vulgate text will show that

the OE is full of additions of varying sorts, some of them quite substantial. Most infamously,

Ælfric replaces the narration of the attempted gang-rape of the angels housed by Lot at Sodom in

Genesis 19 with a more general statement that the Sodomites practiced homosexuality. 20

19
Stanley Greenfield and Daniel Calder rather oddly construe “buton þam anum þæt” as “even though,” meaning
that the OE text will follow the word-order of the Latin source even where it makes no sense to do so (Greenfield
and Calder 85). Not only, however, does this fail to accord with Ælfric’s actual practice, but it makes little sense
grammatically. “Except in the one case that” would be a better MnE rendering of this phrase, considering that Ӕlfric
uses it in the translation itself to render excepto quod at Gn. 9:4.
20
“Se leodscipe wæs swa bysmorfull þæt hig woldon fullice ongean gecynd heora galnysse gefyllan, na mid
wimmannum ac swa fullice þæt us sceamað hyt openlice to secgenne, and þæt wæs heora hream þæt hig openlice
heora fylþe gefremedon.”

23
Needless to say, this is a matter of quite intrusive exegesis, not merely of spelling out the text’s

direct implications. As Malcolm Godden points out, homosexuality as the primary reason for

Sodom’s destruction was not a monolithic interpretation even at the time, 21 and the significance

of this interpolation would be unclear to any reader not already familiar with the full story

(Godden 102-103). Thus Ælfric’s wish to convey the text’s underlying message as he

understands it directly conflicts with his stated principle of non-addition.

In short, there is a general recognition throughout most periods in the history of biblical

translation that explanatory additions may be permissible, in some circumstances even necessary,

in a translated text, but this is almost always accompanied by significant reservations. It is not

difficult to see how translational doubling might have broad appeal in this context. On the one

hand, a bare, ultra-literal translation is, if even possible, unhelpful or misleading; on the other,

insertions for the sake of clarity run an obvious risk of being distortive. Doubling may act as a

compromise between these two extremes. In the first place, as Augustine’s principle of collating

alternatives shows, a second alternative translation can provide meaningful insight into the

message of a text while also basing this insight purely on the source-text rather than some more

controvertible resource. In essence, an alternative translation is the most basic form of

commentary, 22 allowing the translator both to fulfil the explicative function of a translation and

to satisfy the need to hew closely to the source-text without overt deviation. Indeed, it may not

21
It is strongly misguided anyway. Gordon Wenham observes that while “homosexuality has been identified as the
sin of Sodom,” the focus of the passage is not on homosexuality as such but on the proposed gang-rape as a
violation of “the norms of all oriental hospitality” (Wenham 2.55). John Skinner similarly emphasizes that Lot is
presented as “a courageous champion of the obligations of hospitality in a situation of extreme embarrassment”
(Skinner 307), hospitality rather than sexuality being the central concern.
22
It is, for instance, the most common, and sometimes only, form of commentary found in the footnotes of
twentieth- and twenty-first-century English Bible translations.

24
be too much to argue that the prevalence of doubling in medieval translation arises precisely out

of the uneasy tension between the demands of literalness and those of explicitness and clarity.

With all that in mind, we may begin to consider what earlier scholars have had to say

about doubling itself. In general, one of the more interesting consequences of the dearth of

systematic studies of doubling is that, when scholars do notice it in particular works of

translation they often write of it as a peculiarity. Claims about the distinctiveness of doubling in

particular texts, authors, or periods are so common in modern scholarship that they can hardly be

taken at face-value. J.M. Hart observed as far back as 1901 that the “almost incessant recurrence

to two terms for rendering one of the Latin” in the OE translation of Bede came to be “a standing

joke” for him and his students (Hart 150). I have already noted in passing how often it is

observed that doublets are, as Allen Frantzen bluntly expresses it, “ubiquitous” in King Alfred’s

translations (Frantzen 100). Richard Marsden calls the use of doublets “characteristic of Ælfric’s

style, but also that of other homilists” (Marsden [2008] lxxvi). Janet Bately adds the OE

translator of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues to the list of Anglo-Saxon writers who are

“notoriously ready to use [word-pairs] to render a single word in their Latin source” (Bately

[2014] 137; cf. Bately [1988] 123-124). Andy Orchard likewise finds such constructions to be a

distinctive feature of the OE translation of the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (Orchard 124)—

and H.C. Kim says much the same thing about the ME version of the same text by John Trevisa

(Kim liv).

Ronald Waldron at least recognizes doubling as more than a peculiarity of individual

writers when he notes that doubling “has frequently been remarked on as a feature of late Middle

English translation and as a characteristic of John Trevisa’s prose style in particular” (Waldron

269). Hans Sauer similarly states that “Like many English poets, authors and translators,

25
including Chaucer a little earlier and Caxton a little later, Lydgate was very fond of binomials

and used them as a means of achieving stylistic and rhetorical embellishment” (Sauer 228). In

fact, Helmut Gneuss had, sixty years before Sauer, noted doubling as a regular feature of OE

“translation literature” from its earliest beginnings (Gneuss 30). But even to see doubling as a

phenomenon peculiar to the Middle Ages would seem to be a mistake. Henri de Lubac observes

that the pairing of mysterium and sacramentum for Greek μυστήριον often forms a “pleonasm”

in the translation work of Rufinus, a usage “conforming to the genius of the Latin language” (de

Lubac 2.20). Regarding the other end of the medieval period, Michael Haldane asserts that

“Doubling is a pronounced feature of Elizabethan translation, but it is not in itself a

distinguishing characteristic, for we find the same thing in early Tudor translation” (Haldane 1).

The explanations proposed for translational doubling are similarly varied. In general, the

different approaches taken by earlier scholars may, appropriately enough, be divided into two

basic categories (though, as the examples below will quickly make clear, these two are by no

means mutually exclusive). First, doubling may be considered from a rhetorical or poetic point of

view, with emphasis on how doublets fit stylistically in the translated text. Second, doubling may

be considered from a semantic or interpretive point of view, with emphasis on how doublets

reflect the translator’s understanding of the source-text. The former is the primary emphasis of

Inna Koskenniemi’s Repetitive Word Pairs in Old and Early Middle English Prose (1968), the

only published book-length study of doubling of which I am aware. Though she is generally

more interested in examining particular texts than in developing general principles, Koskenniemi

finds that doublets are often used for emphasis or to improve clarity at key points—a view

articulated also by Ludwig Borinski (see Borinski 85-86) and by Frantzen (see Frantzen 100).

For instance, in the OE translation of Orosius’s History against the Pagans, a doubled noun may

26
be used “to make [a] statement more emphatic” (Koskenniemi 28) or a doubled verb may serve

“to mark the duration of an action and to emphasize it” (29), and Koskenniemi supposes this

text’s didacticism to be “largely” responsible for such uses of emphatic doubling. Likewise, in

the OE Bede, she concludes that “the majority of the word pairs denote things that are essential

for the main theme of the work” and relate to the translation’s “educational purpose” as didactic

history rendered into the vernacular (33). In a similar vein, she suggests that in the OE

Apollonius of Tyre, “Twin formulas mainly serve to emphasize dramatic points of the action”

(57). Magdalena Charzyńska-Wójcik and Jerzy Wójcik likewise note that in the translations

attributed to King Alfred doubling is often used “when Alfred wants to emphasise a certain

point” (Charzyńska-Wójcik and Wójcik 38).

The role of specific rhetorical and poetic devices has also been considered in some earlier

examinations of doubling. Sauer, for example, in his analysis of Lydgate’s binomial expressions

(both translational doublets and other phrases of the “x and y” type), observes that “Rhetoric

helps to achieve a weighty style, a copia verborum, and binomials are a means of achieving this”

(Sauer 228). Sauer also finds that alliteration in Lydgate’s binomials “can be regarded as an

additional embellishment, but also as an additional strengthening of the binomial” (234).

Alliteration and other sonic features such as rhyme and “sentence rhythm” are also considered by

Koskenniemi, and about 38% of the word-pairs in the corpus she examines do alliterate

(Koskenniemi 88). Haldane likewise finds a tendency toward iambic rhythms or alliterative

effects in the doublets of the sixteenth-century translator Bartholomew Yong (Haldane 6-8).

Orchard notes that, in the OE Nicodemus, the use of doublets is tied to the use of conventional

rhetorical formulae (Orchard 124).

27
 The two members of a doublet can also be considered separately and taken to suggest not

a pleonastic effect but uncertainty on the translator’s part about the most stylistically appropriate

word. This approach is particularly common in connection with the Wycliffite Bible (1370s or

1380s), a text that exists in multiple discrete versions across which the use of doubling

experienced substantial changes (see Chapters IV and V). Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden,

for instance, associate the insertion of “short verbal glosses” (i.e., doublets) with the stylistic

refinement of this translation in early stages of its development (Forshall and Madden 1.xv-xvi).

Mary Dove similarly makes note of at least one instance of doubling in the Wycliffite Bible in

which she can find no better explanation than that the translators considered two alternatives and

that “the intratextual gloss...survived in spite of having been made redundant” (Dove [2004] 19).

A more elaborate and systematic version of the same view, advanced by Henry Hargreaves, will

be discussed in Chapter IV (see especially Hargreaves [1969] 405).

For those who have considered doubling primarily in terms of meaning, there are several

basic possibilities. Three in particular suggest themselves. The first is closely related to the

rhetorical approach discussed above, and entails thinking about doublets in terms of clarifying

difficult expressions. In the second approach, doubling is seen as a reflection of uncertainty on

the translator’s part about a source-text word’s meaning. In the third approach, emphasis is laid

on the inherent multiplicity of meaning in some expressions, whether inasmuch as the source-

text expression represented by the doublet normally possesses a semantic range that is not

covered by a single equivalent in the receptor-language or works on multiple levels merely in a

given context (as in a figurative usage) or is deliberately ambiguous.

The first of these three possibilities is invoked with particular frequency in earlier

scholarship on doubling. Clive Sneddon, for instance, remarks of a fourteenth-century French

28
version of Livy that its translator “is determined to make as explicit as possible the vocabulary of

the Latin, with frequent recourse to dittology. Although this habit of using two synonyms for a

single Latin word could be regarded as an example of rhetorical expansion, the apparent

intention of the translator is the avoidance of doubt rather than stylistic polish” (Sneddon 340).

Kim in much the same way considers the doublets in Trevisa’s Nicodemus a manifestation of

“Trevisa’s conscious effort to be intelligible” (Kim liv) and remarks that “Trevisa certainly

seems fond of supplying synonyms probably on the assumption that if a word misses the mark,

its synonym may hit it, or perhaps that, if a word almost but not quite hits the mark, the other

may complete the job” (lv). Dove likewise associates “synonymous variants” in the Wycliffite

Bible with the realization that “A ‘strictly true and faithful rendering’ of the Latin original ran

the risk of being unintentionally cryptic” (Dove [2007] 154). For Haldane, doubling often

“displays the translator in the process of attempting to understand the text while also trying to

control the shift in meaning which occurs across the language frontier” (Haldane 2). This is

particularly true for cases in which a loanword carried directly over from the source-text is

paired with an English synonym that acts essentially as a substitute for marginal glossing

(Haldane 3-4; cf. Stanton [2002] 47). 23 Conrad Lindberg likewise remarks of the Wycliffite

Bible that sometimes “no easy equivalent could be found for a Latin word, either because the

word was too unfamiliar or had to be rendered by a paraphrasis or circumlocution...so that the

versions came to teem with more or less deviating alternatives in the region of vocabulary”

(Lindberg [2007] 44) and that the translators faced “the delicate task of choosing the right words

to render the Latin items, either using words resembling the Latin ones, or sticking to native

23
This type of doublet will be discussed more fully in Chapters III and (especially) IV.

29
English words. The double sources or resources sometimes led to pairing synonyms with an or

between them” (ibid.; cf. Kuczynski [2017] 348).

The second possibility—uncertainty on the translator’s part—is also mentioned by

Lindberg. With respect to the Wycliffite Bible’s translations of anima variously as “soule” or

“liif,” sometimes separately and sometimes together as a doublet, he comments that “Since the

noun has this double sense, it is hardly fair to say that one alternative is right, the other wrong.

Rather it is a question of context, which can serve to decide the issue” (Lindberg [2007] 46), and

sometimes context does not provide an unambiguous answer to this question. Margaret Joyce

Powell similarly posits that when one late-ME version of the Pauline Epistles (see Chapter III)

uses doublets, its translator is “suggest[ing] two renderings of one word, between which he is

unable to decide” (Powell xl). “Uncertainty on the part of the translator” is also one of several

possible motivations for translational doubling in OE interlinear glosses suggested by Robert

Stanton, others among which include the use of multiple exemplars and the intent to “establish

loan-words and loan-meanings” (Stanton [2002] 47). In a similar vein, Gneuss sees some cases

of doubled and tripled translations in these glosses as part of a “search for the best translation”

for a certain word, as, even if the translator knew what the Latin meant, to attempt to render it

with one equivalent would be “too daring, too imprecise” (Gneuss 30), and he sees some

doublets as pointing to genuine uncertainty about meaning (31).

The third possible rationale for translational doubling listed above (multiplicity of

meaning in the source-text) is probably the most interesting. It is certainly the most multifaceted,

as it entails a strong recognition of the multiplicity of forms of expression both across languages

and within a single language. Sometimes a word in the source-text has no precise equivalent in

the receptor language, not even in the realm of borrowed vocabulary. Hence, as Koskenniemi

30
observes, in some OE and ME texts translated from Latin “many of these double formulas are

due to a breaking up of the semantic content of a Latin word into two components”

(Koskenniemi 80). Henry Hargreaves makes a similar remark about “alternative and cumulative

renderings” in the Lindisfarne Gospels (Hargreaves [1965] 124). Along related lines, Waldron

comments that “We have evidence that Trevisa was often conscious of the lack of an equivalent

in English to a particular specialized Latin term in his tendency to include such terms more or

less unaltered in his translation and then to add a defining gloss” (Waldron 273). 24 Thus, with a

slippery polysemous term like ars, Trevisa uses different doublets in different places and “It is

clear that Trevisa is making a careful assessment of the semantic components of the Latin word

ars in each context and using, where he finds it necessary, more than one English word to cover

the semantic range” (277). Sometimes, even when a foreign word has been borrowed into the

receptor language, its use in the latter is so different that the loanword cannot function as a

translation of its own original. This is more or less what de Lubac means in his comments on the

doubling of mysterium and sacramentum in Rufinus: though mysterium is a loanword from

Greek, but its use in Latin does not adequately convey the sense of Greek μυστήριον and so

sacramentum helps to supplement this sense, though the two are sometimes used synonymously

(de Lubac 2.20-21).

Moreover, there are cases in which, though someone like Alter may protest, a word’s

contextual meaning is not the same as its dictionary meaning, and doubling may function to

preserve both levels of meaning. What is interesting about such cases is that the doublet thus

provides a comprehension aid to the reader absent from the source-text itself, in a manner

24
In this instance, Waldron is referring to glosses introduced by “that is” rather than to “and” doublets, but he
himself identifies cases in which more or less the same translational procedure is manifested in expressions of the “x
and y” type.

31
recalling Steiner’s view that translations are “explicative” (see above) and “make graphic as

much as they can of the semantic inherence of the original,” and that “Because explication is

additive...translations are inflationary” (Steiner 277). It is also striking that, while explication of

non-literal usages is often invoked as a rationale for particular translational doublets, this aspect

of doubling has never been examined in a systematic fashion. Dove, for instance, finds it in some

of her examples of doubling in the Wycliffite Bible: e.g., the pairing of “flesch” (for Latin caro)

with the “metonym ‘or man’” (Dove [2007] 154). Lindberg says of one doublet in the same text

that the second translation “give[s] a contextual meaning, which may or not add to the value of

the passage” (Lindberg [2007] 65). Kantik Ghosh, discussing cases where the revised version of

the Wycliffite Bible loses nuances of meaning in “aiming at a more fluent idiomatic English,”

cites a doublet which adds an extraneous meaning to the phrase it translates (Ghosh [2017] 178-

179). Annie Sutherland likewise finds a case in one revised Wycliffite Bible manuscript in which

a less-literal alternative translation serves to paper over a “logically problematic image”

(Sutherland 196). That an alternative translation can supplement, rather than merely help to

render, the literal meaning of an expression is certainly at least implied by those who have

treated doubling as a form of glossing, including Sven Fristedt (see Fristedt 1.65-66), Marcin

Krygier (see Krygier 168-169), and Elizabeth Solopova (see Solopova [2016a] 210-211).

Despite the scattered nature of all these observations, a number of basic conclusions may

be drawn. Most importantly, translational doublets can have different functions, and these may

be related both to stylistic considerations and to difficulties in understanding the source-text’s

meaning. Nevertheless, it is entirely possible for multiple types of consideration to be operative

in a single work of translation, though for the sake of clarity it will be useful to separate, at least

conceptually, considerations such as sound patterns from considerations such as figurative

32
interpretations of particular words. What all these have in common is some degree of interplay

between convergence and divergence between the two alternative translations.

It will therefore be helpful to attempt a basic classification of types of doublet. It has

indeed been one of the main defects of earlier work on the subject that scholars have generally

not attempted to develop any kind of taxonomy for translational doubling even when they have

recognized that this phenomenon can take different forms and possess different functions. It is, in

that respect, possible to classify doublets in multiple different ways. On the one hand, doublets

may be examined and classified in terms of “internal” features such as the semantic relationship

between their elements and between each element and the word that both elements translate. On

the other hand, doublets may be examined and classified in terms of “external” features such as

how they relate to the broader interpretive orientation of the text in which they appear or how the

reader is supposed to process the two alternatives (e.g., whether one is meant to elucidate the

other, whether they are meant to be taken as complementary, etc.). For our purposes, the former

approach will be more natural and easier to work with, as it avoids the complex and often

fruitless questions of authorial intent or reader reception in favor of more straightforward issues

of lexical meaning and grammatical structure in the translated text.

Before we consider any such schema, however, it will be helpful to lay out a few

additional points of terminology. First, because of the unwieldiness of expressions like “the word

in the source-text which a doublet translates,” it will be helpful to use a simple shorthand for this

concept. While potentially misleading, lemma suggests itself as such a term. Normally this term

refers to the word or phrase in a text to which a gloss or footnote is keyed, but there is an obvious

logic in extending “lemma” to the word or phrase in a source-text corresponding to a given word

or phrase in the translated text. Second, up to this point, I have generally used the terms

33
“member” and “element” to refer to each of the two words that are joined by a conjunction to

make up a doublet, but I will hereafter prefer component, which emphasizes the idea of two

alternative translations “putting together” a larger phrase than is represented by either on its own.

Thus, in the example from Lydgate cited at the very beginning of this chapter, Guido’s regno is

the lemma, “regne” the doublet’s first component, and “lond” the second component. Third, it

sometimes occurs in OE and ME translations that three or even four alternative translations are

given for a single lemma. Such cases are rare, but not too rare to warrant comment, and I shall

use the terms triplet and quadruplet for expressions consisting, respectively, of three or four

alternatives. Fourth, it will be convenient to have a shorthand term for cases in which a given

lemma is not translated with multiple alternatives, and for that I will use singleton.

At any rate, a first step toward classifying translational doublets can be made with

reference to earlier work on binomials (expressions of the “x and y” and “x or y” types) more

generally, especially the essays collected in Binomials in the History of English (2017). In the

introduction to this volume, Joanna Kopaczyk and Sauer lay out a taxonomy of binomials that is

as applicable to translational doublets as it is to other binomial expressions. Focusing on the

semantic relationship between a binomial’s two components, they produce a threefold typology.

First, the two components may be synonymous (e.g., “tattered and torn,” “aches and pains”).

Second, they may be antonymous (e.g., “night and day,” “black and white”). Third, they may

exist in a relationship of “contiguity,” which, say Kopaczyk and Sauer, “could serve as an

umbrella term for other semantic relations which cover various degrees of

hyponymy/hyperonymy, sequential and causal relationships, metonymic and metaphoric

extensions of meaning, etc.” (Kopaczyk and Sauer 12). This last category is by design open-

ended to a potentially unhelpful extent, but it can be difficult to be more specific for pairings that

34
are semantically related but not synonymous, as in Chaucer’s “establissed or cryed” or Jean de

Meun’s soudre et deslier cited in the opening paragraphs of this chapter. What cannot normally

be found in translational doublets is an antonymic relationship between the elements, given that

in this type of binomial both components are a translation of the same word, which (except in the

vanishingly rare case of autantonyms) cannot mean the opposite of itself.

We may thus simplify Kopaczyk’s and Sauer’s threefold schema into a basic distinction

between synonymous and non-synonymous doublets, the latter corresponding to “contiguous”

binomials as defined by Kopaczyk and Sauer. 25 As will quickly become clear, this distinction is

too facile to have absolute validity, and “synonymous” will always have to be understood as

standing in (to use a doublet of my own) for “synonymous or near-synonymous” (cf. Kopaczyk

and Sauer 12). For instance, in Lydgate’s “regne and lond” or Jean de Meun’s opinion et

cuidance, both components mean roughly the same thing, at least in context, but there are also

obvious differences in the extent of each component’s semantic field (differences more

significant in the case of “regne and lond,” but also apparent in opinion et cuidance).

Furthermore, we shall see in Chapters III and IV that in many cases there is uncertainty or

ambiguity about whether two components of a given doublet are best understood as synonymous

or not. Indeed, the classification of any number of my examples in all chapters is open to dispute.

Nevertheless, the distinction between synonymous and non-synonymous points to a fundamental

division in the way the two components of a doublet may fit together. In the former case, the two

components have essentially the same meaning and it is not clear that the second adds any new

25
A century before Kopaczyk and Sauer, Powell had made essentially this distinction in commenting on the
“alternative renderings” found in one ME biblical text (Powell xlv); Borinski likewise makes a point of
distinguishing Tautologie from zweigliedrigen Ausdrücken, die nicht tautologisch sind, the latter of which he classes
as a type of näheren Erklärung (Borinski 92; cf. Frantzen 100).

35
senses to the first; in the latter case, the divergence in meaning is often unmistakable (e.g.,

“sceptris or powers,” used to translate sceptra at one point in the Wycliffite Bible).

In the case of translational doubling, there is a further consideration not applicable to

binomials as defined by Kopaczyk and Sauer: the semantic relationship between each component

individually and the two components’ shared lemma. As was suggested above, when we consider

the connection between the meaning of a word in a translation and its lemma, there are two

possibilities: either the word renders the literal, dictionary meaning of its lemma (verbum pro

verbo) or it renders a supposed or actual contextual meaning that is not the same as the lemma’s

dictionary definition (sensus pro sensu). 26 Here, it may be helpful to recall Alter’s vocabulary, in

which only translation according to literal denotations is translation properly speaking, and the

alternative is explanation. Toning down Alter’s exaggeratedly polemical tone, even while his

direct simplicity is in many ways helpful, I will modify these categories to denotative translation

and explanatory translation. Thus, for example, when the Latin word manus is translated “hand,”

according to its dictionary definition, this is a denotative translation; if, on the other hand (excuse

the pun), manus is, in a given instance, understood metaphorically and translated “power,” this is

an explanatory translation. It should be emphasized, however, that this is not quite the same as

the conventional distinction between literal and free translation, as it deliberately sidesteps

certain ambiguities surrounding the concept of the “literal” in focusing only on the dictionary

definitions of individual words. For instance, it means that any translation of an exocentric

expression that does not render the meanings of the individual words is “explanatory” even if it

26
There are, of course, also cases in which a given word has no equivalent in the source-text, being an amplification
of one of the types discussed above (e.g., English “of” in phrases translating Latin or German genitives, articles in a
Romance- or Germanic-language translation of a text in a Slavic language). For convenience I set these aside.

36
renders the literal meaning of the expression as a whole. 27 There are obvious drawbacks to this

scheme, but these are suitably compensated for by its simplicity.

In theory, combining these two schemata (classification in terms of relationship between

components of a doublet, classification in terms of each component’s relationship to the lemma)

would yield a sixfold typology: two synonymous denotative translations; two synonymous

explanatory translations; two synonymous translations, one denotative, the other explanatory;

and likewise for non-synonymous doublets. In fact, however, half of these categories may be

dismissed out of hand. First of all, if two translations of a single word are synonymous, it is

hardly possible for each to stand in a different semantic relationship to their shared lemma; thus,

synonymous denotative-plus-explanatory pairings are non-existent. Second, although in theory

there is no reason that two explanatory translations (whether synonymous or non-synonymous)

may not be paired together, in practice such doublets are too rare in medieval texts to warrant

systematic consideration.

The remaining categories are therefore three in number. First, there are doublets in which

both components are denotative translations of their lemma and mean (roughly, at least) the same

thing as each other. Since I have just excluded both of the other possible types of synonymous

pairing, I will use the term synonymous doublet to refer specifically to this type. Second, there

are doublets in which both components are denotative translations of their lemma but do not

mean the same thing as each other. Situations of this sort arise only because languages do not

map precisely onto one another and some words have multiple meanings that cannot be precisely

27
For instance, Nida points out that, in the case of the English expression “Adam’s apple,” “it is clear that some
adjustment in lexical form is inevitable” for translation into languages which do not use the same conventional
metaphor (Nida 219). Any translation which did not use a form of the name “Adam” and a word normally denoting
a round red or green fruit would, however, by my reckoning, be counted as an explanatory translation even if it was
the receptor language’s default term for the bulge in a man’s throat produced by the larynx.

37
captured by a single word in other languages (are, in linguistic terms, polysemous). Using a sort

of transferred epithet, I will refer to expressions of this type as polysemous doublets. 28 Third,

there are doublets in which one component is a denotative translation of the lemma and the other

an explanatory translation (cf. Frantzen 100); such doublets are necessarily non-synonymous.

For these, I will use the term figurative doublets, as explanatory translations are normally

employed when a word in the source-text is (in the translator’s understanding) used in a

figurative sense.

The following table provides a summary of the resulting classification system, using x

and y for the first component and second component, respectively:

x and y synonymous x and y not synonymous

x denotative, y denotative Synonymous doublet Polysemous doublet

x denotative, y explanatory N/A Figurative doublet

In some ways, it seems natural to introduce a third area of consideration into this

taxonomy of doublets: namely, the conjunction used to link the two elements. As will be evident

from the examples cited at the beginning of this chapter, translational doublets can use either the

inclusive conjunction “and” or the exclusive conjunction “or” (for negated phrases, “ne,” “nor,”

and so forth are also precedented in OE and ME texts). There is, of course, an obvious difference

in function between these two conjunctions: the one suggests that the two translations are

complementary, the other that they are mutually exclusive alternatives. In practice, however, this

distinction comes to have far less relevance than it seems at first blush that it should have. In

some texts, such as Chaucer’s Boethius, both conjunctions are used in a seemingly

28
Strictly speaking, of course, it is the lemma rather than the doublet that is “polysemous,” but I find the phrase
“polysemous doublet” useful for its concision relative to more logical alternatives like “doublet translating a
polysemous lemma.”

38
indiscriminate fashion, and in one ME version of Acts (see Chapter III) certain doublets appear

with “and” in some manuscripts but with “or” in others. Looking across texts, too, we will

sometimes find in subsequent chapters that similar doublets may be linked by “and” in one text

and by “or” in another. I will therefore largely disregard this distinction and apply the taxonomy

outlined above without distinction to both “and” and “or” doublets. It should also be noted that,

though Chapters III and V will mention them, cases in which a second alternative translation is

introduced by “that is” rather than by a conjunction will not normally be counted as translational

doublets. This is largely a matter of convenience, but is also intended to help draw a (confessedly

artificial) distinction between alternative translations and explanatory glosses. This is not meant

to suggest that these categories are totally discrete (I have already suggested that they are not),

but emphasizes the semantic difference between “and”/“or” and phrases conventionally used to

introduce explanatory notes. Even if they act like glosses, doublets are not framed as glosses.

Outline of the Present Study

Although translational doubling is found in texts of all sorts throughout the Middle Ages,

the present study will confine itself to biblical translation. I have made this selection in part

simply because the Bible is the most-translated book in the history of European languages,

including in the Middle Ages—as Bassnett aptly puts it, “The history of Bible translation is...a

history of western culture [i.e., western Christian and Jewish cultures] in microcosm” (Bassnett

56)—but there are more practical reasons as well. First, as noted above, many issues in

translation theory that will have pertinence for understanding doublets are (especially in the

medieval and early-modern periods) typically discussed in connection with the Bible and are

often specifically tied to matters peculiar to translating a sacred text. Here, as James Simpson

39
observes of the Reformation-era controversies in England, “Discussion of philology...takes us

quickly into nonphilological territory, because so much is at stake in the choice of one translation

over another” (Simpson 75-76). Second, and relatedly, I have suggested already that doubling is

often linked with broader programs of interpretation, and the vast commentary tradition that

exists for the Bible gave medieval translators more material to draw on in shaping their

translations than is the case with any other text. Third, as Ruth Evans points out, although some

scholars have disputed the validity of applying modern translation-theory concepts to medieval

texts, the formal/dynamic-equivalence binary at least, which I have argued is central to

understanding doubling, can “be mapped only too easily onto the Middle Ages, especially onto

religious texts, since Nida’s theory arose out of his practice as a Bible translator” (Evans [1994]

25-26, emphasis added). Finally, even in a study which attempts to consider a range of

translations rather than a single text, it may be helpful to see how the same material is handled by

different translators at different times—and few non-biblical texts were translated into both OE

and ME in versions that survive to the modern day. 29

My reason for invoking this last consideration is that, given how common doubling is in

early Latin-to-English translation, it is reasonable to ask whether there are diachronic

continuities in the ways doubling is employed. For instance, while they do not make use of the

same doublets in the same places, both the Wycliffite Bible and the Fourteenth Century English

Biblical Version edited by Anna Paues (see below) sometimes similarly introduce alternate

renderings of culturally unfamiliar terms like “Sadducee” and “tribune”—one simply an

Anglicization of the Latin form, the other formed from more familiar terms (sometimes a phrase

29
As noted at the outset, the choice to restrict the scope of this study to English is itself somewhat arbitrary, as
doubling is found in other languages as well. In this case, convenience (both for myself and for the reader) is the
only consideration to which I can appeal.

40
rather than a single word). There is certainly an extent to which particular choices about doubling

reflect peculiarities of individual translators; otherwise, one would expect to find doublets in

more or less the same places in different translations of a given text. This is certainly not the case

with texts of which we have multiple OE and ME translations (such as the Psalms and the

Gospels). Nevertheless, observed differences should not completely rule out the importance of

observed or possible similarities. For instance, the Wycliffite Bible may be unusual in general for

the emphasis on literal interpretation shown by its makers, but doubling in most other English

biblical translations typically also concerns the literal sense, often similarly with regard for what

is culturally unfamiliar.

A small set of English biblical texts will thus be used as test-cases for analysis of the

functions of doublets in medieval English translation. All are prose translations of part or all of

the Latin Vulgate into Old or Middle English, and they represent most of the surviving examples

of lexical translation (as opposed to paraphrase or poetic rendering) of biblical books from before

the sixteenth century. They have been selected because, while they frequently display similar

sorts of doubling translation, they represent an array of different approaches to translation.

Indeed, some of them do not feature doubling in the narrow sense defined at the beginning of this

chapter, and their reasons for inclusion will be explained in the subsequent chapters. At any rate,

the selected texts are the following:

1. King Alfred’s OE translation of Psalms 1-51 (50) (890s): found in the so-called Paris
Psalter (BNF Lat. 8824); edited by Patrick O’Neill;
2. The Old English Hexateuch/Heptateuch by Ælfric and others (c.1000): found in whole or
in part in about seven MSS. (the most complete of which are Bodl. Laud Misc. 509, BL
Cotton Claudius B.iv, and CUL Ii.1.33); edited by Richard Marsden;
3. The West-Saxon Gospels (c.1000); found in whole or in part in eight MSS. (CCCC 140,
CUL Ii.2.11, BL Cotton Otho C.i, BL Royal 1.A.xiv, Bodleian Hatton 38, Bodl. Eng.
Bib. C.2, Bodley 441, Yale Beinecke 578); edited by Roy Liuzza;
4. The Lindisfarne Gospels: the text of British Library MS. Cotton Nero D.iv, containing
the four Gospels in Latin with interlinear OE translation; edited by W.W. Skeat;

41
 5. The Lambeth Psalter: the text of Lambeth Palace MS. 427, containing the Psalms in Latin
(the so-called Roman Psalter translation) with interlinear OE translation; edited by Uno
Lindelöf;
6. The translation of each verse of the Book of Psalms by Richard Rolle included in his
verse-by-verse Psalter commentary (1340s); found in about 20 MSS. (including Univ.
Coll. Oxford 64 and three in the Laud collection: 286, 321, 448); edited by H.R. Bramley;
7. The ME version of the Pauline Epistles found in CCCC MS. Parker 32 (1380s or 1390s);
edited by Margaret Joyce Powell;
8. The partial ME New Testament (1380s or 1390s?), containing translations of the Epistles
(minus Philemon) mostly abridged, Acts, and the opening of Matthew; found in whole or
in part in five MSS. (Selwyn Coll. Cambridge 108 L.1, Parker 434, CUL Dd.12.39,
Bodleian Douce 250, Holkham Hall 672); edited by Anna Paues;
9. The Earlier and Later Versions of the Wycliffite Bible (EV: 1380s; LV: 1390s); 30 found
in whole or in part in over two hundred MSS.; edited by Josiah Forshall and Frederic
Madden (EV and LV printed together) and (on the basis of a few unusual MSS.) by
Conrad Lindberg (EV: Lindberg [1959]; LV: Lindberg [1999]).
These biblical translations are probably most conveniently divided into three groups: a) the

OE translations, b) the non-Wycliffite ME versions, and c) the Wycliffite Versions. The reasons

for these groupings are not merely chronological, but suggested to some extent by the nature of

the translations. The OE versions are mostly devoid of commentary other than introductory

comments (and the West-Saxon Gospels lack even that), but doubling is quite frequent in some

of them. The non-Wycliffite ME versions, meanwhile, all incorporate varying degrees of

commentary more closely integrated into the text, whether in the form of glosses written

continuously with the text or (as in Rolle) as commentary attached to each verse, and their

doublets are sometimes hard to separate from this commentary. By contrast, the translators of the

Wycliffite Versions eschewed a muddling of text and commentary, with the latter mostly

consisting of limited, strictly literal exposition of points the translators considered difficult.

Interestingly, in both the Earlier and Later Versions the second component of a doublet is

routinely marked as a form of glossing in the manuscripts, but in copies of the Later Version

there seems to be a chronological progression away from this kind of marking and toward simply

30
On the distinction between Earlier and Later Versions, see the opening paragraphs of Chapters IV and V.

42
writing doublets out as part of the text—a striking indication of the ambiguous status of doublets

as glosses or not.

In any case, this division yields a fairly straightforward scheme of organization. Chapter II

will focus on doubling in OE biblical translations. Here it will be necessary to begin exploring

the conflicting directives of making Latin writings intelligible to the English reader and of

preventing distortion of a potentially complex sacred text. Alfred’s introductions to Psalms 2-50

and Ælfric’s preface to Genesis provide some clues to the interpretive traditions that underlie

their approaches to their material, and some of this may be usefully applied also to the West-

Saxon Gospels, whose background is uncertain. Doubling as practiced by these translators,

especially Alfred, is largely associated with literal-historical exegesis, the nature of which will

thus be a major crux of this chapter. At least for Alfred (who introduces doublets much more

often than the other OE biblical translators) a relevant precedent for interest in unpacking literal-

historical meanings can be found in the Antiochene school of exegesis, introduced to England

both by Thedore of Canterbury and by certain Irish traditions of Psalter commentary. Ӕlfric is

professedly more interested in the “spiritual” senses of Scripture, but the infrequent use of

doubling in the OE Heptateuch suggests that literal interpretation and concern for OE prose style

are not relegated to secondary status in the translation itself, though this is not part of a clear

program of literal exegesis in either the Heptateuch or the West-Saxon Gospels.

Chapter III will deal with the non-Wycliffite ME translations of biblical books. In most of

these, as stated above, there is a great deal of exegetical intervention in the form of glossing and

commentary, and it will be necessary to consider the frameworks of interpretation that underlie

them. Once again we can see the literal sense of Scripture being prioritized in the use of

doublets, but at the same time, in all of the texts to be examined, doubling is bound up with other

43
types of glossing and explanatory addition, much of it not purely literal, grammatical, or

historical in focus. This is most conspicuously so for Rolle, whose translation is ancillary to his

mostly spiritual commentary, but the other translations to be considered here also contain

elements of non-literal interpretation in their texts as well. This also means, however, that these

ME translations are often fairly upfront about their exegetical outlooks. The use of glosses also

points to a tendency, not as clearly present in the OE translations and explicitly rejected by the

translators of the Later Wycliffite Version, to value the grammatical structure of the Latin

Vulgate to the point of producing English that needs immediate clarification to make sense. It

will thus be necessary to consider the implications of this attitude toward the Latin language,

particularly as it helps to understand what later translators concerned with producing idiomatic

English were rejecting.

The multiple versions of the Wycliffite Bible will occupy Chapters IV and V. These warrant

particular attention in a study of translational doublets for several reasons. First, they contain an

unusually large number of doublets, if only because, as translations of the whole Bible, they

cover much more text than other early English biblical translations. Moreover, doublets are by

far the most common type of explanatory addition in this text. The question of the relationship

between exegesis and translation also becomes especially pressing for the Wycliffite Bible

because it was born out of a movement whose attitudes toward the authority of the Bible caused

great controversy. It will thus be necessary here also to consider a number of issues pertinent to

medieval exegesis. The doublets found in both versions are usually not linked to any particular

source, but the use of Nicholas of Lyra, whose commentaries are remarkable for their focus on

the literal sense, speaks to what the translators prioritized in rendering the Bible into English.

Fourteenth-century controversies over vernacular translation also produced a number of texts

44
which, although none of them discusses doubling, provide insight of varying sorts into the theory

of translation and the interpretive values of the English translators. Texts that bear examining on

this front include John Wyclif’s De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, the General Prologue to LV,

documents related to the translation debate that emerged at Oxford in response to the Wycliffites,

and John Trevisa’s Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk. None of these can, of course, directly

address the question of why some translators should regard certain points as requiring

clarification and not others, but the unusually large amount of ink spilled over the Wycliffite

translation controversies offers more potential insight into the interpretive principles of the

Wycliffite Versions than is the case for most other translation projects.

45
 CHAPTER II: DOUBLING IN OLD ENGLISH BIBLICAL GLOSSES AND
TRANSLATIONS

Doubling seems to have been a feature of English translation since the earliest OE

renderings of Latin texts. The more general phenomenon of binomial expressions is common

especially in poetry, where such pairings are often generated by the formal requirements of

alliterative verse: e.g., “clyppe ond cysse” (Wanderer 42), “ead and æðelo” (Exodus 339), “frofre

ond fultum” (Beowulf 1273). As Koskenniemi has shown, however, “repetitive word pairs” also

occur with notable frequency in OE prose, and this latter will be our primary focus here, for

reasons discussed below. Possibly it is in part (but only in part) from this native tendency toward

doubled expressions that translational doubling arises as a common practice in OE literature.

This should not be taken to imply, however, that doubling is used in OE translations only as

poetic or rhetorical ornamentation. Essentially all OE texts that feature doubling contain both

synonymous and non-synonymous doublets, and the latter can take on a wide variety of

functions. While many of these functions are still essentially stylistic, or else more or less what

we would now call philological, many also have at least some bearing on issues of how the

translators interpret their texts at a conceptual as well as purely linguistic level and how they

wanted their audiences to understand the texts being translated.

This is especially true for some of the biblical translations, thanks to the centrality of

concerns about interpretation (and averting misinterpretation) where Scripture is involved. The

most famous expression of such concerns in OE literature occurs in Ælfric’s preface to his

46
translation of Genesis, which, as we noted in Chapter I, both warns against altering the words of

the Bible and insists on the need for interpretive context for at least the Old Testament. The

tension between these two considerations results most conspicuously in abridgments and

interpolations in some translations, such as Ælfric’s own Genesis (recall the example discussed

in Chapter I), and in accompaniment by interpretive commentary in others, such as King Alfred’s

prose version of the first fifty Psalms (see below, section 3). Less conspicuously, however,

choices about the translation of individual lexical units can also help impose particular readings

and exegetical tendencies on the translated text. Among such choices we may include doubling.

The expansion of a single lemma into multiple components frequently entails construing that

lemma in one particular fashion, and the exegetical uses of this are plain. To give an instance

from OE, when the Roman Psalter’s tabernaculi sui (26:5) is translated as “his geteldes and his

temples” in Alfred’s Psalter, a word meaning “tent” (and presumably referring to the Tabernacle

in which the Ark of the Covenant was housed) is elaborated so as to extend the reference to the

Jerusalem Temple which succeeded the Tabernacle as well. 1 This is not a particularly egregious

case, but it does introduce a questionable interpretation (a move revealed only by comparison

with the source-text). To understand doubling in OE biblical translation, then, we must begin by

considering practices of translation and interpretation in these texts more generally.

There are three basic types of biblical translation in OE: interlinear glosses, continuous

translations, and verse paraphrases. For the purposes of this study, it will be most convenient to

exclude this last category, as poetic paraphrases of biblical books (e.g., Genesis A, Exodus,

1
“His geteldes” is a fairly standard translation, found at the corresponding point in the glosses of both the Vespasian
Psalter (Sweet 220) and the Lambeth Psalter (Lindelöf 1.40). In the latter text, however, “his geteldes” is part of a
double-gloss (see below) beside the alternative “his eardungstowe,” which extends the sense of the lemma in a way
different from Alfred’s Psalter, taking “tent” to mean “dwelling-place” generally.

47
Daniel) often fail to feature precise verbal correspondences with their Latin source-texts.

Moreover, with poetry it is often impossible to disentangle metrical considerations (which can be

reflexive and formulaic) from the kinds of lexical and conceptual matters which are our primary

concern. The interlinear glosses, at any rate, include manuscripts, such as the Vespasian and

Lambeth Psalters and the Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels, which originally contained only a

Latin biblical text, but in which a later annotator has inserted an OE translation of each word in

the space between the lines of text. 2 The result is not continuous prose but a word-by-word (or

occasionally phrase-by-phrase) construal that helps a reader make sense of the Latin but is of

little use apart from the text it glosses. By contrast, continuous translations like the West-Saxon

Gospels and Alfred’s Psalter render their Latin source-text into coherent OE prose, intended to

be read and understood separately from the Latin and usually presented on its own, without the

source-text. Such a “continuous” translation is thus simply a “translation” in the usual modern

sense (and in the sense that the Vulgate is a translation of the Hebrew Bible and Greek New

Testament), though of course this does not preclude various types of abridgment, paraphrase,

mistranslation, and even interpolation into the text by the translator. It is among such types of

intervention into the text by the translator that we find translational doubling.

The use of doublets in OE continuous translations has been characterized by Stanton as a

“device...familiar from the glosses” (Stanton [2002] 98), a characterization accurate as far as it

goes, but which may be misleading. Not only, as we saw in Chapter I, does translational

doubling arise in contexts independent of a glossing tradition (see, e.g., de Lubac 2.20-21), but it

is also not a defining characteristic of OE interlinear glossing. In a number of the surviving

2
O’Brien notes that there are also a few surviving MSS. in which an OE gloss is written continuously with (and in
the same script as) the Latin text, resulting in a word-by-word alternation between Latin and OE (O’Brien 195-196),
though these glosses effectively belong to the same category as the interlinear glosses.

48
glossed Psalters and Gospel-books from the OE period, the use of multiple glosses on the same

lemma is absent or found only where the manuscript contains the work of multiple glossators

working at different times. In the Vespasian Psalter, for instance, every word was given only one

gloss by its first glossator, and, in those places where the manuscript contains two alternatives,

the second is a dialectal variant added by a second glossator at a later date (Koskenniemi 25).

Indeed, “double-glossing” as defined by Tadashi Kotake (“paired words and phrases resulting

from the practice of giving multiple equivalents to a single Latin lemma in Old English

interlinear glosses” [Kotake 82]) is not a typical feature of any of the earliest surviving glossed

biblical manuscripts from Anglo-Saxon England, and Stanton’s assessment of doubling as

“familiar from the glosses” is, among surviving copies, true only for glosses that postdate some

extant continuous translations. Nevertheless, it will be useful to begin our examination of

doublets with the glossed manuscripts for two reasons. First, regardless of chronology,

interlinear glossing is often seen as “a fundamental starting point for the study of translation

theory and practice” (Stanton [2002] 9; cf. Daniell 21-22; O’Brien 8; Partridge 1). Second, the

glosses (where correspondences between lemma and translation are made visually precise)

provide an unusually straightforward locus for a first examination of doubling as a translation

technique.

The remainder of this chapter will deal with continuous translations, though there are

relatively few of these. Aside from homiletic material, in fact, continuous OE prose translations

exist only for the Heptateuch, the Psalms, and the Gospels, and for all items except the Gospels

the translation is incomplete because of either fragmentary survival or deliberate excerpting.

Nevertheless, it is a sufficient corpus to explore the varied forms translational doubling can take

and the uses to which it is put in OE. As was noted in Chapter I, doubling is especially common

49
in the Alfredian translations, and that includes Alfred’s version of Psalms 1-51 (50), which will

be the chief focus of the latter part of this chapter. Even among the OE texts that use doubling

only sporadically we find two other major works of biblical translation: the OE Heptateuch and

the West-Saxon Gospels—the former being actually a composite text combining a translation of

the first half of Genesis and parts of Numbers by Ælfric of Eynsham with versions of the rest of

Genesis and various selections from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and

Judges by unknown translators.

We are therefore in a position to examine the use of doubling in both interlinear and

continuous prose translations, both in texts which use doubling frequently and in texts which use

it only in a small number of cases. It will, for the reasons given above, be most convenient to

begin with the interlinear glosses, and we will thereafter deal with the continuous translations in

two divisions: 1) those with sporadic, 2) those in which doubling is a prominent feature.

(1) Double-Glossing in Glossed Latin Psalters and Gospel-Books

Two glossed manuscripts stand out for their extensive use of double-, triple-, and

quadruple-glossing: the Lambeth Psalter (Lambeth Palace MS. 427, siglum PsGlI) and the

Lindisfarne Gospels (BL MS. Cotton Nero D.iv, siglum Gl (Li)). By Philip Pulsiano’s count,

there are something approaching 1500 cases of double-glossing in PsGlI (Pulsiano 195), and the

figure is also in the lower thousands for Gl (Li). In both manuscripts, the number of double-

glosses is in fact so great as to preclude a proper systematic evaluation here, where our main

point of interest is continuous translations, but it will still be worthwhile to make a few

observations about them. The purpose of this excursus will not be to offer a comprehensive

explanation of when or why the glossators placed multiple glosses on a single word, but simply

50
to point out a few trends in the use of double-glosses that anticipate habits of doubling in later

translations of biblical texts in OE and ME.

In both manuscripts, the components of double-glosses are clearly marked off from one

another with the symbol ꝉ (uel, “or”), and the incidence of double-glossing is fairly high. For

instance, Lambeth Psalm 1 features five double-glosses in six verses, Psalm 2 eleven in thirteen

verses, Psalm 149 three in nine verses, and Psalm 150 four in six verses, yielding averages of

0.83, 0.85, 0.33, and 0.67 double-glosses per verse, respectively. There is thus some variation in

frequency from psalm to psalm, but this does not follow any clear trend, and the use of double-

glossing remains fairly stable to the end of the book. Lindisfarne, meanwhile, features heavier

concentrations of double-glosses, but also greater unevenness in their distribution. For instance,

the first chapter of Matthew features twenty-five verses 3 and twenty-eight double-glosses,

averaging 1.12 double-glosses per verse, and the following chapter features twenty-three verses

and twenty-one double-glosses, yielding an average of about 0.91 double-glosses per verse. The

prevalence of double-glossing generally decreases in the second half of the manuscript, so that,

for instance, Luke 12 features only thirty-four double-glosses in fifty-nine verses (0.58 doublets

per verse), but again reaches levels comparable to the opening chapters of Matthew in the closing

chapters of John.

In general, though Gl (Li) and the PsGlI use double-glossing in similar ways, they are

quite different in specific emphases. In particular, there is the matter of consistency in glossing

habits. The Lindisfarne glossator is remarkably inconsistent in his translations: a single word

may be glossed half-a-dozen different ways in different places, whether with a single word or

3
Of course, use of the Stephanus verse-divisions is anachronistic, but these provide a convenient unit both as an
index of relative length and for estimating the frequency of doubled glosses.

51
with two or three alternatives given together, even if context does not clearly justify such

distinctions. 4 There does not seem to be much rhyme or reason in his choices about when to

provide multiple translations, either, and double-glossing appears on lemmata of essentially

every part of speech. Overall, the Lindisfarne glosses give the impression of being the scattered

work of someone looking to guide readers with fairly competent but perhaps limited Latin. 5 The

Lambeth glossator, meanwhile, tends to gloss any given Latin word with the same OE word

throughout, with double-glosses occurring when there are contextual interpretive difficulties with

a given lemma. It is, however, also fairly common for a particular lemma to be glossed with two

alternatives at its first occurrence, then with just one of those two in all later occurrences, though

with some common words there can be seemingly arbitrary alternation between the two. 6 There

are, as we shall see, even a few cases in which the glossator draws on a larger stock of possible

alternatives for a given lemma. In this manuscript, moreover, double-glossing is used only on

content words, mostly nouns and verbs and less often adjectives and adverbs, which suggests a

conscious decision to give multiple alternatives only for non-trivial lemmata. It may be that

PsGlI’s glosses were connected with the use of the Psalms in elementary Latin pedagogy, and

that the glossator was thus not interested in introducing fine distinctions in the use of simple

words like prepositions and pronouns but did wish to emphasize major recurrent terms.

4
For instance, forms of natus (adj.) are glossed “a[c]cenned” or “acenda” at Mt. 1:20, Mt. 2:2, Mt. 26:24, Mk.
13:28, and Lk. 4:11; “gecenned” at Mt. 2:1 and Jn. 1:13; “boren” at Mt. 19:12; “geboren” at Mk. 14:21; “gewæxen”
at Lk. 12:18; and “gecenned ꝉ geboren” at Mt. 1:16.
5
As Hugh Pope points out, moreover, the lavishness of MS. Cotton Nero D.iv makes it prima facie unlikely that it
was used as an elementary text for beginning students of Latin (Pope 12).
6
For instance, meditabor at Ps. 1:2 is glossed “he smeaþ ꝉ foreþenceþ,” but all subsequent instances of forms of
meditari are glossed only with forms of “smeagan.” Meanwhile, dabit in Ps. 1:3 is glossed “selð ꝉ forgifð,” and,
although subsequent glosses on forms of dare generally use only forms of “sellan,” forms of “forgifan” appear at
least a few times, and “la hwa forgifþ ꝉ la hwilc sylð” is used on quis dabit at Ps. 53:6 (52:7).

52
 Nevertheless, despite their differences, the two glossators drew on a similar stock of

translational approaches when they employed double-glossing on any given lemma. This stock

of translational approaches, moreover, can be organized into a taxonomy similar to that which

seems to underlie doubling in continuous translations. We have already explored the basic

outline of this taxonomy in Chapter I, but now we may begin to develop and apply it with an

examination of specific examples.

In both sets of glosses, we find both synonymous and non-synonymous doublets. For

instance, in the pairing of “onfoh” and “genim” on accipe at Gl (Li) Matthew 2:13, although

there are small differences of meaning between the two components that may be relevant, the

primary denotation of the two is roughly the same (BT, for instance, gives “to take” as the chief

definition of both “onfon” and “geniman” and gives several other identical definitions for both)

and we may regard the doublet as synonymous. Synonymous pairings are also easy to find in

PsGlI: e.g., “crocwirhtan” and “tygelwirhtan” on figuli at Psalm 2:8, “mid ogan” and “mid

fyrhtu” on cum tremore at Psalm 2:11. Non-synonymous pairings are likewise abundant in both

manuscripts. For instance, at PsGlI Psalm 10:15 (9:36), brachium is glossed with both the basic

denotative translation “earm” and the explanatory translation “anweald,” and at Psalm 150:2,

magnitudinis is glossed with “micelnesse” and “mærðe,” which overlap somewhat, but diverge

in that they refer, respectively, to the quantitative and qualitative aspects of “greatness.”

Meanwhile, Gl (Li) features such plainly non-synonymous pairings as “ða Hierusolimisca” and

“ða burgwæras” on Hierosolima at Matthew 2:3, and “ðinga” and “geafa” on munera at Matthew

2:11. In view of these similarities, we will treat the two manuscripts together, dealing with each

of our two main categories of doublet (synonymous and non-synonymous) in turn.

53
(1a) Synonymous Double-Glosses

Taking synonymous pairings first, as in some ways the simpler type, we can distinguish

two basic sub-types: 1. those that use the same lexical morphemes in different combinations, and

2. those that use two different lexical morphemes or sets of lexical morphemes. The first of these

comprises what Kotake calls “grammatical double glosses:” i.e., those which “are composed of

the same word in different grammatical forms” (Kotake 84). As Kotake further explains, “These

instances are fundamentally different from binomials in that the paired items are composed of

two different forms of a single word and/or that the grammatical functions of paired items are not

identical to each other” (85). Thus, in Gl (Li), we find glosses such as “sceal habba / hæfis” 7 on

habebit at Matthew 1:23, “dyde / doend” on agens at Luke 17:16, and, in PsGlI, glosses such as

“yrsige / þæt ne yrsige” on irascatur in Psalm 2:12 and “sy ehtende / ehte” on persequatur in

Psalm 7:5 (7:6). Such pairings seem, in brief, to constitute an acknowledgment that Latin

grammar does not map cleanly onto English. For instance, the Lindisfarne gloss on habebit gives

two different ways of rendering the Latin future tense presumably because OE lacked a formal

future tense and, though futurity was normally expressed with the present tense (as in “hæfis;”

see Mitchell §§617-618), Bruce Mitchell finds that “sculan and willan at times come pretty close

to expressing futurity” (Mitchell §1023). “Sceal habba,” then, clarifies that the lemma is not in

simple present tense but is also not a standard expression of futurity (note that all Mitchell can

muster is “pretty close”). The double-gloss is something of an awkward compromise, and this

very awkwardness underscores differences between Latin and English. What the gloss on

habebit does with tense formation, the PsGlI glosses on irascatur and persequatur do with the

7
For quotations from the glosses in Gl (Li) and PsGlI, a slash will, for convenience, normally be substituted for the
MSS.’s ꝉ mark.

54
expression of grammatical mood and frequentative action, all areas in which Latin and OE fail to

correspond cleanly.

The pairing “dyde / doend” for agens is particularly striking, as it cannot be explained so

patly. It is only one of many present active participles that in Gl (Li) are glossed with both a

participle and a finite verb (e.g., “ðæm fylgendum / fylgdon” on sequentibus at Matthew 8:10,

“cueðendo / hia cuedon” on dicentes at Matthew 9:14, “bidtende / bat” on discerpens at Mark

1:26, “soecende / sohte” on quaerens at Luke 11:24). Such glosses are notable for being clearly

paraphrasal, given that OE has a present participial form just as does Latin and that nothing in

OE grammar requires a finite verb where Latin uses a participle. The grammatical modification

at work in these glosses must therefore be motivated by OE habits of usage rather than anything

in the Latin or any absolute dictates of OE grammar. A similar concession to OE idiom

presumably underlies Gl (Li)’s occasional glossing of est with “is / wæs” when it is used in

perfect passive constructions (e.g., Matthew 1:18, Matthew 3:10, Matthew 11:1), since in such

cases the verb is present in form but past in meaning. (More often, in fact, the gloss gives only

“wæs,” as at Mark 6:34, Mark 8:27, Luke 8:22, etc.) At any rate, double-glosses of both the

“dyde / doend” type and the “is / wæs” type directly illustrate the conflict between “foreignizing”

and “domesticating” translation discussed in Chapter I. This feature of Gl (Li) is particularly

striking in an interlinear gloss, as it represents a degree of “domestication” exceeding that of

many continuous OE and ME translations of Latin texts. 8 In that respect, the Lambeth glossator’s

practice is closer to what one would expect of an interlinear gloss in that, though he does not

8
The OE Heptateuch and the Earlier Version of the Wycliffite Bible, for instance, both frequently decline to resolve
participial constructions even if this produces bad English.

55
avoid grammatical double-glosses altogether, he does seem to eschew those that address such

complicated matters of idiom.

Grammatical double-glosses, in both manuscripts, sometimes also address word-order.

Occasionally, in fact, the glossators’ concessions to OE rather than Latin syntax cause them to

break with strict adherence to word-for-word translation, whether in single glosses or double-

glosses. For instance, the Gl (Li) glossator translates conuocatis at Luke 9:1 (in the ablative

absolute phrase conuocatis...duodecim apostolis) as “miððy geciged woeron,” resolving the

participle into a finite verb-phrase introduced by a conjunction. In other cases, however, the

glossators will pair a gloss that breaks with the syntax of the Latin with another that does adhere

to a rigid word-for-word correspondence. For instance, Gl (Li) Luke 7:19 gives the gloss “ðu arð

/ arð ðu” for the phrase tu es (used to open a question), the first gloss giving the order of the

Latin and the latter using the normal syntax of an English interrogative on the basis of context.

Similar pairings are sometimes found also in PsGlI, and can also arise from a one-word lemma

translated by multiple words in the gloss, as at Psalm 10:14 (9:35), where uides is glossed as “þu

gesihst / geseoh þu” (here the double-gloss works to preserve an ambiguity about whether the

phrase in which the lemma appears is a question). Such “rearranging” glosses are not abundant in

either manuscript, but these two are far from the only examples of syntactical reordering in the

double-glosses of PsGlI and Gl (Li).

The bulk of synonymous double-glosses in both manuscripts, however, consists of pairs

that are closely related in meaning but do not share lexical morphemes. For instance, natus in Gl

(Li) Matthew 1:16 is glossed as “gecenned / geboren,” uocatur in the same verse as “is

genemned / geceyged;” in PsGlI, dabit in Psalm 1:3 is glossed as “selð / forgifð,” and cum

tremore in Psalm 2:11 is glossed as “mid ogan / mid fyrhtu.” The extent to which the

56
components of each pair differ from each other is arguable, 9 but at the very least all these

pairings overlap substantially in semantic range, to the point that the inclusion of both glosses

may seem redundant. It thus appears that the glossators have made allowances for differing

vocabulary preferences among those who might consult their glosses. Here, however, it is likely

that the two glossators manifest similar habits for different reasons. For PsGlI, the likely

pedagogical function of the glosses would be served by introducing variant but synonymous

vocabulary items, which could help enrich the students’ English vocabulary and reinforce

correspondences between Latin and English, just as modern translating dictionaries commonly

give multiple synonyms at the beginning of a given entry. Alternatively, it might point to an

attempt at standardization of the glosses’ vocabulary by giving the glossator’s preferred

translations side-by-side with other translations then current to show where the latter could be

replaced with the former. For Gl (Li), by contrast, the synonymous double-glosses tend simply to

reinforce the inconsistency of the glossator’s translations, and may even point to the possibility

discussed by both Stanton and A.S.C. Ross that the glossator drew on earlier glossed manuscripts

(Ross [1969] 493-494; Stanton [2002] 47), 10 a possibility that perhaps dovetails with the

inconsistent archaism of the glosses’ orthography (Ross [1933] 520-521). One way or another,

9
E.g., “gecenned” can correspond to MnE “conceived” as well as “born,” while “geboren” has the same more
restricted sense as its MnE reflex; “geceyged” is likewise broader than “genemned,” the latter denoting only the
“calling” of someone by name, the former “calling” in a more generic sense. In the first case, the restricted
component more closely reflects the semantic range of the lemma; in the second, the broader component comes
closer. But in neither case is it clear that these considerations are substantial enough to have affected the glossator’s
word-choice.
10
Kotake raises a related possibility in suggesting that double-glosses whose components are, in a surviving MS.,
written in a single hand were copied from an earlier glossed MS. in which the initial glossator supplied only one
gloss but a later glossator added a variant translation on the basis of dialectal or personal preference (Kotake 87).
Ross also notes that Gl (Li)’s glosses sometimes reflect variant readings in the Latin Gospel text (Ross [1981] 6).

57
synonymous double-glosses from Gl (Li) like those cited above often seem highly arbitrary, and

there is little more to be said in explanation of them.

In a few instances, we do find one definite pattern that later becomes common in ME

translations: the pairing of a word borrowed from Latin with a native Germanic synonym (cf.

Gneuss 31). As Stanton notes, double-glosses may sometimes be used “specifically to establish

loan-words” (Stanton [2002] 47), and that is likely to be the purpose in these cases. Because

English of this period still possessed few Latin loanwords, this type of double-gloss is extremely

rare, but it can be seen in glosses like “drencfætes heora / heora calices” on calicis eorum at

PsGlI 10:7, and in “bæstere / fuluihtere” on baptista at Gl (Li) Matthew 3:1. As Ross points out,

a variant of this phenomenon occurs in the gloss on Jerome’s preface to Matthew in Gl (Li),

where we find the Latinate-native pairing “mið pinn / vrittsæx,” though its lemma is calamo

rather than penna (Ross [1932] 452). Such pairings provide both a translation etymologically

derived from the lemma or at least from the same wordstock (more “foreignizing” and thus more

“literal”) and a semantic equivalent that, being a native word, is presumably more easily

understandable. 11 Here again we find an obvious manifestation of the basic tension between

“foreignization” and “domestication.” The same might be said for another pattern in Gl (Li)

identified by Ross: the pairing of a word used in an atypical sense with a more ordinary

translation of the lemma, as when “geðolade / gedrog 12” glosses patiebatur at Matthew 9:20 or

11
Doublets of this type will be discussed at greater length in Chapters III and IV. Given the massive influx of Latin-
derived vocabulary following the Conquest, it is only natural that Latinate-Germanic doublets should have become
much more common in ME than they ever were in OE.
12
“Dragan” in the sense of “suffer” or “endure” is “not recorded elsewhere in O.E.” but resembles a sense given to
the word in some ME texts and paralleled in other Germanic languages (Ross [1932] 452).

58
when “sniueð 13 / hregnað” glosses pluit at Matthew 5:45 (Ross [1932] 452-453). In such cases,

one wonders whether the glossator borrowed a translation from an earlier glossary or glossed

Gospel text and then felt the need to correct or explain it, although such speculation is probably

futile in the absence of evidence from earlier glosses.

Such easily-defined and easily-explained patterns are, however, rare in the glosses and, at

least in Gl (Li), the glossator’s wish to note multiple possible renderings often leads him to draw

strikingly trivial distinctions. The Gl (Li) glossator thus frequently provides two alternatives on

prepositions, pronouns, demonstrative adjectives, connective particles, and so forth. Often, the

two glosses are fully synonymous, as when “suæ / ðus” is used for sic at Matthew 1:18 and Mark

2:7, or “ðer / hwer” for ubi at Matthew 2:9, or “menigo / feolo” for multa at Mark 5:26, and

when various pronouns are marked with both “he” and “se” forms (e.g., “hia / ða” for illi at

Matthew 2:5, “his / ðæs” for cuius at Matthew 3:11 and again in the next verse, “hine / ðene” for

illum at Mark 5:24, “ðara / hiora” for eorum at Luke 20:32). Sometimes the distinction is,

although strictly speaking meaningful, extremely small. For instance, pronouns are sometimes

glossed with a simple pronoun plus a form of “se ilca” (e.g., “hea / ða ilca” on eam at Matthew

1:19 and on eos at Matthew 4:21), apparently to clarify the pronoun’s reference by emphasizing

that it refers to “the same” entity as the last noun or pronoun before it. Similarly fine-tuned

distinctions seem to underlie the double-glossing of prepositions, conjunctions, and conjunctive

adverbs (e.g., “forðon / cuðlice” and “forðon / æc” for ergo at Matthew 1:17 and Mark 12:6, “ec

/ forðon” for enim at Matthew 1:21, “wið / ða huile” for donec at Matthew 1:25, “ofer / on” for

supra at Matthew 4:5, “of ðon / ðona” for exinde at Matthew 4:17, “⁊ / ec” for et at Mark 5:25).

13
Curiously, “to descend in drops” is one of the original senses of the Indo-European root from which “sniwan”
derives, but the OE word is generally used in the same sense as its MnE reflex “snow” (Ross [1932] 453).

59
 Inconsequential as many such cases of double-glossing may be, they nevertheless point to

issues that also confronted the authors of continuous translations of Latin texts. For instance, in

noting the lack of single precise equivalents to ergo and enim, on which one gloss shows the

lemma’s use as a logical connective (“forðon”) and one shows its use as a merely sequential

connective (“cuðlice” or “ec”), 14 Gl (Li) shows that the Latin contains a potential ambiguity

about the connection with a preceding clause—a matter that we shall see raising some

translational problems with the Wycliffite Bible in Chapter V. Grammatical double-glosses

similarly anticipate problems facing the authors of continuous translations. As remarked above, it

is perhaps strange that such glosses appear at all in interlinear translations, given that adaptation

to OE idiom would presumably not be needed for someone only using the glosses as a guide to

understanding the meaning of the Latin text. For instance, though the difference between locative

“ðær” and “in ðæm” might have some significance for OE prose style, it can have little relevance

to understanding how ea is meant in the Vulgate text—and yet there it is in the glosses. The

inclusion of both glosses seems to have little function other than showing to an English-speaking

reader that there are multiple ways to express the relation denoted by the ablative case of the

Latin. At any rate, despite the inconsistency with which the Lindisfarne glossator applies double-

glossing, the principle remains that he uses double-glossing to suggest how the same underlying

idea can be carried over into English in different forms. The same principle is, as we have seen,

manifested also in the synonymous double-glosses in PsGlI even though the latter does not

feature extensive double-glossing of function-words.

14
The varying glosses on ergo and enim, which the Lindisfarne glossator mostly treats as synonymous, are an
interesting matter. Though he uses the same core glosses for both—including, in addition to those already
mentioned, “ðonne” and “ofðon”—he puts these in varying combinations of singletons and doublets throughout Mt.
and Mk. “Forðon” comes to predominate for both lemmata in Lk and Jn., but not absolutely.

60
(1b) Non-Synonymous Double-Glosses

Non-synonymous double-glosses are often easier to explain than synonymous ones, since

the issues they raise have a definite bearing on how to interpret the Latin text. Admittedly, the

glosses in PsGlI and Gl (Li) are never deeply or intrusively exegetical. Sometimes, it is true, the

OE glossators use explanatory translations, but for both Gl (Li) and PsGlI these are employed

exclusively (or almost exclusively) in the service of clarifying the literal meaning of the text,

rather than explicating it in theological terms. In any case, we find both polysemous doublets and

figurative doublets among the double-glosses of PsGlI and Gl (Li). Examples of polysemous

double-gloss include “cynn-reccenise / cneuresuu” on generatio at Gl (Li) Matthew 1:18, where

the Lindisfarne glossator suggests that the lemma can refer either to the “genealogy” in the sense

of a “reckoning of a relationship” (BT, “cynn-recceniss”) or to Jesus’ “generation...race, tribe,

family” (BT, “cneóres”) in a concrete sense; 15 and “ðinga / geafa” on munera at Matthew 2:11,

where he notes that munus can have both a more generic sense (“thing”) and a more restricted

sense (“gift”). Similarly, in PsGlI, we find glosses like “gehiseð / onscunaþ” on abhominabitur

(which can refer to both inward hatred and outward shunning of something) at 5:6 (5:7) and “si

fornumen / si geendod” on consumetur (which can refer both to destruction and to the non-

violent end of something) at 7:9 (7:10). In other cases, neither component of a double-gloss is a

precise translation of the lemma, which may lack an exact OE equivalent, and the two glosses

represent two distinct approximations of the lemma’s meaning. This occurs, for instance, when

sacerdotum is glossed “biscopa / mesa preasta” at Gl (Li) Matthew 2:4, and when dux is glossed

“aldormon / latua” two verses later. Here, it seems that the glossator felt that the political and

religious divides between first-century Judaea and tenth-century England made it impossible to

15
In other words, the distinction is between the list of names itself and the persons whom those names denote.

61
translate either lemma exactly, and the very act of noting multiple possibilities (irrespective of

what these are) underscores this divide.

The category of figurative double-gloss, meanwhile, would seem to leave an opening for

exegetical commentary, but as actually practiced by these glossators such double-glossing is

mostly used to clarify the immediate contextual meanings of particular lemmata. Explanatory but

still basic extensions of meaning can be seen in pairings like “to cymende / toword” on uenturus

est (Matthew 3:11) and “tide / life” on tempore (Mark 10:30) in Gl (Li); or “he acwecð /

asceacð” on uibrauit at Psalm 7:12 (7:13), “hand / miht” on manus at Psalm 10:12 (9:33), and

“on rihte heortan / ða rihtþancedon” on rectos corde 11:2: (10:3) in PsGlI. In the first Gl (Li)

example, both components of the gloss are arguably denotative translations, but the second

neglects the meaning of the lemma’s underlying lexical morphemes in favor of the meaning of

an idiomatic usage. In other words, uenturus is the future active participle form of uenire, the

basic Latin word for “come” (“cuman”), and so the first gloss renders it as a participle with

future force, but its contextual sense is simply “future” (“toword”), and the second gloss captures

this more precisely even as it ignores the basic meaning of uenire. Thus, the presence of two

glosses mediates between two notions of literalness: one centered on the most basic denotations

of the underlying elements, and one centered on idiomatic uses. The case of “tide / life” on

tempore takes this a step farther by attaching a secondary meaning that is bound to its particular

context. That is to say, “tid” (“time”) is the only of the two components to render the basic

denotation of tempus, and “lif” is only applicable because in the full phrase in tempore hoc, the

“time” in question is that of one’s earthly life, opposed to in saeculo futuro (“in the future age,”

glossed “in world ðæm to uearde”) in the second part of the verse.

62
 As should be apparent from these examples, the secondary meanings attached to lemmata

with double-glosses are usually not far from the denotative translations usually provided by the

gloss’s first component. Indeed, it is fair to say that even explanatory translations in this category

(such as “lif” on tempus) are literal translations in their own way. Generally, what has occurred

in such cases is that the glossator has supposed that the lemma is used in a figurative manner—as

a metaphor, metonymy, or synecdoche—and glosses it first with a denotative translation, then

with a gloss indicating the tenor of the figure. Thus, to give another example, in Matthew 2:3

(Herodes rex turbatus est et omnis Hierosolima cum illo), the name of a city is used as a

metonymy for its inhabitants, and so, in Gl (Li)’s double-gloss “ða Hierusolimisca / ða

burgwæras” on Hierosolima, the first gloss reproduces the lemma more closely but the second

gloss points more directly to the lemma’s contextual referent. In other words, the explanatory

translation is still literal, as long as “literal” is understood to encompass not only the dictionary

meaning of the lemma but all of its contextual signifieds. 16 Similar metonymic substitutions are

found in PsGlI: for instance, “eorðan / rica” on terram at Psalm 2:9 (2:10), where, just as in Gl

(Li) we have seen a city taken to stand in for its inhabitants, the land is taken to stand in for the

kingdom that occupies it.

Such “explanation under the guise of translation” is common also in continuous

translations, from the OE period to the present day, 17 whether to the exclusion of a denotative

translation or coupled with a denotative translation to form a doublet. Sometimes, too, it

16
As we shall see in Chapter IV, this idea of “literal” was precisely that held by John Wyclif and his followers,
probably including the translators of the Wycliffite Bible.
17
A frequent pattern in recent English biblical translations is for an explanatory translation to be employed in the
text and a denotative translation given in a footnote. In the English Standard Version (2001), for instance, Ecc. 1:2a
reads, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,” with a note on “vanity” reading, “Hebrew vapor (so throughout
Ecclesiastes);” and “household” in the phrase “the household of Stephanas” at 1 Cor. 16:15 is glossed “Greek
house” in a footnote—exactly the same kind of metonymic substitution as that discussed above.

63
becomes desirable or even necessary because the literalism of an initial denotative translation is

unhelpfully excessive. O’Brien has noted that it is quite common for early English translators to

translate a Latin word on the basis of its constituent parts rather than of the word as a whole

(O’Brien 199-200), and the glossators are no exception. For instance, at PsGlI 1:6, when

“forwyrð / losaþ” glosses peribit, both glosses are literal enough in sense, but “forwyrð”

corresponds more precisely to the lemma’s composition as a prefixed verb (“for-” = per-,

“weorðan” = ire, though the latter correspondence is still somewhat imprecise), and “losaþ” then

appears to be an attempt to explain the contextual force of the lemma 18 rather than a denotative

translation, at least in the glossator’s mind. Likewise, with “strecednysse mine / mine beddinge”

on stratum meum at Psalm 6:6 (6:7), both components are accurate denotative translations, but

the first preserves a feature of the lemma that the second does not: like the lemma (ultimately

from sternere), it derives from a verb (“streccan”) meaning “to spread out.” This etymological

connection makes “strecednysse” in one sense a more literal gloss than “beddinge” even though

the latter is a perfectly correct translation of stratum. Such cases are not common in either PsGlI

or Gl (Li), but they prefigure a pattern that we shall see in the ME translations: the pairing of

what we might call an etymological translation (O’Brien’s term) with a denotative translation

that ignores the formal features of the lemma preserved by the doublet’s other component. As

Gneuss points out, such pairings can be helpful for establishing not only loanwords (as we saw in

section 1a) but, as in these examples from the glosses, loan-meanings (Gneuss 31).

In PsGlI the frequency of glosses interpreting figurative uses is relatively high, and these

are often somewhat more intrusive than their counterparts in Gl (Li). For one thing, the Lambeth

18
Ps. 1:6 reads, quonium nouit dominus uiam iustorum et iter impiorum peribit. Douay-Rheims “shall perish”
accurately captures the sense of this last word as applied to iter impiorum.

64
glossator was fairly free with inserting explanatory translations in expressions whose status as

figurative is disputable (i.e., which could reasonably be interpreted as being meant literally).

Thus, for instance, the metonymic gloss “hand / miht” is placed on manus at Psalm 10:12 (9:33),

even though nothing about the phrase Domine Deus, exaltetur manus tua definitively indicates

that “hand” must stand in for “might” or “strength.” 19 To be sure, it is, as Beth Szilos

emphasizes, perfectly common in the Hebrew Bible for the hand to “metaphorically represent

power,” including “power in general, ability to do something, and military might” (Szilos 187;

cf. Alter [1997] xiv-xv), but only a prior theological commitment to understanding God in non-

anthropomorphic terms (a commitment probably not shared by the Psalmist) demands such a

metonymic reading here. This kind of explanatory operation is perhaps more common in PsGlI

than in many continuous translations, but it is nevertheless found, as we shall see, in the OE

Prose Psalms and in the Wycliffite Bible. Other cases of figurative double-glossing in PsGlI

include the triple-gloss “on diglum / on incofan / on eowrum clyfum” on in cubilibus uestris at

Psalm 4:4 (4:5), where a metaphorical extension of the lemma’s sense (“in one’s bedroom”

interpreted as “in secret”) is followed by two alternative denotative translations, and “on rihte

heortan / ða rihtþancedon” on rectos corde at Psalm 11:2 (10:3), where the second gloss retains

the “riht” (rectos) element but metonymically substitutes “thinking” for “heart” (a part of the

body conventionally associated with mental processes).

PsGlI here becomes the more interesting of the two manuscripts, since the extension of

meaning in its glosses is sometimes not as straightforward as the substitution of the tenor of a

metaphor for its vehicle, but can involve quite complex contextual adaptations. Indeed, as James

19
Cf. “earm / anweald” on brachium at 10:15 (9:36), which is quite similar to a doublet employed in the same place
in Alfred’s Psalter.

65
Rosier notes, sometimes there is “apparent disagreement between the meaning of the gloss and

the meaning of the Latin word it renders, and an attempt to explain how the discrepancy arose, or

what the glossator had in mind besides the literal meaning of the Latin, may indicate that

glossators were often not merely slavish scribes, but students who went about their glossing with

learning and imagination” (Rosier 1). For instance, at PsGlI 5:6 (5:7), the glossator seems to

stumble over the Hebraism uirum sanguinum, and we find the triple-gloss “þæne wer þe is

blodgita / geotende / wer bloda.” Here, interestingly, the literal word-for-word translation is

placed last, after a grammatical double-gloss, as if the glossator initially wanted to avoid it but

decided that the first two glosses were insufficient. At any rate, the first two glosses attempt to

explain the lemma by establishing a relation between its two elements that is not stated explicitly

in the text (the “men” shed “blood”), expressed first as a noun and then as a participle. 20

A similar process occurs when one gloss represents the lemma’s basic denotation and the

other a secondary meaning that the lemma can have in certain contexts: for instance, “onarisað /

wiðstandaþ” on insurgunt at PsGlI 3:1 (3:2), “þu forgnide / þu tobryttest” on contriuisti at 3:7

(3:8), and “gehiseð / onscunaþ” on abhominabitur at 5:6 (5:7). In each of these three fairly

representative instances, the second gloss is closer to the contextual sense of its lemma, but the

glossator seems to have included the first gloss as well (and to have put it first) because it is

strictly speaking closer to the lemma’s primary definition. (“Onarisað” is also a calque of its

lemma and so also more of an “etymological” translation than is “wiðstandaþ.”) In other words,

the pairing of two glosses represents an attempt to represent both the underlying elements in their

most basic meaning and the particular meaning of an expression in context.

20
In this case, it is particularly clear that the first two glosses are to be taken together, since the “blod” element is
not repeated for the second gloss but is still integral to the sense.

66
 In some cases, the Lambeth glossator engages in genuinely theological commentary.

Richard Stracke (echoing observations made by Rosier) has in fact located a number of instances

in which the Lambeth glosses suggest interpretations that can be traced back to patristic sources.

A number of Stracke’s examples involve double-glossing, and his remark about one of these

(“hlywnys 21 / crocsceard” on testa at 22:15 [21:16]), that “Since the verse does not have any

actual word for ‘heat’...the word [hlywnys] must be placed in parallel to crocsceard over testa”

(Stracke 123), may be generalized to any number of other glosses in the same manuscript. For

instance, taking another of Stracke’s examples, on mensam in 23:5 (22:5), we find the tripled

gloss “beod / beodwyste / mysan,” which, as Stracke explains, “takes two directions” in its

interpretation because “Throughout the exegetical tradition...are intertwined two complementary

explanations of the mensa: it is both beata convivatio and esca coelestis” (126)—with the double

interpretation in fact yielding a tripled gloss because the glossator finds himself obligated to

include a denotative translation of the lemma (“beod”) in addition to the meanings assigned to it

by exegetical tradition. 22

Perhaps most interesting in this category are the various glosses of christus (about half of

which are double- or triple-glosses), where the lemma is such a theologically-loaded term that

even a literal translation is difficult to find. To see this, it will be convenient simply to look at the

glosses on all occurrences of christus in PsGlI (Table 2.1.1).

Table 2.1.1. Glosses on Forms of Christus in the Lambeth Psalter

2:2: christum eius = his criste / his gecorenum
17:51: christo = gecorenum / gesmiredum
19:7: christum suum = his gecorenan / crist / kyninge

21
An emendation of the MS.’s “blywnys” suggested by H.D. Meritt and accepted by Stracke.
22
Rosier in fact finds one instance in PsGlI where a doubled gloss (“yfelum yste / omum wæstmas” on erugini at
77:46) furnishes two interpretations based on patristic commentary but fails to provide a denotative translation,
evidently because the scribe was unsure of the lemma’s actual meaning (Rosier 2).

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 27:8: christi = cristes
83:10: christi tui not glossed
88:39: christum tuum = þine crist
88:52: christi tui = þines cristes
104:15: christos = gesmyredan / bearn
131:17: christo = cyningce
Christus is a borrowing of Greek χρɩστός, literally “anointed” (LSJ), and the OE

equivalent of the Greek original, “gesmyrede,” translates this term a few times here and in other

texts (including, as we shall see, Alfred’s Psalms), but “Christ” in the specialized sense of Jesus

Christ is what it regularly denotes in medieval Latin. Certainly the OE borrowing of this word, in

the form “crist,” almost invariably refers to Jesus, so that its use in some of the Lambeth glosses

inevitably suggests Christological readings of some passages. In other cases, however, this either

is not tenable or unduly restricts possible interpretations. Some of the other glosses thus explain

christus in such a way as to give it a broader meaning without excluding the Christological

understanding: in the first three instances, the “Christ” or “anointed [one]” is generalized as one

“chosen” by God, which can refer to King David as well as to Jesus and perhaps to yet others. In

two cases, in fact, the “anointed” one is directly suggested to be David by the gloss “cyning”

(laid alongside both a generalizing explanation and “crist” in one case, on its own in the other 23).

Moreover, in the one case where christus is used in the plural, a non-Christological interpretation

is unambiguously necessary, and so the glossator gives first the underlying etymological

meaning and then suggests that the “anointed” of God in this case are all “children” of God.

Interesting as such theological glossing in what is overall simply a lexical gloss may be, it

is an extremely rare phenomenon in the OE glosses. Even with other theologically loaded terms,

the glossators almost always avoid any kind of exegesis more intrusive than clarification of the

23
In this latter case, the full verse reads, Illuc producam cornu Dauid; paraui lucernam christo meo, with Dauid and
christo meo plainly in parallel, so that there is no question that christus refers to the king rather than the Christ.

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lemma’s immediate reference. Indeed, the failure to gloss christus in Psalm 28 (27) may even

point to a hesitancy to translate this significant lemma in a context where the glossator was (for

whatever reason) unsure about the best interpretation. Nevertheless, the fact that an overtly

exegetical translation like “gecoren,” “cyning,” or “bearn” for christus can make its way into

even an interlinear lexical gloss shows the kinds of difficulties contemporary and later translators

faced in rendering scriptural texts into English, and the Lambeth glossator’s use of doublets in

this connection illustrates one strategy for dealing with such difficulties common in OE and ME.

As stated above, the interest of Gl (Li) and PsGlI for our purposes is mainly in their

anticipations of translational approaches found in the continuous translations. There is perhaps

much more to be said about the kinds of words put together in the double-glossing of both

manuscripts, but what has been said so far has sufficiently illustrated the basic issues to which

we shall recur throughout this study. Though the glosses differ from the continuous translations

(and from each other) in the motivations that apparently underlie their frequent pairing of

synonymous terms, we will see throughout this study that synonymous doublets in continuous

translations often replicate patterns identified above for synonymous double-glosses. With the

category of non-synonymous doublets, the glosses anticipate not only some of the translational

habits followed by later translators (e.g., using a doublet to preserve and explicate a figurative

usage simultaneously, pairing two approximations of a lemma that lacks a precise English

equivalent) but also sometimes particular emphases picked up by these translators (e.g., body-

part metonymies, terms with special theological interest), in a few cases even specific doublets.

Whether or not the interlinear glosses can really be regarded as the starting-point of English

biblical translation, the Lambeth and Lindisfarne glosses provide an exemplary model for several

fundamental aspects doubling in translations of the OE and ME periods.

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(2) Doubling in the OE Heptateuch and the West-Saxon Gospels

Doubling is never quite as frequent in the surviving continuous OE biblical translations

as it is in the glosses, but it is at least occasionally present in all of them. At the same time, in

shifting our attention to continuous translations, we will soon find that doubling becomes a more

complicated matter in several respects (for both biblical and non-biblical translations). Most

importantly, even tracking the use of doubling is less straightforward for a continuous translation

than for an interlinear gloss. Direct one-to-one (or one-to-two) correspondence between lemma

and translation is made visually obvious in a gloss, but becomes harder to establish when the two

are not given together or even when they are but the correspondences are not marked, as in a

facing-page translation. Similarly, processes of “domestication” frequently cause correspondence

between source-text and translation to break down entirely, as when a Latin ablative noun is

translated by a preposition-article-noun construction in English. While the examples cited in

section 1 will have demonstrated that the introduction of function-words with no exact

equivalent in the Latin text is endemic in the glosses, when the translation is unmoored from the

source-text such liberties naturally tend to multiply and become more extreme. Nevertheless,

these complications are far from prohibitive, and the tendency to roughly word-for-word

translation in OE prose renderings of Latin makes doublets usually easy to identify.

In any case, we can reasonably say that the use of translational doubling is highly

variable in extant continuous OE translations of Latin texts. The most extreme cases are probably

the OE versions of Bede, in which there are, by Koskiennemi’s count, an average of about 1.5

doublets on every page of the EETS edition (Koskenniemi 32), and of Orosius, in which

Koskenniemi finds about 0.6 doublets per page of the EETS edition (28). Other translations, such

as the Apollonius of Tyre, avoid doubling altogether. With regard to our immediate subject, in the

70
three surviving prose biblical translations—that is, the first third of the OE text in the Paris

Psalter, the West-Saxon Gospels, and the abridged Heptateuch produced in part by Ælfric—we

find a similar variability. Only in the Prose Psalms (traditionally attributed to King Alfred 24) is

doubling especially prominent, with something like two hundred doublets distributed over fifty

Psalms. Nevertheless, even for the OE Heptateuch (Hep) and the West-Saxon Gospels

(WSCp 25), doubling remains part of a repertoire of approaches from which the translators draw

on occasion. Thus, Hep contains nineteen translational doublets by Koskenniemi’s count

(Koskenniemi 40), and WSCp features about ten. Before turning to Alfred, then, it will be

worthwhile to look briefly at WSCp and Hep to illustrate some of the basic possibilities for

doubling as it was employed by translators who did not make a particular habit of it.

WSCp is notable for being, in contrast with Alfred’s Psalter and Hep, both unabridged

and given independently of any Latin text. Indeed David Fowler calls it “the nearest thing to a

translation in the modern sense” found early in the OE period (Fowler [1983] 221). In that

respect, WSCp can become rather less interesting than the other surviving medieval English

biblical translations. In contrast with the translations of Ælfric and Alfred, it usually sticks so

closely to its source-text as to avoid exegetical interventions, whether paraphrase or

interpolation. The same can be said of very few biblical translations into any medieval

vernacular, and possibly for none do we have so few indicators of the translator’s approach to the

task of translation. Even the Wycliffite Bible, which favors similarly unadorned translation, puts

24
Throughout this chapter, I will refer to Alfred as the translator of the OE Prose Psalms. See O’Neill (2001) 73-96,
Bately (2009), and Bately (2014) 116-118, 140-142 for arguments in favor of this attribution, as well as a summary
of some of the arguments against it. For my purposes, the truth of the attribution is neither here nor there, and I use
the name “Alfred” instead of a designation such as “the OE Prose Psalms translator” mainly because it has a
compactness not offset even by the space wasted on this footnote.

Properly speaking, this abbreviation refers specifically to Corpus Christi College MS. 140, but I will use it for the
25

West-Saxon Gospels generally because it is the base-text of Liuzza’s edition (as well as that of Skeat).

71
its translational approaches into sharper relief in multiple respects, first in that it exists in

multiple starkly different recensions, and second in that many copies of it feature commentary or

prefatory material. With WSCp, meanwhile, we have only a handful of manuscripts whose texts

differ on only minor points and no other OE translation of the same text which might, by

contrast, underscore WSCp’s peculiarities. Moreover, the manuscripts of WSCp contain no

introductions and almost no explanatory interpolations of the sort found in Ælfric’s Genesis and

the Wycliffite Bible: the closest thing to commentary in WSCp is a set of headings in two or

three copies that divide the text into lectionary readings. These, however, contain no comment

other than those of the type “Ðys sceal on þære xxiii wucan ofer pentecosten” (Liuzza 1.38),

accompanied sometimes by an added expression of the “Jesus said” type when a lectionary

reading begins in the middle of a discourse.

WSCp does, however, feature some substantial liberties with its source-text. Most

obvious are its textual glosses, though these are few in number. It is, moreover, quickly apparent

from an inspection of the catalogue of them in Liuzza’s edition that they are all lexical rather

than exegetical in focus. For instance, it occasionally happens that a Latin word is carried over

directly into the English text, lacking any easy English equivalent, and then given an OE

definition. This occurs with legio at Luke 8:30 (“legio þæt is on ure geþeode eored”), where a

direct English equivalent is suggested but the Latin lemma is preserved, presumably either

because it is a technical military expression to which the correspondence with “eored” is not

exact or because it is here used as a proper name. Again, with scorpionem at Luke 11:12

(“scorpionem þæt is an wyrmcynn”), the gloss supplies only a general term explaining what kind

of animal a scorpion is since OE lacks a native word for “scorpion” and the audience might not

72
know what a scorpion was—as it is, in MnE we still use the Latin loanword, though it has

become more familiar than it was in Anglo-Saxon England.

Even this kind of explanatory addition into the text is uncommon in WSCp, and the

majority of translational liberties documented by Liuzza are of even less intrusive types, such as

the supplying of implied subjects, possessive adjectives, and so forth. In other words, additions

of these sorts serve not to explain difficult expressions in the text, but simply to make explicit

what is implied from context in the source-text. This is sometimes still non-negligible, as when

“for þære gesyhðe þe hi gesawon” is added after “and wæron afærede” (Vulgate inuaserat enim

eas tremor et pauor) at Mark 16:8, where the causal relationship between what the women saw

at Jesus’ tomb and their fear is stated explicitly in the translation but not the source-text. But

even when the interpolation is as grammatically elaborate as an entire relative clause, it is never

exegetically elaborate, serving rather to clarify surface meanings.

The same is true of the eight or so translational doublets found in WSCp. Those

documented by Liuzza, plus one other I have found, are given in Table 2.2.1.

Table 2.2.1. Doublets in WSCp

Mt. 4:8: adsumit = genam and lædde
Mt. 10:19: tradent = belæwað hig and syllað
Mt. 18:30: redderet debitum = agulde and gafe
Mt. 20:28: animam = sawle lif
Mt. 27:7: concilium autem inito = hig worhton þa gemot and smeadon hu hig sceoldon
þæs hælendes wurð ateon
Mk. 3:27: uasa = his æhta and his fatu
Mk. 10:25: diuitem = se rica and se welega
Mk. 14:64: condemnauerunt = hyrwdon...and cwædon 26
Only one of these pairings—“belæwað hig and syllað,” the two components of which are,

as Grünberg notes, used interchangeably in WSCp to translate tradere/prodere (Grünberg 272)—

26
Gl (Li) gives a proper doublet on this lemma: “geniðradon / gehendon.”

73
is synonymous, but almost all of them concern fairly trivial points of meaning. Most are best

understood as figurative doublets, based on either a metaphorical or metonymic interpretation or

a contextual implication. For instance, at Mark 10:25, “se rica” is a denotative translation of

diues, and “se welega” represents a kind of metonymy according to which “rich” is understood to

imply “prosperous” in a more general way. 27 A similar metonymy can be seen in “æhta

and...fatu” for uasa, where “vessels” stands for “property” in general. 28 The remaining doublets

mostly feature the explicit statement of something that is only implied in the lemma and in the

doublet’s first component. For instance, in Matthew 4:8, adsumit can be linked in terms of basic

denotation only to “genam” (both mean “took up”), but the action in “lædde” is implied by the

context—that of Satan taking Jesus to a high mountain in the course of the Temptation. In like

manner, the expression “hig worhton þa gemot and smeadon hu hig sceoldon þæs hælendes wurð

ateon” renders the literal denotation of its lemma (with the ablative absolute resolved into a

clause with a finite verb) and adds a concrete expression of something the lemma implies rather

than denotes. In this case, the lemma and first component denote the formation of a council,

which in context implies consideration of how a particular issue (Jesus’ popularity) should be

handled. In short, what Rosier says about the “apparent disagreement between the meaning of the

gloss and the meaning of the Latin word it renders...indicat[ing] that glossators...went about their

glossing with learning and imagination” (see section 1b) applies to the WSCp translator as well

as the glossators.

27
Cf. Gl (Li) on this lemma: “se wælig / ðe wlonca.”
28
This seems to be the only case in WSCp’s doublets where the denotative translation is put second, possibly
because the extended sense is conceptually more significant.

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 The choice of lemmata for translational doubling strikes one as particularly arbitrary in

WSCp. Not only can almost none of the items in Table 2.2.1 can be linked to any major

interpretive issue, but none of them seems to represent a point of obscure or unclear phrasing. It

will also be observed that the use of doubling seems to drop off entirely in Luke and John. If the

purpose of doublets is to clarify and emphasize, it is not clear why these expressions receive the

clarification and emphasis they do while others do not. None of these appear at particularly

important junctures, and the choice to make certain moments or elements more concrete and

explicit is thus most easily understood as an ad-hoc matter. Doubling is, in WSCp, simply one

stylistic resource among many for making the Gospel narrative clearer in general, and the choice

to use it rather than another technique of clarification at a particular point is seemingly

unmotivated. This in turn would seem to show how conventional the use of translational

doubling had already become in OE by the time the WSCp translation was undertaken.

The one doublet in Table 2.2.1 that reflects a significant conceptual difficulty of the sort

we have seen with the glosses is “sawle lif” for animam at Matthew 20:28. This doublet is also

an oddity in that it appears in all manuscripts of WSCp that contain the relevant passage just as it

is given above, without a conjunction linking the two components. It is conceivable that it is

meant as a single compound, but, as Liuzza puts it, “Though sense can be made of the OE

reading, it is possible that the words ‘sawle lif’ represent a repetitious attempt to render animam,

which is translated by both words at various places in the OE version” (Liuzza 2.55; cf.

Grünberg 272). As Liuzza’s explanation suggests, moreover, this particular doublet may arise

from simple uncertainty about the lemma’s meaning in context rather than being an attempt to

cover a broader portion of the lemma’s semantic range than is possible with a single OE word. In

other words, where other doublets are meant to be complementary, these two may be meant to be

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mutually exclusive alternatives. The lack of a conjunction could even suggest that in the ultimate

exemplar for the extant manuscripts, the two components were set down as alternatives to be

chosen from and the copyists reproduced them both only as a misunderstanding. This last

possibility is pure speculation, but would explain the oddity of the expression, both in its

grammatical form and in its being the only doublet in WSCp that does not seem explicable as

simply part of a stylistic tendency toward maximizing concreteness and explicitness. At the same

time, there are significant conceptual difficulties with the Latin word anima that probably come

into play here, but we shall leave these aside for the moment and return to them in section 3,

where we will consider a set of similar doublets in Alfred’s Psalter.

Our second text, Hep, makes slightly more use of doubling, and illustrates particularly

well the tendency to let doubling become a stylistic mannerism, rather than a means of

explanation or emphasis, with its frequent expansion of verbs of speaking. Indeed, most of the

translational doublets in the OE Genesis, especially in the section not translated by Ælfric, are an

expansion of forms of respondere into some variation of “andswarode and cwæð,” with a similar

expansion of ait occurring once in the Ælfrician section. The complete set is given in Table

2.2.2.

Table 2.2.2. Doublets in Hep: Verbs of Speaking

Gn. 20:4: ait = andwirde...and cwæð
Gn. 27:18: respondit = andswarode and cwæð
Gn. 27:32: respondit = andwirde and cwæð
Gn. 29:4: responderunt = andswaredon and cwædon
Gn. 29:26: respondit Laban = andswarode Laban and cwæð
Gn. 31:14: responderunt Rahel et Lia = andswarode Lia and Rachel and cwædon
Gn. 40:18: respondit Ioseph = andswarode Iosep and cwæð
Gn. 47:25: responderunt = andswaredon and cwædon
The habit of turning respondit/responderunt into “answered and said” would seem to be a

simple reflection of the desire to amplify and make explicit, in this case by attaching an explicit

76
verb of speaking to a verb that can but does not have to refer to speaking. More importantly, it

seems to be part of an attempt to make the text more stylistically uniform. D.R. Howlett

considers it characteristic of the Ælfrician section of Hep, in contrast with the rest of the

translation, that it “reflects the Biblical style which is found in [Ælfric’s] model, the Vulgate

Genesis” (Howlett 574), but in fact the handling of respondere throughout the second half of the

OE Genesis points to a similar stylistic leveling by at least some of the anonymous translators.

Constructions of the type respondens ait/dixit/inquit are common in the Vulgate, and (by

resolution of the participle) this tends to be translated as “answered and said” in English

translations going back at least to Hep. 29 Expansion of simple respondit/responderunt into

“answered and said” therefore becomes a way in which a stylistic mannerism of the source-text

is not only adopted but extended by the translation.

For the rest, the use of doublets in Hep is as scattered as in WSCp. To a large degree, this

is surprising, as we know that Ælfric at least (whatever may be said of the other Hep translators)

had a definite interpretive agenda and notions about how this should inform his work as a

translator. In Chapter I, we briefly considered Ælfric’s remarks about the task of translation and

a few ways in which his outlook affected his translation itself. Indeed, James Hurt concludes that

“In general the reservations Ælfric expressed in the preface about translating the Bible are

implicit in the translation itself. Ælfric did his job conscientiously and thoughtfully, but he was

too conscious of how the ‘naked narrative’ could be misunderstood to translate freely and fully

the Book of Genesis” (Hurt 103), finding that Ælfric’s section of Hep is translated only

“somewhat more closely and literally” than the biblical material in his homilies (102). Still,

O’Brien is right to emphasize the “large gap between discussion and practice” in relation to

29
See Gn. 18:27 and Ex. 4:1 for examples in Hep and Mt. 3:15 and Mk. 8:29 for examples in WSCp.

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translation (O’Brien 44) and that Ælfric in particular, while he “does not always translate biblical

texts word for word, as he promised,” also “did not import volumes of wholly extratextual

foreign material in his translations” (ibid.). In fact, most of the time, despite what we saw in

Chapter I about the extreme redaction of and interpolation into Hep Genesis 19, Ælfric’s

translation is “conservative” to the point that “Without the addition of glosses or interpretation of

any kind, ambiguities in the source remain in the translation” (46). In all this, the translators of

the rest of Hep mainly differ from Ælfric only in that they abridge more and elaborate even less.

In any case, doublets are sometimes employed both by Ælfric and by the other translators

for the sake of conceptual or stylistic elaboration. Those that are not expansions of verbs of

speaking include those in Table 2.2.3.

Table 2.2.3. Other Doublets in Hep

Gn. 1:29: herbam = gærs and wyrta [also Gn. 2:5]
Gn. 41:26: ubertatis anni = wæstmbære gear and welige
Gn. 41:29: anni...fertilitatis magnae = swiðe wæstmbære gear and swiþe welige
Ex. 4:17: signa = wundru and tacnu
Ex. 5:17: uacatis otio = ge synd æmtige and idele
Ex. 11:10: ostenta = þa wundru and þa foretacnu
Ex. 32:10: gentem magnam = micle þeode and mære
Dt. 9:7: contendisti = ge fliton and wunnon
Although a number of these items are of individual interest, it is impossible to discern any

broad areas of emphasis on the part of the translators. At least one item is a polysemous doublet,

with Ælfric taking care to specify that, when Genesis 1-2 states that God created herbae, it

means a wide variety of types that, at least in his view, could not be encompassed by a single OE

word—both flowering plants and grass. In a similarly almost-arbitrary fashion, the translator of

the later part of Genesis makes a point of showing that the years of prosperity foretold in

Pharaoh’s dream as interpreted by Joseph entail both fruitfulness (which is what fertilitas and

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ubertas literally denote) and, by extension, general material prosperity—a metonymic doublet of

a sort we have seen in the glosses.

Somewhat more interesting, because it reflects a minor translational difficulty that results

in similar doublets in the Wycliffite Bible, is the use of two variants of the doublet “wundru and

tacnu” for signa and ostenta in Exodus. Signum in the sense of “miracle” is found in a number of

other places in the Vulgate, especially the Gospel of John, and to a lesser extent so is ostentum.

The reasoning behind the doubled translations of these words seems to be based on the same

traditional understanding of them expressed six hundred years later, in notably similar terms, by

Thomas Hobbes. As Hobbes explains in chapter 37 of the Leviathan, “By Miracles are signified

the Admirable works of God: and therefore they are also called Wonders. And because they are

for the most part, done, for a signification of his commandement, in such occasions, as without

them, men are apt to doubt...what he hath commanded...they are commonly in Holy Scripture,

called Signes, in the same sense, as they are called by the Latines, Ostenta, and Portenta, from

shewing and foresignifying that, which the Almighty is about to bring to passe” (Hobbes 300; cf.

Gneuss 73-74). This secondary sense of signum/ostentum is what accounts for the first

component, “wundru” (a word used in its MnE form by Hobbes), in each of these doublets. In

both cases, however, the Hep translator also wishes to preserve the “signification” sense, and so

tacks on “tacnu” (analogous to Hobbes’s “signs”) and “foretacnu” (cf. Hobbes’s

“foresignifying”).

The remaining three items in Table 2.2.3 seem to be the only synonymous or polysemous

doublets in Hep. To my estimation, “fliton and wunnon” is the only of these in which

synonymity is so thorough-going that a clear distinction cannot be drawn between the semantic

ranges of the two components. With “æmtige and idele,” this becomes disputable, as “idel” can,

79
like “æmtige,” mean simply physically empty (BT), but it can also have the same moralistic

sense that “idle” does in MnE, while “æmtig” generally cannot. The rendering of magnam as

“micle...and mære,” meanwhile, reflects the ability of its lemma to refer both to physical size

(“micel”) and to importance or fame (“mære”), both of which the translator seems to think no

single OE word can properly encompass.

On their own, neither WSCp nor Hep is of particular interest as a site of translational

doubling. Indeed, if they possess any notability, this is (appropriately) twofold. First, they

illustrate how commonplace doubling seems to have become for OE translators, to that point that

it is used almost unconsciously. Second, their sporadic doubling reaffirms that the basic

categories of doubling we have discussed up to this point are not limited in their applicability to

particular sets of texts in which translational doubling is a major feature, and are not born of

peculiarities of specific writers like Alfred and the OE Bede translator. With this in mind, we

may more fruitfully pass on to translations in which doubling is a more systematic feature.

(3) Doubling in King Alfred’s Psalter

Compared with many other OE translations from Latin, the Alfredian translations are, as

Bately rightly says, more prone to “free paraphrase” rather than “close translation” (Bately

[1988] 199), to the point that O’Neill usually refers to Alfred’s Psalter (hereafter Ps(P)) as a

“paraphrase” (O’Neill [1981] 20; O’Neill [2001] passim; cf. Bately [2014] 136, where

“adaptation” and “transformation” are also suggested as appropriate terms for the Alfredian

translations). This label should not be taken to suggest that there are no lexical correspondences

between Ps(P) and its source-text, and in fact Bately points out that Ps(P) is less free with its

source than the other Alfredian translations (Bately [1988] 130), but certainly at least O’Brien is

80
right to say that Alfred “translated to clear away obscurities in the Latin source” (O’Brien 159).

Given that, as a result, the liberties Alfred takes with his source-text are more extensive than any

taken by the WSCp translator and more complex than the simple abridgments and exegetical

interpolations employed by Ælfric and the other Hep translators, it will be useful to return to

some issues raised only summarily at the beginning of the previous section.

In a continuous translation, as I have already suggested, any attempt to establish the

relationship between the words of the source-text and those of the translation may be disrupted

on two fronts. First, when the translation is not written as a gloss over individual words, direct

lexical correspondences are not as self-evident as in an interlinear gloss. Second, because it is not

as anchored in precise verbal correspondences with the source-text as is a gloss, a continuous

translation is more apt than an interlinear gloss to paraphrase. Unlike interlinear glosses,

continuous translations are usually not intended (or at least not solely intended) as an aid to

reading the original-language text, and so various forms of “domestication” can be of service in

conveying the text’s meaning in ways peculiar to the translation. Consequently, when one

encounters a phrase like the “hæl and tohopa” where the source-text has only salus, 30 it may

become hard to say with certainty whether both “hæl” and “tohopa” in the translation are meant

to correspond to salus in the source-text or whether “and tohopa” is an explanatory insertion of

some sort. A third complication arises for Ps(P) in particular. Unlike WSCp and (except in rare

cases) Hep, this text clearly shows the influence of various traditions of commentary not only in

the introduction attached to each psalm but in the translation itself (see O’Neill [2001] 34-39),

and on the basis of these commentaries, especially the Pseudo-Bedan Argumenta in Librum

30
In this section, all quotations from the Psalms are, unless otherwise specified, taken from Robert Weber’s edition
of the Roman Psalter.

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Psalmorum, Alfred inserts “numerous explanations and interpretations,” as O’Neill observes

(34). Such a use of outside sources obscures correspondences between translation and source-

text by introducing other potential sources for particular segments of the text. Thus, while it is

still possible to establish instances of translational doubling in Ps(P), as correspondences

between lemma and translation are for the most part fairly unambiguous, these complications

should be kept in mind as capable of producing imprecision and uncertainty.

Furthermore, in many cases, Ps(P) combines paraphrase and commentary to the point that

what is essentially an explanatory gloss is used instead of a denotative translation of a word in

the source-text: for instance, “mægen” sometimes appears where the source-text reads ossa,

“bones” having been understood as a metonymy for “strength” (cf. the glossing of manus in

PsGlI, discussed in section 1b). Nevertheless, it is still generally possible to establish

correspondences between the major words (or at least phrases) of Ps(P) and those of its source,

the Roman Psalter. 31 Even in cases of explanatory translation like the one just mentioned, there

is enough of a connection between two expressions for one to be seen as grounded in the other,

as in the tenor and vehicle of a metaphor. O’Neill in fact posits that many such metonymies

really are literal translations, at least relative to the Latin version’s ultimate source-text: “In the

original Hebrew these were intended to be read figuratively so that cor, for example, could mean

‘the heart of something,’ manus ‘action or power’ and cornu ‘strength’” (O’Neill [2014] 259). 32

We should also, however, continue to be mindful of more basic matters of style, idiom,

and the correspondence between Latin and English at a grammatical level as discussed in section

31
That the Roman Psalter, rather than the Gallican, is the source-text for Ps(P) is well-established, and a number of
readings in the translation have been identified as reflecting the Roman Psalter text, albeit a redaction of the Roman
Psalter different from that found in the MS. in which Ps(P) is preserved (O’Neill [2001] 10-11).
32
He adds, however, that Alfred got the sense of these Hebraisms from Latin commentary (O’Neill [2014] 259).

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1, and before advancing to doublets in which exegesis is an obvious concern it will be

convenient to begin with those (synonymous and polysemous) in which more purely lexical

issues are the primary issue.

(3a) Synonymous Doublets

Although explanatory translations are fairly common in Ps(P), denotative translation is

still the norm, and this is true in doublets as well. Thus, almost all doublets in Ps(P) contain at

least one denotative translation, and in a narrower majority both components are denotative

translations of their lemmata. This includes both synonymous and polysemous doublets, which

come to be something of a stylistic mannerism on Alfred’s part. It has often been observed that

Alfred’s translation tends toward varying degrees and types of embellishment in its prose style,

and doublets whose components have identical or related meanings form a notable part of this.

O’Neill and Bately, for instance, have both identified a tendency toward “balanced structure” in

Ps(P) (O’Neill [2001] 51; Bately [1988] 126) that goes beyond and reinforces the parallelism of

Hebrew poetry. This tendency is manifest in features such as “deliberate variations in word

choice, where [Alfred] departs from his normal translation of a concept in favor of one that

offers the euphonic advantages of alliteration or assonance” (O’Neill [2011] 50) and the use of

unusual words “chosen for alliterative or rhythmical effect or to avoid repetition” (65), as well as

in the use of doublets specifically (Bately [2014] 137-138). 33 Often, too, an emphasis on fullness

and clarity, in addition to such rhetorical concerns, lends itself to a pleonastic style. Borinski

observes of the Alfredian translations generally that they tend toward “additions, whether of

33
Bately elsewhere discusses the use of similar techniques of rhetorical expansion in Wærferth’s translation of
Gregory’s Dialogues (Bately [1988] 121-123), so it should not be supposed that any of this is unique to Alfred.

83
words or of whole subordinate and main clauses for the sake of clarification, summary, etc.” and

that “these many additions with little elaboration of sense make the tempo inordinately slow”

(Borinski 307). Synonymous doublets especially form a part of this, underscoring certain

expressions without more fully explaining their meaning as do non-synonymous doublets.

Examples of synonymous doublets are collected in Table 2.3.1.

Table 2.3.1. Synonymous Doublets in Ps(P)

1:3: non decidet = ne fealwiað ne ne seariað
4:1 (4:2): tribulatione = minum earfoðum and nearonessum
5:1 (5:2): clamorem meum = mine stemne and min gehrop
7:17 (7:18): psallam = herie...and lofige
8:2 (8:3): defensorem = þa þe unrihtwisnesse ladiað and scyldað
10:5 (9:26): dominabitur = he mæge rixian and wealdan
10:7 (9:28): dolo = facnes and searuwa
10:10 (9:31): cadet = aginð he sylf sigan oððe afylð
14:3 (13:3): inutiles = idle and unnytte
16:4 (15:4): infirmitates eorum = heora unmiht and heora untrymð
17:8 (16:8): custodi me = geheald me...and beorh me
18:4 (17:5): dolores = sar and sorga 34
18:5 (17:6): dolores = sar and manigfeald witu
18:9 (17:10): caligo = gesworcen and aðystrod
18:32 (17:33): uirtute = mid mægnum and mid cræftum [also 18:39 (17:40)]
22:7 (21:8): aspernabantur = forsyhð and onscunað
22:18 (21:19): super uestem meam miserunt sortem = gedældan him min hrægl and þæt
tohlutan
25:14 (24:14): firmamentum = mægen and cræft
26:4 (25:4): uanitatis = idelra manna and unnytra
27:3 (26:3): castra = getruman and scyldridan
28:3 (27:3): ne perdas me = ne forleos me ne me ne fordo
29:6 (28:6): comminuet = forbrycð and forbryt
30:11 (29:12): planctum meum = mine heaf and mine seofunga
31:7 (30:8): exultabo et laetabor = fægnie and wynsumige and blissige
31:10 (30:11): defecit = geteorode and geendode
31:10 (30:11): in gemitibus = on sicetunga and on gestæne
31:10 (30:11): in paupertate = for wædle and for yrmðum
34:5 (33:6): accedite ad eum = cumað nu to him and genealæcað him
34:10 (33:11): eguerunt = wædledon and eodon biddende
37:36 (36:36): quaesiui eum = ic acsode æfter him and hine sohte
38:1 (37:2): ne...arguas me = ne þrea þu me ne ne þrafa

34
Gallican reading; a translation of Roman gemitus (“granung”) is appended to this doublet (see Table 2.3.5) to
form a triplet.

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 38:8 (37:9): incuruatus = gesæged and gehnæged
38:10 (37:11): fortitudo mea = min mægen and min strengo and min cræft
39:11 (38:12): uane = on idlum sorgum and on ymbhogum 35
39:11 (38:12): conturbatur = byð...gedrefed and abysgod
44:3 (43:4): non saluauit 36 = ne geheoldon ne ne gehældon
44:5 (43:6): uentilauimus = beþurscon...and awindwedan
44:13 (43:14): obprobrium = to edwite and to bysmre
48:6 (47:7): tremor = ege and fyrhto
48:6 (47:7): dolores = sar and wracu
48:12 (47:13): in turribus = on þam torrum and on þam wighusum
In any number of these examples, one might point to minor nuances of meaning as

showing that these doublets are not fully synonymous. Nicole Discenza makes an important

point when she remarks that “Translators select words which they feel capture the primary sense

of source words and match secondary meanings and connotations only if they can” (Discenza

81), and a corollary of this is that when two translations are employed they may differ in

“secondary meanings and connotations” even if they capture the same primary meaning. Thus,

for instance, as Discenza’s analysis of the OE Boethius shows, “cræft” differs strongly from

“mægen” in many of its specific applications, but the two share an overarching sense of “power”

both with each other and with uirtus, and are used interchangeably in some of the Alfredian

translations (see especially Discenza 84, 91). 37 It would thus seem that in this case the two

components do not have clearly differentiated semantic functions, or at least that the distinction

is unlikely to be the primary reason for the inclusion of both components. The doublet is, in other

words, a pleonasm whose raison d’être can only be rhetorical or stylistic since it does not serve

in any way to clarify the meaning of the text. The same is even more pointedly true for “ege and

35
Roman Psalter uanitas, but Gallican uane probably underlies Ps(P)’s translation.
36
Gallican reading; the Roman Psalter has saluabit.
37
As Gneuss points out, the similar doublet “mægen / miht” is found in some of the interlinear glosses for uirtus in
the sense of “powerful act” (Gneuss 72).

85
fyrhto,” which are effectively interchangeable. 38 The interchangeability of the components in

most of these doublets, moreover, extends to their regional provenance, and Ps(P)’s doublets

seem never to fulfill the function of introducing dialect variants found sometimes in the glossed

manuscripts. 39

A more useful line to pursue here will be considerations about euphony of various sorts,

such as alliteration, assonance, and rhythmical effects, considerations which Bately has found

frequently to govern elaborations of the source-text in the Alfredian translations generally

(Bately [2014] 122-123; cf. Borinski 84). Given the nature of OE poetry, it is hardly surprising

that several scholars have attempted to invoke alliteration as a possible stylistic rationale for

doublets in OE (see Koskenniemi 23-24, 27; cf. Frantzen 100; Bately [2014] 139-140). It will be

noticed, however, that only five items in Table 2.3.1 contain alliteration of primary-stressed

syllables: “sar and sorga,” “þrea and þrafa,” “forbrycð and forbryt,” and “on sicetunga and on

gestæne,” “ne geheoldon ne ne gehældon” (and only for two of these is the alliterating consonant

word-initial for both components). Nevertheless, that does not exclude phonetic qualities as a

major consideration in the use of doublets in Ps(P). There are, for example, also cases of shared

unstressed prefixes (“heora unmiht and heora untrymð,” “forbrycð and forbryt” again, “gesæged

and gehnæged,” “ne geheoldon ne ne gehældon”), identical endings (“herie...and lofige,” “ne

geheoldon ne ne gehældon,” not to mention several other pairs which share grammatical

inflections), and even an instance of end-rhyme (“gesæged and gehnæged”). The repetition of

function-words, which Borinski rightly sees as grammatically gratuitous yet common in

38
The same doublet, in the form “mid ogan / mid fyrhtu,” is found on the same lemma in a different verse in PsGlI
(see section 1a).
39
Besides, as O’Brien points out, it is not clear that the pre-Conquest English ever thought of their own language in
terms of discrete dialects (O’Brien 29-30). What were described above as “dialectal variants” in the Vespasian
Psalter, the glossators themselves presumably understood more simply as familiar versus unfamiliar words

86
Alfred’s word-pairs (Borinski 43), has also been identified by Bately as a notable element of the

Alfredian translations’ “balanced structure” (Bately [2014] 137-138), and we see this reflected in

doublets such as “heora unmiht and heora untrymð,” “mid mægnum and mid cræftum,” “mine

heaf and mine seofunga,” and “to edwite and to bysmre.”

Even for synonymous doublets, moreover, it is worthwhile to consider semantic

functions. With these doublets, although clarification of the text’s meaning is normally not a

concern, emphasis on particular aspects of the text’s meaning naturally arises from added

repetition. To cite a parallel, in her assessment in the OE version of Bede, Koskenniemi

concludes that the primary function of the translation’s doublets is emphasis and that “the

majority of word pairs denote things that are essential for the main theme of the work”

(Koskenniemi 33). 40 Likewise in Table 2.3.1, one finds that a number of items do in fact

correspond to terms related to common key themes of the Psalms. Perhaps most obviously, the

verb form of “psalm” itself is doubled once in Psalm 7, underscoring and amplifying the central

idea of praise. It is perhaps in a related vein that, in Psalm 25 (24), firmamentum is doubled when

referring to the power of God “for those who fear him,” 41 emphasizing the majesty of the object

of praise.

It would seem, however, that the most common motif singled out for this kind of

rhetorical amplification in Ps(P) is adversity or suffering. In one sense, this should not be

surprising, as the Psalmist’s persecution by his enemies is discussed at length in something like a

quarter of the Psalms, but it is still more prevalent in Table 2.3.1 than one might expect from a

40
Hart suggests something similar when he analyzes the use of doublets in the OE Bede as “amplificatio.”
41
Roman Psalter: firmamentum est Dominus timentibus eum. Ps(P): “Drihten is mægen and cræft ælces þæra þe hine
ondræt.”

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random sampling of key terms in Psalms 1-50. In addition to obvious terms of tribulation and

lament such as tribulatio, planctus, gemitus, obprobrium, tremor, and dolor, lemmata that

receive doubling include dolus in reference to the guile of the Psalmist’s enemies and fortitudo

mea in a verse which speaks of the Psalmist’s fortitudo failing him. This emphasis on adversity,

moreover, coincides strikingly with what we find in Alfred’s introductions to Psalms 2-50. Susan

Irvine has emphasized the role of “paratexts” such as prefaces in framing readers’ interpretations

of the text in the case of several of the Alfredian translations (see Irvine 169-170), and O’Neill

has applied similar thinking in examining parallels of emphasis and vocabulary between the

introductions and the translation in Ps(P) specifically (O’Neill [1981] 21-25). As has frequently

been observed, the primary focus of these introductions is historical exposition of the Psalms,

mainly in reference to three Old Testament themes: the life of King David, the reign of King

Hezekiah, and the Maccabaean revolt (see O’Neill [1981] 26-27)—in connection with all three

of which the introductions repeatedly emphasize the role of adversity. In their Davidic

comments, the introductions frequently introduce references to David’s “feondas” even if the

word “feond” appears nowhere in the translation of the relevant psalm itself (e.g., introduction to

Psalm 2: “[Dauid] seofode on þæm sealme and mænde to Drihtne be his feondum”). Likewise

with Hezekiah and the Maccabees, emphasis is repeatedly laid on adversity and suffering (e.g., in

the introduction to Psalm 4: “swa dyde Ezechias þa he wæs ahred æt his feoundum”).

Though the only word in Table 2.3.1 that directly echoes a phrase from the introduction

to the psalm in which it appears is “forbrycð” in Psalm 29 (28) 42—and even this doublet’s other

component, “forbryt,” has no counterpart in the introduction—points of correspondence between

42
The relevant portion of the introduction reads, “And eac swa ilce he [Dauid] be eallum þam þe æfter him
gebrocode wæron and eft arette.”

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the doublets in Table 2.3.1 and the vocabulary of the introductions generally are much more

abundant. “Earfoða” in particular (as found in the doubled translation of tribulatio in Psalm 4)

appears in more than a third of the introductions (“nearonesse,” which which “earfoða” is paired

in Psalm 4, is less common, but is found in the introduction to Psalm 39 [38]). Likewise,

“seofian” (reflected in Table 2.3.1 not only in its noun-form “seofunga” but in a number of

synonyms and other related vocabulary such as “heaf,” “sicetung,” “gestæn,” “sar,” “wracu,” and

“gehnægan”) recurs in about thirteen introductions, often paired with “singan” or taking “þysne

sealm” as its object, emphasizing the centrality of lament to Alfred’s interpretation of many of

the Psalms. (The introduction to Psalm 44 [43] puts all four of these key terms together, in its

opening phrase “Dauid sang þysne...sealm seofigende his earfoþa.”) Indeed, as many of

O’Neill’s examples of lexical correspondence between text and introduction (e.g.,

“yfelwillendra,” “orsorg,” and “rothwile”) show, adversity and relief from adversity are recurrent

themes for Ps(P) in general, not merely in its doublets (O’Neill [1981] 22-23).

With synonymous doublets, it is perhaps especially difficult to arrive at an explanation

for the function of any individual doublet. Purely stylistic considerations of sound and plenitude

are obviously in play in many cases, but such considerations remain scattered and contextual to

the point of randomness. Meanwhile, the choice to emphasize words regarded as key by doubling

them is evident, but what counts as “key” in Alfred’s mind remains an ad-hoc matter: even if a

few patterns are identifiable, there seems to be little relation between different areas of emphasis

and, moreover, the choice to double certain “key” terms but not other related lemmata (or even

other instances of the same lemma) remains arbitrary. It becomes, in short, not only unnecessary

but impossible to arrive at an absolutely systematic description of the processes that yielded

Ps(P)’s synonymous doublets. Nevertheless, this observation in itself suggests something about

89
the work of translation: doubling is, for Alfred, simply a resource for amplifying or clarifying the

text on which he can draw at will but that is not tied to a definite scheme. In brief, the case of

Ps(P)’s synonymous doublets illustrates especially clearly the basic principle that doubling is not

a mechanical function of the work of translation but a matter of authorial choice and even whim.

That doubling of this kind in Ps(P) has become more of a stylistic mannerism than the

reflection of a systematic interpretive approach is further suggested by another tendency: the

frequent appearance of translational doublets in proximity to other binomials. In other words, it

seems that, in contexts where the source-text features pairs of words joined by et, Alfred felt a

particular inclination to translate nearby single-word expressions by doublets joined by “and.”

Thus, as noted also by Borinski, a “two-member tautology” sometimes yields a “three-member

expression” (Borinski 85). For instance, at Psalm 38:8 (37:9), the phrase incuruatus sum et

humiliatus sum is translated “Ac ic eom gesæged and gehnæged and swiðe geeaðmed,” with the

first element of what was already a binomial expression in the Latin itself expanded into a

doublet in the translation. The propensity to multiply repetition is evident in a number of other

items in Table 2.3.1 as well. 43 Stanton suggests one likely explanation for such tendencies when

he points out that, in general, “Even in Alfred’s translation of the psalms, in which fidelity and

literalism are seen as desirable norms, changes to the Latin often bring the Old English into line

with Old English stylistic norms” (Stanton [2002] 84). That a disposition toward pleonastic

expressions is one such norm is attested elsewhere in OE literature, particularly in the

conventions of OE poetry, where we find a tendency toward what Stanley Greenfield and Daniel

43
E.g., at 7:17 (7:18), the doublet “herie his ðone hean naman and lofige” (psallam nomini Domini altissimi) is
preceded by the words “Ic þonne andette Drihtne æfter his rihtwisnesse and” (confitebor Domino secundum
iustitiam eius et), such that ultimately it is just as accurate to speak of the triplet “andette...and herie...and lofige”
corresponding to the functionally synonymous pair confitebor...et psallam as to speak of the doublet “herie...and
lofige” corresponding to the singleton psallam.

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Calder call “Variation...[which] may be defined as a double or multiple statement of the same

idea within a clause or in contiguous clauses (and sentences), each restatement suggesting

through its choice of words either a general or more specific quality, or a different attribute, of

that concept” (Greenfield and Calder 127-128). Where such pleonasm exists already in the

source-text, it thus becomes only natural to elaborate on it still further.

Ps(P)’s synonymous doubling is, in other words, reinforced by the nature of its source-

text, and can even be seen as a natural extension thereof. Ps(P) is unusual among the OE prose

biblical translations in engaging in rhetorical elaboration of its source-text, often in ways that (as

we have seen) seem to reflect quasi-poetic concerns of sound and rhythm, but its independence

from its source-text should not be exaggerated. As Bately has emphasized, the style of a source-

text can affect the choice of particular words and constructions in a translation like Ps(P) “even

when they are found in passages of rewriting for stylistic effect” (Bately [2009] 104). Bately’s

chief example is the use of certain prepositions, but we may extend this reasoning to doubling

and repetition as well. Hebrew poetry is, as is well known, based on the use of parallel

constructions, and so the Roman Psalter text is already full of pairs of parallel elements, many of

them pairs of synonyms. Alfred has thus (despite total ignorance of Hebrew language and poetic

conventions) often simply intensified what was already an important aspect of the Psalms’

literary style. In short, synonymous doubling in Ps(P) can be said to arise when Hebrew

parallelism and OE poetic and rhetorical “variation” meet, as OE stylistic norms receive

encouragement, so to speak, from the nature of the source-text. Moreover, though we have

considered these ideas in connection with synonymous doublets, they should continue to be kept

in mind as we move on to the different types of non-synonymous doublet.

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(3b) Polysemous Doublets

Geoffrey Shepherd argues that, for medieval biblical translators, “No translation is

possible before an acceptable interpretation of the original has been established. It is rash to

render an ambiguous oracle” (Shepherd 365). This may be true enough in some respects, but in

Ps(P) the presence of polysemous doublets seems to suggest that some degree of ambiguity, or at

least multivocality, was allowed to stand in the translated text. The pairing of two non-

synonymous denotative translations may entail either of two related phenomena, between which

there is too much overlap to make an absolute distinction. First, a given lemma may be treated as

straightforwardly polysemous and translated by two alternatives, either of which could stand on

its own. For instance, in 30:12 (29:13), when gloria mea is rendered “min wuldor and min gylp,”

each component renders one major sense of gloria (“glory” as it is used in MnE, or “boasting”),

either of which, but usually not both simultaneously, may be present in the lemma in a given

context. Second, a doublet may analyze and divide into two parts what is really a single concept.

In such cases, although the two components of the English doublet have separate denotations, the

distinction does not correspond to separate possible meanings of the lemma, but arises from the

absence of an OE equivalent that expresses the full semantic range the Latin lemma may have in

any one context. As W.V. Quine emphasizes, translators commonly treat polysemous terms as

pairs of homonyms not because their “multiple meanings” are fully separable but “for no better

reason than that [the translator] needs two distinct correlates in his own language to cover the

ground of the foreign word” (Quine 129). A polysemous doublet of either sub-type is a natural

extension of this, giving the two “correlates” side by side rather than choosing between them.

Unsurprisingly, a number of polysemous doublets, especially of the second sub-type,

relate to expressions with overt religious significance. The phrase anima mea, for instance, is in a

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large number of cases translated as “min sawl and min mod” (6:3 [6:4], 16:10 [15:10], 35:9

[34:9], 42:1 [41:2], 42:5 [41:6], 42:6 [41:7], and with the components inverted at 25:1 [24:1] and

42:11 [41:12]), and cor receives similar treatment in a few instances (see Table 2.3.2 below).

Vocabulary related to the “soul” poses a variety of problems for biblical translators in all

languages, 44 as different languages reflect different understandings of the psychological or

spiritual component of the human person, and this is markedly true for Ps(P). Amy Faulkner has

explored at some length “the [Ps(P)] translator’s concern with the workings of the mind,

demonstrated by the tendency to introduce the word mod (‘mind’) when there is no mention of a

faculty of thought or feeling in the Romanum source, and the use of mod to translate the words

cor (‘heart’) or anima (‘soul’)” (Faulkner 597), and she observes that “In the Old English

translations, or rewritings, the mod represents one aspect of the unitary soul, that which precedes,

exists in and succeeds the body” (598-599). For that reason, when confronted with Latin soul- or

mind-related vocabulary, Alfred seems not to have regarded any one OE word as fully equivalent

to anima or cor. What the English translation does instead is to divide the concept of anima into

two components, one (“sawl”) more clearly encompassing the “immortal principle in man” in a

general way (BT II), the other (“mod”) “with more especial reference to intellectual or mental

qualities” (BT I.a). 45 In the case of cor, the operation is the same, except that the first component

refers to a physical organ associated with feeling or thought rather than to the “soul” as such.

44
The Roman Psalter’s anima is itself a questionable rendering of the underlying Hebrew. In every case cited in this
paragraph, anima mea corresponds to ‫[ נַפְ ִשׁי‬napšî], a form of a word for which, as we have seen (Chapter I), Alter
gives strong reasons for regarding MnE “soul” as a misleading translation, and his basic criticism of “soul”—that it
does not sufficiently reflect the Hebrew word’s “concretely physical meanings” and the “conception of the living
human body” that they imply (Alter [2019] 48)—applies equally to anima in Latin, whose use in a physicalist sense
is attested (see Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 3.136ff.) but presumably not intended by Jerome.
45
A third aspect of anima is suggested by WSCp’s doublet “sawle lif,” which likewise divides the lemma’s sense
into two complementary components.

93
 A similar “unpacking” operation is at work in Ps(P)’s renderings of christus in Psalms 2

and 20 (19). This word, which can also be seen as straightforwardly polysemous, is especially

troublesome because, as discussed in section 1b, its use in the Psalms is obviously divorced from

its more usual reference to Jesus of Nazareth. Even if contemporary allegorical interpretation of

the Psalms made it true that these references had to be understood as ultimately pointing to Jesus,

they also had to be understood as having other immediate referents in their literal sense. 46 Ps(P)

in general prioritizes Davidic interpretations of the Psalms, and it is probable (and in the case of

Psalm 2 certain) that Alfred wishes the reader to understand christus in this book primarily as

“anointed [king]” and refer it to David. 47 Ps(P)’s introductions generally give both a Davidic and

a Christological interpretation, but elaborate the former to a much greater degree, with christus in

the main text either translated in a “generic” fashion that can be applied to either interpretation or

else made to refer only to David. 48 This, unlike most other early English biblical translators,

what Alfred apparently wishes to bring out in his translation is the underlying meaning of

christus rather than its immediate reference. 49 He therefore explains the term by dividing it into

two parts: “þam þe he to hlaford geceas and gesmyrede” for christum eius at 2:2 and, similarly,

46
This is particularly true in view of Ps(P)’s introductions, which emphasize the Psalms’ context in the history of
Israel as presented elsewhere in the OT. It should also be kept in mind, however, that Davidic and Christological
interpretations are not mutually exclusive, as is well illustrated by Ps(P)’s exegetical comments in Ps. 45 (44),
especially vv. 1 (2) and 11 (12), which Alfred frames as David prophesying while “oferdrenct mid þy Halgan
Gaste.”
47
Christus is used to refer to Saul and David (though never any of the later kings of Israel) several times in the OT:
see 1 Sam. 24:7, 2 Sam. 1:14, 2 Sam. 19:21, 2 Sam. 22:51, 2 Chr. 6:42.
48
See Frantzen 97-98 for other cases (not involving christus) in which Alfred’s translational choices specifically
point away from a primarily Christological interpretation to a primarily Davidic one.
49
Here we can see the influence, which will be discussed in section 3d, of the Antiochene school of exegesis and of
Theodore of Mopsuestia in particular. Richard Perhai notes that “For Theodore, allegorical interpretation wrongly
separates the original context and history in the comparison” (Perhai 210; cf. McLeod 21), and it is precisely such a
separation from original context that Alfred circumvents by translating christus with an explanatory doublet rather
than the more usual “crist.”

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“þone gesmyredan and ðone gehalgodan” for christum at 19:7. Both doublets complement

“gesmyrian,” the basic OE translation of the underlying Greek etymon (see section 1b) with an

explanation of what “anointment” signifies. In the first case, as O’Neill points out, this

“anointment” is made into “an unambiguous and intentional reference to King David (rather than

Christ) as indicated by the use of the word hlaford (rather than Drihten) with its denotation of

secularity” (O’Neill [2014] 262). In the second case, anointment is associated specifically with

“consecration” like that of a priest or (what is more to the point here) a king.

On balance, however, the use of polysemous doublets is not reserved for explanation of

terms with special theological interest, and the nouns, verbs, and adjectives to which it is applied

sometimes even seem trivial. Furthermore, although a distinction between the two types of

polysemy is useful in theory, in practice the distinction is usually hard to draw, especially with

more trivial words and concepts. The difference ultimately lies in how the reader interprets the

text (or how Alfred means for the reader to do so) and whether the multiple senses of the lemma

are understood in any given instance as mutually exclusive or as complementary. (Indeed, the

consistent use of “and” for translational doublets in Ps(P) could suggest that Alfred means for

such doublets always to be read as complementary, even if comparison with the source-text

sometimes suggests that only one possible meaning of a given word is dominant in a given

context.) Additional instances of polysemous doublets are therefore given without further

distinctions in Table 2.3.2.

Table 2.3.2. Polysemous Doublets in Ps(P)

1:3: folium eius = his leaf and his blæda
2:6: praeceptum Domini = his willan and his æ
4:4 (4:5): compungimini = forlætað and hreowsiað
6:5 (6:6): confitebitur tibi = ne ðe andetað ne ne heriað
7:2 (7:3): saluum faciat = ahredde and gehæle
9:15 (9:16): occultauerunt = hi...gehyd and gehealden hæfdon

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 10:14 (9:35): orphano = þara þe nabbað nawðer ne fæder ne modor
12:6 (11:7): casta = swiðe soð and swiðe clænu
15:5 (14:5): non commouebitur = wyrð he næfre astyred ne scynd
17:7 (16:7): mirifica = gewundra nu and geweorða
18:21 (17:22): impie = arleaslice ne unhyrsumlice
19:7 (18:8): animas = manna mod and heora sawla
22:6 (21:7): obprobrium = to leahtrunge and to forsewenesse
22:11 (21:12): adiuuet = wylle oððe mæge me gehelpan
22:14 (21:15): cor meum = min heorte and min mod [also 37:11, 39:13]
24:7 (23:7): gloriae = þe God gewuldrod hæfð and geweorðod
25:8 (24:8): dulcis = swete and wynsum
28:3 (27:3): ne simul trahas = ne syle me ne ne send
28:3 (27:3): ne perdas me = ne forleos me ne me ne fordo
29:3 (28:3): aquas multas = manegum wæterum and mycelum
30:6 (29:7): in mea abundantia = on minum wlencum and on minre orsorhnesse
30:9 (29:10): sanguine meo = min slæge oþþe min cwalu
30:12 (29:13): gloria mea = min wuldor and min gylp
31:12 (30:13): a corde = on his heortan and on his mode
31:19 (30:20): quam magna = hu micel and hu manigfeald
31:19 (30:20): abscondisti = hæfst gehyd and gehealden
31:23 (30:24): requiret = lufiað and secð
31:24 (30:25): cor uestrum = eowere heortan and eower mod
34:10 (33:11): eguerunt = wædledon and eodon biddende
35:7 (34:7): absconderunt = teldedon...and...gehyddon
35:23 (34:23): in causam meam = to minum þinge and to minre þearfe
37:1 (36:1): noli aemulari = ne wundrie ge...ne onhyriað
37:24 (36:24): supponit manum suam = gefehð his hand and hine upp arærð
37:36 (36:36): transiui = ic þa þanon for and eft ðyder com
38:3 (37:4): non est pax = nan sib ne nan rest nis
43:4 (42:4): in cithara = mid sange and mid hearpan
44:11 (43:11): diripiebant sibi = gegripað and him sylfum gehrespað
47:6 (46:7): psallite = singað and heriað
49:6 (48:7): gloriabuntur = gylpað and wuldrað
Although most of these examples are more straightforward than anima in christus in that

they have to do with less difficult concepts, it is for that very reason a less straightforward matter

to explain why they have been selected for doubling. That is to say, it is plain why a

theologically-charged word like christus should warrant a doubled translation, given that it is a

technical expression whose full meaning can be difficult to express compactly and which

contextually means something other than what it most commonly refers to. The same cannot be

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said for folium or (at least in this context) gloria. In the case of those two expressions in

particular, it is probably of little consequence what part of the plant is being denoted, or whether

“glory” denotes an exalted state of being or a bragging assertion thereof. Most items fall between

the extremes of difficulty and triviality, but the cases cited so far illustrate the eclectic range of

doubling in Ps(P). The “unpacking” operations at play in some of these doublets are also varied.

For one, with folium rendered as “leaf and...blæda,” we have a lemma that can refer to closely-

related but slightly different physical entities, and the translation emphasizes that both are

simultaneously encompassed by the expression. In another vein, dulics can refer to the physical

sensation of a taste or to a mental or emotional sensation, and when it is rendered “swete and

wynsum” at 25:7 (24:8) the first component expresses the “physical” meaning, the second the

“mental/emotional” meaning. In yet another vein, pax can, like its MnE derivative “peace”

(borrowed from French in the ME period), have both an interpersonal sense (“sib” in the first

component of the doublet at 38:3 [37:4]) and a personal sense (“rest”), and these can operate

together simultaneously in a way that neither “sib” nor “rest” conveys. In short, the lemma can

be “unpacked” in terms of different physical elements, or in terms of a distinction between

concrete and abstract uses, or in terms of different contextual applications.

Here again the emphases of the introductions are reflected in the translation of the

biblical text itself. The emphasis on adversity discussed in section 3a is likewise on display in the

doubling of lemmata like clamor (as a cry to God for help), inutilis, deridere, perdere, egere, and

non est pax. Conversely, this kind of doubling operation is also frequently applied to expressions

referring to divine comfort or aid: saluum facere, non moueri (referring to stability provided by

obedience to God), mirificare, custodire, inimicos meos dedisti mihi dorsum, and supponit

manum suam. Words expressing praise or worship are also doubled a few times: confitebitur tibi,

97
dulcis (describing God), and cithara. In any case, the scattered nature of these polysemous

doublets makes it clear that the application of doubling is an ad-hoc matter even when genuine

difficulties of meaning are involved. Doubling can be used to produce clarification of as well as

mere emphasis on terms and concepts that Alfred regards as important, but again what counts as

important is a question about which Alfred is not systematic.

(3c) Figurative Doublets

Although most doublets in Ps(P) pair two denotative translations, figurative doublets are

also common. For the most part, such doublets operate along similar lines to their counterparts in

the glosses. As noted earlier, Alfred sometimes uses an explanatory translation entirely on its

own (as in “mægen” for ossa), but in line with Ps(P)’s generally “literalist” bent these

explanations are seldom mystical or spiritual, but instead focus on simple metaphorical or

metonymic substitutions (mere Erklärungen [“clarifications”], as Borinski calls such

translations). Often, however, even when introducing an explanatory translation, Alfred makes a

further concession to the primacy of literal meaning, as Frantzen notes, by giving first what I

have called a denotative translation (Frantzen 100; cf. Borinski 92-93), as is common in the

glosses. Thus, although very few of Ps(P)’s doublets are identical to any found in PsGlI, the

principle underlying them is essentially the same (Table 2.3.3).

Table 2.3.3. Figurative Doublets in Ps(P)

5:12 (5:13): coronasti = þu...gecoronadest and geweorðadest
6:2 (6:3): ossa mea = eall min mægn and eal min ban
6:2 (6:3): conturbata = gebrytt and gedrefed
7:9 (7:10): dirige = gerece and geræd [also 24:5, with components reversed]
7:9 (7:10): renes = ædra and manna geþohtas
8:7 (8:8): sub pedibus eius = under his fet and under his anwald
9:2 (9:3): laetabor et exsultabo = ic blissige and fægnige and herige
10:2 (9:23): incenditur = byð...onæled and gedrefed and eac geunrotsod

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 10:5 (9:26): uiae eius = his wegas and his weorc
10:15 (9:36): brachium = þone earm and þæt mægen
16:10 (15:10): uidere corruptionem = forrotian ne forweorðan
17:4 (16:4): uias duras = hearde wegas and manigfald earfoðu
17:10 (16:10): adipem suum = heora fætnesse and heora tohopan and heora weolan
17:14 (16:14): manus tuae = mid þinre handa and mid þine mægene
18:21 (17:22): uias = wegas and...bebodu
26:10 (25:10): manibus = þæra handa and þæra weorc
27:4 (26:4): uideam = geseon...and...ongitan [also 39:13]
27:5 (26:5): tabernaculi sui = his geteldes and his temples
28:5 (27:5): non intellexerunt = ne ongitað...ne þa ne geseoð
31:10 (30:11): conturbata = gedrefedu and fullneah forod
31:12 (30:13): uas perditum = forloren fæt and tobrocen
32:3 (31:3): ossa mea = min ban and min mægen
34:16 (33:17): uultus...Domini = Godes andwlita and his yrre
37:17 (36:17): brachia = se earm and þæt mægen
37:23 (36:23): uiam eius = his wega and his weorca
38:10 (37:11): lumen = þæt leoht and seo scearpnes
39:11 (38:12): fortitudine manus tuae = þære strenge þinra handa and þinre þreaunga
39:12 (38:13): lacrimas meas = minne wop and mine tearas
41:2 (40:3): manus = handa and anweald
42:2 (41:3): sitiuit = þyrst and lyst
42:4 (41:5): epulantis = symblendra...and bliðra
44:10 (43:11): auertisti nos retrorsum = þu hæfst nu us gehwyrfde on bæcling and us
forsewenran gedone
45:4 (44:5): dextera tua = þin seo swyþre hand and þin agen anweald
45:9 (44:10): in honore tuo = for þinre lufan and for þinre weorðunga
45:14 (44:15): circumamicta = utan beslepte and gegyrede
46:6 (45:7): terra = ure land and ure folc
46:14 (47:15): reget nos = ræt us and recð
49:12 (48:13): in honore = on are and on anwealde
49:20 (48:21): in honore = on welan and on weorðscipe
49:5 (48:6): calcanei mei = minra hoa and eales mines flæsces
Some of these are quite straightforward, and most follow patterns similar to those

discussed above for PsGlI. For instance, “handa and anweald” for manum at 41:2 (40:3), which

gives first the lemma’s denotation, then its metonymic sense, closely parallels a double-gloss on

the same Latin lemma at a different point in PsGlI (“hand / miht”), discussed in section 1b.

The kinds of interpretive operations at work in these figurative doublets are various. Of

these, three categories are especially prominent. First, as in the example in the previous

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paragraph, there are conventional metaphorical and metonymic substitutions that make sense in a

variety of contexts. Alfred seems particularly keen to note when body-parts are used as emblems

of broader human faculties: “ædra and manna geþohtas,” “se earm and þæt mægen” (twice),

“handa and anweald,” “þin seo swyþre hand and þin agen anweald.” Many of these metonymies

are commonplaces of Latin Psalter glosses commentaries, 50 and some of them (like “kidneys”

standing for the seat of thought 51) are Hebrew idioms whose preservation in the Latin text itself

could be criticized as obfuscatory ultra-literalism. This is one of the few areas in which Alfred’s

doubling begins to take on a character of reflexive or mechanical insertion, as the interpretations

that are adduced here approach the level of cliché show little variation. Nevertheless, it should be

kept in mind that even stereotyped translations may represent some degree of conscious choice,

as even standard metaphors and metonyms can be interpreted in more than one way (to give a

trivial example, Alfred’s biographer Asser glosses manu[s] Domini in Proverbs 21:1 as consilium

[Life of Alfred 99] rather than, say, potestas).

Second, there are contextual (but similarly concrete) adaptations of lemmata used in

unusual senses, where the doublet captures both the normal meaning of the lemma and the

extended or secondary sense which context forces on it. For instance, with lumen at 38:10

(37:11), the usual denotative translation “leoht” is supplemented by “scearpnes” because in

context the expression refers to eyesight (lumen oculorum meorum). Likewise, with uideam in

27:4 (26:4) and sitiuit in 42:2 (41:3), a denotative translation (“geseon,” “þyrst”) is given first

50
E.g., Augustine on 10:15 (9:36): brachium ergo eius dixit potentiam eius (Enarrationes in Psalmos 9.32 [PL
36.129]); and on 17:14 (16:14): erue ab inimicis manus tuae, hoc est uirtutis tuae (Enarrationes 16.13 [PL 36.147]).
De Titulis Psalmorum on 45:4 (44:5): dextera tua, id est, potentia et diuinitas tua (PL 93.719d).
51
Antje Labahn explains that “In Hebrew anthropology the kidneys along with the heart denote the center of the
human person” and that “kidney” can thus indicate “the innermost part of the body, the place on which human
thoughts and emotions are centered” (Labahn 173).

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but is paired with a second verb that abstracts from the lemma’s literal meaning to a different

verb in the same semantic field (“lyst,” “ongitan”) in order more literally to suit its object (Deum

fortem, who cannot literally be “thirsted” for since he is not water; uoluptatem Domini, which

cannot literally be “seen” because it is not a concrete physical entity). Into this category we may

also put “forloren...and tobrocen” for perditum when applied to a piece of pottery that is useless

rather than absent, 52 and “þu...gecoronadest and geweorðadest” for coronasti when it refers to

honor or favor bestowed on a whole group of people rather than to an individual king. In all this,

Alfred follows patterns we have seen in the other OE continuous translations.

Third, there are more complex explications of the biblical text which may draw on

“spiritual” understandings thereof. Thus if the literalizing of a metaphor relates to the “literal”

sense of Scripture, we can also find the influence of “moral” readings in some of Ps(P)’s

renderings. For instance, the various doubled translations of uia show an attempt to bring out the

meaning of this word, for which the literal translation “weg” is always given first, in terms of

practical morality, to show that it refers to good or evil “works” or to other conditions of moral

action such as surrounding hardships. 53 This as a metaphor is also fairly conventional (as shown

by its repeated use in the Psalms), but is somewhat more restricted and context-dependent than

“strength” for “arm” and less concrete and immediate than “keenness [of sight]” for “light [of the

52
Again this is common in Latin glosses and commentaries: cf. Pseudo-Bede on 31:12 (30:13): uas perditum, id est
uas confractum et nulli usui aptum (PL 93.634c). But the extended sense of this lemma does also naturally arise
from a consideration of the immediate context (factus sum tamquam uas perditum as an expression of humiliation),
and MnE translations generally use “broken” rather than something closer in meaning to Jerome’s perditus. (As it
happens, the Vulgate’s translation is closer to the denotation of the underlying Hebrew ‫’[ אֹ בֵ ד‬ōbēd], for whose root
BDB gives the basic definition “to perish.”)
53
This is also a commonplace of Latin commentary. See, e.g., Augustine on uias duras in 17:4 (16:4): ego custodiui
uias laboriosas mortalitatis humanae atque passionis (Enarrationes 16.4: PL 36.146); and Jerome on the same
verse: timens futura supplicia, quae legis trangressoribus [sic] comminatus est, duris me laboribus exercui
(Commentarioli in Psalmos 16). Likewise the Pseudo-Bedan De Psalmorum Libro Exegesis on uia peccatorum in
Psalm 1: stetit in uia peccatorum, id est actus prauae consuetudinis postea frequenter impleuit (PL 93.485c).

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eyes].” Likewise, with “gerece and geræd,” the idea of physical guidance found in the lemma

diriges is both preserved and expanded to include moral counsel, since that is the kind of

“guidance” Alfred sees the Psalmist to be attributing to God. Still, even such overtly interpretive

doublets of Ps(P) avoid deep allegorizing. Elements of “allegorical” and “anagogical” readings

of the Psalms are apparent in parts of this translation, but these tend to be marked by explicit

introductions of the “þæt is” type. This may seem a minor distinction, but it makes obvious that

all but the most basic exegesis is, while not separated from the main text, generally framed in a

way that makes it possible to distinguish from that main text. Thus O’Neill’s edition is usually

able to separate these sorts of exegetical comments with parentheses in a way that could not be

naturally done with doublets.

What is notable about all three kinds of figurative translation is that they are generally

employed only where a denotative translation makes little sense in context. A few examples of

lemmata which become absurd if taken literally have already been cited, but this trend can also

be seen in expressions in which the explication is more conventional, like those involving body-

part metonymies. For instance, Alfred opts to use an explanatory translation for pedes in Psalm 8

when the full expression is omnia subiecisti sub pedibus eius (“you have put all things under his

[man’s] feet”), a literal understanding of which would be nonsense, but which offers a

conventional metaphor for domination. Likewise, the first of several translations of manus in

Table 2.3.3 occurs when this word is applied to God (ab inimicis manus tuae, Domine), whom

Alfred at least would not have imagined as a physical being with hands, whatever

anthropomorphic conceptions the original Psalmist may have had. Even with ossa at 32:3 (31:3),

although the complete expression inueterauerunt ossa mea (“my bones have grown old”) does

make some literal sense, the context makes such a strictly literal understanding clearly irrelevant:

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the Psalmist is describing a sense of divine disfavor, not the physical consequences of aging. To

some extent, such explanation of the text may appear otiose, as in most cases the inapplicability

of the doublet’s first component is so obvious that the reader should not need the second

component to understand the expression, or at least to understand that it is in some way non-

literal. In short, we can see Alfred’s use of doublets in these instances as a kind of excessive

caution against literal-minded reading, based on a presumption that the translation should try to

eliminate even basic interpretive work by the reader, which might beget misinterpretation.

Still more complex considerations can also emerge, particularly with “tropological”

doublets, as is well illustrated by the variant renderings of honos in Table 2.3.3. Notably, among

the three doubled translations of this lemma in Psalms 45 (44) and 49 (48), there is not a single

shared component (though two are related). Indeed, “lufu,” “weorðunga,” “are,” “anweald,”

“wela,” and “weorðscip” all draw on different aspects of honos and its associations. In that

respect, it appears that the doublet in each case serves to limit the possible applications of the

lemma. They do suggest some overlap, given that, though far from interchangeable,

“weorðunga”/“weorðscip” and “are” are related in meaning and both work as denotative

translations of honos, but the explanatory components (“lufu,” “anweald,” “wela”) solidly

differentiate each expression from the others in a way the source-text does not. 54 The difficulty

arises from contextual differences affecting the application of the lemma. It will be immediately

noted that the components of the earlier doublet (“lufu” and “weorðunga”) are more

unambiguously laudatory in tone, whereas in the other doublet “are” and “wela” are more

54
The placement of the less-literal translation “lufu” first in the earlier instance need not muddy the waters. Very
likely, the break with Ps(P)’s (and other medieval translations’) usual practice of putting the more literal translation
first in an explanatory doublet is motivated by concerns of sound or rhetoric. Kopaczyk and Sauer, for instance, note
that theories attributing the origin of binomial expressions to metrical/rhythmic considerations would predict that
“the shorter word would precede the longer word in a binomial” (Kopaczyk and Sauer 9)—and this holds true for
most items in Tables 2.3.1-4 whose components are not the same number of syllables.

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ambivalent with regard to tone and “anweald” is decidedly neutral in tone (“authority” or

“wealth” rather than “honor” or “respect”). In Psalm 45 (44), honos appears as part of an

encomium to a Davidic or messianic king and is associated with divine favor, whereas Psalm 49

(48), as Frantzen explains, aims to present a unified message about the impermanence of “wealth

and honor” as contrasted with good deeds (Frantzen 104-105). In both psalms, the choice to

translate honos with a doublet does still indicate the breadth of possibilities underlying the

lemma, but ironically also helps limit them by, in each case, drawing on only a certain part of the

lemma’s semantic range. Indeed, from a rhetorical point of view, the function of these doublets is

mostly to reinforce particular contextual interpretations.

Rebecca Barnhouse has discussed how the translators of Hep “tak[e] on a paternal role,

interpreting, simplifying, and summarizing material...with the intent of saving readers from

error” (Barnhouse 108), and the use of explanatory translations in Ps(P) often suggests a more

restrained but basically similar approach. For instance, although “handa and anweald” is used to

translate manus at 41:2 (40:3) because in context 55 “hand” clearly cannot be understood as

referring only to the physical organ, the doublet nevertheless dictates what kind of figurative

meaning readers attach to the term. In this case, the interpretation Alfred imposes on the text is

almost indisputably correct, but there are other instances where his interpretation becomes more

questionable, particularly with doublets whose metaphorical interpretations draw on “spiritual”

rather than concrete meanings. For instance, at 34:16 (33:17), uultus...Domini is translated by

“Godes andwlita and his yrre.” Because, again, Alfred assumes the Psalmist not to possess a

crudely anthropomorphic conception of God, uultus/“andwlita” cannot be meant literally, but it

is not clear what “face” here stands for. As O’Neill points out, the idea that it is a sign of “anger”

55
Non tradat eum in manun inimicorum eius.

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is found in a work attributed to Jerome (O’Neill [2001] 228), 56 and it does make intuitive sense

in the larger phrase uultus autem Domini super facientes mala. Nevertheless, Ps(P)’s rendering is

just one possible interpretation among others.

This last difficulty is one faced by all translations that seek to be at least partly

explanatory, and Ps(P) is not particularly egregious in its use of explanatory translation. If Ps(P)

is unusual for anything, it is for its emphasis on fitting the Psalms into their supposed historical

context. In that respect, we can see how even the explication of figurative uses works in service

of the literal sense of the text—that is, an attempt to reconstruct the immediate reference in the

authors’ original milieu. The application of this in cases where the authors themselves (or author

himself, as Alfred assumes) are not speaking literally shows that the extent to which Alfred

strives for clarity is fairly extreme, and that doubling is one of the translational techniques on

which he relies for such clarifying translation. Although the doublets we have been discussing as

explanatory do not follow the same trends in subject-matter as those discussed in the two

previous subsections (suffering, adversity, etc.), they similarly serve to clarify and emphasize

expressions that are of interest to a reader approaching the text with a historical, Davidic focus.

(3d) Doublets Introducing Outside Commentary

Despite his emphasis on the literal meanings of words, Alfred was also not entirely

averse to fleshing out the meaning of his text with non-literal trappings. Sometimes, the

“extended sense” that is attached to the translation by means of a doublet is not part of the

semantic range of the lemma even in its secondary or contextual denotations. Such non-intrinsic

56
Breviarium in Psalmos 33: uultum hic furorem intelligimus, qui minando iram, memoriam peccati a terra
disperdit (PL 26.922b).

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meanings attached to a denotative translation to form a doublet can be derived from multiple

sources. Perhaps the most basic of these possible sources is the range of associations held by the

lemma and by the doublet’s first component as Alfred understands them. For instance, at Psalm

3:9, salus is translated by “eall ure hæl and ure tohopa.” The first component, “eall ure hæl,”

despite slightly expanding on the lemma with the possessive adjective, is the word ordinarily

used to translate salus in OE (BT). But “tohopa” just as clearly falls outside the ordinary

meanings of salus. Still, it is not difficult to see how the two are related: salus/“hæl” implies the

speaker’s expectation of something good, in other words a “hope.” Particularly in the context of

the larger phrase, Domini est salus et super populum tuum benedictio tua (“for ðam on ðe ys aell

ure hæl and ure tohopa and ofer þin folc sy þin bletsuncg”), it appears that the lemma is meant to

suggest a future rather than present deliverance from trouble or distress. The second component,

then, while non-literal, has a basis in the lemma and first component by overlap not with its

denotations but with its contextual associations.

Moreover, as Frantzen observes, the text of Ps(P) “incorporates a complex tradition of

psalter study” (Frantzen 89), and this sometimes produces doublets in which one component

derives from particular Psalter commentaries. Many cases of this are documented by the notes to

O’Neill’s edition, and it would be otiose here to try to distinguish them from insertions of a

similar nature produced by Alfred’s own reading of the source-text, not least because we cannot

be totally certain of the full range of sources used by Ps(P). Nevertheless, the knowledge of

Ps(P)’s sources we do possess is sufficient to show probable sources, or at least close analogues,

for many of the interpretations introduced by its doublets. For instance, at 49:14 (48:15), where

the Roman Psalter has auxilium eorum, Ps(P) has “hyra fultum and hyra anweald,” with only the

doublet’s first component directly corresponding to the lemma. The association of “help” with

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“power” is, however, found also in the epitome of Julian of Aeclanum’s Psalter commentary,

where auxilium is glossed omnis potentia diuitium (qtd. O’Neill [2001] 266). Often the parallel is

not so direct but is still discernible as an influence on the expanded rendering of the lemma in the

OE text. For example, at 5:6 (5:7), the Roman Psalter’s operantur iniquitatem is rendered “unriht

wyrcað and þæt ne forlætað ne his ne hreowsiað,” and, as O’Neill points out, “A similar

clarification...occurs in Jerome, Tract[atus siue Homiliae in Psalmos], 15.103-5: ‘Non dixit, qui

operati sunt iniquitatem; sed qui operantur iniquitatem. Qui perseuerant in peccato’” (O’Neill

[2001] 173). In other words, though the expression “and do not give it up or repent of it” seems

not to have a precise source, the commentary tradition on this lemma clearly lays out the idea

that to “work sin” here means also to persist in it unrepentantly, even though the text is not

explicit on that matter.

Expansion of the lemma by appending a related expression, whether drawn from an

outside source or devised by the translator, can be seen in a number of forms, of which Table

2.3.4 provides a further sampling.

Table 2.3.4. Doublets in Ps(P): Denotative Translation + “Commentary” Expression

3:5 (3:6): suscepit me = me awehte and me upp arærde
3:8 (3:9): salus = eall ure hæl and ure tohopa
4:9 (4:10): in spe = on blisse and on tohopan
5:6 (5:7): operantur iniquitatem = unriht wyrcað and þæt ne forlætað ne his ne hreowsiað
5:10 (5:11): cogitationibus suis = þæt yfel þæt hy þencað and sprecað
10:9 (9:30): insidiatur = sætað...and þæs wilnað
11:1 (10:2): in montem = geond muntas and geond westenu
12:8 (11:9): multiplicasti = tobrædst ongean hy and wið hi gefriðast
14:5 (13:5): trepidauerunt timore = cymð...ege and ungelimp
16:6 (15:6): praeclara = foremære and...swyðe unbleo
18:40 (17:41): inimicorum meorum dedisti mihi dorsum = minra feonda bæc þu
onwendest to me and me hine gesealdest
24:4 (23:4): non accepit in uano animam suam = ne hwyrfð his mod æfter idlum
geþohtum and him mid weorcum fulgæð
25:21 (24:21): sustinui = anbidode and wilnode and wende
27:14 (26:14): expecta Dominum = hopa nu...to Drihtne and gebid his willan

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 29:6 (28:6): dilectus = swa mycle and swa fægere
30:1 (29:2): exaltabo te = ic fægnige...and þe herige
31:20 (30:21): abscondes eos in abditu uultus tui = gehydst and gehyldst hale and orsorge
ægðer ge modes ge lichaman
32:3 (31:3): tacui = ic sugode and hæl mine scylda
32:11 (31:11): laetamini = fægniað and wuldriað
35:14 (34:14): conplacebam = hy lufode and him tiolde to licianne and to cwemanne
35:15 (34:15): congregata sunt = hi comon ongean me and gegaderodon
36:12 (35:13): qui operantur iniquitatem = þa þe unriht wyrcen and him þæt licað
37:9 (36:9): nequiter agunt = yfel doð and þæt ne betað
37:9 (36:9): qui...expectant Dominum = þa þe to Gode hopiað and his fultumes anbidiað
38:11 (37:12): amici mei et proximi mei = mine frynd and mine magas and mine
neahgeburas
41:5 (40:6): dixerunt mala = cwædon yfel and wilnodon
41:9 (40:10): edebat panes meos = æton and druncon mid me
42:6 (41:7): turbata = gebolgen and gedrefed
44:2 (43:3): plantasti = plantode and tydrede
44:6 (43:7): non saluabit = ne gefriðode ne ne gehælde
45:11 (44:12): adorabunt eum = gebide þe to him and weorþa hine
45:14 (44:15): uarietate = mid eallum mislicum hrægla wlitum and mid gyldnum fnasum
48:12 (47:13): circumdate Sion = hweorfað ymb Sion and gað ofer þone weall
Hierusalem and ymbutan
49:7 (48:8): redemit = nele alysan of helle ne ne mæg
49:10 (48:11): sapientes = þa welegan and þa weoruldwisan
49:11 (48:12): in terris ipsorum = hiora land and hiora tunas
49:13 (48:14): in ore suo = mid wordum næs mid weorcum
49:14 (48:15): auxilium eorum = hyra fultum and hyra anweald
50:21 (49:21): tacui = ic swugode and þolode swycle ic hit nyste
Again, the items that fit into this grouping vary in level of importance to the text. A

number of them are expressions with pointed religious significance, at least in context: e.g., spes,

confiteri. Others, like insidiari, dolor, malignare, and tacere, point to the emphasis on adversity

and suffering that we have seen to recur throughout Ps(P)’s doublets.

In general, Ps(P)’s approach to exegesis derives ultimately from the so-called Antiochene

school, which is closely associated with literal interpretation of Scripture. It is, in O’Neill’s

words, well-established that “The dominant influence on Ps(P) was the historical exegesis of

Theodore of Mopsuestia,” one of the leading figures of the Antiochene school (O’Neill [2001]

37). Theodore’s exegesis reached Alfred both directly through a Latin translation of his Psalter

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commentary by Julian of Aeclanum—though in Alfred’s day this commentary was wrongly

attributed to Jerome and neither Theodore nor Julian (both condemned heretics) was known by

name—and, for Psalms 1-16, indirectly through an Irish commentary that has been dubbed the

Expositio Psalmorum and draws on an epitome of Julian’s translation as a major source (39).

According to O’Neill, this influence “is most readily discernible in the bias towards literal and

historical interpretations, specifically in the application of the psalms to David’s life and to later

Old Testament events, where the orthodox commentators apply them to Christ or to the Church”

(37), a feature we have already considered in several connections. Although the introductions

rather than the main text are the primary locus of such historical interpretation in Ps(P), we have

seen that the translation itself displays a number of features that reflect the values displayed in

Theodore’s approach to the Psalms. (For a simplified account of the Antiochene school and its

influence on early English biblical scholarship, see Frantzen 93-94.)

This interpretive orientation becomes particularly evident in Ps(P)’s “commentary”

doublets. The main distinguishing feature of the Antiochene school of exegesis is what Frederick

McLeod calls its “literal, historical, and rational approach to biblical exegesis” (McLeod 3). As

Michael Lapidge explains, “the Antiochenes attempted to elucidate the exact sense of the text by

repair to techniques which we would today describe as ‘philological’” (Lapidge 4). In addition to

the aforementioned emphasis on history, this entails a focus on working out the exact meanings

of the words as they are arranged in the text. The stated central interpretive principles of

Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Psalter commentary, for instance, are διανοία and ἀκολουθία—what

Robert Devreesse paraphrases as “la donée littérale et l’enchaînement du propos” (Devreesse

69). Put another way, “an interpreter should always stay with what the text actually states”

(McLeod 18). With regard to how this affects the understanding of particular words and phrases,

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Devreese observes that this “philological” interest extends, in Theodore’s commentary, to

examination of rhetorical devices, including metonymy and part-for-whole synecdoche

(Devreesse 66-67). We have already seen how Ps(P) integrates concern with precisely such

figures of speech into some of its doublets, and other concerns of the Antiochene exegetes can

also be traced in Table 2.3.4.

Here, it may be useful to think of a parallel, though not directly related, development in

literal and philological exposition of biblical texts from Anglo-Saxon England: the productions

of the school of Theodore and Hadrian of Canterbury in the seventh century. Although the

biblical “commentaries” (glosses, really) produced at Canterbury comment on the Pentateuch

rather than the Psalms and so are not a source for Ps(P), they might provide a useful analogue. If,

as Stanton suggests, the presence of doublets in a translation may reflect the use of a glossed

source-text (see Stanton [2002] 58), the gloss Ps(P) drew on for doublets like those in Table

2.3.4 would seem to be similar in emphasis to the Canterbury commentaries, a series of short

explanatory notes which Lapidge describes as “wholly Antiochene in orientation” (Lapidge 5).

In particular, these commentaries show an interest in “the flora and fauna mentioned in the

Bible...minerals and precious stones, the customs of the Jews, the topography of the Holy Land,

the paraphernalia of everyday life in the Bible, and so on” (Bischoff and Lapidge 246), and

reflect a broader recourse to such disciplines as “medicine, philosophy, rhetoric, metrology, and

chronology” to help in understanding the text (249). As Bernhard Bischoff and Lapidge point

out, these commentaries do not entirely exclude allegorical interpretation, just as Ps(P) does not

(see Bischoff and Lapidge 219-220, 245), but such interpretations are found “only rarely” therein

(247). There is far less that warrants historical, geographical, zoological, or mineralogical

explanation in the Psalms than in the Pentateuch (though “hweorfað ymb Sion and gað ofer þone

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weall Hierusalem and ymbutan” at 47:13 represents a striking attempt to draw attention to Zion

as a historical-geographical entity rather than a symbolic one), but the grounds for most of

Ps(P)’s “commentary” doublets do seem to lie in areas like philology, and in simply reasoning

out the implications of the text (its ἀκολουθία) through various points of real-world knowledge.

In particular, Ps(P) shows some of the same kinds of interest as the Canterbury

Pentateuch commentaries in the workings of the real world as understood and interpreted

through various disciplines (especially rhetoric in history in this case). Such “consultation of

relevant ancillary aids...and disciplines” (Lapidge 4) could help to explain a number of doublets

in Table 2.3.4 even apart from any specific sources. Unlike in the Canterbury commentaries, the

books covered by which often refer directly to creatures and customs foreign to Anglo-Saxon

England, Ps(P) is more limited in its discussion of specific “difficult” words. Unfamiliar flora

and fauna are mentioned a few times in the first fifty Psalms, but not often, and usually they are

dealt with by means other than doubling. For instance, at 29:5 (28:6), unicornus is rendered by

the explanatory circumlocution “þees deores bearn þe unicornus hatte.” Obviously, this is less

explanatory than glosses found in full-fledged commentaries, given that it does not fully explain

what kind of “beast” the “unicorn” is, but the impulse to comment on a word for an exotic

animal is essentially the same. Alfred takes a different tack in explaining hyssopus at 51:8 (50:9),

where the expression asparges me hysopo is translated as “bespreng me nu mid þinum

haligdome swa swa mid ysopon.” 57 Nevertheless, in including both the explanatory translation

“haligdom” and a simple Anglicization of the potentially difficult lemma, Alfred seeks to explain

57
The interpretation of “hyssop” as “holiness” is paralleled, as O’Neill points out, in the Psalter commentary of
Cassiodorus (O’Neill [2001] 271).

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the significance of a foreign object while also acknowledging that the Psalmist’s image is rooted

in a culture different from that of the medieval English reader.

Where this kind of interest in “ancillary aids and disciplines” manifests itself most

prominently among Ps(P)’s doublets is in the elaboration of some details on the basis of outside

knowledge. This is usually quite basic outside knowledge, as when edebant is expanded into

“æton and druncon” on the grounds that a communal meal (which is what the full phrase edebant

panes meos implies) involves both food and drink. In other cases, slightly more elaborately, we

can see Alfred elaborating from cause to effect, as when plantasti becomes “plantode and

tydrede.” This is scarcely a matter of advanced botany, but the addition of “tydrede” (i.e.,

“multiplied”) does rely on the inference from outside knowledge that “planting” a crop entails

causing it to reproduce and that this ultimately is the idea conveyed by the horticultural image in

the second part of the larger phrase manus tua gentes disperdidit et plantasti eos (i.e., the hand of

God has both destroyed and built up nations). Such expansions in Ps(P) are quite rudimentary,

drawing on intuitive understanding of certain concepts rather than specialized knowledge, but

they do suggest a wish to interpret the significance of some terms on the basis of how they

function in the real world. They are, then, exegetical, but a form of literal exegesis grounded in

external understanding of how the natural world and society operate.

In several of the items in Table 2.3.4, yet another pattern emerges. This has less to do

with exegesis as such than with clarifying or enlivening the text—a concern which Bately

considers characteristic of the Alfredian translations generally (Bately [2014] 129-133)—and

entails the adduction of a related noun or verb for the sake of amplifying an action or image. For

instance, in the rendering of praeclara (referring to the Psalmist’s “inheritance”) as “foremære

and...swyðe unbleo,” L. Whitbread is probably right (pace Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie) to see in the

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second component not an obscure synonym for “foremære” but “a translator’s addition”

intensifying the sense of “goodly, pleasant, delightful” (Whitbread 448) implied from the tone of

the verse as a whole. Obviously, this kind of contextual tailoring is interpretive in one sense, but

again there does not seem to be any clear significance to allegorical or moral understandings of

this expression. Even more trivial from an exegetical point of view are such amplifications as the

triplet “mine frynd and mine magas and mine neahgeburas” for the doublet amici mei et proximi

mei, which merely tacks on a term (“magas”) conventionally associated with “friends and

neighbors.” 58

Sometimes, the attachment of extrinsic terms in the formation of a doublet represents a

more intrusive form of contextual adaptation, making the text conform with a particular

interpretation of the Psalm as a whole, not just with isolated non-literal usages. For instance, the

insertion of “welegan” before “weoruldwisan” in 49:10 (48:11) is in no way directly justified by

either the primary or the secondary denotations of the lemma sapientes (of which

“weoruldwisan” is a reasonably literal rendering). It does, however, dovetail with Ps(P)’s

introduction to this Psalm, which states that David here “lærde ealle men...þæt hy hy upp ne

ahofen for heora welum, and þæt hy ongeaton þæt hi ne mihton þa welan mid him lædan heonon

of weorulde.” The term “welegan” of course directly recalls the phrases I have italicized in this

quotation, and its inclusion helps align the Psalm-text’s sapientes/“weoruldwisan” with the moral

message drawn by the introduction. 59 A similar insertion of a term from the introduction into the

58
“Magas” can probably be associated more closely with amici than with proximi, but it would probably be better to
say that it emerges more from the general sense of the phrase as a whole than from any particular element of it. Note
again the tendency to multiply repetition, as noted in section 3a.
59
This is further emphasized by the inclusion of “weoruld-” in the doublet’s second component, which indicates that
the “wisdom” the text refers to is human rather than divine. This interpretation of sapientes presumably arises from
its context in the larger phrase non uidebit interitum cum uiderit sapientes morientes, whose reference to the death of
“the wise” is out of step with an approbatory view of the “wisdom” in question.

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Psalm even when it does not correspond to the meaning of any term in the Latin text comes in

Psalm 11 (10), with “geond muntas and geond westenu” in verse 1 (2). In this case, the insertion

comes not from the moral interpretation of the Psalm, but from Alfred’s comments about its

supposed historical context: “Ðysne teoþan sealm Dauid sang þa he wæs adrifen on þæt westen

from Sawle þam cynge.” (This comment doubtless comes from some work of literal-historical

commentary but is too generic to allow for identification of a particular source.) By changing the

source-text’s “mountains” into “muntas and...westenu,” Ps(P) thus aligns the opening of the

Psalm with the situation in which it was supposedly written, directly recalling the narrative of 1

Samuel.

With all these differing sources for meanings external to the source-text (commentaries,

outside knowledge, contextual interpretation either narrative or moral), the literal meaning of the

text seems still to be Alfred’s main concern. Even material borrowed from commentaries or

shaped by Alfred’s broader interpretation of a given Psalm tends to remain on the same level of

abstractness or concreteness as the lemma and the doublet’s more literal component and simply

elaborate on perceived implications. For instance, in the commentary-influenced “yfel doð and

þæt ne betað,” the second component is unambiguously extrinsic to the lemma and first

component, but concerns the same domain of moral behavior and fits into the same logical

sequence. A few items on Table 2.3.4, moreover, once again point to doubling as a stylistic tic,

introduced perhaps more for rhetorical reasons than because of a concern for amplifying the

sense of the text, and are found as set-phrases in other texts. For instance, “swa mycle and swa

fægere” (at 29:6 [28:6]) and “lufiað and secð” (at 31:23 [30:24]) are both also found in the OE

version of Boethius, while “æton and druncon” (at 41:9 [40:10]) and “word...[and] weorc” (at

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49:13 [48:14]) 60 are, like their equivalents in many other languages, downright cliché. Doublets

like these might be introduced almost reflexively by association when the context suits, even

though the source-text does not directly express both components. Certainly, however, in these

instances also the element of context which the additions can be said to “suit” is its literal sense

and the immediate implications thereof.

Finally, it is worth noting that a small but not insignificant number of doublets in Ps(P)

reflects another kind of outside meaning: variant readings in the source-text. It is fairly well-

established that, although Alfred used the Roman Psalter as the basis for his translation, he did

not consult only one redaction of the Psalms, and indeed some portions of Ps(P) reflect readings

found only in the Gallican Psalter rather than the Roman text. As O’Neill has pointed out,

however, in at least a dozen instances translations of the Gallican and Roman readings are given

side-by-side as doublets (though in a few cases without a conjunction). The instances cited in the

notes to O’Neill’s edition are listed in Table 2.3.5.

Table 2.3.5. Doublets in Ps(P): Roman Psalter Reading + Gallican Psalter Reading
12:3 (11:4): magniloquam / maliloquam = þa oferspræcan and þa yfelspræcan
25:17 (24:17): dilatatae / multiplicatae = swyðe tobræd and gemanigfealdod
31:19 (30:20): quam multa / quam magna = hu micel and hu manigfeald
37:24 (36:24): conlidetur / conturbabitur = ne wyrð he gebrysed ne his nan ban tobrocen
37:24 (36:24): supponit manum suam / firmat manum suam = gefehð his hand and hine
upparærð
38:10 (37:11): uirtus mea / fortitudo mea = min mægen and min strengo and min cræft
40:17 (39:18): liberator / protector = min friðiend and min gefultumend and min
gescyldend
48:2 (47:3): dilatans / fundatur = he tobrædde...is aset
The triplet at 38:10 (37:11) is particularly interesting because it seems to be the product of two

motivations for doubling in concurrent operation. On the one hand, uirtus is commonly

60
Note that, in this case, neither component is a denotative translation of the lemma, in ore suo, but “mid wordum”
is a straightforward explanatory translation (taking “mouth” as a metonymy for “words”).

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translated “mægen” in OE texts and “strengo” more obviously fits with fortitudo (since both

refer specifically to physical power), but “cræft” will serve as an expansion of either or both. We

have already examined the pairing of “cræft” with “mægen” to translate uirtus, of course, but its

placement in this case associates it more closely with “strengo.” In short, this appears to be a

case in which doubling in the source-text has begotten more doubling in the translation.

In concluding this examination of non-synonymous doublets in Ps(P), it is worth

reiterating that a number of the rhetorical and sonic features identified for synonymous doublets

in section 3a are also common in non-synonymous doublets. Even with Table 2.3.5, where the

primary motive for doubling is a purely lexical as a variant reading in the source-text, attention

seems to have been paid to euphony, and we find cases of alliteration (“hu micel and hu

manigfeald,” “ne wyrð he gebrysed ne his nan ban tobrocen,” “min friðiend and min

gefultumend”), of repeated endings (“þa oferspræcan and þa yfelspræcan,” “min friðiend and

min gefultumend and min gescyldend”), and of repeated function-words (“þa oferspræcan and

þa yfelspræcan,” “hu micel and hu manigfeald,” “min mægen and min strengo and min cræft,”

“min friðiend and min gefultumend and min gescyldend”). Even more examples of each of these

rhetorical devices could be drawn from among those doublets classed above as figurative or

polysemous, though to do so at this point would be otiose. It suffices to say that rhetorical and

semantic considerations are not mutually exclusive in forming a doublet. Not only is it not

always easy to place a given doublet in one category or another, but a primary emphasis on

conceptual clarification or elaboration does not preclude stylistic and rhetorical concerns

operating at the same time.

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Conclusion

Stanton calls Ps(P) a translation “in which fidelity and literalism are seen as desirable

norms” (Stanton [2002] 98), and none of what we have seen in this examination of the OE

Psalms contradicts his assessment; indeed, much at least implicitly corroborates it. This is,

however, dependent on two qualifications: 1. an acknowledgment which Stanton himself makes

immediately after this statement, that “changes to the Latin often bring the Old English into line

with Old English stylistic norms” (ibid.), and 2. an understanding that “fidelity and literalism”

mean not primarily verbal but conceptual agreement between source-text and translation (as

Alfred understands it). To some extent, we could even say that translational doubling as

practiced in OE biblical texts, not only Ps(P) but WSCp and Hep as well, comes at the

intersection of these two qualifications. Certainly in the case of Ps(P) doublets are simply one

part of a host of other low-level literal clarifications of the text (see, e.g., Frantzen 98-100). Thus

Bately is right to emphasize “the need to distinguish those features of a translation which depend

on a Latin source from those which represent the writer’s own usage” (Bately [2014] 119), but

the two are usually intertwined. Even with synonymous doublets, as we have seen,

considerations both about stylistic convention and about meaning can come into play, as these

doublets can be used to reinforce thematic emphases while also fitting into broader patterns of

repetitive phrasing common both in OE literature and in the Hebrew on which the Latin Old

Testament is based. In that respect, synonymous doubling can be understood as primarily a form

of stylistic fine-tuning, whether a rhetorical amplification of particular concepts or an attempt to

extend stylistic tendencies of the source-text.

Perhaps more obviously with non-synonymous doublets Alfred and the other OE biblical

translators sought to make explicit or express more fully what is, in the source-text, only implicit

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or stated with less emphasis. That they do so, in many cases, with simple doublets rather than

more intrusive comments or glosses (though all three translations feature some of the latter as

well) shows the extent to which interpretive operations are worked into the fabric of the

translation. Thus polysemous doublets show how multiplicity of meaning and interpretation can

arise from the very definitions of the words of the source-text, while figurative and

“commentary” doublets show that even less intrinsic aspects of meaning can, in the translator’s

mind, form part of the necessary understanding of the biblical text. What makes such

interventions into the text notable is, then, the form they take: though sometimes acting like

glosses, they are designed not to draw attention to themselves as such, and usually only collation

with the source-text can reveal them for what they are. This is all the more striking with Ps(P) in

that the interpretive operations underlying its non-synonymous doublets are entirely extrinsic to a

basic literal reading of the text.

It will be worthwhile to end with a brief consideration of overall purposes and intents of

the interpretive work seen in doubling. O’Neill characterizes Alfred as a translator of the Psalms

thus: “He projected its literal meaning well, even as he colored it with interpretative perspectives

mainly reflecting the historical interpretations laid down in the Introductions. When confronted

by difficulties (mostly syntactical and semantic) in the Latin text, he adopted a variety of

solutions, sometimes supplying verbal connectors of his own making, sometimes providing

interpretations from the commentaries. One could characterize his approach as pragmatic—

whatever (re)source best clarified the literal sense was clearly the one used, even if that meant

compromising interpretative consistency” (O’Neill [2014] 277). Frantzen similarly says that

Alfred’s “focus on the literal and historical level was a very conservative one, admitting as little

ambiguity as possible, presenting the simplest interpretation of the text, and producing a clear

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translation of the psalms” (Frantzen 98). The translator of WSCp is not much different, though

he did not frame his work with explicitly interpretive comments like Ps(P)’s introductions, nor

even, where doubling is concerned, are the translators of Hep. The outlook of all of them is

basically literal-historical; insertions in the form of doublets for all three extant continuous OE

biblical translations, where they are not primarily stylistic or rhetorical, tend to focus on

clarifying immediate conceptual referents and meanings in their sequential, historical, or (in the

cases of WSCp and Hep) narrative contexts. Bately says of the use of prepositions in Ps(P) that

“even where these function words are additions and not direct translations of the Latin, they are

frequently reactive—inserted, for instance, to make clear, or emphasize, the relationship between

two phrases or clauses juxtaposed in the source text” (Bately [2009] 196), and much the same

may be said of other kinds of liberties taken with the source-text in Ps(P) and other biblical

translations, including their doublets. From the beginning, we can then see, though there are

exceptions, use of doubling in early medieval English biblical translation tended to be a

handmaiden of the literal sense of Scripture.

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CHAPTER III: DOUBLING IN NON-WYCLIFFITE ENGLISH BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS
OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

Among the extant ME translations of the Bible or individual biblical books, doubling is a

prevalent feature only in the best-known of them, the Wycliffite Bible. Nevertheless, surviving

ME biblical literature is fairly plentiful and varied, and some of the lesser-known translations

feature at least a few scattered uses of doubling in various forms. Indeed, depending on how

“translation” and “translational doubling” are defined, it would be possible to track the latter

phenomenon through a very wide range of texts indeed. In the first place, as David Lawton

among others has emphasized, adaptations of Scripture in ME go well beyond prose translations

made directly from the Vulgate (see Lawton [1999] 454-457) and include works as diverse as

verse paraphrases like the Orrmulum and certain sections of the Cursor Mundi, prose

commentaries like Richard Rolle’s Psalter, and even the mystery cycles and miracle plays.

Moreover, even if one narrows the scope of “translation” to lexical renderings of Latin biblical

texts into English, this is by no means limited to complete biblical books or selections from

biblical books. Works like Piers Plowman and the Canterbury Tales, as well as some of the

biblical adaptations just mentioned, often feature short quotations of scriptural texts rendered

phrase-by-phrase or even word-for-word into English. For instance, in the Pardoner’s Tale, the

couplet “A lecherous thing is wyn, and dronkenesse / Is ful of stryving and of wrecchednesse”

(PdT 549-550) is a quotation of Proverbs 20:1a, 1 and in fact strongly resembles the rendering of

this verse in the Later Version of the Wycliffite Bible (“wiyn is a letcherouse þing and

drunkenesse is ful of noise”). As the last phrase in Chaucer’s version (“ful of stryving and of

1
Vulgate: luxuriosa res uinum et tumultuosa ebrietas.

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wrecchednesse” for tumultuosa) shows, moreover, ME writers were not averse to using doublets

in short ad-hoc translations, especially in verse. 2 It would therefore be possible to trace the role

of doubling in ME biblical translation in a large number of contexts, even some that are not

normally thought of as translation.

The present study, however, by confining itself to prose translations, is restricted to a small

corpus of texts. ME prose biblical translations other than (and mostly antedating) the Wycliffite

Bible comprise about ten surviving texts, all of them Psalters or partial New Testaments. Of

these ten or so, we shall exclude a further two (a fourteenth-century English version of the

popular Anglo-Norman Apocalypse [ed. Fridner], and a fourteenth-century English Psalter to

which modern scholars have given various designations, including the ME Glossed Prose Psalter

and the Midlands Prose Psalter [ed. Black and St.-Jacques]) whose immediate source-texts are

evidently French translations rather than the Vulgate (see Black and St.-Jacques xliv). It will also

be convenient to set aside the English Gospel harmony Oon of Foure, though this contains a

relatively large number of doublets, since its immediate source-text is also not the Vulgate Bible

as such, but the Latin Gospel harmony Unum ex Quattuor. 3 I pass over the ME Gospel

commentaries discussed by A.B. Kraebel in part because their dependence on particular Latin

commentaries (see Kraebel [2014] 95-98) obscures their relationship to the Vulgate, but mostly

for the sake of convenience, as they are not available in a critical edition. This leaves just three

texts, only one of them (Rolle’s Psalter) widely known and widely circulated.

2
Alliterative verse seems especially conducive to doubling in “occasional” translations, and examples are traceable
in Piers Plowman. For instance, Langland at one point translates Jesus’ exhortation nesciat sinistra tua quid faciat
dextera tua (Mt. 6:3) as “Let not þi left hond, late ne raþe, / Be war what þi riȝt hond werchiþ or deliþ” (A 3.56).
3
Additionally, it has been argued by Paul Smith that Oon of Foure is directly related to the Wycliffite Bible, and
Smith is right at least that its approach to translation is strongly congruent with that of the Later Wycliffite Version
(see especially Smith [2010] 161-162), so that discussion of this text here would be redundant.

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 None of these three translations contains doubling to the same extent as the Wycliffite Bible,

either in terms of absolute numbers or relative to their variable lengths, but two of them do

feature at least a few doublets. More interestingly—because not paralleled in either the

Wycliffite Bible or the OE texts examined in Chapter II—all three also feature cases in which a

whole sentence is translated with two alternatives. It thus becomes worthwhile to examine these

translations as foils to the Wycliffite Bible, since all three operate according interpretive and

translational approaches that are at odds with what appears in the latter text. Their interpretive

approaches are quite different also from the literal-historical emphases of Ps(P) and the bald

directness of the interlinear glosses and WSCp (though they have something in common with

Ælfric). Their use of at least some translational techniques in common with the earlier and later

biblical texts will thus serve to illustrate both the historical continuities and the individual texts’

points of distinction in the use of doubling.

(1) Translational Approach in PE, EBV, and RRP

Of the three extant non-Wycliffite ME biblical translations that will be considered in this

chapter, two feature occasional doubling, and the third features a variation on the phenomenon of

doubling that will be explained more fully in section 2. This third text, Richard Rolle’s Psalter

(hereafter RRP), was by far the most widely-circulated and influential of the three, and was

evidently known to the makers of the Wycliffite Bible, but because of its lack of straightforward

translational doublets we will have relatively little to say about it. Nevertheless, despite their

obscurity, the two other translations, both of them partial New Testaments dating to the

fourteenth (or perhaps early fifteenth) century, have considerable interest, if not in their own

right, at least for the sake of comparison with other biblical texts of the same period. Because

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they are so little-known, however, it will be necessary to begin with an overview of each of

them.

A major feature of virtually all non-Wycliffite ME biblical translations is a tendency to frame,

modify, and even “disfigure” the English text in ways that emphasize its dependence on the Latin

source-text. The first of the two partial New Testaments—a version of the Pauline Epistles

contained in CCCC MS. Parker 32 (hereafter PE)—is a curious artifact of ME biblical literature

especially for this reason. PE consists of a Vulgate text of the fourteen 4 Pauline Epistles

interspersed with a ME translation. The Latin and the English are written out continuously,

marked off from each other only by pilcrows. In many ways, the text is shoddy and scattershot.

The segments into which it is broken are of highly variable, seemingly arbitrary length (though

after 1 Corinthians this stabilizes into a pattern in which roughly each full chapter is given first in

Latin, then in ME). The alternation between the Vulgate and the translation is rather disorienting,

but makes clear that the English is given simply as a key to understanding the Latin. In contrast

to the OE interlinear glosses, this ME text can be read on its own, and the presence of additional

glosses on that ME text but not the Latin indicates that it is meant to stand on its own to some

extent; James Morey sees reason to think that the translation “had both public and private

applications,” though its immediate purpose is unknown (Morey 345). But the placement of the

English after the Latin it translates emphasizes its subordinate status as a means of mediating the

sacred text, which is emphatically the Latin text.

A devaluation of the ME text relative to the Latin is apparent also in the translation itself.

Morey calls this translation “sometimes ungrammatical but perfectly orthodox” (ibid.). As

Powell, observes, “This version does not compare favourably with any other Biblical translation

4
In medieval reckoning, Heb. is always counted as one of Paul’s letters.

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made in the fourteenth century” (Powell lxxiii), largely because of a slavish word-for-word

literalism coupled with awkward attempts to prevent this literalism from completely drowning

out the sense. At Romans 3:23, to give a representative instance, the English reads, “For alle þei

hafe synned and nedyn þe joye of God, þat is forgifnesse of God” (Vulgate: omnes enim

peccauerunt et egent gloria Dei). This verse illustrates two points which are fairly characteristic

of PE: a lack of context-sensitivity in its translation of particular words, and (as mentioned in

passing above) the insertion of explanatory glosses, normally introduced by “þat is.” 5 These two

tendencies conspire to make the translation a strikingly defective production. To take the first

point first, meaning in the English text is frequently obscured by various ultra-literalisms. As

Powell observes, the translator “is apt to render a Latin word invariably by the same English

expression” (xxxv)—probably the largest problem with the verse quoted above is that, while

gloria might reasonably be rendered “joy” in some contexts, Romans 3:23 is not one of them.

The insertion of glosses, meanwhile, is a two-edged issue. On the one hand, it sometimes

creates syntactic confusion, as at 1 Corinthians 12:28: “And sume þerfore God sette in þe kyrke:

first apostlys; aftyr prophetys; þe thrydde doctours; aftur vertues, and fro þen grace of helyng,

þat is to say þem þat helyn þe syke; and opytulacyouns, þat is to say þem þe whylke brynge

rychesses to þe more; governynges; and kyndes of spechys.” Sometimes indeed the glosses

create grammatical difficulty bordering on incoherence, as at 2 Corinthians 5:16: “And þerfore

we knowyn, þat is we preysen, no man lifande after the flesch, and if we hafe knowyn Crist aftyr

þe flesch to ben deadly; but now aftyr þat he roos we knowe not hym aftyr the flesch to ben

deadly.” Sometimes, on the other hand, rather than creating confusion, glosses are inserted

precisely to clarify the sense when it has been obfuscated by excessive literalism. This

5
As with the segmentation of the text, however, there is a noticeable progression toward simplicity as the text goes
on, and glosses (absolutely pervasive in Rm. and 1 Cor.) become gradually less frequent after 2 Cor.

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commonly takes the form of restating the antecedent of a relative pronoun that has just been

rendered literally: e.g., at Ephesians 1:13a, “In whom, þat is to sey Crist, and ȝee had herd þe

woord of soþnesse þe ewangelye of ȝoure hele.” In many cases this occurs on a larger, more

intrusive scale: e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:56b: “þe vertue forsoþe of synne, þat is þe ekyng of synne,

is þe lawe;” Galatians 3:15: “Breþere, I seye or profe þise thynges afyr þe man or aftyr mannys

custome.” By translating uirtus and secundum hominem mechanically without regard for context,

the translator has, in short, created a muddle that must itself be rectified.

It would be a mistake, however, to see all of this as incompetence on the part of the translator.

While it is true, as Powell points out, that the translator occasionally misconstrues his text, on

balance we are given no reason to think that he did not fundamentally understand both Latin and

English. Even when awkwardly placed, the glosses themselves do not show the same stylistic

defects as the main text, and “corrective” glosses (see section 4) frequently show that the

translator does understand the sense of the text even when his primary translation is

unintelligible. The decision to give the actually understandable translation as a gloss thus

emphasizes the primacy of the Latin and the status of the translation as simply a reading aid for

the Vulgate. As Gotthard Lechler observes, the placement of the Latin text before the ME is “a

clear proof that the work could not have been prepared for the people, but rather for the less

educated class of priests” (qtd. Powell xxviii), and this is reinforced by the placement of ultra-

literal initial translations before more intelligible retranslations.

The second text that will be considered in this chapter, edited by Paues under the title A

Fourteenth Century English Biblical Version (hereafter EBV), is actually a composite of three

translations of varying quality dating to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. These three

segments are, in order, 1) the Catholic and Pauline Epistles (all but 2 Peter, James, and Jude

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abridged, with Philemon absent entirely), 2) Acts (complete), and 3) the first six chapters of

Matthew (ending with the closing words of the Lord’s Prayer in 6:13). All three translations are

stylistically a significant improvement over PE: as Powell puts it, “The text [of EBV] is much

more readable and intelligible, and more independent of the Latin original” (Powell lxxiv). Paues

notes, for instance, that EBV is less apt than the Wycliffite Bible to translate a given Latin word

by simply Anglicizing its form (Paues lxxiv) and that it sometimes appears to use certain words

based entirely on considerations of euphony in the receptor-language such as alliteration and

assonance (lxxv). More concretely, compare PE 1 Corinthians 12:28 (quoted above) with EBV’s

translation of the same verse: “And God haþ y-put in his churche, first sum men apostles, in þe

secunde place prophetes, in þe þridde techeres, seþþe vertues, seþþe graces of helynge men,

helpynges, governynges, dyverse kyndes of langages, interpretacyons of wordys,” with the

Vulgate’s O-S-V syntax (retained in PE) reordered to ordinary English S-V-O and secundo and

tertio idiomatically expanded into “in the second/third place” where PE had more elliptically

given simply “aftyr” and “þe thrydde.” The impulse to “disfigure” the text for exegetical reasons

is nevertheless apparent in this translation as well. The different parts of this version, being

originally separate compositions, do this to different degrees, but EBV as a whole gives a clear

impression of deliberate mediation and interpretive framing of the text.

This is most obvious in the basic framework of the translation. An examination of Paues’s

table of contents makes immediately apparent that the EBV translators were highly selective:

most of the books of the New Testament are listed, but most of them are heavily abridged. The

section containing the Epistles is introduced by a lengthy prologue given in the form of a

dialogue between a learned male religious, a less-educated monk, and a nun and resumed in

bridge-passages between books, which, as Paues notes, suggests that this translation was

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“undertaken at the urgent request of the inmates of some religious house” (Paues xxiv). This

dialogue, however, never acknowledges that the translated books are largely incomplete, and

indeed seems to suggest that the whole text is being given in all cases (e.g., with introductory and

concluding comments like, “Seynt Poule wryteþ to þe Romaynes and seiþ” and “Þus...Seynt

Poule wryteþ” [Paues 48, 56]). The reason for this seems to be a wish to leave out difficult

material, suggested, for instance, by the removal of passages dealing with issues of Jewish law in

Romans and Galatians. Acts, in addition to being the only unabridged book in the collection and

appearing in a translation of a higher quality than most of the rest of EBV, lacks any kind of

prologue or introduction, but is nevertheless, in Paues’s hyperbolic but basically accurate

assessment, “corrupted by an endless number of glosses and alternative readings” (Paues lxxix).

RRP stands out from both of these texts in being not merely a translation but a verse-by-verse

commentary on the Gallican Psalter. Still, David Daniell is right to call RRP “the first complete

Psalter in an English that is recognisable today” (Daniell 101), as the comment on each verse

begins with an English translation of the Latin. Like PE, however, RRP is often difficult to make

sense of. Kinga Lis puts the case bluntly in saying that “Even a cursory examination of its text

leaves the reader in no doubt as to its compliance with the principles of word-for-word

translation advocated by Jerome in the case of scriptural renditions” (Lis [2016] 88). There are

probably multiple reasons for this. First, as Lis further explains, Rolle’s approach to translation

“did not allow for stylistic considerations to be superimposed on [the text] as the Psalter was no

place for concessions made to literary deliberations because it endangered the orthodoxy of the

translation” (ibid.). 6 Thus his translation becomes, as Anne Hudson expresses it, “so literal that

6
Lis elsewhere elaborates on this point: “Rolle was an extremely conservative translator and approached the task
with utmost care stemming from the reverence for the text he rendered and the belief that every word in it was
sacred, in compliance with the contemporary attitude towards the Bible” (Lis [2015] 49).

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understanding of Latin could be deduced from it” (Hudson [2012] 1.xxx). Indeed, Lilo Moessner

finds that RRP is more consistent in failing to resolve participial constructions—a major

sticking-point in the translation of Latin into English, as we saw in Chapter II—than any other

major ME translation of the Psalms (Moessner 141; cf. Hudson [2012] 1.xcvi). Second, because

Rolle’s comments are generally translated from Latin sources commenting on the Latin text of

the Psalms, a close approximation of that Latin text may often be necessary for the commentary

to make sense. In David Norton’s words, Rolle “made no effort to produce a literary translation.

Rather, his work is a guide, first to the meaning of the Latin, second, through a commentary, to

the meaning of the Psalms” (Norton 5).

RRP also differs from PE and EBV in featuring a prologue in which the translator speaks

explicitly about matters of translation technique. On the whole, this prologue embraces literalism

while rejecting some forms of extreme ultra-literalism. By Rolle’s own account, in his

translations “I seke na straunge Ynglis, bot lyghtest and comonest and swilk that is mast lyke til

the Latyn, swa that thai that knawes noght Latyn by the Ynglis may com til mony Latyn wordis”

(Rolle 4). Because of this, Rolle has sometimes been accused of being a “language purist” (cf.

Partridge 21), though doubtless Lis is correct to argue against this, observing that “There are a

number of issues inevitably entailed in this assumption. Firstly, Rolle would need to have a

‘linguistic’ knowledge extensive enough to enable him to differentiate between lexical items on

the basis of their etymology. Secondly, it would take an extremely disciplined and individualistic

translator, if one takes into account also other (nearly) contemporaneous Psalter renditions,

allegedly replete with loanwords, to incorporate such an endeavour into the task of Bible

translation, especially if Rolle’s primary focus was providing as close a rendition of the original

as possible” (Lis [2015] 46). Indeed, in comparing RRP with the Wycliffite Bible’s Psalter and

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other ME versions of the Psalms, Lis finds the incidence of non-native vocabulary to be lower

than in the other Psalter translations, but never by a significant amount (58-59)—a finding

congruent with the more broad-reaching analysis of Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi (see Pahta and

Nurmi 228ff.).

Still, even if Rolle’s vocabulary is English, his syntax is Latin (“In the translacioun I folow

the lettere als mykyll as I may” [Rolle 4]). Lis adds to the observations about Rolle’s syntactical

literalism which I have quoted above that “despite the fact that in Rolle’s translation policy

primacy was given to preserving the literal reading, the readers’ moral elevation was also catered

for—in the Commentary on the text. Thus, by means of separating them, Rolle managed to

provide for both literal accuracy—so important in the context of biblical translation—and clarity

of the conveyed message” (Lis [2016] 88). This primarily takes the form of the exegetical

commentary which comprises the bulk of RRP. Bramley describes Rolle’s commentary thus: “In

his Comments on the Psalms...he sees Christ throughout. Christ’s union with His Church and His

abiding in holy souls therein, are his perpetual theme. His Birth, His Passion, His Resurrection,

His present and future reign over his saints, are brought in to shed light upon obscure passages,

and are evidently the habitual subject of the writer’s thoughts” (Rolle xii); Lawton notes that

Rolle’s main source for his Christological allegorizing is Peter Lombard (Lawton [1999] 469-

470).

The basic difference of emphasis between Rolle’s translational approach and that both of

predecessors like Alfred and of successors like the Wycliffite Bible translators is revealed by an

easily-missed quirk of phrasing in the closing lines of RRP’s prologue. It will be observed that

Rolle concludes his rejection of “straunge Ynglis” with the hope that the reader “may com”—not

to the “sentence,” as the Wycliffite Bible’s prologue will later express it—but “til mony Latyn

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wordis.” He further explains that “thare I fynd na propire Ynglis I folow the wit of the worde”

(Rolle 5), so the concept of underlying sense (“wit”) is by no means neglected, but there is a

strong emphasis on the idea that the “wit” is that of the Latin text. 7 Indeed, the casual

juxtaposition of these two statements underscores how totally he assimilates the idea of the

biblical text’s underlying meaning with the Latin Psalter as Latin. The same identification of

Scripture with Latin can be traced also in EBV’s prologue. Unlike Rolle, the characters in this

dialogue virtually never acknowledge that the Bible as they have it is specifically the Latin Bible,

and the translations which ensue are given without the Latin text. Nevertheless, the reaction of

the “learned brother” to a request for instruction in the faith is surprisingly dire: though he

acknowledges that he is “holde by Cristis lawe” to do as asked, nevertheless “we beþ now so fer

y-fallen a wey from Cristis lawe þat ȝif y wolde answere to þyn axynges y moste in cas

underfonge þe deþ” (Paues 4-5). The brother’s worry is expressed elliptically, but plainly has to

do with the association of the vernacular with heresy. As Morey puts it, “Given the importance

of having the Latin present as a kind of control, its absence may account for the learned brother’s

unease” (Morey 347). What I wish to underscore, however, is that the “learned brother” does not

have to spell any of this out precisely because he and his addressees take for granted an

inseparable association between the Bible and the Latin language.

For both RRP and EBV (at least its Epistles), the chief concern underlying the translation is

orthodoxy. For instance, in EBV’s prologue, the “learned brother” is able to overcome his

scruples about translation only because, as the other monk expresses it, those “þat han of Godes

grace more knowynge þan we han þat beþ lewed and unkunnynge beþ y-holde to techen us

þinges þat beþ nedeful to þe hele of oure soules: þat is to seye, what þing is plesynge to God and

7
Moreover, Hudson finds that RRP’s Latin text is more accurate than that of most contemporary Psalters (Hudson
[2012] 1.lxxxii), which further underscores how much care Rolle took with the ipsissima verba specifically in Latin.

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what displeseþ hym also” (Paues 4). In the same spirit, the bridge-passages, especially that

between the Catholic and Pauline Epistles, make a point of framing the biblical text’s

significance in terms of selective (orthodox) doctrinal emphases—a tendency obviously

reinforced by the abridgment of most books in EBV. Meanwhile, Rolle’s explicit purpose in

“following the wit of the word” is “swa that thai that sall red it thaim thare noght dred errynge”

(Rolle 5), a remark which emphasizes, first, that the dread of error is greatest where the

translation must deviate from Latin forms of speech and, second, that orthodox explanation on

the basis of the Latin text, rather than the underlying meaning of the text, is what Rolle is

primarily concerned with conveying, even if he insists on following “the letter” where he can.

Nevertheless, an emphasis on conceptual explanation does not totally displace lexical

explanation. It is to this end that, as already noted, both PE and all sections of EBV feature not

only translational doublets but short explanatory glosses, many of which serve simply to clarify

the definitions of particular words. Meanwhile, in many cases a concern to clarify the lexical

meaning of the Psalter obligates Rolle to include a second translation not of an individual word

but of a clause, sentence, or verse as a whole. Though this is not doubling as we have

encountered it up to this point, it is clearly a related phenomenon and warrants discussion here,

not least because such whole-sentence doubling is present in a few places in both PE and EBV. It

shall be my chief argument here that the use of alternative translations in all of these texts,

especially but not only doubling of whole sentences, serves to draw attention to the translation’s

putative inferiority to the Latin “original” by suggesting that the ME text cannot convey the

meaning of Scripture as fully as can the Latin source-text.

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(2) Doubled Translations of Whole Sentences in RRP, EBV, and PE

Though doubled translations of single words are absent from RRP (except insofar as a few

manuscripts document textual variants in the form of “or” doublets), whole-verse doublets are

extremely common in this text. Lawton goes so far as to say that Rolle “essentially...translate[s]

each psalm twice,” first ultra-literally and then more freely in his commentary (Lawton [2008]

222). It is certainly true that the initial translation is often followed immediately by a paraphrase

which forms the beginning of Rolle’s commentary on the verse he has just translated, but this

paraphrase is usually more than just a restatement of the translation in more direct terms. Instead,

Rolle typically begins his moral or spiritual exegesis at this point by explicating particular

elements as figuratively standing in for something else. For instance, at Psalm 1:3, we find an

initial translation, “And he sall be as a tre that is sett bysid the stremes of watirs, the whilk sall

gif his froyte in his tyme,” followed by the comment “As wha say, he sall noght anly be goed in

him selfe bot he sall be as a tre that is profitabile til many and noyand til nane, that has ay

wetynge of the watirs of grace and haly lare.” In this instance, a few phrases are repeated with

slight variation that clarifies their reference (“he sall be as a tre,” “wetynge of the watirs”), but

on the whole the main change is the replacement of particular elements with others that impose

an allegorical reading on the text (“the whilk sall gif his froyte in his tyme” is abstracted to “that

is profitabile til many and noyand til nane,” and “stremes of watirs” is allegorized as “wetynge of

the watirs of grace and haly lare”).

Sometimes, however, Rolle’s paraphrase of a verse or part of a verse really is a restatement of

the initial translation in slightly different terms or with different syntax. The choice to introduce

such merely lexical or idiomatic variants before (or, as we shall see, alongside) the usual

allegorical or tropological commentary is generally marked by the phrase “as wha saye” or “that

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is [at say],” though these phrases are also commonly used to introduce “spiritual” interpretations.

Nevertheless, there are clear instances in which Rolle has felt compelled to clarify the lexical

meaning in addition to introducing his allegorizing comments. For instance, at Psalm 4:8 (4:9),

the commentary on the verse (translated “in pees in it self I sall slepe and I sall rest”) begins,

“That is at say, in pees of thoght, that is in it self,” giving a more idiomatic expansion of in se

before introducing the allegorical reading. Rolle then suggests the further alternative translation,

“that is with all softnes, pryve fra all the noys of the warld.” Likewise, in the following verse, the

initial translation (“ffor thou, Lord, syngulerly in hope has sett me”) is followed by an alternative

rendering of the last phrase: “that is at say, in a hope thurgh the whilke I hope a thynge that is

verraily goed thou has festid my hert.”

At the same time, though some portions of RRP’s commentary are recognizable as lexical

paraphrases, Rolle has a tendency to mix such rephrasing with allegorical and tropological

explanations. Thus, for instance, at Psalm 5:6 (5:7), we find the comment (allegorical comments

in italics), “That is at say, men slaers with tonge or hand or hert, and fals men, leghers, God sall

desherit and make tham partles of heven, bot I, says halykyrke and ilk trew man, in thi mykil

mercy, noght in my meritis” immediately following the translation “man of blodes and swikel

wlath sall Lord, bot I in mykilnes of thi mercy.” Here the need for a second, revised translation is

obvious, as the initial translation is essentially unintelligible. Moreover, the process for

producing the second translation is straightforward. In the first place, a Hebraism retained in the

Gallican Psalter and carried over into Rolle’s initial translation (uirum sanguinum, “man of

blodes”) is rephrased in line with English idiom (“men slaers”), 8 and a substantivized adjective

that Rolle had initially felt compelled to translate as an adjective (dolosum, “swikel”) is

8
Cf. PsGlI on the same lemma: “þæne wer þe is blodgita / geotende / wer bloda” (see Chapter II, section 1b).

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rephrased, according to normal ME usage, first as an adjective-noun phrase meaning the same

thing (“fals men”) and then as a noun (“leghers”). Next, the following phrase is reordered from

V-S order (abominatur Dominus, “wlath sall Lord”) to the S-V order typical of English (“God

sall desherit”), with the verb also changed to a more common one that emphasizes a specific part

of the lemma’s semantic range. The limitations of Rolle’s willingness to rephrase Scripture

according to ME grammar are underscored by his failure to place the direct object after the verb

(the second translation overall follows O-S-V order), but at least the reordering of subject and

verb succeeds in clarifying that the “Lord”/“God” is not the verb’s object. Finally, as in his

rewording of uir sanguinum, Rolle simplifies the verse’s final phrase from an abstract noun

derived from an adjective (“mykilnes”) modified by an adjectival prepositional phrase (“of thi

mercy”), to a noun (“merci”) modified by the adjectival form of the other noun (“mykil”). This is

perhaps not demanded by ME idiom, but it is more natural in it than is the original translation.

The basic patterns on display in these examples can be found in a number of other instances.

Table 3.2.1 gathers many of these, though for convenience it is limited to instances in which the

second translation is introduced by the phrase “that is at say.”

Table 3.2.1. Alternative Translations in RRP: “That Is at Say”

6:3 (6:4): et anima mea turbata est ualde sed tu Domine usquequo = And my saule is
druvyd mykil, bot thou Lord how lange. That is at say, mi saule is mykil turned til
penance; forthi how lange dylayes thou to gif grace and to hele me
7:16 (7:17): conuertetur dolor eius in caput eius et in uerticem ipsius iniquitas eius
descendet = The sorow of him sall be turnyd in his heved, and in the skalp of him his
wickidnes sall lyght. That is at say, the sorow that he consayved sall be turnyd in his
thoght and his wickidnes in his skalp
8:1 (8:2): quoniam eleuata est magnificentia tua super celos = ffor liftid is thi worship
aboven hevens. That is at say, thou ert mare worthi to be loved and worshipid than any
aungel or haly saule may thynke
9:15 (9:16): in laqueo isto quem absconderunt comprehensus est pes eorum = In this
snare the whilk thai hid taken is the fote of thaim. That is at say, in thaire desayvabil
counsaile thaire luf is taken

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 9:17 (9:18): conuertantur peccatores in infernum omnes gentes que obliuiscuntur Deum
= Tornyd be synful in till hell, all the genge that forgetis God. That is at say, synful men
that dwellis in thaire synn sall be turnyd in till hell
10:13 (9:34): propter quid irritauit impius Deum? dixit enim in corde suo, Non requiret =
ffor what thynge the wickid excitid God? For he sayd in his hert, He sall noght seke. That
is at say, what profet has he to doe swa many illes for the whilk he excitid God to doe
him pyne
15:5 (14:5): qui facit hec non mouebitur in eternum = he that does there he sall noght be
stirid withouten end. That is at say, he that lifis in haly kirke here on this manere he sall
com til perfit stabilnes
16:4 (15:4): multiplicate sunt infirmitates eorum; postea accelerauerunt = Many faldid
ere thaire seknesis and sithen thai hastid. That is at say, thai knew that thai ware fulseke
in body and saule and sythen thai hastid thaim till the leche
16:10 (15:10): quoniam non derelinques animam meam in inferno nec dabis sanctum
tuum uidere corupcionem = ffor thou sall noght leve my saule in hell ne thou sall gif thi
haligh to see corupcioun. That is at say, the saule that I haf as verray man sall noght be
left in hell and my body that thou halighid sall noght rote
18:31 (17:32): quoniam quis deus preter Dominum aut quis deus preter Dominum
nostrum? = ffor whi wha is god bot the Lord or wha is god bot Oure Lord? That is at say,
na god is bot the Lord of heven and erth, that is Oure Lord
18:35 (17:36): et disciplina tua correxit me in finem et disciplina tua ipsa me docebit =
And thi disciplyne amendid me in end and thi disciplyne that sall lere me. That is at say,
thi chastiynge suffirs me noght to erre fra the end
19:10 (18:11): dedsiderabilia super aurum et lapidem preciosum multum et dulciora
super mel et fauum = Desiderabile aboven gold and preciouse stane and swetter abouen
huny and huny kambe. That is at say, the domes of god ere desiderabile aboven all riches
25:17 (24:17): tribulaciones cordis mei multiplicate sunt; de necessitatibus meis erue me
= The tribulaciouns of my hert ere many faldid; of my nedynges delyvere thou me. That
is at say, swa many ere the wrechidneses of this warld that the anguys of thaim is comen
till my hert and for thi delyver me Lord of my nedynges
38:4 (37:5): quoniam iniquitates mee supergresse sunt caput meum et sicut onus graue
grauate sunt super me = ffor my wickidnessis overgane ere my heved; as hevy birthyn
hevyd thai ere on me. That is at say, for wickidnes liftid my proude thoght agayns God
In almost all of these, there is a heavy admixture of the allegorical commentary that takes up

most of the ensuing commentary on each verse, so that it is often easy to miss the presence of

merely lexical or syntactical alternatives to the initial translation. Nevertheless, it is also possible

to isolate those elements of the paraphrase introduced by “that is at say.” There are, moreover,

just a few basic patterns. In some cases (e.g., 6:3 and 19:10), the Gallican Psalter text does not

include a verb, and so no verb is used in the initial literal translation. Because, however, ME

does not normally omit the copula or other main verb as Latin can do, the paraphrase repeats the

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subject or the rest of the predicate without alteration (“thou” at 6:3, “desiderable” at 19:10) and

inserts a verb implied from context (“dylayes” at 6:3, “ere” at 19:10). In a similar vein, 9:18

furnishes an example of a substantivized adjective rendered unidiomatically as an adjective

(“synful”), then translated less literally but more idiomatically as an adjective-noun phrase

(“synful men”). In other cases, words are supplied on the basis of less direct implications. For

instance, the first possessive pronoun (eius/“of him”) at 7:16 is expanded in the second

translation to “that he consayved” in order to clarify what the possessive element denotes in

relation to “sorow.”

In some cases, word-order is also a major consideration. For instance, at 9:15, “taken is the

fote of thaim” (the Latin order) is rearranged to “thaire luf is taken,” with the subject interpreted

figuratively but the rest altered only syntactically to fit the natural ME order for a present passive

construction: modifier, subject, copula, participle. Placement of the verb in initial position is

common Rolle’s translation because it is common in the Gallican Psalter, and there are several

other cases in which the paraphrase proceeds to rearrange this to S-V order (e.g., “tornyd be

synful” changed to “synful men...sall be turnyd” at 9:17) or move other elements of the predicate

to after the subject (e.g., “desiderabile aboven gold” changed to “the domes of god ere

desiderabile” at 19:10). The various cases of reordering found in Table 3.2.1 and other comments

introduced by “that is” or “as wha say” proceed along various lines in the details, but the

underlying pattern is the same: the initial translation reproduces the syntax of the source-text,

with only some minor concessions to ME word-order where this deemed absolutely essential,

while the commentary begins with a reformulation that places the major elements of that initial

translation in their natural English order.

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 In some items on Table 3.2.1, however, it will be noted that some major elements do change

from the initial translation to the paraphrase. Often this is a function of Rolle’s allegorizations, as

in the case of “fote” glossed as “luf” at 9:17 mentioned in the previous paragraph. In other cases,

however, it seems to be a matter of purely lexical clarification or amplification similar to what

we have seen with synonymous doublets in OE texts. At 18:35, for instance, we find

“disciplyne” in the initial translation, but “chastiynge” at the corresponding point in the

paraphrase—two synonyms, one of which is an Anglicization of the word (disciplina) which

both translate, just as in a number of synonymous doublets discussed below (section 3). In a

slightly different vein, when, at 10:13, “ffor what thynge” from the initial translation is recast as

“what profet has he” (both translating propter quid), the initial translation is a mechanical

reproduction of the preposition’s basic equivalent, while the “paraphrase” is a context-sensitive

rendering of one of the secondary meanings of the same preposition. Further examples of

varying sorts could here be given, but again purely lexical alternatives are freely mixed in with

allegorical explications, and the two are not always easy to distinguish (e.g., the replacement of

“does there” by “lifis in haly kirke here” at 14:7 obviously has some allegorizing elements, but

“lifis...here” could also be construed as simply a lexical variation on its lemma).

In a few places, EBV also practices whole-sentence doubling (Table 3.2.2), though, unlike

RRP, it never introduces exegetical commentary into the resulting doublets.

Table 3.2.2. Doubled Translations of Whole Sentences/Verses in EBV

Ac. 10:45: quia et in nationes gratia Spiritus Sancti effusa est = for in nacyons þo grace
was ȝotted oute of þo Holygoste; þat es for þat oþer nacyons hade þo grace of þo
Holygoste
Ac. 11:3: quare introisti ad uiros praeputium habentes = why ȝodeste þow unto men þat
hade þer circumsicynge; þat es whi ȝodeste þow wiþ hem þat haden þer prepucy ande
wore noghte circumsiced
Mt. 2:6: tu Bethleem terra Iuda nequaquam minima es in principibus Iuda = þou Betleem
in þe lond of þe Iewrye þou art not leest in princes of þe Iewry; þat is to say þou citye
Betlem þou art not holde to be lest among alle þe cytees of þe Iewry but most of dignite

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A single instance of this in PE occurs at Romans 1:17, where iustus autem ex fide uiuit is

translated as “forsoþe þe riȝtwise man lifes of þe feyth; or elles þus: riȝtwise he is of þe feith,

eche man þat riȝtwis is.”

Since there are so few instances of this form of doubling in these texts, it will be possible to

examine each of them. To begin with, the doubled rendering of Acts 10:45 shows that even

translations that the translator feels to “correct” can display some flexibility in word-order,

though every word of the ME text (except its definite articles) still corresponds to a particular

element in the source-text: “for [= quia] in [= in] nacyons [= nationes] þo grace [= gratia] was [=

est] ȝotted [= -fusa] oute [= e-] of [= genitive case-ending of spiritūs sancti] þo Holy [= sancti]

goste [= spiritus].” The second translation (“for þat oþer nacyons hade þo grace of þo

Holygoste”) retains all the major elements (“nacyons,” “grace of þo Holygoste”), but construes

the main verb as a periphrastic statement of possession and expresses this more directly with the

verb “had.” The addition of “oþer,” meanwhile, seems to suggest a reading of nationes in a

restricted sense as referring to gentiles, the additional adjective thus making explicit something

latent in its lemma.

This latter type of consideration seems to be the main issue at work in the doubled translation

of Matthew 2:6. In the first translation, there is again a bit of syntactic rearrangement but every

word can be traced back to the Latin text: “þou [= tu] Betleem [= Bethleem] in [= ablative case-

ending of terrā] þe lond [= terra] of þe Iewrye [= Iuda (1)] þou [= second-person singular

inflectional ending of es] art [= es] not [= nequaquam] leest [= minima] in [= in] princes [=

principibus] of [= genitive case-ending of Iudā (2)] þe Iewry [= Iuda (2)].” In the second

translation (“þou ciyte Betlem þou art not holde to be lest among alle þe cytees of þe Iewry but

most of dignite”), “art not” is expanded into “art not holde to be” evidently on the grounds that

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es/“art” is understood as denoting a perception rather than an absolute state, while “but most of

dignite” is added to clarify that “not...lest” is a litotes denoting the opposite of “least.” At the

same time, “princes” is replaced by “cytees” as the former is understood to be a metonymy for

the latter.

The doubled translation of Acts 11:3 arises at least partly from the translator’s confusing of

the word praeputium with its opposite, “circumsicynge.” The second translation both corrects the

verse’s final phrase to “þat haden þer prepucy” and adds a paraphrase (“ande wore noghte

circumsiced”) that explains the phrase’s significance more clearly. The second translation thus

shows that the translator understood the sense of the verse as a whole, but could not express this

by what he believed to be a literal word-for-word translation, so he gave such a translation first

and then followed it with a translation that more clearly conveyed the right overall sense.

The whole-verse doublet in PE, meanwhile, seems not to present an ultra-literalism (or error)

and correction, but to provide two possible readings of a supposedly ambiguous lemma. The first

translation seems reasonably natural in ME and renders the Latin more literally and precisely

(“forsoþe [= autem] þe riȝtwise man [= iustus] lifes [= uiuit] of [= ex] þe feyth [= fide]”). The

second translation (“riȝtwise he is of þe feith, eche man þat riȝtwis is”) seems to interpret uiuit in

the idiomatic sense of est and read iustus non-substantively. Between these two changes, the

statement is turned into a definition of iustus as one who “is” ex fide. The somewhat confused

phrasing of the added words “eche man þat riȝtwis is” seem like an attempt to clarify this, the

second translation overall meaning something like “Whoever is righteous is of the faith.” It is

admittedly difficult to tell, thanks to the PE’s characteristic clumsiness, but the overarching point

that uiuit is here construed to mean “is” and iustus translated as a non-substantive appears to

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stand either way. The fact that this is a bizarre reading of the verse is beside the point, except

inasmuch as it reinforces our perception of the translator’s ineptitude.

At any rate, different as all these varying forms of multiple-translation in RRP, EBV, and PE

are from one another, they have a few things in common. First, all feature one component in

which verbal correspondences to the Latin are more precise than in the other. Second, in all of

them one component is in some way more awkward or difficult to construe (as ME prose) than is

the other. Third, in all of them there is some difference in meaning between the two translations

but this difference is only extreme or fundamental in those cases in RRP in which Rolle replaces

key words on the basis of his moral or allegorical interpretations. For all three of the doubled

translations in EBV, it would seem that the translator prefers the second translation as more

directly or more explicitly conveying the sense of the lemma, while in the PE the second

translation is so strange and so far removed from the Latin that the translator must have believed

it to convey something about its lemma more fully than does the first translation. With RRP, we

might say that both of these considerations hold, and that Rolle includes his initial translation in

order to lay out what the (Latin) scriptural text says but is mainly interested in conveying the

underlying message that he explicates in his commentary. What all this suggests is that all three

translators felt themselves in some sense constrained by the words of the source-text. Even if

they proceed to give a translation that is not thus constrained, they do so only after giving an

initial translation that adheres closely to the ipsissima verba. Thus once more one of the major

functions of these translators’ doublets is to emphasize the subordination of the translation to the

Latin “original.” In other words, the inclusion of a more “literal” but less idiomatic translation

serves to make clear that the second translation does not exactly reflect the words of the source-

text and that the translator’s paraphrase does not have the full authority of Scripture.

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 The use of alternative translations in this fashion thus emphasizes the divide between Latin

grammar and ME grammar in ways that neither an ultra-literal translation on its own nor an

idiomatic translation on its own would do. In the former case, the unintelligibility of ME with

Latin word-order is doubtless quickly apparent to the reader, but does not invite explicit

acknowledgment from the translator. In the latter case, a reader not familiar with the source-text

would be unaware of the Latin word-order in the first place and so could not observe any kind of

discrepancy. Again this dramatizes precisely the conflict between “foreignization” and

“domestication” latent in all translation. We passed over some of these issues in Chapter II

because doublets in the OE biblical translations tend to work more obviously as complementary

rather than conflicting alternatives. In the ME texts under consideration here, however, a clear

distinction is made between the “true” translation (reflecting the Latin word-order and

vocabulary) and the more idiomatic translation (generally treated as a gloss or paraphrase), with

a clear hierarchical ordering. If, as suggested in Chapter I, doubling arises from the need to

“serve two masters,” it is clear which master PE, RRP, and to a lesser extent EBV prioritize.

Here indeed we see the basis for Schwarz’s view that medieval translators considered ultra-literal

translation a “safeguard against any alteration of the original thought” (Schwarz 51). At the same

time, cases like those discussed in this section point to an awareness of the limitations of such an

approach, manifesting as concessions to the forms of ME speech. Still, when such concessions

are made they are distinguished as secondary, not self-sufficient translations.

(3) “And,” “Or,” and Asyndetic Doublets in PE and EBV

PE and EBV both also, as has already been mentioned, feature translational doublets for

single words, and indeed use doublets in ways quite similar both to each other and to the OE

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texts discussed in Chapter II. There are of course differences, particularly in the extent to which

doublets are employed, with EBV making minimal use of both doubling except in Acts and the

excerpt from Matthew. Nevertheless, where PE and EBV do use doublets, they tend to follow

similar patterns of usage, and the categories developed in Chapters I-II continue to hold good,

with all three types of doublet (synonymous, polysemous, figurative) represented in both texts.

The most convenient procedure will be to consider PE and EBV together and examine each of

our three basic types of doublet in turn.

Let us begin with synonymous doublets (Tables 3.3.1-2).

Table 3.3.1. Synonymous Doublets in PE

Rm. 3:9: causati sumus = we hafe schewid trewe cause and resoun
1 Cor. 14:13: interpretetur = þat he interprete or expowne
2 Cor. 2:9: experimentum = experyment or prefe
2 Cor. 9:2: emulacio = emulacyoun or love
2 Cor. 10:1: humilis = hombyl or meke
1 Tim. 5:13: uerbose = verbously or ful of woordys
Heb. 1:3: figura = figure or prente

Table 3.3.2. Synonymous Doublets in EBV

Eph. 6:20: ligatione 9 = ligacyon byndynge
Ac. 2:26: insuper = over þat or þeropon
Ac. 16:3: gentilis = a gentile or a paynyme
Ac. 17:26: terminos = termes or endes
Ac. 18:17: nihil eorum Gallioni curae erat = Gallyo roghte noghte þeroffe or toke no
kepe þeroffe
Ac. 20:35: infirmos = þo infirme or þo febul
Ac. 21:21: discessionem = discencyone or diverste
Ac. 27:8: portus = porte or haven
Mt. 1:18: generatio = þe generacyoun or kynrede
Mt. 2:6: dux = a dewke a ledere
Mt. 3:1: in deserto = in þe wyldernes or in þe desert
Mt. 3:15: dimisit eum = he lyte hym or suffred hym
Probably the most notable feature of these is the full emergence of a pattern identified in

Chapter II as a rare occurrence in OE translations: the pairing of an Anglicized form of the

9
SV legatione.

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lemma with a Germanic synonym. This occurs in its simplest form in doublets like “termes or

endes,” “porte or haven,” and “in þe wyldernes or in þe desert,” where one component (in EBV

not always the first) is clearly chosen for its etymological relation to its lemma, while the other is

the basic native word for the same thing. The doublet “verbously or ful of woordys” differs from

these in that the translator opts in the second component to provide something closer to a

definition than a simple equivalent.

There are also a few cases, in both texts, in which the doublet’s Latinate component, while

basically synonymous with the other component, possesses an ambiguity which the latter

clarifies. This can be seen in doublets like “experyment or prefe,” “figure or prente,” and “a

dewke a ledere.” 10 In these cases, while the Latinate component is an accurate translation, it is

potentially misleading. Thus, though “proof,” “image,” 11 and “leader” are listed by the MED as

definitions for “experiment,” “figure,” and “duk,” respectively, none of these is a primary

definition. The second component in each of these is therefore, if not a corrective, at least useful

as a clarifying alternative, and in fact the question comes to be the usefulness or necessity of the

Latinate component. The answer to that would appear to be simply the translators’ desire to stick

as closely as possible to the Latin text, down (where possible) to its lexical morphemes. The

doublet, in cases like these, allows the translators to split the difference between a potentially

misleading ultra-literalism and abandonment of close fidelity to the Vulgate text.

In “verbously or ful of woordys,” meanwhile, the Latinate component is not misleading but

obscure. Not only is the adjective “verbose” attested only from the sixteenth century (OED), but

10
As the first two of these illustrate, moreover, sometimes a Latinate translation that Anglicizes its lemma can be
paired with a second word also of Latin origin but unrelated to the lemma and more common in fourteenth-century
English. (For a fuller discussion, see Chapter IV, section 1a.)

Though not identical to “print,” this is one of the primary meanings of ME “prente” (MED) and clearly what is
11

meant by “prente” at PE Heb. 1:3: “he has ben...figure or prente of þe substance of [God].”

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PE 1 Timothy 5:13 furnishes the MED’s only quotation for the adverb form, so that it seems to

be an ad-hoc coinage on the PE translator’s part. While it would probably not be difficult for a

reader to piece out the word’s meaning, given that all of its elements were familiar in late ME, it

would nevertheless have been a strange expression, and a definition would have been, if not

absolutely necessary, at least helpful.

Some of EBV’s synonymous doublets are harder to explain, and probably represent a degree

of caprice. For instance, “desert” is attested from the thirteenth century (MED), and while “port”

in the sense of “harbor” is found only in the later fourteenth century (ibid.) 12 the quotations in the

MED and OED show it being used without comment or need of explanation in texts earlier than

or roughly contemporary with EBV, including the Agenbite of Inwit and Gower’s Confessio

Amantis, so that it seems unlikely that either word would require clarification. EBV also features

some doublets in which both components not only mean the same thing but derive from the same

wordstock or do not belong to plainly different registers: e.g., “over þat or þeropon,” “roghte

noghte þeroffe or toke no kepe þeroffe,” and “lyte hym or suffred hym.” 13 It is possible with all

three of these examples that there are slight differences of intended meaning (especially in “over

þat or þeropon”) or degree of formality (especially in “roghte noghte þeroffe or toke no kepe

þeroffe”), but if so none of these is stark or obvious. At any rate, it is evident that in neither PE

nor EBV does the use of synonymous doublets fit any absolutely consistent patterns. Indeed,

unlike in Ps(P) it is not possible even to identify thematic emphases in the selection of lemmata

12
As noted in the OED, “porte” is attested in some OE documents, including the OE Bede, but the word seems to
have fallen out of use after the eleventh century and then been independently re-borrowed in the fourteenth.
13
The last of these is, to be sure, a Germanic-Latinate pairing, but “suffred” is not related to its lemma dimisit and
“suffer” in the sense of “allow” had been perfectly common since early in the fourteenth century (MED 7a).

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to be doubled, and I do not see any clear rhetorical or euphonic motivations for any of either

text’s doublets.

Both PE and EBV also feature a number of polysemous doublets (Tables 3.3.3-4).

Table 3.3.3. Polysemous Doublets in PE

Rm. 1:5: graciam et apostolatum = grace and ofice of apostil or power of þe office of
apostyl
Rm. 6:5: ad uerecundiam uestram = to ȝoure schame...or to ȝoure reverence
Rm. 8:18: condigne = sufficient or worþi
1 Cor. 7:35: facultatem = wille or lyghtschype
1 Cor. 15:32: pugnaui = I hafe foughten or desputyd
1 Cor. 16:3: graciam = grace or gyfte
Col. 2:22: ipso usu = in þat use or ryte

Table 3.3.4. Polysemous Doublets in EBV

Ac. 15:9: discreuit = he departed or made difference
Ac. 15:22: ecclesia = þo church or congregacyone
Ac. 16:35: lictores = baylys or bedels
Ac. 16:38: lictores = þo bedels or þo baylyes
Ac. 17:9: accepto satis = hade made satisfaccyon or excusinge
Ac. 17:22: in medio Ariopagi = in myddes of þat towne or strete
Ac. 18:3: scenofactoriae artis = of þo crafte of makynge of tabernacles or of cordes and
ropes
Ac. 18:4: 14 interponens = he menged ande sette
Ac. 19:40: rationem = skille or wyte
At least a few of the items on these tables seem to be doubled because their lemmata are

technical terms for which it is difficult or impossible to find a precise ME equivalent. This is

certainly the case for lictor, which refers to a specific office peculiar to the classical Roman

political system. In that respect, the use of two translations is a mark of imprecision, since in the

case of a title for a public office the two cannot be easily taken as complementary, but indicates

that the officials in question were something like bailiffs and something like beadles yet not

exactly the same as either.

14
Verse not in SV, but documented in the apparatus.

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 In other cases, there is simple ambiguity. This is true certainly for “þo crafte of makynge of

tabernacles or of cordes and ropes,” where the term used for Paul’s occupation (in the original

Greek as well as in the Latin) is open to multiple interpretations. It is less strictly true for “þat

towne or strete” for Ariopagus in EBV Acts 17, but comparison with a gloss on “Ariopagus” a

few verses earlier (Table 3.4.2) shows that the doublet in v. 22 draws on what the translator has

just presented as two possible definitions. Meanwhile, ratio, facultas, and [con]dignus are quite

versatile terms, and it is perfectly natural that they should give any translator some difficulty,

particularly one as inept as the PE translator. In a related but separate vein, EBV’s doubled

translations of discreuere and interponere are probably best understood as separating into two

parts the action denoted by a single verb, in a manner paralleled in some of Ps(P)’s doublets.

More interesting are “grace or gyfte” in PE and “church or congregacyone” in EBV. In each

of these, the first component has a religious meaning that is absent from or more subdued in the

second. Gratia is a central theme in the theology of the Pauline Epistles, but it also has secular

meanings related to gifts or favors that ME “grace” normally does not (the same is true of Greek

χάρις, which gratia translates [LSJ]). At 1 Corinthians 16:3 (cum autem praesens fuero, quos

probaueritis per epistolas, hos mittam perferre gratiam uestram in Ierusalem), the gratia in

question is that of the letter’s recipients, rather than of God, and “gyfte” is probably a better

rendering of the lemma’s non-theological senses. Likewise, ecclesia (a Greek loanword) in

medieval Latin typically corresponds to the narrowly-Christian English word “church,” but also

sometimes still draws on its original generic sense of “gathering.” At Acts 15:22, the choice to

record both the specifically Christian and the generic sense is curious, as ecclesia refers to the

Jerusalem Church under the governance of the Apostles, but perhaps the EBV translator fears

that “church” on its own might mistakenly be seen as referring (anachronistically) to the

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medieval ecclesiastical hierarchy when it means simply a single assembly of Christians. In any

case, the doublet shows that its lemma can have a narrow “ecclesiastical” meaning but can also

refer more broadly to any gathering of people.

With regard to figurative doublets, there is some difference between EBV and PE, as the

latter’s explanatory translations tend to rely less than the former’s on straightforward explication

of rhetorical tropes. We shall thus consider EBV’s figurative doublets first (Table 3.3.5).

Table 3.3.5. Figurative Doublets in EBV

Gal. 5:8: persuasio = persuacyoun or evidence
Ac. 13:36: dormiuit = he slepped or dyed
Ac. 15:23: salutem = gretes wele or ȝernes hele [also Ac. 23:26]
Ac. 21:36: tolle eum = undo hym or slee hym
Ac. 22:22: tolle = undo hym and delyver hym
Ac. 26:26: in angulo = in hiddels or in hernes
Ac. 27:33: accipientes = have ȝhe eten or taken 15
Ac. 28:20: circumdatus = umgyven or bounden
Mt. 2:13: ad perdendum eum = to lose or to sle hym
The non-literal uses here are all quite straightforward compared to many in Ps(P). Three are

euphemisms for death, de-euphemized in the doublet’s second component. A few others involve

treating the lemma as metonymic or metaphorical. This is perhaps most obvious in “in hiddels or

in hernes,” where only the second component represents a literal denotation of angulus

[“corner”], while the first generalizes the expression as a metaphor for secrecy. Likewise, the

doubled translation of accipientes adapts the verb to its object, “no mete,” 16 by interpreting the

action of “taking” food as a metonymy for eating it (a common figure of speech). Metonymy

also seems to be the operative principle in “persuacyoun or evidence,” where the second

component denotes the material used to persuade rather than the act of persuasion.

15
Note the resolution of the participle into a finite verb.
16
The word “mete” is also supplied from context, the object of accipientes in the Vulgate being simply nihil.

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 Though the others are slightly more complicated, the reasoning behind them is not difficult to

understand. In “undo hym and delyver hym,” a denotative translation (in the first component) is

supplemented by an elaboration of the sequence of action, a kind of metonymy. The doublet also

perhaps serves to clarify that “undo” is not (as in 21:36) being used in the sense of killing.

Circumdatus, meanwhile, is an affixed form, for which the first component of the doublet

provides a calque (circum- = “um-”, datus = “gyven”), while the second summarizes the force of

the expression. Essentially, the lemma is treated as a periphrasis for what the second component

expresses directly. 17 The case of EBV’s twice-used doublet “gretes wele or ȝernes hele” is more

interesting, as its first component is a reasonably adequate rendering of salutem at the beginning

of a letter. The second component, however, gives the underlying meaning of salus (“hele,” MnE

“health”), with a verb supplied to fill out the sense of the expression. In that respect, the second

component is an ultra-literalism, and the doublet overall a somewhat awkward attempt to render

both the meaning and the etymological derivation of a Latin idiom not precisely paralleled in

ME.

A few of these operations are paralleled in the figurative doublets of PE, the chief examples

of which are gathered in Table 3.3.6.

Table 3.3.6. Figurative Doublets in PE

Rm. 5:13: non imputabatur = was not put to or trowyd
1 Cor. 15:34: ad reuerenciam uobis loquor = to ȝour schame I speke or to ȝoure profyte
2 Cor. 1:20: est = it is or ȝee
2 Cor. 5:19: posuit = he has sett or gyfen
2 Cor. 9:5: benedictionem = blessynge or almesse
2 Cor. 9:7: ex tristicia = of sorwfulnesse or of constreynyng
Gal. 3:15: dico = I seye or profe
Eph. 5:4: ad rem = thyng or profite
1 Tim. 5:17: presunt = gon byfore or ordeyne
Heb. 3:16: exacerbauerunt = were maade harde and unbeleevande
Heb. 5:11: grandis...sermo = a gret woord or deep or suytyle

17
We shall return to this pattern, common in the Earlier Version of the Wycliffite Bible and even applied at one
point to circumdare, in Chapter IV, section 2b.

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 Heb. 13:10: edere non habent potestatem = þei han no power to etyn of or leve to etyn
Though some of these operate along simple lines of figurative explication (e.g., a term for

physical size understood as metaphorically denoting complexity; “hardness [of heart]”

recognized as a common metaphor for disbelief throughout the Bible 18), the contextual

adaptations represented by these doublets often depart significantly from the lemma’s normal

semantic range. This is particularly true for “profe” for dico and “profite” for res, where “seye”

and “thyng” can hardly be said to be used figuratively. Instead, the translator practically forces

the context, rather than the actual sense of the words he is translating, onto his text. In the case of

“seye or profe,” for instance, he seems to insert the second component into the expression “I

seye...þise thynges aftyr þe man” because the “thynges” in question are part of Paul’s deductive

argument. At any rate, I can find no better explanation. The doubled translation of ad rem at

Ephesians 5:4 is somewhat easier to explain: in the full phrase “harlotrye þe which pertenys to no

thyng,” the last three words are clearly an expression of futility (rather than, say, of non-

existence, which “nothing” more commonly denotes) and “no...profite” expresses this more

directly. Similarly, “ordeyne” at 1 Timothy 5:17 seems to derive more from the subject of the

verse, presbyteri/“prestis,” and a knowledge of the functions of a priest, than from the verb

presunt/“gon byfore” (note that “gon byfore” is based on a misreading of presunt as preeunt).

Both texts also feature a few doublets that do not fit neatly into any of our usual categories.

The thorough subordination of the English translation to the Latin text in both texts (especially

PE) results in what we might call (on the model of Kotake’s term “grammatical double-glosses”)

“grammatical doublets:” doublets in which both components use the same main lexical

18
Even this, however, underscores the overall defectiveness of PE as a translation, since exacerbare does not
actually mean “make hard,” but “sharpen” (cf. its MnE derivative “exacerbate”).

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morphemes but combine these with different grammatical morphemes, function-words, and

sometimes secondary content-words. These doublets are listed in Tables 3.3.7-8.

Table 3.3.7. Grammatical Doublets in PE

Rm. 1:7: uocatis sanctis = callid holy or in holynesse
Rm. 10:19: uos adducam = I schal lede ȝou or suffre ȝou to be led
1 Cor. 16:1: in sanctos = in seyntys or for þe use of seyntys
Gal. 3:15: secundum hominem = aftyr þe man or aftyr mannys custome
Table 3.3.8. Grammatical Doublets in EBV
Mt. 1:23: nobiscum Deus = God is wiþ us or God schal be wiþ us
Ac. 27:21: audito me = forto here me or forto have harde me
A similar grammatical rearrangement occurs at EBV Matthew 3:3 with the phrase “make ȝe ryȝt

stretis or elles streyȝte þe weyes” for rectas facite semitas.

Essentially, the issue in all these is that the translator is either not sure of the actual meaning

of a grammatical form or idiom or not confident that a direct translation conveys its meaning.

The simplest of these doublets is probably “callid holy or in holynesse,” where it appears that the

translator is uncertain whether sanctis is a masculine dative modified by uocatis or a neuter

ablative of description modifying a substantivized uocatis. That the latter interpretation is bizarre

and unnatural is neither here nor there, as it seems to be the only way to make sense of “in

holynesse.” “I schal lede ȝou or suffre ȝou to be led” is somewhat more curious, as there is no

question that only the first component renders the Vulgate’s basic construction. It would seem

rather that something about the context has led the translator to suppose that the active verb in

fact stands in for an expression of passive allowance. The remaining two doublets in Table 3.3.7

show a literal translation of a preposition set alongside an elaboration of that preposition’s

idiomatic sense. Clearly the purpose of this is to show simultaneously that the biblical text in

these places does use a simple prepositional phrase and that these have more idiomatic meanings.

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 Meanwhile, in PE, there are a few instances in which we find a doublet with no lemma—that

is to say, in which the translator gives two possibilities for a word supplied in the translation to

complete its sense (Table 3.3.9).

Table 3.3.9. Doublets in PE: Phrases Supplied to Complete Sense

1 Cor. 4:6: alio = an oþer doctour or techere
1 Cor. 7:28: huiusmodi = suyche maner men or wymen
2 Cor. 6:4: necessitatibus = nedys of lyflode or cloþyng
Gal. 3:19: quid ergo lex = þerfore what þe lawe or wherefore of God is þe lawe gyfen
Heb. 4:13: sermo = a woord to ȝeelde resoun of oure werkys and thoȝtis and intencyouns
Heb. 7:28: infirmitates = þe syknes of synnyng and of deyȝyng
There is fairly little to say about these. In each case, the translator has supposed that an

additional word or phrase is needed to convey the lemma’s full meaning, but either is unsure

which word is most appropriate for this or sees fit to divide the completing phrase into two

parallel components. (In one instance, actually, he begins with an unembellished rendering of the

source-phrase and gives his expansion only as an alternative translation.)

(4) Glosses and Alternative Translations Introduced by “That Is” in PE and EBV

I suggested in Chapter I that translational doublets stand apart from explanatory

interpolations and glosses in that they build attempts to address difficulties of translation directly

into the main text of the translation rather than its apparatus and so at least purport to be

grounded in the words of the source-text. In that respect, doublets in PE and EBV represent at

least a partial attempt to make the English text self-sufficient. Nevertheless, in both texts

doublets appear alongside a much larger number of other kinds of explanatory commentary that

is more clearly marked as commentary. The textual glosses in both PE and EBV are thus worth

considering alongside their translational doublets not only because they provide insight into the

general interpretive orientation of these translations but because they reiterate and expand on

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some of the specific interpretive functions performed by doublets but do so in a way that

emphasizes their status as secondary to the main text.

In the first place, many of the glosses in both EBV and PE furnish various sorts of lexical

explanation. Some glosses, for instance, define terms that are likely to be unfamiliar, obscure, or

easily misunderstood by the reader (Tables 3.4.1-2).

Table 3.4.1. Glosses in PE: Definitions of Difficult Terms

Rm. 1:29: susurrus þat is sowende among frendys discord
Rm. 6:19: in to sanctificacyoun þat is in to consummacyoun of goode
1 Cor. 1:16: Stephan þat is þe name of þat wydow
1 Cor. 3:22: Cephas þat is to sey Petyr
1 Cor. 4:15: pedagogies in Crist þat is maysterys
1 Cor. 14:26: þe apocalipse þat is to sey revelacyoun
1 Cor. 15:51: a mysterye þat is sumwhat þat is to manye privee
2 Cor. 6:5: sedycyons þat is styryngys
2 Cor. 12:20: susurracyouns þat is sowyngys of dyscordys
1 Cor. 12:28: opytulacyouns þat is to sey þem þe whylke brynge rychesses to þe more
governynges
2 Tim. 1:14: kepe þou þe goode depose þat is þe office to þee betan
1 Tim. 3:6: a neophite þat is to sey buystous or newe turned
2 Tim. 3:3: crymynatours þat is puttande crimys to oþere
Heb. 9:5: þe propicyatorye þat is þe table þat is on þe whicche

Table 3.4.2. Glosses in EBV: Definitions of Difficult Terms

Ac. 4:1: Saduceys þat wore relygyouse men
Ac. 5:17: Saduceys þat wore religiowse
Ac. 7:41: offurde offeringes to þo symulacre þat es unto þo mawmete
Ac. 13:7: þo proconsul Sergyo Paulo...a proconsul es he þat ledes a towne or guvernes bi
cownseyl
Ac. 17:19: ledde hym to þo Ariopage þat es to a strete of Athenys where þo philosofers
studied
Ac. 21:31: þo tribune of þo companye...tribune was he called þat hade a þowsande
knyghtes at his ledinge
Ac. 21:38: foure þowsande of men sicaryens sicariens wore men þat maden fauchons or
lytle swerdes
Ac. 23:35: þo mote halle of Herowde þo place þere Heroude deemed
Ac. 24:1: an orator þat es a motar or advoket
Mt. 2:23: Nazarene þat is to seye holy
Mt. 4:25: of Decapoly þat is to seye of þat cuntrey þat hadde ten cytees

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 The array of expressions glossed in this way is quite varied, though for both texts there are

some noticeable trends. For EBV, there are two main themes: Roman government and ancient

religion. The former is seen in glosses on terms like “proconsul,” “tribune,” and “mote halle,”

and also relates to the glosses on terms of historical interest like “Ariopage” and “Decapoly.”

The translator’s interest in religion-related expressions also centers on concrete historical

elements, as in the glosses on “Saduceys,” “symulacre,” and “Nazarene.” In PE, on the other

hand, the emphasis is primarily on more abstract theological and ethical categories (“susurrus,”

“sanctificacyoun,” “mysterye,” “crymynatours”), although some more historically-bound terms

receive definitional glossing (“neophite,” “propicyatorye”). The glosses on names at 1

Corinthians 1:16 (a female name that might be mistaken for that of the male martyr Stephen) and

3:22 (the less-familiar Aramaic form of the name Peter) also point to some interest in concrete

historical circumstance, though this is more subdued than in EBV. With both texts, at any rate,

the definitions given in the glosses are so generic as to make identification of sources for the

glosses not only impossible but needless, since they do not point to any particular interpretive

schema other than a general interest in different aspects of the text’s immediate meaning. In the

case of EBV, the lack of any immediate source is further suggested by the striking frequency

with which the gloss is erroneous, or at least misleading, as with “proconsul” (the etymological

link with “counsel” exists but is not pertinent in the official title pro consule), “Ariopage” (a hill,

not a street or a town), “Sadducee” (the Sadducees were not a formal religious order in the

medieval sense), and “Nazarene” (in context meaning an inhabitant of Nazareth, not someone

under a Nazarite vow).

Both texts also apply this kind of glossing to less difficult words, which become essentially

synonymous doublets with “that is” instead of a conjunction (Tables 3.4.3-4).

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 Table 3.4.3. Glosses in PE: Synonymous Alternatives
Rm. 3:31: we stablyn þe lawe þat is we conferme þe lawe
Rm. 4:2: not byfor God þat is not of God
Rm. 6:13: nor gyfe ȝee þat is makys not able ȝoure membris to synne
Rm. 6:20: ȝee were free of riȝtwisnesse þat is þe lordschype of riȝtwysnesse ȝou faylede
Rm. 9:3: I myself coveytyde to ben cursyd þat is to sey to be departyd
Rm. 10:19: I schal sende ȝou in to wrathe þat is to sey I schal suffre ȝou to be wrathed
Rm. 14:9: in þat þat is for þat
Rm. 14:14: comyne þat is unclene
Rm. 14:15: for þe mete now þat is of þat it is opyn
1 Cor. 1:17: not in wysdam of woord þat is in þe curyosyte and fayrhed of woordys
1 Cor. 1:18: þe woord of þe cros þat is þe prechyng of þe crosse
1 Cor. 2:15: he is of no man demyd þat is reprovyd or reprehendyd
1 Cor. 3:15: he schal suffre apeyryng þat is of þe lesse glorye or ellys he schal suffre
sumwhat of peyne
1 Cor. 4:6: for ȝou þat is for ȝoure profit
1 Cor. 6:2: if þe world schal ben demyd in ȝou þat is by ȝou
1 Cor. 6:4: þoo þat ben contemptible in þe kyrke þat is undyscrete
1 Cor. 7:36: over þat age þat is over puberte
1 Cor. 8:4: noght is an ydole in þe world þat is among þe creaturys of þe world
1 Cor. 8:10: syttande in þe ydole þat is in presence of þe ydole
1 Cor. 11:23: I hafe tan of oure lord þat is I have leryd of oure lord
1 Cor. 11:28: profe a man hymselfe þat is examyne or purge himself
1 Cor. 12:2: when ȝee were folc þat is lyfande heþenly
1 Cor. 14:9: spekyng in þe ayre þat is with a veyn strook of þe ayre
1 Cor. 14:27: interprete þat is to seye expowne
1 Cor. 15:56: þe vertue forsoþe of synne þat is þe ekyng of synne
2 Cor. 3:14: þeyre wittes ben dulle þat is þeyre resoun is dulle and may not perse
2 Cor. 5:16: we knowyn þat is we preysen
2 Cor. 5:21: God þe fadyr has maad hym þat knew no synne synne þat is to be holdyn a
synnar
Gal. 4:20: I am schent in ȝou þat is byfore oþere I am schamyd for ȝou
Gal. 5:14: alle þe lawe is fulfyld in one woord þat is in one comaundement of charyte
Gal. 6:15: newe creature þat is newe lif þurgh þe feiþ
Eph. 2:2: þe childre of dyffydence þat is of þem mystrestande or of wanhope
Eph. 2:15: þe lawe of comaundementis þat is þe lawe of fleschly observauncys
Eph. 3:9: hid fro þe worldis þat is fro alle þe creaturys of þe world
Eph. 6:12: in hevyns þat is in þis lowere eyre
Phil. 3:2: see ȝee þe howndys þat is knowe ȝee þem to be howndys
Phil. 3:2: see ȝee þe concysyoun þat is knowe ȝee þe separacion
Phil. 4:10: ȝee were ocupyed forsoþe þat is ȝee were lettyd
1 Thess. 1:7: forme þat is exsaumple
1 Tim. 3:2: chaste þat is to seye schameful
1 Tim. 6:18: to be made ryche in goode werkis lightly to gyfe þeyrs and comune þat is to
trowe þeire thyngus comune
Phile. 14: þat þi goode were not of nede þat is ageyn þy wille

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 Heb. 10:9: þe suande þat is þe newe sacrifice
Table 3.4.4. Glosses in EBV: Synonymous Alternatives
Ac. 4:28: discryved þat es ordeynde
Ac. 4:32: o herte ande o soule þat es o wille
Ac. 5:36: alle þat to hym trowed wore disparpulde þat es wore spred obrode ande
destroyed
Ac. 17:22: as supersticyouse men þat es as men of vayne religion or elles gifen to myche
unto vayne þinges
Mt. 2:22: in to þe partys þat is to þe cuntrey
Mt. 5:24: to be reconsyled to þi broþer þat is be at on wiþ þi broþer
The basic patterns identified in section 3 recur here. Thus, for instance, we see Latinate-

Germanic pairings (e.g., “comyne” glossed with “unclene,” “were ocupyed” with “were lettyd,”

“chaste” with “schameful,” “be reconsyled” with “be at on”), as well as Latinate expressions

glossed with more common Latin-derived expressions (e.g., “profe” with “examyne or purge,”

“interprete” with “expowne,” “concysyoun” with “separacion”). Sometimes, again, the

difference between the lemma and the gloss is not merely one of wordstock or register, but of

specificity, with the gloss essentially synonymous with its lemma but limiting its semantic range.

This seems to be more common in “that is” glosses than in “or” doublets for both texts,

especially PE (e.g., “we conferme þe lawe” for “we stablyn þe lawe,” “þe ekyng of synne” for

“þe vertue...of synne,” “þis lowere eyre” for “hevyns,” “ageyn þy wille” for “not of nede,”

“ordeynde” for “discryved,” “cuntrey” for “partys”). In some cases, the initial translation is

potentially misleading. For instance, “vertue” (like Latin uirtus) can have the sense of “moral

virtue,” which is obviously wrong in a phrase referring to sin, while “ekyng” (whose basic sense

is “increasing” [MED]) reflects only the “effectiveness” aspects of the lemma’s possible

meanings. Similarly, “hevyns” (like Latin caelum) can refer both to a spiritual heaven and to the

physical sky, while the gloss “lowere eyre” can only refer to the latter.

These last two examples can be seen as correctives to ultra-literal translations, and a more

extreme form of this (common in PE but not EBV) is seen in glosses such as “not of God” for

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“not byfor God,” “for ȝoure profit” for “for ȝou,” “by ȝou” for “in ȝou,” “in presence of þe

ydole” for “in þe ydole,” “I schal suffre ȝou to be wrathed” for “I schal sende ȝou in to wrathe,”

and “knowe ȝee þem to be howndys” for “see ȝee þe howndys.” The difference between

translation and gloss is often strikingly trivial, with several of these hinging on the meanings of

common prepositions. In all such cases, the initial translation gives the typical base-translation of

the Latin preposition (“byfor” for apud, “for” for propter, “in” for in”), while the gloss supplies a

secondary meaning that is more suited to its contextual use. In all cases cited in this paragraph,

the variant translation of the preposition is perfectly reasonable and its relegation to a gloss

seems to reflect the translator’s habit of ignoring context in his translation (see section 1) and his

extreme deference to the ipsissima verba of the Vulgate.

If we may think of such glosses as correcting lexical ultra-literalisms, one common thread in

EBV’s glosses is the correction of grammatical and idiomatic ultra-literalisms (Table 3.4.5).

Table 3.4.5. Glosses in EBV: Correction of Ultra-Literalisms

Ac. 1:17: was noumburde in us þat es was of oure company
Ac. 2:31: neþer his flesche sawe corrupcione þat es was never filed
Ac. 2:46: and iche day þei contynued lastande in þo temple togader ande abowte howses
þat es unto þo puple þat þer kome of diverse places
Ac. 3:2: a man þat was crokud fro his moder wombe þat es was borne crokud
Ac. 3:22: ȝhe schal here hym as meselven þat es as ȝhe done me
Ac. 10:14: never ȝitte I ete alle komune and unclene as who sey none suche bestes
For some of these, it may be surprising that the translator should have felt the gloss to be

necessary to explain the phrase in question, most conspicuously with the periphrastic

constructions “fro his moder wombe” and arguably also in “neþer his flesche sawe corrupcione.”

For others, the idiom is not naturally transferable into English, though the general sense should

be understandable even without the gloss, as in “was noumburde in us” and “never ȝitte I ete alle

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komune and unclene.” 19 For still others the initial translation is opaque or outright unintelligible,

with the gloss conveying the actual sense far more clearly once the translator is freed from the

constraints of the words of the text: e.g., in “contynued lastande in þo temple togader ande

abowte howses.” In the case of “ȝhe schal here hym as meselven,” meanwhile, the gloss is

necessary only because English reflexive pronouns lack clear case markers, whereas Latin me is

unambiguous. We might note in this connection that fourteenth-century opponents of vernacular

translated commonly cited the lack of a complete case system in languages like English as

grounds for considering vernaculars inferior to Latin (see Chapter V); a gloss which draws

particular attention to this issue is not difficult to see as a partial concession to that argument.

PE, meanwhile, is notable for the extent to which it makes use of figurative and allegorical

glosses. This, of course, is closely related with functions we have identified in connection with

figurative doublets in this and other texts, but in PE there seems to be a fairly clear distinction

between “or” doublets and “that is” glosses on this front, in that the latter tend to be much more

intrusive, and sometimes downright fanciful. As illustrated by the examples in Table 3.4.6,

however, there is a good deal of variation in the outlandishness of these figurative explications.

(EBV also features a few glosses on figurative uses, collected in Table 3.4.7.)

Table 3.4.6. Glosses in PE: Figurative and Allegorical Explanations

Rm. 3:5: evyl þe which bryngys in wrathe þat is to sey dampnacyoun
Rm. 3:20: justified alle flesch by for hym þat is every man fleschly lifande
Rm. 4:1: aftyr þe flesch þat is of þe werkys of þe lawe
Rm. 4:19: nor he beheld his body to be dead þat is fro þe werk of geting of childre
Rm. 5:9: we schulde be saaf fro þe wrath þat is everlastyng peyne
Rm. 5:13: þe synne was in þe world þat is to sey in man
Rm. 6:19: to þe unclennesse of þe flesch þat is to leccherye
Rm. 7:18: in my flesch þat is to sey in þe feeble man
Rm. 10:12: riche in to alle þat is to sey sufficient to alle

19
This latter is an unidiomatic ultra-literalism even in Latin: the construction used at this point in the original Greek,
πᾶς [“all”] with a negative adverb, is an acceptable way to express “not any” (LSJ), but the same is not true for Latin
omnis. Instead, the equivalent of negated πᾶς is ullus, and the Vulgate’s numquam manducaui omne commune et
immundum would be more natural if emended to numquam manducaui ullum commune et immundum.

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 Rm. 12:21: þou schalt hepe þe colys of fyre þat is to seye þe hete of charite up on his hed
Rm. 13:1: ilke soule þat is every man
Rm. 13:13: not in couchys þat is sloth
1 Cor. 1:29: þat not eche flesch þat is þat no man riȝtful or unriȝtful
1 Cor. 9:4: power of etyng and drynkyng ȝoure thyngys þat is of lyfyng of ȝoure goodys
1 Cor. 9:9: þou schalt not bynde to þe mouth of þe oxe plowande þat is þou schalt not
forbede þe prechour to lyfe of þe ewangelye
1 Cor. 11:10: and þat for aungelys þat is for þe reverence of preestis
1 Cor. 14:11: schal be to me a barbyr þat is he me nor I hym schal not undyrstande
1 Cor. 14:14: with oute fruyte þat is without undyrstandyng of þoo þynges
1 Cor. 14:21: in oþere languages and in oþere lippys þat is in dyverse maner of tongys
1 Cor. 15:32: to þe beestys of Ephesy þat is a geyn þe beestely lifande
1 Cor. 16:9: þer is a gret dore opyn to me and an evydent þat is þer ben many mennys
hertys redy to heryn
2 Cor. 1:11: þe personys of manye faces þat is of dyverse virtues and dyverse agys
1 Cor. 1:26: not manye wyse after þe flesch þat is aftyr þe worldly wysdam nor manye
myghty þat is with lordschype nor manye noble þat is through schynyng of kynne
2 Cor. 2:12: a gret dore were open to me þat is mennys hertys were redy to resceyfe þe
ewangelye
2 Cor. 5:12: in þe face þat is in þe syghte of men
Gal 3:19: tyl þe seed shulde hafe comen þat is Crist
Gal. 3:19: ordeynyd þurgh þe aungelys þat is Moises and oþere mynystres of God
Gal. 4:5: þat we schulde resceyve þe adopcion of þe chyldre þat is þat we schulden be
parteners of Goddys glorye
Eph. 3:9: hid fro þe worldis þat is fro alle þe creaturys of þe world
Tit. 1:12: evyl bestis of þe wombe þat is to seye glotounys and þerfore slow
Heb. 11:12: of oon and þat as dead þat is of oon wombe of Sare and of oon fadyr
Abraham as dead as to þe deede of conceyvynge
Heb. 11:21: he [Ioseph] worschipide þe somet of his ȝerde þat is Crist by whom in Egipt
he hadde þe lordschipe and þe ȝerde of dyscyplyne
Heb. 12:1: so grett a cloud of witness insett to us þat is so grett a multitude of seyntus þat
fleen as cloudys and scheeldyn fro þe swellynge of tribulacyoun and reynyn to us þurgh
loris of þe feith of goode werkys
Heb. 13:10: þat serve to þe tabernacle þat is to þe lustys of þe body
Table 3.4.7. Glosses in EBV: Figurative and Allegorical Explanations
Ac. 2:35: þe while þat I putte þine enmyse schamel of þi fete þat es til þat I putte hem
under þi fete
Ac. 2:46: brake þe brede þat es Goddes worde
Ac. 6:2: serve unto þo bordes þat es at þo mete
Mt. 3:9: wiþinne ȝoure self þat is in ȝoure hertys
Mt. 5:38: eyȝe for eyȝe and a toþ for a toþ þat is to seye a man schulde be punysched in
þe same membre in þe whuche he disseyfede his neyȝebores
The degree of “intrusiveness” found in these glosses (i.e., the extent to which they draw on

external interpretations rather than the immediate meaning of the text) is highly variable. In some

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cases, the gloss introduces a conventional interpretation of a common rhetorical trope: e.g.,

“every man” for “ilke soule” (synecdoche), “leccherye” for “unclennesse of þe flesch” (a

metaphor not infrequent in the New Testament), “mete” for “bordes” (metonymy), and “in þe

syghte of men” for “in þe face” (cf. the MnE idiom “to his face,” though in this case the phrase is

a Hebraism in Paul’s Greek carried over into the Vulgate’s Latin and thence into PE’s English).

In others, at least in PE, the interpretive operation is more complex, but it is still concerned with

the immediate meaning or reference of the text: e.g., “þe werkys of þe lawe” and “þe feeble

man” for “þe flesch” (based on a conventional understanding of Paul’s use of the term “flesh”),

“he me nor I hym schal not undyrstande” for “schal be to me a barbyr” (see Chapter IV, section

2b), and “Crist” for “þe seed” (drawing on the broader Christological message of this passage to

interpret a single word within it). In such cases, the gloss’s interpretation becomes more

disputable than with the first sort, but can still be said to have its grounding in the text. Other

glosses, however, narrow the sense of the text in line with particular, often highly controvertible

interpretations. For instance, the meaning of the phrase translated “and þat for aungelys” at 1

Corinthians 11:10 is infamously obscure, and PE’s gloss puts forward just one of many possible

understandings. Likewise, the gloss interpreting “aungelys” at Galatians 3:19 as a reference to

“Moises and oþere mynystres of God” is strained at best, considering that nothing in the verse

suggests that the “angels” in question are human agents.

What all these categories of glossing have in common is a) an emphasis on either the literal,

historical sense of the text or concrete application of its categories to medieval practice or ritual,

and b) a tendency to reinforce the subordination of the English translation to the Latin source-

text. The first of these is a deliberately broad grouping, to the point that it can be regarded as a

single category only in the loosest sense, but it emphasizes that the interests displayed in the

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glosses of both PE and EBV are generally not matters of abstract theology. A large proportion of

the glosses in both texts concern merely lexical issues or even problems of syntactic clarity. At

the same time, the attempt to “take on a paternal role” in guiding the reader that was identified in

the OE translations discussed in Chapter II is on display in these ME texts as well. The tendency

of the glosses to reinforce the supposed inferiority of the English translation to the Latin

“original” has been commented on above, and need not be reiterated in detail here. It will suffice

to remark that the glosses reinforce a clear hierarchy of meaning that prioritizes specific

interpretations of the Latin text and impose these on the translations themselves.

All this is in strong contrast with the doublets in the same texts. In the doublets, only lexical

and low-level semantic concerns come into play. Even “that is” glosses that merely present

alternative translations of a single word often, as should be evident from Tables 3.4.1-2, present

alternative translations more obviously divergent from the first translation than do “and” and

“or” doublets in the same texts. Compare, for instance, “a dewke a ledere” or “experyment or

prefe” with “discryved þat es ordeynde” or “we stablyn þe lawe þat is we conferme þe lawe.” In

all cases, the second translation reiterates one of the first translation’s possible meanings, but in

the “dewke” and “experyment” examples the second component gives one of the more common

of those possible meanings, while in the “discryved” and “stablyn” glosses the alternative

translation draws on a more obscure or contextual meaning of the first translation. This is merely

a tendency rather than a clean distinction, but it does help illustrate the more general fact that

“and,” “or,” and asyndetic doublets stick more consistently than “that is” glosses to basic lexical

and semantic considerations. In other words, the translators of PE and EBV were in general

inclined to guide the reader’s interpretation of the text along highly specific lines based on

meanings drawn from sources outside the text itself, and this is seen with their glosses,

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sometimes even those that simply provide alternative renderings of single words. With their

doublets, by contrast, the literal and historical senses of the text, construed simply on the basis of

the immediate reference of the words of the text, are the only guiding principles.

Conclusion

Beryl Smalley famously considered an emphasis on the literal sense one of the hallmarks of

thirteenth-century and post-thirteenth-century biblical exegesis, growing out of tendencies which

were apparent already in the twelfth-century Victorines (see Smalley [1983] 369-373) and

associated with the rise of Aristotelianism (292-296; Minnis 17-18). By Copeland’s account, “in

the fourteenth century, the literal sense was not only a hermeneutical tool, but was also an

acutely determined political category of long historical lineage” (Copeland [2001a] 139).

Certainly, as Deeana Klepper emphasizes, the literal commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra, about

whom we will have more to say in Chapters IV-V, were inordinately popular by the middle of

this century (Klepper 117-118). There is a definite extent to which this is manifest even in the

non-Wycliffite English translations of Scripture produced during this period. It is at the very

least suggestive that, as Kraebel shows, Rolle’s Latin writings on the Psalms were regarded in

the fourteenth century as a useful source for literal exegesis (Kraebel [2012] 140, 142) and that

RRP was revised and circulated by Lollards (Hudson [2012] 1.passim) and in one case used as

the basis of glosses in a copy of the Wycliffite Bible (see Kuczynski [2016] 218-223). In the end,

concern for the literal meaning of biblical texts is implied by the extreme ultra-literalism of RRP,

PE, and the worst parts of EBV. Admittedly, there are respects in which close textual literalism

actually undercuts any emphasis on the literal sense, as it potentially reduces the translation to a

gloss on the “real” text that is in itself often in need of glossing to be rendered intelligible.

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 Nevertheless, when contrasted with such contemporary biblical adaptations as the mystery

cycles and the so-called Metrical Life of Christ which are often counted by modern scholars as

“vernacular Scripture,” even these translations give far more direct access to what the books they

translate actually say. In the case of the prose translations, though the text is never free of

explanatory framing and commentary, the latter is nevertheless separable from the former.

Indeed, it is for just this reason that, as Kevin Gustafson puts it in the case of RRP, “uncertainties

about lay reception ultimately frustrated attempts to guarantee the orthodoxy of the English

Psalter by grounding its meaning in Rolle’s authorial intention” (Gustafson 296). This is

especially true for RRP because it exists in versions (available in a modern edition by Hudson)

which feature Lollard interpolations in the commentary, but the potential for heterodox

repurposing arises wherever text and interpretation are distinguished. Moreover, much of the

interpretive material included with the text is, in the case of PE and EBV, concerned merely with

elucidating the immediate, literal reference of the biblical words. This is certainly true of their

doublets. Whatever else some of the glosses may suggest about “spiritual” interpretation, when

an alternative translation is introduced by “and” or “or” it is generally a purely lexical

alternative. Even if the doublet introduces figurative extensions, these tend to be demanded by

context, and indeed sometimes forced by the meanings of the surrounding words as the lemma’s

ordinary literal denotation does not make sense without modification in a given instance.

Nevertheless, the presence of the glosses and other framing material should not be forgotten.

Barth’s description of how post-Tridentine Catholicism tended to emphasize “how difficult it is

to interpret the Bible, how great is the danger of an arbitrary subjectivism in its readings and how

pressing the resultant need for a secondary authority to regulate the understanding of Scripture”

(Barth [1956] 552) may be something of a caricature, but would perhaps not be far off as a

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description of the mindset of Rolle, the PE translator, and at least some of the EBV translators.

Lawton is clearly right to say that even for the later Middle Ages, “There is little or no sense that

the Bible, even if seen as single or whole, should necessarily stand alone and self-sufficient. It is

a period without fundamentalists in the modern sense” (Lawton [1999] 457). Kraebel finds that

“a perceived need (or perhaps anxiety) to justify the use of the vernacular seems to lie behind the

common habit of extending the compiler’s deferral to his authoritative sources to include the

translator’s avowal of close adherence to his Latin antecedents” in the ME Gospel commentaries

he examines (Kraebel [2014] 105), and something similar is probably the ultimate explanation

for many of the textual oddities in the three translations examined in this chapter as well. To

varying degrees, the prologues, glosses, and commentaries with the three translations examined

in this chapter emphasize at least implicitly the difficulty of biblical exegesis as they understand

it and the narrowness of “acceptable” interpretation in at least some cases, while also

emphasizing the dependence (or rather subordination) of the ME text on the Latin text from

which it derives. Norton remarks that, in RRP, “Rolle was treating a limited part of the Bible in a

limited way...Rather than presenting an English Psalter to the people, he was presenting them

with the Latin Psalter as understood by the Church” (Norton 6), and more or less the same may

be said of the translators of PE and EBV.

Thus it is all the more striking that the doublets of PE and EBV tend to fit within guidelines

that, as will be shown in the next two chapters, apply also to the Wycliffite Bible, a translation

notable for its literalness and eschewal of narrow interpretive framing. Though motivated by

decidedly non-literalist concerns about the meaning of Scripture, both translators nevertheless

pay careful (if sometimes defective) attention to the literal sense of the text and work to ensure

that the reader can follow this as well as the “spiritual” senses. It is perhaps trivial to note that all

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these translators had to confront the issue of the literal meanings of the words on the page, but it

is less so to observe that, while they made a point of putting “spiritual” interpretations generally

into “separable” elements of the translation such as glosses, they often did not handle alternative

translations in the same way. On the whole, in short, doublets remain so closely connected with

the literal sense of Scripture even in these texts that they do not operate fully like explanatory

glosses. They seem, in other words, to fill an ambiguous position between literal translation and

explanatory gloss that underscores the capaciousness of the concept of “literal”—a conclusion

that it will be vital to keep in mind as we approach the almost ostentatiously “literal” translations

contained in the Wycliffite Bible.

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 CHAPTER IV: DOUBLING IN THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE—EARLIER VERSION

In terms of total number, the doublets of the Wycliffite Bible (WB) are more abundant

than those in any other text examined in this study. This is in large part because the two related

ME translations of the Bible known by this title are substantially longer than those other texts,

comprising the entire Catholic biblical canon (both protocanon and Old Testament Apocrypha),

none of it abridged. Still, the frequency of translational doubling is also comparatively high,

albeit with considerable variation from version to version and from book to book. It should be

emphasized indeed that the differences between versions (both with respect to doublets and in

general) are substantial enough that, while the two translations collectively known as WB are

closely related, one being a revision of the other, modern scholars are right to treat them as two

distinct texts. This matters for our purposes because, although both versions contain translational

doublets, many of them the same in both versions, one of my main goals in these final two

chapters (especially Chapter V) will be to explore the differences between the Earlier Version

(EV) and the Later Version (LV) in their use of doubling. Still, there are also strong similarities

in the use of doubling between EV and LV, most obviously the use of “or” as the conjunction

between the two components of all doublets in both versions, and the use of doublets only for

single words or short phrases, rather than complete clauses or sentences.

WB, in both EV and LV, represents an apparently unprecedented effort to translate the

entirety of the Vulgate Scriptures into English with minimal built-in exegetical commentary. One

of the chief distinguishing features of WB is therefore its literalness. An emphasis on the literal

sense of the Scriptures had been one of the major features of the teachings of John Wyclif, to

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whom WB has traditionally been attributed. This emphasis was picked up and sometimes taken

further by Wyclif’s followers, known variously as Wycliffites or Lollards, one or more groups of

whom are now thought to be responsible for WB. This is not literalism in a narrow sola scriptura

sense (see, e.g., Hudson [1989] 708; Hudson and Kenny 626-627), but it does mean that the

Wycliffite translators strove to render the Vulgate text in a phrase-by-phrase and often even

word-by-word fashion into ME, to produce as much as possible a “naked text” of the Bible. The

translations, especially LV, show some acknowledgment that reading the bare words of the

biblical text is not always enough to understand it fully, but this leads to much more restrained

explanatory insertions than are found in most of the translations examined in earlier chapters. In

that respect, WB’s doubling—which is the primary form of explanatory insertion in these texts,

especially EV—is an extension of the translations’ main purpose, and it may be said in at least a

broad sense that these doublets are almost exclusively focused on literal interpretation. This does

not mean that both components of every doublet in WB are denotative translations of their

lemmata (see below, sections 2b-c), but it does mean that doubling is almost never used to lay a

literal rendering of the lemma side-by-side with a spiritual exposition of it.

Where the use of doublets in the two versions diverges is in the specifics of execution.

Both versions are similarly focused on the literal sense of the text, but often apply this focus to

different lemmata, and in a few cases show differences in what is counted as part of the literal

sense. We shall therefore consider the two translations separately, beginning with EV both

because it is earlier and because it makes more extensive use of doublets than does LV.

***

If the doublets in WB have received more attention than those in other ME biblical

translations, this is only because WB overall has received more attention. Most scholars of the

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Wycliffite translations have in fact paid no attention to their use of doubling. Almost all of those

who have discussed this feature have written of it as a type of glossing, often with little further

elaboration. Lindberg, for instance, as was noted in Chapter I, simply catalogues doublets along

with other glosses in his various editions of WB (see, e.g., Lindberg [1978] 36-37), and the

standard edition of both versions of WB by Forshall and Madden (hereafter FM) also seems

mainly to mean doublets when it refers to “glosses.” Dove points out that some have supposed

EV’s doublets to be placeholders, left until the translators could decide which alternative to use,

a supposition supported by the elimination of most of EV’s doublets in LV (see Dove [2007]

155). Henry Hargreaves, who elsewhere refers to doublets as one type of “textual gloss” among

others (Hargreaves [1961] 292), suggests the following account of WB’s doublets: “A difficult

word in the Latin was apparently first rendered by a literal translation, or was anglicized into

what must have been a quite unintelligible form. This was first [in EV] supplemented by, later

sometimes used as a supplement to, and finally completely displaced by, a more idiomatic

translation [in LV]” (Hargreaves [1969] 405; cf. Fristedt 1.104).

One way or another, to treat the doublets of WB as a type of glossing is at least partly

correct. MnE translations often give alternative translations as footnotes (see Chapter II, n. 17),

so such a treatment would certainly fit with a pattern found in many of WB’s successors.

Whether doublets are meant to be integral to the text of WB itself is, however, a complicated

question, which cannot be definitively answered with a yes or a no. On the one hand, there are

definite signs that those who copied and circulated the text tended to regard each doublet’s

second component as a gloss. For one thing, the second component is commonly underlined in

the manuscripts, as are textual glosses introduced by “that is.” For another, there is more

variation from manuscript to manuscript in the inclusion or omission of doublets than there is in

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the words of the translation generally. Some EV manuscripts omit nearly all doubling, and at

least one does so completely (see FM 1.li; Fristedt 1.33). Moreover, several manuscripts add new

doublets that must be the product of later copyists and glossators (FM’s apparatus is full of

examples).

The variability of doublets from manuscript to manuscript of EV is noted by both

Hargreaves and Lindberg and seems to be one of their reasons for considering doublets

extraneous to the text. Even this, however, is not as suggestive as it might be. For the most part,

doublets vary only in their presence or absence in a given place in a given manuscript; though

there are exceptions, their content when they do appear is usually no less consistent from

manuscript to manuscript than is the rest of the text. In other words, if a given manuscript

features a given doublet in a given place, this doublet is almost always the same as in all other

manuscripts that contain a doublet in the same place. Lindberg’s edition of EV, based on the two

manuscripts generally thought to be earliest, demonstrates this strikingly. His base-text for the

New Testament (MS. Christ Church 145) is largely free of doublets, but he collated this text with

the other surviving EV manuscripts, and he documents their doublets in the critical apparatus; in

virtually all cases, he marks doublets with either “cet[eri]” (present in all other EV manuscripts)

or “plur[es]” (present in many or most other EV manuscripts). The doublets were thus added at a

later stage in the translation process than that preserved in Christ Church 145 (cf. Smith [2010]

160-161), but they seem to have been put there by the translators responsible for EV as found in

most of the manuscripts. In any case, the consistency among most EV manuscripts all but

conclusively demonstrates that most doublets in EV were not supplied by independent

glossators.

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 There are also equally clear indications that doublets are not to be regarded as glosses.

First, some manuscripts occasionally reverse the components of certain doublets, which would

make little sense if the second component were understood as a gloss. Second, while

underscoring sometimes marks glossing in ME manuscripts (e.g., in PE), in WB manuscripts it is

often used, like italics in KJV, to mark words not directly corresponding to particular words in

the source-text even if they are integral to the sense of the translation. For instance,

“man”/“men” is sometimes underlined when it is used in an adjective-noun phrase translating a

substantivized adjective, as at EV 2 Corinthians 2:6, where qui eiusmodi est appears as “þat is

such maner man.” 1 We also sometimes see an underscore when WB supplies a noun where the

Vulgate uses a relative pronoun: e.g., at EV Romans 4:18, where qui is translated “þe whiche

Abraham.” (Forshall and Madden apparently italicize all material underlined in its base-

manuscripts, though, as Fristedt notes, they nowhere explain their use of italics [Fristedt 1.33].)

Additionally, as Dove points out, the underlining of doublets in manuscripts of WB is

merely “sporadic” (Dove [2007] 158). Solopova explains the situation thus: “the manuscripts

suggest that the custom of underlining added material originated with EV translators responsible

for the text after Baruch 3:20, 2 was adopted by LV translators who used it throughout the biblical

text, but partially abandoned during the commercial production of WB in the first and second

quarters of the 15th century” (Solopova [2017] 211). Thus, in many LV manuscripts, no attempt

at all is made to mark doublets or other added material. Additionally, though the manuscripts of

both EV and LV that do make use of underlining to mark doublets and other glosses show a clear

attempt to do so for all added material, the attempt falls short in almost all copies. That, of

1
All quotations from WB are taken from FM, with “þ” restored for “th” where appropriate.
2
See below for the significance of Bar. 3:20 as a turning-point in EV.

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course, is only to be expected, but it could be taken as evidence that the copyists did not always

find underlining in their exemplars and inserted it at their own discretion.

Moreover, some manuscripts contain material that is underlined wrongly—i.e., is

underlined even though it directly corresponds to a phrase in the source-text. University of

Pennsylvania MS. Codex 201, a typical, unremarkable copy of the New Testament in EV, is

illustrative. It contains four instances of mistaken underlining (Table 4.0.1).

Table 4.0.1. Phrases Mistakenly Underlined in UPenn MS. Codex 201

1 Cor. 14:23 (pg. 236): idiotae aut infideles = idiotis...or men out of feiþ
2 Cor. 10:12 (pg. 262): inserere aut comparare nos = put vs among or comparisoune vs
Ac. 7:42 (pg. 347): uictimas aut hostias = slayn sacrifices or oostis
Ac. 23:29 (pg. 380): morte aut uinculis = deeþ or boondis

It is immediately apparent that all of the wrongly-underlined phrases begin with “or” and so

resemble translational doublets. Certainly, whoever decided which phrases to underline in this

manuscript (and others that contain similar lapses 3) cannot have been one of the translators, who

would have known that these four “or”-phrases correspond to aut-phrases in the Vulgate. In

other words, at least some of the underlining of doublets in EV manuscripts must be the editorial

work of scribes rather than part of the urtext of the translation.

Indications about whether doublets are to be regarded as glosses are therefore mixed. In

assessing their status either as glosses or as integral to the main text, it may also be useful to

consider what is known of the actual reading practices of WB’s audience. Information on this

front is limited, but sources such as John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments have provided hints on

which modern scholars such as Hudson and Margaret Aston have been able plausibly to

elaborate. Aston, for instance, notes that both Foxe and extant records of fifteenth-century heresy

trials point to the existence of “underground reading parties” at which groups of Lollards read

3
FM copies an analogous error from its base-text at EV Dt. 13:3, where “ether of dremere” (aut sominatoris) is
printed in italics.

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out WB and other texts to one another (Aston [1977] 353). It seems that fifteenth-century

Lollards were in the habit of holding “readings (chiefly Biblical) of a more or less ritual nature,

which called for expert readers...who pronounced the word to gatherings of heretics met

specifically for this purpose” (359). Undoubtedly, much of the circulation of WB centered on

oral readings to groups, and here of course underscores would not have the same effect as to a

solitary reader. If an “expert reader” at a “reading party” possessed a manuscript in which

doublets were underlined, that reader might choose either to skip over the underlined material or

to read it out; in the latter case, the audience would perceive doublets as simply part of the text.

Thus, in practice doublets may become harder to separate as glosses than the manuscripts imply,

and the scribes must have been aware of this even when they did underline the second

components of doublets they copied. All in all, we may most fruitfully think of doublets as

integral to the text even while they resemble commentary in that they do often help interpret the

text. Certainly, at least, it will be helpful to see doublets as more than mere placeholders, and to

consider EV’s doublets in their own right, not merely how they changed in the course of

revision.

To understand doubling in EV specifically, then, it will be necessary to think about the

translators’ approach to their task more broadly. It has often been remarked that EV can be

almost unintelligible as an English composition thanks to a tendency toward what Fristedt calls

“bigot literalism” (Fristedt 1.104 and passim). The largest part of this unintelligibility springs

from a refusal to impose English syntactical patterns on the text, in favor of retaining the foreign

syntax of the Latin. F.F. Bruce invokes a common view when he says that the translation

procedure of EV “reflects one theory about Bible translation, according to which the sacred

quality of the text could be preserved in translation only by the most painstaking word-for-word

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procedure. But a translation of this kind would have been of little value for ordinary people”

(Bruce 15). Kenneth McFarlane similarly asserts that EV is made “painfully literal” by

Wycliffite approaches to Scripture (McFarlane 78). Recent work on WB has tended to qualify

this sort of assessment with an acknowledgment that, as Hudson puts it, “None of the EV

copies...is consistently a stencil rendering of the Latin; accommodation to the idiom, and

especially the word order, of English appears to be present from the start even if it is not

invariably maintained” (Hudson [2006] 137; cf. Dove [2007] 137). But a tendency toward almost

word-for-word rendering is unquestionably characteristic of EV. As is pointed out by LV’s

General Prologue, this literalism extends even to a lack of context-sensitivity in translating

connective particles such as autem and uero and participial constructions such as the ablative

absolute, resulting in such monstrosities as “Forsoþe þe evenynge maad whenne þe sone wente

doun” (Mark 1:32; Vulgate: uespere autem facto cum occidisset sol). Here, attention has been

paid only to the construction of the Latin, with no effort to find an idiomatic equivalent for the

ablative absolute or for autem.

At the level of the individual word, however, EV shows somewhat more flexibility in

translating, though Lindberg holds that “the words are chosen more or less in imitation of the

Latin original, the Vulgate” to a higher degree in EV than in LV (Lindberg [1985] 129). Even

apart from doublets, the EV translators did not always use the same English word for every

instance of a given Latin word. Some such differences may be the result of different translators

working on different sections, 4 and it is well established that a break in the translation process

and change in translators after Baruch 3:20 is reflected in shifts in how certain words are

4
In her discussion of the Alfredian translations, however, Bately rightly emphasizes that it is entirely possible for a
single translator to translate the same expression differently for any number of idiosyncratic reasons, so this criterion
should be approached with caution (Bately [2014] 123-124).

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translated (see Tanabe 392-393 for examples). 5 This shift, however, does not account for all such

variation, and EV’s handling of the verb soluere provides a neat illustration both of the division

into two main parts and of the variability within each of those parts. “Lowse” is the usual

translation before Baruch 3:20, 6 but we also find “[is] payed” (Genesis 47:26; 2 Kings 3:4),

“ȝeelde” (Leviticus 22:18 and 21; Isaiah 19:21), “be quyt” (Leviticus 22:23; Numbers 15:3),

“soylen”/“assoyle” (four times in Judges 14:12-19), “shal be feblid” (2 Samuel 17:10), and “shul

ben forȝove” (Ecclesiasticus 28:2). Meanwhile, though “unbind” becomes dominant after Baruch

3:20, 7 “breke” (Ezekiel 17:16, 17:18; John 5:18, 7:23; Acts 27:41), “payeþ” (Matthew 17:23),

“untye” Luke 13:15, 19:33), “shulen be dissolved” (2 Peter 3:10, 3:12), and “undo” (John 2:19,

10:36) also occur, as well as two doublets that will be discussed below (section 2c). While

translations of soluere present an atypically extreme case, the underlying principle applies to any

number of words. With some expressions, moreover, the translators seem to have been loath to

settle on a single interpretation and single translation. Doubling (which, incidentally, is in EV

found almost exclusively after Baruch 3:20) can thus help split the difference between narrow

fidelity and ready comprehensibility, for instance by allowing the inclusion of both an ultra-

literal denotative translation and a contextually-sensitive explanatory translation.

Hargreaves’s suggestion that doublets in EV are placeholders while the translators

grappled with “difficult words” is, in any case, a reasonable starting-point for examining EV’s

5
Tanabe’s work shows also that certain shifts in vocabulary within each of the two main sections of EV may point
to at least two further divisions, though these are less clear than the break at Bar. 3:20 (Tanabe 393-398; cf.
Lindberg [1985] 130-131).
6
Gn. 27:40, Ex. 3:5, Jos. 5:16, Rt. 4:7-8, Jdt. 6:10, Jb. 6:9, Jb. 6:17, Jb. 39:5, Ps. 102:21 (101:21), Ps. 105:20
(104:20), Ps. 146:6 (145:7), Ecclus. 3:17, Is. 5:27, Is. 52:2, and Jer. 40:4, with slight variant “loosne” at Is. 20:2.
7
Is. 58:6, Dan. 5:6, Hos. 5:13, Mt. 16:19, Mt. 18:18 (twice), Mt. 21:2, Mk. 11:2, Mk. 11:4, Mk. 11:5, Lk. 3:16, Lk.
13:16, Lk. 19:30, Lk. 19:31, Jn. 1:27, Jn. 11:44, Ac. 7:33, Ac. 13:25, Ac. 22:30, Eph. 2:14, Rev. 5:2, Rev. 5:5, Rev.
9:14, Rev. 20:3, and Rev. 20:7.

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use of doubling. By this account, flexibility and variation in the translation arise mainly from the

translators’ struggle to understand the meanings of some words in what is otherwise a fairly

mechanical operation of construing the source-text. It is, however, impossible to affirm

Hargreaves’s explanation with certainty, and entirely possible to reject it on multiple grounds.

For one thing, doublets do not always disappear in the course of revision, and in fact LV features

hundreds of doublets not found in EV. The most troublesome thing about Hargreaves’s account,

in short, is that it almost satisfactorily explains EV’s doubling, but not quite. There can be no

doubt that the LV revisors mostly sought to simplify EV’s doublets to singletons, yet they did

not do so unilaterally and seem to have regarded doubling as a valid translation technique. With

that in mind, it becomes harder to claim that EV’s doublets were always a stopgap, always meant

to be reduced to singletons.

Hargreaves is also less than satisfactory in accounting for what kinds of words received

doubled translations. As we saw above, he simply suggests that this is done for “difficult” words,

a category he does not explore in depth. Certainly in many instances a doublet suggests some

kind of uncertainty about the meaning of a word at least in context. To give two instances, at

Matthew 25:35 collegistis is translated “gederiden or herberden,” and at Romans 3:4 mendax is

translated “a lyere or unstable,” in each of which the difference in meaning between the two

components by its very starkness suggests some kind of difficulty about the lemma. Indeed, in

the latter case the translations seem impossible to take as complementary rather than conflicting

alternatives. That is, as a translation of mendax, “unstable” does not complement “a lyere” as a

second aspect of the lemma’s normal semantic range and does not grow out of it as a natural

figurative extension, and when the LV revisors settled on “liar,” they chose one of two

interpretations of an evidently disputed word.

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 What is interesting about both of these examples, for Hargreaves’s hypothesis, is that

neither collegere nor mendax can on its own be considered a “difficult” word. The trouble is not

in understanding the denotations of these relatively common words, but in their specific

application to the contexts in which they appear. It might seem strange that mendax should ever

have been taken to mean “unstable” when it is perhaps the most basic word in Latin for

“deceitful.” In context, however, this translation may make more sense. The complete phrase in

the Vulgate is est autem Deus uerax; omnis enim homo mendax, and the EV translators were

clearly keen to retain the antithetic parallelism of uerax-mendax. Verax is also rendered by a

doublet, albeit a synonymous one: “trewe or soþfaste.” The two components of this doublet,

however, both contain the same ambiguity—they can refer to truth-telling or to constancy—

which no word corresponding to mendax can do for the negative side of the antithesis. Thus the

doublet lets the translators address both possibilities (“liar” for the truth-telling aspect,

“unstable” for the constancy aspect) in a way no single word could. The Matthew 25:35 example

is somewhat more straightforward: collegere does not literally mean “to harbor,” but the context

(hospes eram et collegistis me) clearly implies that “to gather” really means to bring into one’s

home (cf. KJV: “I was a stranger, and ye took me in”). In this case, the LV revisors eliminated

the denotative translation in favor of “harbor,” evidently thinking that a lack of context-

sensitivity would be misleading or obscure the sense. In any case, both instances show that it is

not the difficulty of the Latin words themselves that motivates most of the non-synonymous

doubling in EV, but uncertainty about how context affects their meaning.

Another problem with Hargreaves’s account of EV’s doubling is that, if it were correct,

one would expect non-synonymous doublets to predominate, since these most clearly reflect

trouble with difficult vocabulary in the source-text. In fact, however, in both EV and LV

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synonymous and non-synonymous doublets occur with similar frequency, with synonymous

doublets probably the more common. The difference in function between synonymous and non-

synonymous doublets is, moreover, often quite marked. For instance, the examples examined in

the last two paragraphs are what I have called figurative doublets, and EV also features

polysemous doublets, with both of these categories operating similarly to what we have seen in

Chapters II and III. In synonymous doublets, meanwhile, the difference between the two

components is at most a matter of register, most obviously when Germanic vocabulary and Latin

vocabulary appear together. This latter type of doublet was discussed in Chapter III, but in WB

(especially EV) it becomes pervasive (e.g., “spouse or husbonde” for sponsi at Matthew 9:15 and

“affeccioun or love” for affectione at Romans 1:31), and it occurs amidst a large number of

other, less clearly patterned synonymous doublets (e.g., “gravel or soond” for harenam at

Matthew 7:26, “mede or hyre” for mercedem at Romans 1:27). We shall therefore have to

consider both synonymous and non-synonymous doublets in this text as we have done for others,

and we shall begin with the somewhat simpler category of synonymous doublets.

(1) Synonymous Doublets

As we have seen, synonymous doubling of individual words is not common in non-

Wycliffite ME biblical translations, but is frequent in OE texts, both glosses and continuous

translations, rising to the level of stylistic mannerism in Ps(P). While closer to Ps(P) in frequency

of synonymous doublets, EV is somewhat more consistent in clearly differentiating the

components of these in terms of register and etymologies. Even the categories that can be drawn

up along those lines, however, are often not as useful as is commonly supposed. To begin with,

the distinction between Latin-derived vocabulary and Germanic vocabulary, mentioned briefly in

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the previous section is of course historically important and frequently borne in mind by modern

scholars who have discussed WB’s vocabulary, but it seems not to have meant as much to the

WB translators as it does to modern philologists. As was noted in Chapter III, Rolle shows some

awareness of the distinction between Latinate and native wordstocks, but this is limited to the

realization that some Latin words have passed into English—and this is probably the extent of

the WB translators’ understanding of English etymology as well. At any rate, the vocabulary of

EV’s doublets would seem to suggest that the translators did not make much of the Latin-

Germanic distinction in its own right. As has already been mentioned, the components of EV’s

doublets are sometimes both Germanic, sometimes both Latin, and sometimes a mixture. The

third of these combinations is the most common, but not by so wide a margin that it seems to

have been a definite preference. At any rate, it is with such doublets that we shall begin.

(1a) Latinate-Germanic and Latinate-Romance Doublets

Two considerations that the WB translators would have kept in mind are a) the

morphological similarity of the words in their translation to their lemmata and b) the linguistic

register of their vocabulary. Point a) is, of course, related to the question of Latin versus

Germanic wordstocks, but is more specialized, as it excludes cases in which a word ultimately

derived from Latin (usually through French) is used to translate an unrelated lemma. For

instance, when segregatus is translated “departid” in EV Romans 1:1, the translation uses a word

drawn from Latin (via French) but not from segregare. The translators likely did not even

consider that “depart” ultimately comes from Latin partire and is therefore not a native English

word. Conversely, the translators must have been fully aware that they were merely Anglicizing

the lemma when, earlier in the same verse, they translated seruus as “servaunt” (though they

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presumably also recognized that the ME form more immediately resembles French than Latin).

Krygier asserts that Germanic synonyms for Latin terms are “of a necessarily lower prestige”

(Krygier 161), but this would only be true in cases where the form of a ME word makes it

obvious that it is derived from Latin, especially longer words and those with endings like “-

acion” and “-ible.”

In WB, comparison with the source-text makes it easy to pick out Latinate words that

were chosen specifically for their resemblance to their lemmata, but some Latin-derived words

are so common and ordinary that they would be harder to identify as foreign in origin. This is

certainly the case for words like “enter,” “form,” “offer,” “people,” and “use,” all of which occur

frequently in EV, sometimes as translations of their respective Latin etyma. It would be possible

in theory to draw a hard distinction between words borrowed directly from Latin and those

borrowed from French, but that distinction would be both difficult and unnecessary to maintain

for two basic reasons. First, even words borrowed directly from Latin are commonly Gallicized

in form by analogy with words borrowed from French: e.g., Latin words ending in -atio and -

ibilis typically appear in ME with the endings “-acion” and “-ible” regardless of immediate

French influence. Thus it can be difficult to tell in any given case whether the immediate source-

language for a word is Latin or French. Second, as was already suggested with “servaunt” as a

translation of seruus, the WB translators could be conscious simultaneously that a word is

French and that this French word derives from Latin, and in the case of a Latin-to-English

translation the latter consideration is presumably more important than the former. For both these

reasons, throughout this and the next chapter I will largely ignore the question of whether any

word in WB is taken directly from Latin or indirectly from Latin through French, and focus

instead on whether it is etymologically derived from its lemma. As a shorthand, I will use the

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term “Latinate” to designate words used to translate their own etyma (as these are commonly,

though far from always, words borrowed directly from Latin) and “Romance” to designate Latin-

derived words etymologically unrelated to their lemmata (as these are almost always borrowed

from French).

In any case, bilingual doublets, as we may call Latinate-Germanic and Latinate-Romance

pairings collectively, have received more attention than other types of doublet in earlier

scholarship because their raison d’être seems obvious. For instance, Waldron, discussing the use

of bilingual doublets in John Trevisa’s translations, refers to the possibility that the Germanic

component is included to explain the Latinate component, whose meaning might be unfamiliar or

obscure to the reader (Waldron 273). Undoubtedly, as Haldane asserts, translational doublets can

be used for “the introduction of loan-words to enrich the language” (Haldane 3; cf. Gneuss 31),

and this is clearly the case with bilingual pairings in some OE texts (see Koskenniemi 35-36), as

I already suggested in passing in Chapter II. In EV, something like this certainly seems to be in

operation with one major sub-type of synonymous doublet: the pairing of a Latinate word with a

Germanic/Romance calque. In these, the translators give first an Anglicized form of the lemma

and then an expression that translates the lemma’s individual morphemes separately with

elements etymologically unrelated to them. Representative examples are given in Table 4.1.1.

Table 4.1.1. Synonymous Doublets in EV: Latinate + Germanic/Romance Calque

Ezek. 1:2: transmigrationis = of transmygracioun or passyng over [also Ezek. 3:15; Ob.
20; Nah. 3:10]
Ezek. 7:7: contritio 8 = contricioun or tredynge to gider
Ezek. 7:10: contritio = contricioun or defoulynge togidir [also Rm. 3:16]
Ezek. 21:5: inreuocabilem = irrevocable or þat may not be clepid aȝen
Ezek. 48:14: transferentur = shuln be transferrid or born over
Dan. 11:34: adplicabuntur = shuln be applied or putt to
Joel 3:14: concisionis = of concisioun or sleaynge to gydre
Jon. 3:8: conuertatur = be...convertid or al turnyd
Zech. 12:3: concisione = wiþ conscicioun or kittyng to gidre

8
SV contractio, with contritio noted in the apparatus (also at Ezek. 7:10).

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 1 Mac. 3:40: adplicuerunt = applieden or fellen to
1 Mac. 12:19: rescriptum = þe rescrite or aȝein wrytyng
2 Mac. 2:33: praefatione = prefacioun or byfore spekyng
2 Mac. 12:43: conlatione = collacioun or spekinge to gidre
2 Mac. 14:3: accessum = accesse or cummyng to
Mt. 19:28: regeneratione = regeneracioun or gendrynge aȝen
Mt. 23:4: inportabilia = unportable or þat mown nat be born
Rm. 1:4: praedestinatus = predestynat or bifore ordeyned bi grace
Rm. 3:24: redemptionem = þe redemcioun or aȝenbiyng
Rm. 3:27: exclusa = excludid or put out
Rm. 5:2: accessum = accesse or nyȝ goynge to
Rm. 6:19: infirmitatem = þe infirmite or unstabilnesse
2 Cor. 4:16: renouatur = renewlid or maad newe aȝen [also Eph. 4:23]
2 Cor. 9:15: inenarrabili = unenarrable or þat may not be told
2 Cor. 10:10: contemptibilis = contemptible or worþi for to be dispysid
Phil. 4:17: requiro = I requyre or seke aȝen
Col. 3:13: subportantes = supportinge or beringe up to gidere
Col. 3:24: retributionem = retribucioun or ȝeldinge aȝen
Col. 4:10: concaptiuus meus = myn evene caitif or prisoner wiþ me
2 Thess. 2:3: discessio = departyng awey or dissencioun
1 Tim. 3:2: inreprehensibilem = irreprehensyble or wiþoute reprove
1 Tim. 5:5: desolata = desolat or discomfortid
1 Tim. 6:2: beneficii = of benefice or good doyng
2 Tim. 3:4: proterui = proterve or overþewert
Heb. 6:15: repromissionem = repromyscioun or biheeste aȝen
Heb. 7:16: insolubilis = insolible or þat may not be undon
Heb. 11:17: repromissiones = repromyssiouns or aȝenbiheestis
Jas. 2:2: conuentu = covent or gedering to gydere
Jas. 5:17: passibilis = passible or able for to suffre
1 Pet. 1:2: praescientiam = þe prescience or bifore knowinge [also 2 Pet. 1:16]
1 Pet. 3:8: conpatientes = compacient or ech suffring wiþ oþer
Most of these are perhaps not calques strictly speaking, in that they convert single words

into multi-word expressions. Nevertheless, they show clearly how the translators analyzed each

lemma and rendered the individual elements. For instance, “worþi for to be dispysid” at 2

Corinthians 10:10 reads like a glossary-entry for its lemma contemptibilis, with “worþi for to be”

explaining the suffix -ibilis, while the contem- element is translated “dispysid.” As can be seen

from Table 4.1.1, however, the use of calquing is most obvious in translating words with

prefixes. The formation of calques indeed arises mainly out of a wish on the translators’ part to

preserve the sense of adverbial prefixes such as re- (“aȝen”), con- (“to gidere”), ad- (“to”), and

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trans- (“over”), even in the doublet’s second component, where the prefix is usually treated as an

adverb and placed after the word which renders the lemma’s main lexical morpheme.

Some of these calques are ordinary expressions in their own right (“born over,” “put out,”

“unstabilnesse”), but, as Harumi Tanabe has emphasized, “Most of these English verbal

compounds are improvised in WB with particles very often having emphatic or empty meaning”

(Tanabe 392). In that respect, O’Brien is right to say of loan-translation generally that, while it is

less “conservative” than mere “transcription” (even transcription in Anglicized form, as found in

the first component of each doublet in Table 4.1.1), its “very awkwardness retards any migration

of meaning any significant distance from what the source signifies” (O’Brien 197). Certainly this

awkwardness is obvious in expressions like “þat mown nat be born,” “nyȝ goynge to,” and “þat

may not be told.” In such cases especially, it becomes easy to see how the second component

acts more as a gloss on or definition of the first than as an independent translation. Certainly we

here find clear support for Haldane’s assertion that “The imbalance in language, and between

languages, is symbolized in the process of doubling, and this is most apparent when a foreign

word is preserved and also given an English equivalent” (Haldane 3).

On this front, Holmes draws a useful distinction between homology (correspondence in

form but not function) and analogy (correspondence in function but not form), observing that the

two rarely coincide (Holmes 85). Thus, in “unportable or þat mown nat be born,” the first

component is closely homologous to importabilia, whose morphology it directly copies, while

the second is more analogous to the lemma, analyzing it into its functional elements (the negative

prefix in-, the suffix -abilis, and the lexical morpheme port-) and translating them individually as

“nat,” “þat mown...be,” and “born” without concern for the lemma’s grammatical form. By

expanding the single adjective into a relative clause, the translators have, in simpler terms,

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sacrificed formal fidelity to conceptual explicitness. The decision to lay a calque side-by-side

with a simple Anglicization of the Latin thus suggests that homology and analogy exist in

definite tension in the translators’ minds. Krygier neatly expresses the basic issues of this tension

when he characterizes the doubled translation of praedestinatus at Romans 1:4 as

“simultaneously copying the Latin word and remaining faithful to its meaning” (Krygier 164).

As Krygier further remarks, “predestynat” is “a word [that would have been] unfamiliar to an

audience not involved in the theological disputes of the day” and so would need a gloss based on

more well-established vocabulary (165), 9 but for that reason it possesses more of both prestige

and precision as a theological expression. In some of the longer calques in Table 4.1.1,

meanwhile, the failure of homology is so extreme that the second component could hardly be a

suitable translation on its own. For instance, the aforementioned “worþi for to be dispysid” may

give the reader a clearer idea of what contemptibilis means, but “contemptible” is, like the

lemma, a simple adjective rather than an adjective-phrase and in that respect more accurately

renders the Latin.

The same is true also for many doublets in which the second component does not calque

its lemma but expands it into multiple words in other ways. For instance, in a doublet like

“benygnyte or good wille” (benignitas) or “a festu or a litil mote” (festuca), the second

component is not obtrusive or awkward, but it does deviate from the grammatical arrangement of

the source-text. Table 4.1.2 gives further examples of such “expanding” synonymous doublets.

Table 4.1.2. Synonymous Doublets in EV: Latinate + Multi-Word Germanic/Romance

Is. 9:1: adleuiata = aleggid or maad liȝt
Is. 11:8: infans = þe faunt or a soukande childe
Bar. 6:13: sceptrum = ceptre or kyngis ȝerd [also Ezek. 19:14]
Ezek. 10:13: uolubiles = volible or turnynge about
Ezek. 16:10: bysso = wiþ biis or whiit silk

9
Krygier points out that EV contains the earliest instances of “predestinaten” and “predestinacioun” cited by the
MED, giving a clear indication of the word’s unfamiliarity (ibid.)

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 Ezek. 27:19: stacte = myrre or preciouse gumme
Dan. 5:3: concubinae = concubynes or secundarie wyves
Mic. 1:7: sculptilia = sculptilis or graven ymagis [also Mic. 5:12; in sg. Nah. 1:14]
Mic. 5:5: primates = primatis or first men in dignyte
Zech. 7:11: adgrauauerunt = aggregiden or maden hevy
1 Mac. 1:56: fugitiuorum = of fugityves or fleeynge men
2 Mac. 5:4: monstra = þe monstris or wondres tokne of þingus to cummyng
2 Mac. 7:34: flagitiosissime = most flagiciouse or fullist of yvel doyngus and stiryngus
2 Mac. 14:35: uniuersitatis = of unyversitee or of alle creatures
Mt. 7:3: festucam = a festu or a litil mote
Mt. 7:6: margaritas = margaritis or preciouse stoonys
Mk. 4:10: singularis = singuler or by hym silf
Rm. 2:4: benignitas = þe benygnyte or good wille
Rm. 3:7: abundauit = haþ habdoundid or be plentevous
Rm. 11:12: diminutio = þe menusinge or makinge lesse
Rm. 15:26: conlatione = collacioun or gedrynge of moneye
1 Cor. 1:17: euangelizare = evangelyse or preche þe gospel
1 Cor. 6:4: contemptibiles = contemptyble...or of litil reputacioun
1 Cor. 13:5: ambitiosa = ambicious or coveitous of worschipis
1 Cor. 16:1: collectis = collectis or gaderingis of moneye
Eph. 4:18: alienati = alyened or maad ferr
Eph. 4:32: benigni = benygne or of good will
Phil. 3:10: configuratus = configurid or made lyk [also Phil. 3:21]
1 Thess. 1:8: diffamatus = defamyd or moche told
1 Tim. 6:20: depositum = þe depoost or þing bitakun to þee
2 Tim. 1:12: depositum = depoost or þing putt in keping
2 Tim. 3:3: affectione = affeccioun or good wille
Tit. 3:8: curent = curen or do bisynesse
Phile. 22: hospitium = an oost or hous for to dwelle inne
Phile. 23: concaptiuus = evene caytif or prisoner to gidere
Heb. 6:6: renouari = renewlid or maad newe
Jas. 3:6: inflammata = enflaumed or sett afiire
1 Pet. 1:1: dispersionis = of dispersioun or scateringe abrood
1 Pet. 2:13: praecellenti = precellent or more worþi in staat
2 Pet. 2:5: diluuium = þe diluvye or greet flood
Jude 25: imperium = empire or greet lordschip
Rev. 18:13: iumentorum = iumentis or werk beestes
Some of the multi-word expressions in these doublets are, of course, more compact than

others. In some, such as “preciouse stoonys” and “maad ferr,” either the whole expression is a

conventional unit or one or both words are small and do not significantly affect the syntax of the

passage. Here, the difference is one of register: expressions like “precious stones” and “made

far” are more elementary than “margaritis” and “alyened,” the latter of which is (like a number

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of items on Table 4.1.2) a neologistic borrowing. In other cases, where the second component

comprises several words and resembles a glossary definition (e.g., “evangelyse or preche þe

gospel,” “depoost or þing putt in keping,” “precellent or more worþi in staat”), it is indeed

conceivable that the translators copied from a Latin-English glossary, though we know nothing

of what glossaries they may have used. At any rate, these doublets certainly look very much like

simple lexical glosses for obscure words, as Hargreaves would have it.

By the fourteenth century, however, the “glossing” of Latinate words with Germanic (or

Romance) alternatives would usually have been deemed unnecessary. For instance, Waldron,

examining a section of Trevisa’s translation of the Polychronicon (composed a few decades

earlier than EV), finds that in virtually all cases the Latinate components of what I have called

bilingual doublets were already well-established in English by Trevisa’s day and would not have

required definition (Waldron 274-277). The same may be concluded for many of EV’s bilingual

doublets, such as “benygnyte or good wille,” “concubynes or secundarie wyves,” and

“affeccioun or good wille.” In each of these, the Latinate component is well-attested in other ME

texts without any kind of gloss or explanation (sometimes in other parts of EV). Waldron’s

conclusion that Latinate-Germanic doublets are not intended as glosses on unfamiliar words is

perhaps especially true for doublets in which the Latinate component appears in a heavily

Gallicized form, as in the translation of breuiatum as “breggid or maad short” at Romans 9:28.

“Bridge” in this sense is attested in English from about 1330, appears without comment in a

work sometimes attributed to Wyclif (OED, “bridge v.2”), and might not have been recognized

by the EV translators as a derivative of breuiare, though its use as a translation of its Latin

etymon seems unlikely to be coincidental. It thus appears that “maad short” is not necessary

because of excessive obscurity in “breggid.” Yet even if “bridge” is not hopelessly arcane just

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because it comes from Latin, it does not belong to the same linguistic register as “make short.”

The latter is more elementary, but also possibly less elegant because it requires two words to

express what “breggid” does in one. That much at least would have been apparent to the

translators, as a stylistic consideration if nothing else.

At the same time, a number of Latinate words in EV are not attested prior to WB,

including “unportable,” “minish,” “ambitious,” and “configured,” for each of which EV

furnishes the MED’s (and OED’s) earliest quotation. “Festu” does not even have an entry in the

OED, and the MED’s quotations (of which there are only six) show that this word was only ever

used to translate Latin festuca, EV being the earliest text cited. In such cases, the unusual

fullness of the second component would seem to arise because it really is an explanation of a

difficult, possibly unintelligible first translation. In brief, while the “gloss” possibility can

usually be rejected, it cannot always be rejected.

Once again this brings us to the fundamental tension between fidelity to the source-text

and readability. For the EV translators as for Rolle, the easiest way to remain faithful to the Latin

text is to change its words as little as possible, and the extreme form of this is Anglicizing—the

prioritizing of homology, in Holmes’s terms. The frequency of Latinate expressions in EV is

fairly high (see Yonekura [1988] 420), and the inevitable result of this is vocabulary which is

relatively far removed from ordinary ME. The introduction of doublets with more quotidian

vocabulary has the potential to counteract this and make the text easier to follow, but the stylistic

awkwardness that frequently results draws attention to the divide between the translation and its

source-text. As Venuti remarks (or rather complains), “By producing the illusion of

transparency, a fluent translation masquerades as a true semantic equivalence when it in fact

inscribes the foreign text with a partial interpretation” (Venuti 16), and the EV translators seem

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to have been aware of some of these issues and to have tried to mitigate them by not making

their text fluent when they used clarifying paraphrase. In any case, Waldron is right to assume

that, if a Latinate word is attested elsewhere in contemporary ME without explanatory comment,

it should not be regarded as impossibly obscure for a typical reader, but it might still be harder to

understand than a more common synonym. The more ordinary synonym, in other words, is not

necessary to clarify sense, but can still make the sense easier to grasp.

This seems to hold also for bilingual doublets in which each component consists of only a

single word. In a sense, this category is more straightforward than the preceding two, but, since

one word usually does not usually provide as thorough an explanation as several, it becomes

harder to see many of these doublets as having a “glossing” function. Table 4.1.3 will give some

idea of the nature and frequency of “simple” bilingual doublets.

Table 4.1.3. Synonymous Doublets in EV: Latinate + Single-Word Germanic/Romance

Jer. 7:11: spelunca = a spelunke or denne
Bar. 6:34: requirunt 10 = requyren or axen
Ezek. 8:11: uapor = þe vapour or smoke [also Jas. 4:14]
Ezek. 16:18: thymiama = tymyame or encense [also Ezek. 23:41; Hos. 4:13]
Ezek. 20:30: polluimini = ȝe ben polut or defoulid
Ezek. 22:13: auaritiam = averyce or gredynes
Dan. 4:33: figura = figure or shap
Nah. 1:6: dissolutae = dissolved or broken
Zeph. 3:2: disciplinam = disciplyne or chastising
Hag. 1:6: sacculum = sac or bagge
Mal. 2:7: scientiam = science or kunnyng [also Rm. 2:20; 1 Cor. 1:5; 1 Pet. 3:7; 2 Pet.
1:6]
Mt. 9:15: sponsi = of þe spouse or husbonde
Mt. 10:12: salutate = grete ȝe or salute ȝee
Mt. 23:34: scribas = scribis or writeris
Rm. 1:31: affectione = affeccioun or love
Rm. 3:5: iniquitas = wickidnesse or unequyte
Rm. 5:14: forma = foorme or licnesse
1 Cor. 7:35: facultatem = faculte or esynesse
1 Cor. 10:29: libertas = liberte or freedom
2 Cor. 4:17: in praesenti = in present or now
Gal. 4:27: desertae = of þe desert or left womman

10
SV requirent, with requirunt noted in the apparatus.

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 Gal. 5:24: concupiscentiis = concupicencis or coveitisis
Eph. 6:1: iustum = iust or riȝtful
Phil. 3:19: sapiunt = saveren or undirstonden [also Col. 3:2; 1 Tim. 6:17]
Col. 3:11: seruus = servaunt or þral
1 Thess. 2:10: querella = querel or pleynt
1 Thess. 4:15: 11 residui = residue or left
1 Thess. 5:22: specie = spice or liknesse [also 2 Tim. 3:5]
2 Thess. 3:12: silentio = wiþ silense or stilnesse
1 Tim. 4:13: exhortationi = exortacioun or monestyng
Tit. 3:4: humanitas = humanite or manhed
Heb. 7:13: praesto = prest or redy
Heb. 13:22: solacii = of solace or coumfort
Jas. 1:23: conparabitur = shal be comparsound or likned
Jas. 3:8: inquietum = unquyet or unpesible
1 Pet. 2:1: simulationes = symulaciouns or feynynges
2 Pet. 2:11: execrabile = execrable or cursid
2 Pet. 2:12: captionem = capcioun or takinge
Rev. 18:12: margaritis = margarite or peerl

For many of these, it will be intuitively apparent to the native speaker of MnE that the

two components differ in degree of formality. For instance, in “residue or left” at 1

Thessalonians 4:15, the Latinate component is not a difficult word in need of an explanatory note

but is also not as quotidian as “left” and may have connotations superfluous to its context. The

distinction is still more inconsequential in many cases, such as “foorme or licnesse” and “silense

or stilnesse,” in which both components are reasonably common. (In some, such as “unquyet or

unpesible” at James 3:8, both components are uncommon words, and it seems that the translators

struggled to find an accurate translation.) Beyond this, however, patterns in the implementation

of this kind of doubling are difficult to see. Unlike in Ps(P), the selection of lemmata is too

varied for identification of particular trends, in part because EV covers the entire Bible, whose

subject-matter is much more varied than that of any single book. A few doublets are repeated

multiple times, most notably “science or kunnyng,” but this seems to be simply because their

lemmata occur relatively frequently.

11
Marked 4:14 in FM.

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 On the whole, bilingual doublets seem to represent an awkward compromise between the

demands of two kinds of readers, or rather an attempt to appeal to both simultaneously. On the

one hand, the Latinate translation is most useful to the reader who, probably having some

knowledge of Latin, wishes to have as precise an idea as possible of the Vulgate text’s exact

wording. Indeed, this approach seems to be favored, since the Latinate component is almost

always put first, though even here there are exceptions (e.g., “wickidnesse or unequyte” at

Romans 3:5), and the prominence of unusual Latinate words in EV is such that McFarlane could

with reason speculate that this translation was “presumably intended to enable a reader of weak

Latinity to construe the Vulgate for himself” and aimed more at clergy with bad Latin than at the

laity (McFarlane 104; cf. de Hamel 184-186, Moessner 151). On the other hand, the more

common synonym is helpful to a reader who wishes to have the underlying sense of the text

conveyed in terms as close to ordinary English as possible. The grammar of EV may make this

difficult, but its vocabulary on the whole is not particularly outlandish, and the introduction of

doublets helps push it even further in the direction of the ordinary. Still, this is only a step in that

direction, and the joining of ordinary vocabulary to Latinate vocabulary, some of it neologistic in

ME, prevents either from being completely dominant. In other words, the use of doublets in

instances like these allows the text to be both high-brow and low-brow at the same time.

(1b) Doublets Explaining Difficult Expressions

Although, as suggested in the previous section, there are no clear patterns in the subject-

matter of EV’s synonymous doublets, there are at least a few patterns at other levels. Here it

becomes helpful to invoke Hargreaves’s suggestion that doubling is used for “difficult” words.

Difficulty can take a number of different forms, but these are reducible to a few basic categories,

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at least for present purposes. One is technical vocabulary, which may not have direct English

equivalents. A second is false friends (that is, words that have been borrowed from Latin into

English but do not mean the same thing as their etyma). A third is idiomatic constructions that

cannot be easily retained in English. We shall briefly explore each of these in turn, since all three

do manifest themselves in EV in the form of doublets.

Our first category of “difficult” expressions is relatively expansive: here, the doublet’s

first component is a term from some technical discourse (e.g., law, theology, logic) and the

second is a synonym that lacks such technical associations. Examples (some of them featured in

earlier tables) include those in Table 4.1.4.

Table 4.1.4. Synonymous Doublets in EV: Technical Expressions

Wis. 6:17: prouidentia = provydence or bifore ordeynyng
Ecclus. 10:5: scribae = of þe scribe or man of lawe
Bar. 6:13: sceptrum = ceptre or kyngis ȝerd [also Ezek. 19:14]
Bar. 6:28: menstruatae = menstruat or in uncleene blode
Ezek. 14:7: proselytis = proselitis or men new comen to þe lawe of Iewis
Ezek. 20:30: polluimini = ȝe ben polut or defoulid
Ezek. 20:40: primitias = prymysies or first fruytis [also Mal. 3:8; Rev. 14:4]
Ezek. 23:20: fluxus = fluxis or rennyngis [also Mt. 9:20]
Ezek. 23:38: profanauerunt = prophaneden or maden unhooli
Ezek. 27:13: Thubal = Tubal or Spayn
Ezek. 27:13: Mosoch = Mosoch or Capadocye
Ezek. 30:5: Chub = Chub or Arabie
Ezek. 43:15: arihel = ariel or auter [also Ezek. 43:16]
Ezek. 44:10: Leuitae = Levytis or dekenys
Dan. 1:3: praeposito = prepost or sovereyne [in pl. 1 Mac. 12:45]
Dan. 2:37: imperium = empire or lordship
Dan. 3:2: satrapas = satrapis or wiise men
Dan. 3:10: decretum = a decree or dome [also Dan. 3:96, 6:7]
Dan. 8:23: propositiones = proposiciouns or resouns
Dan. 11:36: definitio = diffinicioun or dome
Hos. 2:11: neomeniam = neomynye or new feest
Hos. 3:4: ephod = ephot or prestis clothing
Hos. 4:13: sponsae = spousis or wiifis [in sg. Rev. 22:17; cf. 1 Mac. 9:39, Mt. 9:15]
Hos. 10:1: simulacris = in symulacris or fals goddis
Ob. 1: legatum = a legate or messager
Mic. 1:7: sculptilia = sculptilis or graven ymagis [also Mic. 5:12; in sg. Nah. 1:14]
Mic. 5:11: diuinationes = dyvynaciouns or tellyngus by devels craft

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 Zeph. 1:11: pilae = of Pyle or of tavern
1 Mac. 1:56: fugitiuorum = of fugityves or fleeynge men
1 Mac. 3:55: centuriones = centoriouns or ledinge an hundrid
1 Mac. 14:42: praepositos = prepostus or governours
2 Mac. 4:42: sacrilegum = sacrileger or þeef of holy þingis
2 Mac. 5:4: monstra = þe monstris or wondres tokne of þingus to cummyng
2 Mac. 12:2: Cypriarches = Cipriarchis or prince of Cipre
2 Mac. 13:6: sacrilegum = þe sacrileger or cursid man
Mt. 9:15: sponsi = of þe spouse or husbonde
Mt. 10:18: praesides = presidentis or meyris
Mk. 9:2: fullo = a fullere or walkere of cloþ
1 Cor. 14:26: apocalypsin = apocalips or revelacioun [also Rev. 1:1]
2 Cor. 11:32: praepositus = þe provost or kepere
Gal. 1:11: euangelizatum = evangelisid or prechid
Eph. 5:5: idolorum = of ydols or mawmetis
Col. 1:26: mysterium = mysterie or privete
2 Thess. 2:15: traditiones = þe tradiciouns or techingis
Heb. 6:16: controuersiae = controversye or debate
Heb. 7:27: hostias = oostis or sacrificis [also Heb. 9:9; in sg. Heb. 9:26, 10:5]
Heb. 13:17: praepositis = provostis or prelatis
1 Pet. 3:20: arca = þe ark or schip
Rev. 5:12: diuinitatem = divynite or godhed
In instances like these, there is a special attraction in using the Latinate translation

because it is more precise than any Romance or Germanic equivalent. (In several cases the

lemma is itself a Hebrew or Greek loanword used in the Vulgate for similar reasons: e.g., arihel,

ephod, Cypriarches, apocalypsis, mysterium.) Thus, for example, although “bifore ordeynyng”

denotes the same thing as “provydence,” the latter more strongly evokes Latin theological

discourse. In a similar vein, though relating to law rather than theology, “spouse” (like its Latin

counterpart sponsus/sponsa) lays an emphasis on the legal side of marriage to an extent that

“husband”/“wife” does not. Indeed, though the second component is still approximately

synonymous with the first, it often loses some nuances of meaning that the first carries over from

the lemma. For instance, though “techingis” captures the sense of traditiones/“tradiciouns” as a

body of doctrine, it eliminates the sense of something “handed down from one generation to the

next” (MED, “tradicioun”) derived from underlying tradere. This sort of loss is particularly

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striking in doublets whose first component refers to a historic political, religious, or social

position for which the second component gives merely an approximation: e.g., “Levytis or

dekenys,” “satrapis or wiise men,” “centoriouns or ledinge an hundrid.” 12

The range of “technical” fields covered by these expressions is varied. Some have to do

with religious ritual: polluere (referring to ritual impurity), primitiae (as a ritual offering), hostia,

idolum, sculptile (i.e., idol), and so forth. Others have to do with theology or doctrine:

prouidentia, apocalypsis, euangelizare, traditio. Others come from the field of politics and law:

sceptrum, praepositus, imperium, decretum, legatus, fugitiuus, magistratus, praeses. A few have

to do with logic and academic discourse: propositio, controuersia. I can also find at least one or

two medical terms (fluxus, arguably menstruata) and a few terms related to trades and

professions that would be familiar to a typical middle-class reader (e.g., fullo). I have also

included in this category, though it is arguably a separate phenomenon, a few expressions in

which the lemma has a specific historical reference not fully conveyed by the doublet’s second

component: Leuita, arca (Noah’s Ark), pila, Cypriarches, and the place-names in Ezekiel that

the translators identify as denoting Spain, Cappadocia, and Arabia. At any rate, though

“technical” vocabulary here is an open-ended category and any observations about trends in the

translators’ usage must be provisional, the varied items on Table 4.1.4 illustrate some of the

concerns the EV translators display in their wish to be both precise and clear. In this case, there

really is some difficulty in the meaning of the lemma, as it has specific associations and shades

of meaning that are peculiar to it as distinct from any possible synonym.

In other cases, the use of a Latinate word creates other sorts of difficulties, as not every

loanword has the same meaning in the receptor language as in its source-language. As Long

12
Though the second component in this last example is less obviously “defective” than those in the preceding two,
“ledinge an hundrid” fails to clarify that “centurion” is a fixed rank.

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wryly observes, the EV translators were “working at the level of equivalence without always

taking into account what was signified” (Long 89), and sometimes not even they could ignore the

problems this generated and opted to clarify the resulting flaws in their translation with a second

alternative. There are two overlapping types of what I above called “false friends.” First, there

are false friends in the strictest sense: e.g., “iacynct” (a blue stone) used to translate hyacinthus (a

blue dye), “confusid” (“frustrated; ruined” [MED]) used to translate confusus in the sense of

“destroyed.” Second, there are loanwords which can denote the same thing in ME as in Latin,

but which in ME usually have a more restricted meaning than their Latin etyma: e.g., “duk,” as

noted in Chapter III, can refer to a specific rank of nobility as dux did not before the Middle

Ages. Examples of doublets arising from both types are listed in Table 4.1.5. 13

Table 4.1.5. Synonymous Doublets in EV: False Friends

Ecclus. 26:23: plantas = þe plauntes or soulis
Ecclus. 27:31: illusio = illusioun or scorne
Jer. 6:14: curabant = þei cureden or heliden
Jer. 10:9: hyacinthus = iacynct or as men seyn violet blyw silc
Bar. 3:23: fabulatores = þe fablers or ianglers
Ezek. 24:6: sors = soort or lot
Ezek. 24:16: plaga = plage or wounde [also Am. 3:12; Mic. 1:9; Rev. 13:14]
Ezek. 39:10: uastatores = waasters or distruyers
Ezek. 47:17: plaga = plage or coost
Dan. 2:30: sacramentum = sacrament or hid trewþe
Dan. 3:35: Israhel = Yrael or Iacob
Dan. 7:14: corrumpetur = shal...be corrupte or distruyed [in active form Mal. 3:11]
Joel 1:12: malum = maal tree or fir
Am. 5:9: uastitatem = distruyinge or waastnesse
Ob. 14: reliquos = þe relikis or left men
1 Mac. 6:34: mori = morus or mulberie trees
1 Mac. 8:16: magistratum = maistrie or cheef governaunce
2 Mac. 2:26: curauimus = we curiden or hadden bysynesse
2 Mac. 4:11: humanitatis = of humanytee or curtasie
2 Mac. 6:13: sententia = sentence or dome
2 Mac. 8:22: duces = duykis or leeders
2 Mac. 12:15: Iesu = Iesu or Iosue
2 Mac. 14:21: sellae = sellis or smale setis

13
I make no effort to distinguish the two types of false friends here because it is, in practice, often hard to tell an
unusual or neologistic usage from a simply mistaken one.

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 Mk. 2:21: supplementum = supplement or pacche
Mk. 14:34: sustinete = susteyne ȝe or abide ȝe
Jn. 4:35: regiones = þe regiouns or cuntrees
Rm. 14:16: blasphemetur = blasfemyd or dispisid
Col. 3:25: iniuriam = iniurie or wrong
In many of these, there is essentially a reversal of what occurs when the lemma is a

formal technical expression: there is a difference of register between the doublet’s two

components, but it is the non-Latinate translation’s register which more closely matches that of

the lemma. For instance, morus is a perfectly ordinary word in Latin, as “mulberie” (but not

“mor”) is in ME. In some cases, the first component is used neologistically, as with

“supplement” in the sense of patch and “sell” in the sense of seat, neither of which is attested in

the relevant sense in other documents but both of which are attested in other senses (MED). In

other cases, the first component’s sense is both correct and precedented, but it introduces an

ambiguity not present in the source-text because of additional senses that the word acquired in

ME but not in Latin. For instance, “wastour” in the sense of “one who...or destroys a nation, a

people, etc.” (represented unambiguously in “distruyers”) was current in ME (MED 1a), but the

word is (like MnE “waster”) used more commonly in the sense of “one who wastes,” which is

not part of the semantic range of Latin uastator. Such a disambiguating function is especially

obvious in the doublets for names at Daniel 3:35 and 2 Maccabees 12:15, where the second

component clarifies that the text refers, respectively, to the patriarch Jacob (as opposed to the

nation of Israel) and to the early Israelite leader Joshua (as opposed to Jesus of Nazareth), while

the first component retains the source-text’s nomenclature. At any rate, with all of these the

difficulty is essentially the opposite of that represented by technical vocabulary: in the latter

case, a homologous translation is also analogous but may be difficult to understand, whereas

with false friends a homologous translation is comprehensible but not analogous.

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 Finally, there are difficulties of mapping Latin syntax onto English, which sometimes

give rise to what I have called “grammatical” doublets. This kind of doublet is not common in

EV, but occurs often enough to be worth noting (Table 4.1.6).

Table 4.1.6. Synonymous Doublets in EV: “Grammatical” Doublets

Ezek. 14:15: inuia = unwaied or wayles
Hos. 2:3: inuiam = unweyed or wiþ outen weye
Am. 4:9: oliueta = olyvetis or placis wher olyves wexen
1 Mac. 4:36: renouare = renewle or make newe
2 Mac. 4:9: Antiochenos = Antiochenys or men of Antioche
2 Mac. 4:14: disci = of dishe or pleyinge wiþ ledun dishe
2 Mac. 9:15: Atheniensibus = Atynyens or men of Atenys
Mt. 3:2: adpropinquabit 14 = shal neiȝ or cume niȝe
Mt. 3:12: inextinguibili = unquenchable or þat never shal be quenchid
Mt. 20:22: petatis = ȝe axen or shulen axe
Mk. 10:42: dominantur = lordschipen or ben lordis
Rm. 1:5: apostolatum = apostilhed or stat of apostle
Rm. 1:21: obscuratum = derkid or maad derk
Rm. 7:8: concupiscentiam = coveityng or coveityse
Rm. 8:20: subiecit = sugetide it or made it suget
2 Cor. 6:10: egentes = havynge nede or as nedy men
2 Cor. 12:14: thesaurizare = to tresoure or make tresour
Gal. 4:27: non paris = childist not or bryngist not forþ child
Eph. 1:21: principatum = principat or power of princes
2 Thess. 3:6: inordinate = unordynatly or aȝens good ordre
2 Tim. 2:15: inconfusibilem = unschamyd or worþi not for to be schamed
Tit. 3:3: odibiles = hateful or worþi for to be hatid
Jude 16: querellosi = pleynynge or ful of pleyntis
Rev. 2:6: Nicolaitarum = of Nycholaytis or folewers of Nychol
The degree of difference between the two components varies noticeably. In some items in

Table 4.1.6, such as “childist not or bryngist not forþ child” and “principat or power of princes,”

the second component adds some significant words that do not correspond directly to anything in

the lemma or the doublet’s first component. Here, again, the doublet’s second component reads

almost like a glossary-entry, but is also generally closer to ordinary English. Even in an instance

as extreme as “dishe or pleyinge wiþ ledun dishe,” the “pleyinge” and “ledun” elements are

14
SV adpropinquauit.

194
implied by the definition and function of a discus. In most cases, however, the material added in

the second component consists only of unobtrusive words such as “be,” “men,” and “make.”

Thus it is plain that the difference between the two components in doublets like “derkid or maad

derk” and “to tresoure or make tresour” is purely one of construction, not of meaning. As with

many of the doublets discussed in section 1a, however, there can also be differences of register,

most noticeably in “Antiochenys or men of Antioche” and “Atynyens or men of Atenys,” where

the Latinate demonymic suffixes are rather less pedestrian than “men.”

There are also cases in which the difference between the two components is only a matter

of grammatical morphemes such as affixes. For instance, in “unwaied or wayles,” the difference

lies only in the translation of the negative prefix in- in inuia, with the first component keeping it

as a prefix and the second changing it to a suffix. Neither possibility results in a common word

(the MED gives only three quotations for each), but the less homologous translation “wayles” is

at least attested before EV (in one of John Trevisa’s translations). Something similar can be said

for “coveityng or coveityse,” except that here both forms are relatively common and it is harder

to say which form is more homologous to the lemma concupiscentia. The doublet “axen or

shulen axe” at Matthew 20:22 presents an even more trivial distinction. This verb is part of an

indirect question (nescitis quid petatis), for which Latin regularly uses the present subjunctive

whether the equivalent direct question would be in present or future, and the translators decline

to adjudicate between the two possibilities.

For all of these variations on the “grammatical” doublet, the underlying issue seems to be

essentially the same: the problem of homology and analogy. As with many of the doublets

discussed earlier in this section, one component (usually the first) is closer in form to the lemma

and the other more congruent with ordinary ME usage. What sets these doublets apart is that the

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area in which one component is more homologous to the lemma than the other is grammatical

construction rather than its main lexical morphemes. Thus for these Latin words the translators

do not find any difficulty in identifying a “core” equivalent, but do find difficulty in phrasing

that “core.” On the one hand, they can follow the grammatical form of the Latin, using a noun

where it uses a noun, a prefixed adjective where it uses a prefixed adjective, etc.—but this may

result in atypical uses, such as “neiȝ ” as a verb or the participial form “derkid,” or even in

neologisms, such as “principat,” “unschamyd,” “renewle,” and “apostilhed,” for all of which EV

furnishes the MED’s earliest quotation. On the other hand, the only way the translators find to

avoid such neologistic uses is to employ expressions that disregard their lemmata’s grammatical

constructions, for instance altering a verb into a verb-phrase with direct object (as in “bryngist

not forþ child” for non paris and “make tresour” for thesaurizare). In other words, in these

instances there are no direct ME equivalents for certain Latin words even though it is fully

possible to express their meanings in ME. Either equivalents must be forced or the text’s syntax

must be reworked—or else the translators must waive this difficulty by doing both.

(1c) Other Synonymous Doublets

The last group of synonymous doublets that presents itself is probably the most puzzling.

In all the examples we have seen up to this point, the two components of the doublet differ from

each other in register, grammatical form, or secondary meanings, but EV also features a huge

number of doublets whose components are not noticeably different in any of these respects. The

presence of an indifferent mixture of Germanic and Romance elements in EV’s vocabulary was

noted above, and in fact sometimes both words are Germanic even in synonymous doublets, or

else both are Romance in the narrow sense defined in section 1a. Such doublets cannot be

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explained in terms of the tensions between homology and analogy, either of morphology or of

grammar. “Anomalous” doublets of this type, whether comprising two Germanic words, two

Romance words, or a mixture, include those listed in Table 4.1.7, which provides only a very

limited sampling.

Table 4.1.7. Synonymous Doublets in EV: Other

Ezek. 43:23: arietem = a weþer or ram [also Dan. 8:20]
Mt. 7:26: harenam = gravel or soond [also Heb. 11:12]
Mt. 8:30: grex = a floc or drove
Rm. 1:27: mercedem = þe mede or hyre [also, with components reversed, 1 Cor. 9:18]
Rm. 3:13: dolose = gilyngly or trecherously
Rm. 3:14: maledictione = cursyng or wariyng
Rm. 15:10: laetamini = glade or ioye ȝe
Rm. 15:19: circuitum = cumpas or envyroun
1 Cor. 2:2: scire = for to wite or kunne
1 Cor. 7:12: dimittat = leve he or forsake
1 Cor. 11:5: decaluetur = be maad ballid pollid or clippid
2 Cor. 1:22: pignus = a wed or eernes
2 Cor. 2:2: contristo = make...sori or hevy
2 Cor. 12:11: debui = I schulde or owȝte
Gal. 2:2: seorsum = a sydis hond or by hem silf
Eph. 2:19: aduenae = gestis or comelingis [also 1 Pet. 1:1]
1 Thess. 5:14: corripite = reprove or chastyse [also Heb. 12:7]
2 Tim. 3:15: infantia = ȝongþe or childhod
2 Tim. 4:20: remansit = dwelte or lefte
Tit. 2:3: criminatrices = bacbiteris or seyinge fals blame on oþere men
Tit. 3:12: festina = hyȝe or haste
Heb. 9:24: uultui = chere or face
Heb. 10:23: indeclinabilem = unbowynge or þat may not be foldyn
Heb. 11:31: excipiens = takynge or receyvynge
Jas. 4:1: lites = cheestes or chidinges
Jas. 5:15: adleuabit = shal discharge or make him liȝt
1 Pet. 2:12: detractant = bacbiten or yvele treeten of
2 Pet. 3:10: impetu = bire or feersnesse
Jude 24: exultatione = gladinge or ioyinge wiþ oute forþ
In these, where neither meaning nor etymological relation to the lemma differs between

components, it seems most natural to invoke stylistic considerations as a motive. What those

stylistic concerns are, however, is hard to say. None of the kinds of sonic and rhetorical devices

invoked for Ps(P)’s doublets in Chapter II seems to come into play for any of WB’s doublets. In

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fact, such considerations seem to have dropped away entirely for translational doubling as

practiced in ME, at least outside of poetry. Nor is there an obvious change of register between

the two components in doublets like “gravel or soond” and “gilyngly or trecherously,” though

there may be a more subtle shift in the latter case (the MED offers only four quotations, all from

WB, for “gilingli,” but eight, all from different texts, for “trecherousli,” indicating that the

former is a rarer word). Both components of most doublets in Table 4.1.7 are also grammatically

congruent, and, even for those that are not, the second component cannot be explained as an

expansion of the first, except in a few cases (e.g., “bacbiteris or seiynge false blame on oþer

men,” “unbowynge or þat may not be foldun”) which present something similar to calque

doublets. Certainly even the provisional explanations suggested so far are untenable in cases

such as “floc or drove” and “mede or hyre,” where both components are reasonably common. It

almost seems most natural to explain doublets like those in Table 4.1.7 as reflecting disputes

among the translators about which of two synonyms sounded best (on its own) in a particular

context. Here, at any rate, it begins to appear that Lindberg is right to say that “finding the best

equivalent for a Latin word not present in a similar English form” is “one of the main difficulties

for the [WB] translators” (Lindberg [2005] 195).

Also difficult to account for is why doublets of this sort occur where they do. Indeed,

when doubling is applied even to words whose meaning is not in question and for which a simple

Anglicization is not possible, nothing becomes clearly apparent except the ad-hoc nature of EV’s

doubling. This arbitrariness, however, is notably paralleled in some of the medieval Latin Bibles

examined by Christopher de Hamel, who notes that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Vulgate

manuscripts sometimes contain “a choice of readings...added in the margin, each introduced by

the word vel” (de Hamel 123). The example de Hamel gives, emisitque and et emisit at Genesis

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3:23 in BL Add. MS. 40006, shows how trivial these variants can be, just as they often are in

EV’s synonymous doublets. This would seem to show that, although such hair-splitting about the

right word may strike us as arbitrary, it was standard for medieval biblical scholarship.

Moreover, some words in the Vulgate gave the translators recurring trouble, resulting in repeated

doublets. It will be observed, for instance, that several items on Table 4.1.7 occur more than

once. There is, then, a degree of consistency in EV’s doubling even here, but the selection of

lemmata for doubling appears to be overall unsystematic.

(2) Non-Synonymous Doublets

We have already seen that doubling may arise from uncertainty about what the lemma

denotes. Without precise knowledge about the translation process, it can be hard to know when

this is the case, but some doublets suggest it more strongly than others. Even with non-

synonymous doublets, uncertainty generally seems not to stem from the translators’ ignorance of

the denotations of particular words. Rather, difficulty mainly arises, as LV’s General Prologue

observes, because of “wordis equivok, þat is, þat haþ manie significacions undur oo lettre” (FM

1.59). The prologue-writer is here speaking of the need to translate the same word differently in

different contexts, but the occurrence of “wordis equivok” also sometimes leads the WB

translators to translate the same lemma two different ways in the same context—i.e., with a

doublet. Moreover, “equivok” is itself equivocal, and, as we have seen in previous chapters,

there are two distinct senses in which a word may fit this description: it may be innately

equivocal (polysemous), or it may be contextually equivocal (figurative). Doublets based on both

types of equivocation are found commonly in WB.

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 We have already considered a few examples of figurative doublets from EV, and I

suggested there that the explanatory translation given as the second component in each case was

based on highly contextual readings. Such translations obviously require a more intrusive

exegetical intervention than do denotative translations, and in previous chapters we have seen

some ways in which that can be used to advance a particular interpretation. Nevertheless, it is

generally true that, as Margaret Deanesly asserts, WB avoids “any partizan attempt to emphasise

particular shades of meaning in certain verses or words by a novel translation” (Deanesly 230). It

becomes slightly less true, however, if one shifts one’s attention to doublets. Indeed, it seems to

be as true for the EV translators as for their contemporaries that, as Shepherd puts it, “Literal

interpretation did not mean looking for a plain sense. Interpretation...relied instead on the whole

wide store of human learning, on Aristotelian philosophy and natural science and on detailed

philological and linguistic knowledge of the sacred languages” (Shepherd 385), though in EV it

is largely just “philological and linguistic knowledge” that shapes the interpretation of the text.

The interpretive operations represented by non-synonymous doublets may take place on

several different levels and be motivated by various considerations. It shall be the purpose of this

section to identify and examine the most prominent and recurrent of these.

(2a) Polysemous Doublets

Let us begin with polysemous doublets. Now at this juncture it should be borne in mind

that there is often no definite line between figurative uses and literal denotations. Quine

observes, for instance, that when the MnE word “hard” comes to be applied to immaterial

concepts like “question” and not only to physical objects like “chair,” it becomes unclear

whether we should regard the additional meaning “as a second sense of a thenceforward

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ambiguous term, or...as an extended application of a thenceforward more general term” (Quine

181). I make this point only now because, although it is equally true for the translations

examined in earlier chapters, EV’s doublets contain a fairly high number of borderline cases (and

I will often resort to disputable judgments of classification). For instance, uir/uiri is translated at

Ephesians 5:22 and 1 Timothy 2:12 as “man/men or housebond[is].” Both of these are correct

denotative translations, but there is no way of knowing whether the EV translators understood

that the more restricted sense of “husband” is one of the accepted dictionary definitions of uir in

classical Latin or supposed that “man” is here used as a genus-for-species synecdoche. The

former possibility is more likely, but it is impossible to know for sure. Nevertheless, there are

also cases in which both components of a doublet are plainly meant as denotative translations of

the lemma and yet clearly do not mean the same thing. For instance, negotium (like uir) has both

a more restricted and a more general meaning, but the one is not as easily derived from the other

as for uir. Thus when, at Romans 16:2, negotium is translated “nede or þing,” there is no way to

understand these as anything but two separate denotative translations of the shared lemma.

The ad-hoc nature of doubling in EV is perhaps clearer than ever with polysemous

doublets, since a doublet whose components differ as widely as “nede” and “þing” essentially

marks a refusal to give the lemma a definitive interpretation. This is even more true than for

polysemous doublets in Ps(P), as the components of EV’s polysemous doublets more often

derive from entirely different semantic fields (as in “nede or þing”). As was seen in Chapter II,

even doublets in which the meaning of one component is not dependent on the other can work in

an obviously complementary fashion, as when “leaf and blæda” as a unit brings together

different aspects of folium that may be in operation simultaneously. When two meanings entirely

fail to overlap, however, the uncertainty extends to the ultimate sense of the lemma, not simply

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how that meaning should be conveyed. The uncertainty that polysemous doublets leave for the

modern scholar of EV is the degree to which the translators wished to resolve difficulties about

polysemous expressions in the Vulgate. There are two possibilities. The first is that these

doublets are, as it has been suggested that all of EV’s doublets are, merely a stopgap, and the

translators always intended to simplify them once they had decided which of the two alternatives

was better in context. The second is that they are intended to present the English reader with

something approaching the full possibilities of the Latin text’s meaning, handing off the mental

act of disambiguation from translator to reader.

If the second possibility is correct, the implications of the choice to let the reader decide

between multiple possibilities are still ambiguous. Viewed one way, this choice represents

deference to readers’ ability to interpret the text on their own. Alternatively, it may imply that the

translators accept the possibility of multiple valid understandings, without requiring either

translator or reader to fix on a single option among several. Third, it could suggest that the

translators have chosen in these cases to defer not to the reader’s interpretive abilities, but to the

language of the Vulgate—i.e., to ensure that as little as reasonably possible is lost about the

peculiarities of the source-text as a specifically Latin text, as I have suggested that texts like RRP

aim to do. In the second and third cases, even doublets may be too limiting, as many words have

more than two meanings, but to present all possible meanings would be, in most such cases,

impracticable without overburdening the text. One way or another, with polysemous doublets,

the translators show a particularly marked awareness that Latin and English do not map cleanly

onto one another. They share this awareness with Alfred as translator of the Psalms, but often

manifest it more extremely. Whatever exactly motivates choices about when to present a pair of

alternatives, the use tow unrelated words in the translation shows that the full semantic range of

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the Latin term cannot be expressed by a single equivalent in English and that it is not always

clear which aspects of that semantic range are in operation at a given point.

EV’s polysemous doublets are even more scattered and eclectic than those of Ps(P), but

three major trends present themselves. First, as in the cases of “nede or þing” and “man or

housebond” already mentioned, one component may have a more generic, the other a more

specific denotation. Commonly (as in “nede or þing”) this entails a distinction between abstract

and concrete. Second, mainly in the case of concrete nouns in narrative passages, both

components of some doublets are equally specific and belong to the same semantic field but refer

to slightly different objects. For instance, in “herþ or chymney,” translating arula at Jeremiah

36:22, both components refer to structures connected with a fireplace, but to different portions

thereof. This is essentially the same as in the bulk of Ps(P)’s polysemous doublets, but again

more often both meanings cannot reasonably be in operation simultaneously. Third, some

lemmata may be read as having particular connotations or associations in some cases, but not in

others, and both possibilities are represented using a doublet. For instance, in “aspies or

tresouns,” translating insidias at Obadiah 7, the second component contains an element of moral

disapproval not found in the first, though both translations refer similarly to covert machinations.

Doublets of the first sub-type include those listed in Table 4.2.1.

Table 4.2.1. Polysemous Doublets in EV: Generic + Restricted

Ezek. 1:4: turbinis = of tempest or whirlwynde
Ezek. 16:7: ubera = breestis or teetis
Ezek. 34:4: aegrotum = seek or soor
Dan. 2:35: testa = pott or mater maad of erþe
Dan. 2:41: testae = erþi or cleyi
Zeph. 1:6: quaesierunt = souȝten or axiden
Hag. 2:7: modicum = lytil þing or tyme
Mal. 3:9: penuria = myseyse or nedynesse
Mk. 2:22: utres = botelis or wyne vesselis
Lk. 1:20: tacens = stille or doumbe
Rm. 1:24: contumeliis = wrongis or dispitis [also in sg. Heb. 10:29]

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 Rm. 1:26: ignominiae = yvel fame or schenschip
Rm. 4:11: signaculum = markynge or tokenynge
1 Cor. 10:16: participatio = delynge or part takynge
2 Cor. 4:3: opertum = keverid or hid
2 Cor. 10:4: munitionum = of wardingis or strengþis
Phil. 2:20: unanimem = of o wille or acoord
Phil. 4:5: modestia = temperaunce or pacience
Col. 1:18: principium = þe begynnynge or þe firste þing of alle
2 Thess. 2:9: mendacibus = lyinge or fals
2 Thess. 3:8: gratis = frely or wiþoute oure owne traveil
1 Tim. 3:3: modestum = temperaunt or pacient
1 Tim. 3:7: obprobrium = schenschip or reprof
1 Tim. 4:14: neglegere = dispise or litil charge
1 Tim. 5:5: instat = wake or be bysi
Heb. 7:28: infirmitatem = sykenesse or freelte
Heb. 12:13: gressus = goyngis or steppis
Heb. 12:18: turbinem = greet wynde or whirlwynd
Jas. 1:11: ardore = brennynge or heete
Jude 12: maculae = filþes or defoulinges
Rev. 3:19: aemulare = sue or love
Rev. 7:9: amicti = coverid or cloþid
In most of these, one component is simply a hyponym of the other. For instance, in

“markynge or tokenynge” at Romans 4:11 the second component also implies a “marking,” but

more specifically one that conveys a message, as the lemma signaculum can denote either a

meaningful or a meaningless mark. In other cases, we find instances of the concrete-abstract

distinction noted above, as in “lytil þing or tyme” for modicum, “yvel fame or schenschip” for

ignominiae, and “wrongis or dispitis” for contumeliis (at least if “wrongis” refers to actions and

“dispitis” to attitudes). Likewise, in “tempest or whirlwynde” for turbo and “breestis or teetis”

for ubera the second component denotes a particular type or part of the thing denoted by the first

(which, in the latter case, is also commonly used as a synecdoche for the whole in ME).

The second trend in EV’s polysemous doublets has to do with concrete nouns, or

occasionally adjectives. Here, the difference between the two components represents an

ambiguity more profound than level of hyponymy/hyperonymy, though they are still related in

meaning. Some examples are gathered in Table 4.2.2.

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 Table 4.2.2. Polysemous Doublets in EV: Ambiguous Concrete Nouns
Wis. 5:15: lanugo = a wlle loke or thistil doun
Is. 22:9: piscinae inferioris = of þe neþere pond or sisterne
Jer. 36:22: arula = þe herþ or chymney
Bar. 6:60: spiritus = spirit or wynd
Ezek. 4:2: castra = castels or oostis [also several times throughout 1-2 Mac.]
Ezek. 22:18: scoriam = drosse or syndre
Ezek. 27:16: mercatu = market or marchaundise
Ezek. 38:11: uectes = barris or lockis [also Am. 1:5; Nah. 3:13]
Ezek. 40:17: atrium = porche or large hous
Dan. 2:42: digitos = fingris or toon
Dan. 3:46: stuppa = herdis of hemp or flaxe
Dan. 13:17: smegmata = sope or oynement
Hos. 13:3: nubes = clowde or myst
Joel 3:10: ligones = pikoysis or mattokis
Mic. 7:10: lutum = clay or fen
Zech. 3:5: cidarim = cappe or mytre
1 Mac. 1:11: obses = in seegyng or plegge
Mt. 13:25: zizania = dernel or cokil [also Mt. 13:26, 27; in pl. Mt. 13:29, 30, 37, 38]
Mt. 13:55: fabri = of a smyþ or carpenter [also Mk. 6:3]
Mt. 27:2: praesidi = meire or chef iustice
Lk. 16:1: uilicum = a fermour eþir a baily
Jn. 12:3: nardi pistici = spikenard or trewe narde
Rm. 16:23: arcarius = tresorer or kepere
Eph. 6:11: insidias = aspyingis or asaylyngis
2 Tim. 4:5: ministerium = servyse or office
Tit. 2:12: erudiens = techinge or lernynge
Jas. 1:10: faeni = of hay or grasse [also Rev. 8:7]
Jas. 4:12: legislator = speker or maker of þe lawe
1 Pet. 2:14: bonorum = of goode dedis or goode men 15
1 Jn. 2:14: adulescentes = ȝonge men or of mydle age
Rev. 1:15: orichalco = drosse of gold or latoun
Rev. 22:10: signaueris = signe or seele
Many or most of these set up distinctions that seem to be of no particular significance.

For instance, the doublet “dernel or cokil” for zizania, repeated seven times in fourteen verses,

simply shows uncertainty about what kind of weed Jesus refers to in the Parable of the Wheat

and the Tares in Matthew 13. 16 Likewise, at Joel 3:10, “pikoysis or mattokis” refers to two

15
Here the uncertainty is also grammatical: is bonorum neuter (“good deeds”) or masculine (“good men”)?
16
Depending on how “cokil” is understood, this doublet could also be classed with those on Table 4.2.1: “cockle”
can refer either to corncockle in particular, or to a larger class of weeds which includes darnel. In any case, the
lemma is genuinely unclear. The Vulgate simply transliterates original Greek ζιζάνια, an obscure word which LSJ

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similar but distinct tools, in an exhortation to reforge peace-time implements into weapons. In

some cases, the difference between the two components is itself unclear. For instance, in

“spikenard or trewe narde” (referring to the ointment with which Mary of Bethany anoints

Jesus), “true nard” is East Indian spikenard (MED, “nard”), while “spikenard” here, opposed as it

is to “trewe narde,” is probably meant to refer to another species, but there is no way of knowing

which of the species that can be called “nard” the translators have in mind. At any rate, in many

cases the difference is so insignificant as to make these doublets functionally similar to

synonymous ones. What such fine distinctions seem to show is the translators’ close attention to

the literal sense of the text, even at the level of minor details.

A few patterns are worth pointing out. One of these is familiar from translations

considered in previous chapters: historically or culturally restricted terms that lack precise

English equivalents, translated with two inexact approximations. This occurs with “cappe or

mytre” for cidarim (a ceremonial headdress not known in medieval England, the lemma itself

being a borrowing from Persian via Greek), “meire or chef iustice” for praeses (referring to

Pontius Pilate, whose office was peculiar to the ancient Roman Empire 17), and “a fermour eþir a

baily” for uilicus (the “unjust steward” in the parable usually known by that title in MnE).

Conversely, in a few cases, the doublet seems to be produced not by particularly careful

consideration of the lemma’s context, but by mechanical reproduction of multiple meanings

without consideration for context. The most egregious instance of this is “fingris or toon” for

digitos at Daniel 2:42. Here the full phrase is digitos pedum, and so there is no ambiguity about

cites only from Mt. and two Byzantine reference-works. “Darnel,” as it happens, is also LSJ’s best guess for the
identity of this plant. MnE translations usually paper over the difficulty by using the generic term “weeds” (“tares”
in some early MnE translations), occasionally acknowledging the likelihood that darnel is meant in a footnote.
17
But cf. Mt. 10:18, where the plural of this lemma is translated “presidentis or meyris” (Table 4.1.4). Why the
translators saw fit to use an Anglicized form of the lemma as the closest approximation to its meaning in one case
but not the other is impossible to say.

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which kind of “digits” are in question. Such doublets are rare, and it is possible that there are

more meaningful explanations for them, 18 but it appears that the same tendency toward

“mechanical” translation that sometimes yields unintelligible syntax in EV can also entail

mindless construing of individual words with no regard for contextual markers.

Our third category of polysemous doublets has to do less with difficulties of denotation

than with connotations. As a group, it is quite multifarious, but can be defined as pairings which

combine different permutations of three basic semantic groups: expressions with definitively

positive connotations or tone, expressions with definitively negative connotations or tone, and

expressions without either (which we may consider “neutral”). It is usually impossible to define

“positive,” “negative,” and “neutral” with any precision, and connotations are infamously

difficult to pin down, but some expressions, such as terms associated with moral virtues, positive

emotions, and material prosperity, can readily be classified as “positive” in connotations or tone,

while terms associated with the opposites of these may be classed as “negative” (Table 4.2.3).

Table 4.2.3. Polysemous Doublets in EV: Ambiguous Tone or Connotations

Ecclus. 4:9: acide = egreli or hevyly
Ecclus. 18:15: tristitiam = sorewi slouþe or hevynesse
Ezek. 21:23: otium = þe idilnes or rest
Dan. 5:7: magos = witches or wiis men
Hos. 7:6: insidiaretur = he aspiede or sette tresoun
Ob. 7: insidias = aspies or tresouns
Mic. 4:10: satage = tyse or do ynewȝ
Mal. 3:9: penuria = myseyse or nedynesse
2 Mac. 3:25: impetu = feersnesse or bire
Mt. 2:16: inlusus = scorned or disceyved
Mt. 10:19: tradent = shulen take or bitraie
Mt. 21:37: uerebuntur = shulen shame or drede [also Heb. 11:27]
Mk. 4:4: caeli 19 = of hevene or of þe eire
Mk. 12:6: reuerebuntur = schulen schame...or drede wiþ reverence
Mk. 12:30: uirtute = vertu or myȝte

18
In this case it is conceivable that the EV translators did not realize that “toe” is part of the dictionary meanings of
digitus, and that this pairing should be seen as a figurative doublet, interpreting “fingers of the feet” as a periphrasis.
19
Not in SV but documented in its apparatus.

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 2 Cor. 1:6: tribulamur = we ben trowblid or pursuwed
2 Cor. 5:11: suademus = softly moven or counceilen
2 Cor. 8:3: uirtutem = vertu or power
Gal. 1:14: aemulator = lovere or folower
Gal. 3:1: proscriptus = dampnyd or excilid
1 Thess. 2:8: cupide = coveityngly or wiþ greet love
1 Thess. 4:11: operam = werk or bisynesse [also 2 Pet. 1:15]
1 Thess. 5:12: monent = monesten or techen
2 Thess. 2:17: exhortetur = stirre or moneste
1 Tim. 6:10: appetentes = coveitynge or desyringe
Tit. 2:8: uereatur = be aschamed or aferd
Heb. 8:12: propitius = helpeful or mercyful
Jas. 3:14: zelum = zeel or envy
1 Pet. 2:24: pertulit = suffride or bar
2 Pet. 2:22: uolutabro = walewinge or slowe
In most of these, the denotations of the two components are, while distinct, more closely

related than most in the previous two subsets of polysemous doublets. What distinguishes them

instead is the extent to which the lemma is supposed to connote a particular attitude toward the

subject-matter. For instance, the two translations of uerebuntur at Matthew 21:37, like those of

reuerebuntur in this verse’s parallel in Mark, 20 capture two readings of the lemma, differing in

how much they emphasize its negative senses. In both passages, the phrase containing the

doublet is [re]uerebuntur filium meum (“þei shulen shame or drede my sone”), spoken by the

landlord in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants as he is contemplating sending his son as a

messenger. The difficulty in rendering [re]uerebuntur is thus that the attitude it denotes can

encompass both fear and reverence in varying measures. The doublet’s second component in

each case thus suggests that a sense of outright fear may be present in the phrase, but the

presence of the first component lets the reader know that this is not necessarily the case.

Other doublets arise from ambiguity about whether the expression has a moralizing tone.

For instance, several verbs related to persuasion or admonition (suadere, exhortari, monere) are

20
The OED cites EV Mk. 12:6 for “to feel shame in regard to (a person or thing); to hold in awe or reverence; to
dread or shun through shame” as a meaning of “shame.” A similar doublet is found in PE at Rm. 6:5 (Table 3.3.3).

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given two renderings, the one denoting advice in a specifically moral sense and the other

referring to instruction in a broader fashion (not necessarily in that order). Thus, when suademus

appears as “softly moven or counceilen” at 2 Corinthians 5:11, the moral connotations of the

lemma are more definitely on display in the second component than in the first. In context

(scientes ergo timorem Domini, hominibus suademus), Paul is referring to religious teaching and

conversion, and so “counsel” suggests the giving of definitely edifying advice; “move,”

meanwhile, lacks such connotations when it refers to incitement to an action. To “move” does

not suggest an approbatory attitude as does counsel; certainly “techen” (1 Thessalonians 5:12)

can be applied just as easily to subject-matter that the reader is intended to view negatively as to

subject-matter the reader is intended to view positively.

Other doublets, conversely, present first a translation with specific religious or moral

associations and then a translation that lacks these associations. For instance, in both “vertu or

myȝte” and “vertu or power,” the first component suggests that the expression may or may not

refer to moral qualities, 21 but the second possesses only non-ethical meanings. The doublets

“dampnyd or excilid” and “coveityngly or wiþ greet love” both seem to use the second

component as a corrective to the first component, whose doctrinal or moral associations might

distort the meaning of the verse if taken at face-value. Galatians 3:1 as a whole reads, O insensati

Galatae, quis uos fascinauit non obedire ueritati, ante quorum oculos Iesus Christus

praescriptus est, in uobis crucifixus? such that the word translated “dampnyd” is applied to

Jesus. This, of course, could be theologically troublesome if taken as condemnation to hell rather

than condemnation by a secular authority (as in “excilid”). Likewise, cupide in 1 Thessalonians

2:8 is applied to Paul and his companions “wish[ing] to give out the gospel of God” (uolebamus

21
This is not as unambiguous in ME, in which “virtue” could be used in a manner synonymous with “power” or
“might,” as it is in MnE, but use of “virtue” in more or less its MnE sense was also current at the time of EV (MED).

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tradere...euangelium Dei), so that a term for a moral vice becomes inappropriate. Meanwhile, in

“of hevene or of þe eire” translating caeli (in uolucres caeli), the second component prevents the

phrase from having a specifically religious meaning (obviously inappropriate here), since

“heaven” can have a non-religious sense more readily than “the air” can have a religious sense.

In addition to these larger sub-categories, a few smaller groupings can be identified. For

instance, there are a few cases in which prepositions are doubled (Table 4.2.4).

Table 4.2.4. Polysemous Doublets in EV: Prepositions

Ezek. 46:14: cata = bisidis or niȝ
1 Cor. 6:18: extra = wiþouten or by sidis
Gal. 3:21: aduersus = anentis or contrarie to
Prepositions notoriously tend to possess nuances that are hard to convey when translating

from one language to another, and these doublets seem to show that, for all the “mechanical”

tendencies of EV’s translational approach, the translators were aware that simple words do not

always have simple equivalents in other languages. A similar attention to minor nuances can be

seen with translations of the adverb inuicem, which appears as variants of “to gidere or ech oþir”

at Matthew 24:10, Mark 12:7, Romans 1:12 and 14:13, and Philippians 2:3 and, in the phrase ab

inuicem, as “fro a twynne or ech fro oþir” at Galatians 5:15.

Ambiguities are also in a few cases generated by homonyms and homographs. Thus, in

Hosea, we twice encounter the doublet “toke or bigan” (6:2, 11:6). SV and other modern Vulgate

texts have cepit at 6:2 and coepit at 11:6, but, because the distinction between oe, ae, and long e

was lost in medieval Latin orthography, the manuscripts with which the EV translators worked

would have had cepit in both places, making it impossible to distinguish between the perfect

tense of capere (“take”) and that of coepere (“begin”) except from context—and, in both cases,

the EV translators evidently decided this was not enough to be certain and preferred to note both

possibilities. (In both of these cases, LV settles on the term more closely corresponding to the

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correct Vulgate reading: “took” at 6:2, “bigan” at 11:6.) Likewise, at 1 Peter 2:14, the doublet

“mysdedis or mysdoeris” because the lemma malefactorum can be read as the genitive plural of

either malefactum (“misdeed”) or malefactor (“misdoer”). In a similar vein, the translators on

two or three occasions show uncertainty about whether a word in the source-text should be taken

as a personal name or as a title, and so both possibilities are noted: hence “Cesar or emperour”

(Caesari) at Matthew 22:17 and “August or noble” (Augusto) at Luke 2:1.

It is also worth mentioning that a small number of doublets reflect a phenomenon we saw

also in Ps(P): variant readings in the source-text. Such instances are mentioned by Henry Ansgar

Kelly (see Kelly [2016] 41), but they are not very illuminating with regard to the general use of

translational doubling in EV, and, relative to the translation’s overall length, are even rarer than

in Ps(P). Indeed, I can find only seven doublets in EV that unambiguously translate two variant

lemmata, and one other in which this seems the most likely explanation (Table 4.2.5; SV’s

reading is in bold).

Table 4.2.5. Doublets in EV: Variant Readings in Source-Text

Ezek. 27:35: remiges / reges = þe rowers or þe kyngis
Am. 7:1: gregis / regis = of floc or kyng
Mk. 12:1: parabolice / in parabolis = parably or in parablis 22
Jn. 8:51: uidebit / gustabit = schal...se or taaste
1 Cor. 2:2: indicaui / iudicaui = schewide or demyde
2 Thess. 2:4: in templo / in templum = in þe temple or into þe temple
1 Jn. 1:1: contrectauerunt / temptauerunt = tretiden to gydere or touchiden
2 Jn. 13: filii / filiae = sones or douȝtres

Not even for most of these is it possible to determine with complete certainty whether the

EV translators really did encounter variants in the Vulgate text. In fact, in all cases except

contrectauerunt/temptauerunt at 1 John 1:1 and filii/filiae at 2 John 13, which are documented in

SV, I have had to reconstruct the variant lemma, based on two clues: a) that the components of

22
It is conceivable that “parably” is also a translation of in parabolis, but the construction of a neologistic adverb to
translate a prepositional phrase is, as far as I can tell, not found elsewhere in EV and would be simply an odd choice.

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the doublet are too different from each to be translations of the same lemma and b) that a variant

lemma which reasonably accounts for one component of the doublet and could have arisen from

a plausible corruption of the Vulgate text can easily be reconstructed. Though such instances

seem to be rare in EV, they nevertheless show that some care was taken in textual scholarship

even at this stage in the translation project, and perhaps raise the possibility that something

similar may be going on in other cases of doubling.

(2b) Figurative Doublets: Rhetorical Tropes and Poetic Figures

The status of figurative language is perhaps the most vexing aspect of the “literal sense”

of Scripture for medieval interpreters and translators, especially the Lollards, who placed an

unusually high premium on literal interpretation. 23 As is often pointed out, Wyclif and his

followers took a view of the literal sense of Scripture that encompassed everything a given text’s

author had in mind as part of the meaning he was trying to convey. Michael Wilks goes so far as

to say that, for Wyclif, “literal” simply meant “true” or “conforming to the inner divine content

of a biblical statement” (Wilks 158). Thus, for instance, as Ian Christopher Levy explains,

“Wyclif concluded that all parabolic expressions in the Gospel are true according to the meaning

that they were intended to relate. When Christ recounts a parable...the parabolic sense is the

literal, or authentic, sense even if not the historical” (Levy 33; see also Brungs and Goubier 208-

209; Copeland [2003] 194; Dove [2006] 370-372; Kuczynski [2017] 356). Alastair Minnis in

fact holds that Wyclif for this reason disliked making distinctions between different “levels” of

sense (Minnis 26-27). Nevertheless, as Dove points out, Wyclif’s commentary on Daniel

acknowledges “cases where there is more than one literal sense” and concludes “that some literal

23
It should be emphasized at the outset that the Lollards were not therefore, as is sometimes alleged, averse to the
use of “embellished or figurative language to draw out truth” (Gayk 146; cf. Copeland [2003] 186-187).

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senses take precedence over others, though all are authentic” (Dove [2006] 37). Kuczynski

similarly states that for Wyclif and the Lollards, as emphasized by marginal glosses found in

some copies of WB, the literal sense of the Psalms “includes...both historical references in the

Psalter to events in David’s life and psalm prophecies concerning Christ,” though they avoided

“elaborate mystical allegories” (Kuczynski [2016] 218, emphasis added; cf. Klepper 34).

Nor was this view of “literal sense,” expanded to include what Christopher Ocker calls

the “literally figurative,” unique in the fourteenth century to the Lollards. 24 In fact its basic

points are traceable, as Theresa Gross-Diaz notes, as far back as Origen (Gross-Diaz 125; but see

Copeland and Sluiter 36-38 for medieval writers who disagreed with this definition of literal

sense). Augustine, for instance, states that maxime...inuestigandum est utrum propria sit an

figurata locutio quam intellegere conamur, and that this is necessary to arrive ad sententiam

ueritatis (DC 3.34)—i.e., the meanings of figurative usages are an essential part of the “truth” of

the text. 25 Thomas Aquinas makes a similar point: 26 for him, as Jeremy Catto paraphrases, “The

key to understanding the literal sense was to establish the meaning which the biblical author

intended in particular sentences or verses, and as the literary genre of the different books of the

Bible might include poetry...and prophecy as well as moral instruction...so metaphor and

allegory...had to be understood as the author had understood it” (Catto [2017] 14). Likewise

Minnis notes that, for scholastics like William of Ockham, it was necessary to identify the

24
“Wyclif’s originality lies neither in the principle of contextual adjustment of equivocal terms (or of contextual
selection of equivocal things) nor in the use of equivocation for figurative, analogical discourse, but rather in the use
of analogical equivocation (with its contextual adjustment) to root Scripture’s figurative significations of terms and
sentences in virtus sermonis, and to fully legitimate their properness” (Brungs and Goubier 229).
25
For Copeland, this kind of thinking is derived from the concept of “intention” in the context of “a written
document introduced into court as evidence” (Copeland [2003] 189).
26
Cf. Summa Theologica Pt. I, q. 1, art. 10: sensus parabolicus sub litterali continetur; nam per uoces significatur
aliquid proprie et aliquid figuratiue, nec est litteralis sensus ipsa figura sed id quod est figuratum. Non enim cum
Scriptura nominat Dei brachium est litteralis sensus quod in Deo sit membrum huiusmodi corporale, sed id quod
per hoc membrum significatur, scilicet uirtus operatiua.

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underlying literal meanings of figurative expressions before subjecting biblical texts to logical

argument (Minnis 22).

A particularly strong form of the “authorial intent” view of the literal sense was a

hallmark of Nicholas of Lyra, whose influence on WB (especially but not exclusively LV) is

foundational, as we shall see more concretely in the next chapter. In particular, Nicholas’s desire

always to foreground “the respective intentions of each contributor to the book” (Minnis 21) 27

was, alongside the exegesis and textual scholarship of Jerome, a major influence on Lollard

views of the value of the “literal sense.” As Klepper says, “Like Jerome, Nicholas read the Old

Testament in its original Hebrew. Like Jerome, he focused on the literal, historical sense of the

Bible rather than on the spiritual, allegorical, or theological implications that might derive from

that historical reading...Both men showed a love of the letter and a passion for unraveling a level

of detail that most Christian readers of the text simply ignored” (Klepper 133). What Nicholas’s

“literalism” entailed has been explored by a number of writers. Lesley Smith, for instance, finds

that Nicholas’s commentary on John gives an atypical prominence to “local knowledge” of

ancient Middle-Eastern customs (Smith [2000] 226-227) and in general relies on outside sources

only for matters of practical and philosophical understanding in order to make sense of the

evangelist’s intended meaning (245-247). Kevin Madigan likewise finds that Nicholas’s

commentary on Matthew often criticizes patristic sources—as Klepper elaborates this point, “Not

only did he rely less on patristic authority, Nicholas did not hesitate to deviate from it, regularly

arguing against traditional interpretations of the text” and did so “only on the basis of the literal

27
Minnis is here speaking of Nicholas’s Psalter commentary, but the same generally holds for his commentaries on
other books. It should be noted also that Minnis considers Nicholas’s ideas about the literal sense to be perhaps
entirely indebted to Thomas Aquinas (Minnis 4). Corrine Carvalho further points out that, in considering different
“contributors” to the Bible, Nicholas paid less attention to the “divine author” and more to the human author than
did writers like Thomas Aquinas (Carvalho [2007] 773).

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sense” (Klepper 38)—and tends to eschew the presentist concerns often found fourteenth-century

commentaries (Madigan 219-221; but see Ocker 52, 64-65 for exceptions). By Mark Zier’s

account, even Nicholas’s understanding of the prophecies in Daniel hinges mainly on close

reading supplemented by secular knowledge (see especially Zier 181-188).

At the same time, as Levy notes, the “expansion of the literal sense to include parables

and metaphors” still left some significant difficulties, and “Some wished to constrict the range of

the literal sense such that the ‘force of the word’ (virtus sermonis) encompassed a term’s proper

grammatical signification within a proposition. It was thus distinct from the more expansive

usages of improper supposition: the common parlance (usus loquendi) that permits metaphors

and tropes in keeping with the author’s intended meaning” (Levy 33). 28 Thus Fristedt is right to

say that, for Wyclif, “Latin was one of the sacred languages which could not be violated even if

not understood, and Wycliffe himself must frequently have been in doubt as to the correct

wording and as to how far he could ‘go from the letter’” (Fristedt 1.105). The distinction

between virtus and usus becomes in effect the same as that underlying my distinction between

“denotative” and “explanatory” translations, and figurative doublets can thus function as a means

to appeal simultaneously to both views of “proper” signification. It therefore becomes apparent

that these kinds of exegetical problems are really at heart semantic problems. It is certainly to the

point here that Copeland finds “rhetorical” tropes in medieval reckoning to be in fact the domain

merely of grammar (Copeland [1991] 57-58; see Ocker 46-47 for an example of Nicholas of

Lyra “treat[ing] the ‘spiritual’ sense in the grammatical terms proper to literal exegesis”). As she

and Sluiter explain, “the medieval grammatical model sees an intrinsic ‘rectitude’ that governs

the extrinsic deviation. The meaning has been established and fixed prior to the figurative

Brungs and Goubier note that this strict view of virtus sermonis, often associated with Ockhamite nominalism,
28

was formally condemned at the University of Paris in 1340 (Brungs and Goubier 208).

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deviation” (Copeland and Sluiter 30-31). 29 In other words, by this reckoning, not just in the Bible

but in all contexts “figurative deviation” is so basic to language use as to be derivable from the

innate denotations of particular expressions.

Still, whatever else the literal sense of the biblical text might contain, it certainly included

the dictionary definitions of the words on the page, and a literal translation could never blatantly

disregard these. As Alexander Brungs and Frédéric Goubier summarize Wyclif’s views, no doubt

shared by the WB translators, “Knowledge of grammar as taught in grammar schools—that is,

knowledge of ‘dictionary’-meanings—serves as a starting point for the hermeneutical process. At

some stage in this process, knowledge will be enhanced to such an extent that the original starter-

knowledge is no longer of use and therefore can be left behind—but this does not mean that it

was not necessary in the first place” (Brungs and Goubier 238). Moreover, while the dictionary

definitions are relatively stable, figurative extensions are usually more variegated, a point

emphasized by Augustine (e.g., “lion” can refer to both Christ and the devil [DC 3.36]). This

implies also that figurative interpretations are generally more open to dispute than literal

denotations. Figurative doublets thus have the advantage of papering over some difficulties by

acknowledging both the underlying denotations of their lemmata and the figurative

interpretations that, in the translators’ understanding, also constitute part of the literal meaning,

even if particular figurative interpretations are potentially questionable or ambiguous.

All that said, EV’s figurative doublets follow a number of predictable patterns. For

instance, the EV translators usually clarify euphemisms for death with de-euphemizing doublets.

Thus we find forms of dormire translated by variants of “slepte or diede” at 2 Maccabees 12:45,

29
It should be noted that, rather than either “grammar” or “rhetoric,” Wyclif generally prefers to speak of the “logic
of Scripture,” but, as Ghosh explains, for Wyclif “‘logic’ is posited as a master-discourse identical to Christ himself,
and encompassing, as necessary, the arts of language (grammar, rhetoric, and hermeneutics) as well as the arts of
disputation” (Ghosh [2011] 27).

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Matthew 27:52, Acts 13:36, 1 Corinthians 11:30, 15:6, and 15:18, and 1 Thessalonians 4:13; 30

obductionis by “of opressing or deþ” at Ecclesiasticus 5:1; expirauit by “sente out þe spirit eþer

diede” at Luke 23:46; ceciderunt by “felden or deieden” at 1 Corinthians 10:8; resolutionis by

“of resolucioun or deeþ” at 2 Timothy 4:6; and distenti by “holdun forþ or deed” at Hebrews

11:35. 31 Most figurative doublets in EV are not used repeatedly, but this case, while atypical in

its recurrence, is illustrative of the direct simplicity of most of EV’s figurative doublets.

Generally, these doublets draw simply on the old recognition, which Peter Auksi traces through

medieval exegesis more broadly, that “secular rhetoric properly studied and applied could assist

the student of...the Bible” (Auksi 182; see also 180-181), and are explicable in terms of standard

rhetorical tropes and figures. 32 This is true not only, as in Ps(P), for conventional metonymies

like cornu for “strength,” but also for more context-dependent metaphors, synecdoches, etc.

Examples of figurative doublets in EV are thus plentiful and varied. Table 4.2.6 furnishes

a broad, though far from exhaustive, sampling.

Table 4.2.6. Figurative Doublets in EV

Bar. 6:49: sentiri = for to be feelid or demyd
Ezek. 3:17: speculatorem = a biholder or a spier
Ezek. 4:12: in oculis = in þe eyen or siȝt [also Ezek. 4:8]
Ezek. 5:2: nudabo = y shal make nakid or unsheþe
Ezek. 13:18: capiendas = for to take or disseyve
Ezek. 20:32: cogitatio mentis uestrae = þe þenkynge of ȝour soule or understondynge
Ezek. 21:16: appetitus = þe appetit or desier
Ezek. 22:15: uentilabo = I shal wyndewe or blowe
Ezek. 23:12: forma...egregia = in noble fourme or shappli
Ezek. 27:27: populo tuo praeerant = weren bifore to þi puple or soverayns

30
In some of these places, recent translations such as the New Revised Standard Version, New American Standard
Bible, and English Standard Version follow a similar pattern, either explaining in a footnote that “fall asleep” means
“die” or using “die” in the main text and explaining in a footnote that the Greek lemma literally means “fall sleep.”
It is interesting that, in these MnE versions, the latter is more common.
31
A “that is” gloss at 1 Cor. 7:39 functions similarly.
32
Ancient and medieval writers (e.g. Quintilian and Martianus Capella; see Copeland [1991] 57-58) sometimes
draw a distinction between “trope” and “figure,” but I am scarcely the first to find such distinctions hard to maintain
consistently (cf. Copeland and Sluiter 32), and so I will use the two terms more or less interchangeably.

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 Dan. 2:34: comminuit = made lesse or brake
Dan. 8:4: uentilantem = wyndowynge or castynge doun
Dan. 12:3: docti = tauȝt men or wiise
Hos. 12:3: subplantauit = he supplauntide or disceyvyde
Ob. 3: scissuris = kyttyng or hoolis
Mic. 4:8: nebulosa = cloudy or derk
Mic. 6:16: sibilum = hissyng or scornyng [cf. Zeph. 2:15]
Hab. 3:14: sceptris = þe sceptris or powers
Zeph. 1:8: peregrina = pilgrim or straunge [also Heb. 13:9]
Zech. 6:10: transmigratione = þe transmygracioun or caitiftee
Zech. 8:23: linguis = tungis or langagis
Zech. 9:15: proteget = shal kevere or defende
Zech. 10:8: sibilabo = y shal hisse or softly speeke
1 Mac. 2:48: cornu = horn or strengþe
1 Mac. 6:6: primis = þe first or best men
1 Mac. 11:62: dextram = riȝt hond or pees
1 Mac. 14:4: siluit = was stille or pesible
1 Mac. 15:6: percussuram = smytyng or printe
2 Mac. 5:17: mente = fro mind or undirstondyng
2 Mac. 6:19: amplectens = biclippynge or desiirynge
2 Mac. 7:41: consumpta 33 = waastid or dead
2 Mac. 10:3: ignitis lapidibus = stoon fiirid or flyntys
2 Mac. 14:10: superest = is above or alyve
Rm. 7:13: appareat = appere or be knowen
Rm. 9:6: exciderit = haþ falle doun or failide unfulfillid
1 Cor. 1:11: significatum = signyfied or toold
1 Cor. 14:11: barbarus = a barbar or not undirstondun
1 Cor. 14:14: mens = mynde or resoun
2 Cor. 1:17: est et non = is and not or ȝhe and nay
Gal. 4:19: parturio = I childe or brynge forþ by traveyl
Eph. 5:18: inebriari = be fulfillid or be drunkun
Phil. 2:17: immolor = I be offrid or slayn
1 Tim. 2:2: sublimitate = hiȝnesse or greet stat
Tit. 1:15: mens = þe soule or resoun
Heb. 1:4: differentius = more different or excellent
Heb. 5:12: elementa = elementis or lettris
Heb. 9:3: uelamentum = veil or hydyng
Heb. 10:7: capitulo = þe heed or bigynnyng
Heb. 10:28: irritam...faciens = makynge voyde or brekinge
Jas. 1:14: inlectus = snaarid or deceyved
Jas. 3:8: domare = daunte or chastise
1 Pet. 3:7: uaso = vessel or body
1 Pet. 3:22: degluttiens mortem 34 = swolewinge deeþ or destriynge

33
SV consummata, with consumpta noted in the apparatus.
34
Not in SV but documented in its apparatus.

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 Jude 16: mirantes = wondringe or worschipinge
Rev. 19:15: calcat = trediþ or defouliþ
These doublets are mostly explicable in terms of rhetorical tropes of the types explained

in standard reference-works like Isidore’s Etymologies. Thus, some explicate metonymies: we

have already noted cornu for “strength” (1 Maccabees 2:48), and to the same category of

conventional metonymy (transnominatio ab alia significatione ad aliam proximitatem translata

[Etym. 1.37.8]) we might adduce “eyen or siȝt” for oculi, “sceptris or powers” for sceptra, “mind

or undirstondyng” for mens, and “tungis or langagis” for linguae. Other doublets explicate their

lemmata as cause-for-effect metonymies 35 (“tauȝt...or wiise” for docti, “kyttyng or hoolis” for

scissuris, “smytyng or printe” for percussura, “trediþ or defouliþ” for calcat), genus-for-species

synecdoches 36 (“elementis or lettris” for elementa 37), or species-for-genus synecdoches (“be

offrid or slayn” for immolari, “pilgrim or straunge” for peregrinus). Others treat their lemmata as

metaphors (“cloudy or derk” for nebulosus, “veil or hydyng” for uelamen, “vessel or body” for

uas) or personifications (“make nakid or unsheþe” for nudare applied to a sword). This includes

concrete-for-abstract substitutions (“take or disseyve” for capere, “biclippynge or desiirynge” for

amplectens, “supplauntide or disceyvyde” for subplantauit, “hiȝnesse or greet stat” for

sublimitas, “snaarid or deceyved” for inlectus) and more complicated associations like “first or

best men” for primi and “more different or excellent” for differentius. We need not dissect all of

35
Cf. Etym. 1.37.10: item per efficientem id quod efficitur, sicut “pigrum frigus” quod pigros homines faciat, et
“timor pallidus” eo quod pallidos homines reddat. at contra per id quod efficitur efficiens (Isidore’s examples seem
to muddle cause-for-effect and effect-for-cause metonymies, but the basic point is clear.)
36
Cf. Etym. 1.37.13: synecdoche est conceptio, cum a parte totum uel a toto pars intelligitur. eo enim et per speciem
genus et per genus species demonstratur, sed species pars est, genus autem totum.
37
In considering “lettris” a non-literal extension of “elementis” rather than part of the lemma’s literal denotation, I
follow Alan of Lille, who says that soleat “elementum” littera dici [“a letter is customarily called an ‘element’”]
merely tropice [“figuratively”] at Anticlaudianus 2.429.

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these, but it will be worthwhile to survey some of the peculiarities of EV’s handling of rhetorical

tropes in producing figurative doublets.

First of all, it is interesting that practically none of the metonymic substitutions that we

have seen in earlier texts yield doublets in EV. The case of “horn” for “strength” is nearly the

only exception. Even Hebraisms involving “hand” go unexplained in this translation, as also do

expressions involving “arm” (often representing “strength”), “kidneys” (in Hebrew designating

the seat of thought), and “heart” (also referring to the seat of thought or emotion). In other cases,

the translators do explicate figurative uses so obvious that it is surprising that they should have

considered explication necessary. Particularly conspicuous is “tungis or langagis,” given that in

both ME and Latin the word for the physical organ of speaking can also refer to speech, and

“tungis” ought to be sufficient for both. Other figurative doublets may be equally “gratuitous.”

For instance, with sceptris (“sceptris or powers”) at Habakkuk 3:14, one must recognize the

association of a sceptre with royal power to make sense of the prophet’s statement that “Þou

[God] cursidist þe sceptris” of the “unpitouse man,” but this is hardly arcane knowledge. 38 To

judge from the MED’s quotations, the use of “sceptre” metonymically to mean “sovereign

authority, dignity, or state” was still novel in the fourteenth century, but at the same time sceptres

were a regular part of a king’s accoutrements in medieval England as well as ancient Israel.

The need for clarification of metonymic uses is more obvious in other cases, as is well

illustrated by the doublets used for forms of sibilare and sibilum. In all cases, the doublet’s first

component is the denotative translation “hiss,” but because the significance of “hissing” can

differ in different contexts, the translators vary the second component. Thus forms of

“scorn[yng]” are used at Ezekiel 27:36, Micah 6:16, and Zephaniah 2:15, when “hiss” marks

38
Forms of sceptrum are also translated with the synonymous doublet “ceptre or kyngis ȝerd” at Bar. 6:13 and Ezek.
19:14; see Tables 4.1.2 and 4.1.4.

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contempt, but “softly speeke” is used at Zechariah 10:8, where “hiss” refers to a covert signal

(sibilabo eis et congregabo illos). Sometimes the reference of the lemma is culturally or

historically bound, as with dextra and transmigratio. Extending the right hand can mean

different things in different contexts and for different cultures, so when it occurs at 1 Maccabees

11:62 as a gesture of peace, the translators note this by appending “or pees” to a denotative

translation. Even more historically sensitive is the translation of transmigratio as “þe

transmygracioun or caitiftee” at Zechariah 6:10 (cf. “þe transmygracioun or...þe puple led out of

her loond” at Ezekiel 11:25, not listed in the table), where the second component clarifies that

“migration” stands in for the Babylonian Captivity of Israel (which began with a migration).

The distinction between particular rhetorical tropes is often difficult to draw absolutely,

and some of these examples that I have labeled metonymic may be equally well classified as

metaphorical. Nevertheless, such distinctions often matter because figures like metaphor entail

less of a direct, one-to-one correspondence between vehicle and tenor than does metonymy. This

in turn makes the relationship between source-text and translation more complex. For instance,

parturio at Galatians 4:19 (in Paul’s address to the letter’s recipients as filioli mei, quos iterum

parturio) does literally mean “childe” (i.e., “give birth”), and so must be meant metaphorically

when applied by a male author to persons not related to him by blood. The doublet’s second

component thus paraphrases the verb as “brynge forþ bi traveyl” in an attempt to explain what

aspects of childbirth are being applied to Paul’s “birthing” of his addressees, suggesting that the

relevant point is the “travail” of it. This is by no means an unnatural interpretation, and is

paralleled in some MnE translations (for instance, KJV has “travail in birth” 39), but it is more

intrusively interpretive than identifying the referent of a conventional metonym, like “eye” for

The original Greek ὠδίνω also literally means “I give birth;” note that the Vulgate stands apart from both EV and
39

KJV in making no effort to explain this metaphorical usage.

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“sight.” Of course all translation is interpretive to one degree or another, but the relationship

between tenor and vehicle in a metaphor can be multifaceted even in simple cases. Thus the

emphasis on “travail” in EV’s explication of parturio is simply one possible understanding

among others of why Paul uses the image of childbirth to describe his relationship to the Galatian

church, and it passes over, for instance, implications of ongoing “maternal” responsibility toward

the “children.”

The multifariousness of metaphorical expressions is nicely illustrated by the difference

between the doubled translations of uentilare at Ezekiel 22:15 and Daniel 8:4. In both of these,

the first component is a form of “wyndewe” (i.e., “winnow”), a denotative translation, but the

divergence in the second component is striking: “blowe” in Ezekiel, “castynge doun” in Daniel.

Conceptually, the difference is explained simply enough by context. In Ezekiel, the verb occurs

in a declaration by God that the people of Israel will be scattered (et dispergam te in nationes, et

uentilabo te in terras), with “blow” perhaps suggesting wind imagery, while in Daniel it relates

to an animal in one of the prophet’s visions (uidi arietem cornibus uentilantem contra

occidentem), an atypical usage that seems to refer to a ram brandishing its horns. At any rate,

“winnow” being the basic meaning of uentilare, both uses must be metaphorical when applied to

either God or a ram. What is striking is that the two explications of this metaphor necessarily

draw on different aspects of the shared vehicle. In the image of God “winnowing” the people of

Israel, the relevant aspect of the winnowing process is the dispersal of the chaff, as is emphasized

by a parallel with dispergam (“I shall scatter”) in the first part of the verse. This, however, would

make nonsense of the image of ram “winnowing” with its horns, which instead seems to imply

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(as the EV translators construe it) a comparison between the movement of the ram’s head and the

waving of a winnowing-fan, which recalls a ram lowering its horns before charging. 40

Conversely, we also see instances of different vehicles attached to the same tenor. This

seems to be particularly natural when the lemma is a concrete noun or verb standing in

metaphorically for an abstract entity or action. Thus the verb “deceive” is appended as an

alternative rendering to denotative translations of capere (“take”), subplantare (“supplaunt”),

and illicere (“snare”). All three verbs, while differing starkly in primary denotation, refer to

concrete actions that can readily be used as images for misleading or tricking someone in non-

physical ways. Likewise, “desire” in an abstract sense is, among EV’s doublets, expressed by

multiple different terms referring to bodily actions or inclinations: embracing (amplectens,

“biclippynge” at 2 Maccabees 6:19) and physical urges (appetitus, “appetit” at Ezekiel 21:16).

This is certainly not to imply that only concrete lemmata interpreted as metaphors for abstract

concepts can give rise to the same explanatory translation for different lemmata, but, perhaps

because a move from concrete to abstract often entails thinking in general categories, doublets

involving this kind of interpretive operation seem especially prone to such repetitions.

Overlapping with this is synecdoche, which in EV’s doublets usually involves the

substitution of a word denoting a general type for a word denoting a particular member of that

type (or vice versa). For instance, in the phrase significatum est enim mihi de vobis fratres mei ab

iis qui sunt Chloes at 1 Corinthians 1:11, it would seem the method of “signifying” is some kind

40
In this case, the “fanning” imagery is an invention of the Vulgate. The original Hebrew ‫ֵח‬
ַ ‫[ ְמ ַנגּ‬mənaggēaḥ] derives
from a root meaning “push,” “thrust,” or “gore” (BDB), and seems to have given both Latin and MnE translators
difficulty because of its lack of a direct object. MnE renderings since the Geneva Bible have preferred “pushing” or,
more recently, “charging.” Jerome probably added the reference to horns in view of the Hebrew word’s associations
with the use of horns when applied to animals, and in Ex. 21:28-32 translates forms of the same Hebrew word with
variants of cornu percutere—but here he needed an intransitive and less violent verb.

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of personal communication, though Paul is not specific, 41 and so the more concrete “told” is

supplied as a second translation of significatum, which can refer to any kind of meaning-bearing

token, visual or auditory. The case of “barbar or not undirstondun” at 1 Corinthians 14:11 42 is

especially interesting because of the multivalence of its lemma barbarus. The original sense of

Greek βάρβαρος is simply “non-Greek,” but this comes to imply a number of things in different

contexts, most having to do with various types of unsophistication. When borrowed into Latin,

barbarus could also mean “foreign,” but not normally “ignorant” in a generic way. 1 Corinthians

14, however, deals with the limitations of speaking in tongues, and so in v. 11, which reads, Si

ergo nesciero uirtutem uocis, ero ei cui loquor barbarus, et qui loquitur mihi barbarus, the

emphasis is on inability to understand a language, but not specifically Greek (or Latin). Thus, as

the EV translators realize, barbarus must refer to a more general category of language barrier

than it usually does. This synecdochic interpretation of barbarus is paralleled in a passage in

Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Politics cited by some fourteenth-century defenses

of vernacular Bible translation (see Dove [2010] 146, 216), but “not undirstondun” here is still

interesting precisely because, first, it is broader in meaning than its lemma and, second, it would

make no sense in any of the four other places in the Vulgate New Testament in which barbarus

occurs, since these do not involve failures of communication (see section 2c).

Other doublets interpret their lemmata not as synecdoches properly speaking, but as

based on implied synecdochic substitutions. For example, in “was stille or pesible” for siluit at 1

Maccabees 14:4, the absence of noise (the literal meaning of the lemma) is construed by the

second component as standing in for a lack of strife, of which the lack of noise is one aspect. The

41
The original Greek ἐδηλώθη (lit. “it was made apparent”) is if anything less specific than the Vulgate.
42
Cf. PE’s gloss on this verse: “a barbyr þat is he me nor I hym schal not undyrstande.”

224
case of “a biholder or a spier” for speculator is striking because this doublet essentially

recapitulates the etymology of its lemma. As shown by the OLD’s quotations, “spy” or

“watchman” in a military sense 43 is in fact the primary meaning of speculator, already

established as such in classical Latin. The EV doublet’s first component, however, suggests that

the translators understood it primarily in terms of the verb speculari, whose basic sense, “watch”

(“bihold”), is more generic than that of its derivative. At the same time, “one who watches” (“a

biholder”) is a category which encompasses different kinds of “watching,” including “watching”

as part of the duties of a guardsman, and that is clearly pertinent in the context of Ezekiel 3:17

(God’s charge to Ezekiel: Fili hominis, speculatorem dedi te domui Israel, et audies de ore meo

uerbum et annuntiabis eis ex me), whose imagery casts the prophet explicitly as “watchman”

(KJV): hence “spier.” Presumably, speculator in this sense was originally just such a

synecdoche, but by Jerome’s day (and well before), “spier” was the primary meaning of

speculator. Nevertheless, the presence of the more generic translation in EV’s doublet, along

with its placement in first position, suggests that the translators (mistakenly) believed speculator

to have the same less restricted semantic range as the verb from which it is derived.

Perhaps the most egregious examples of disputable synecdoche (or metonymy, since

again these are not always easy to distinguish) are the doubled translations of mens at 1

Corinthians 14:14 and Titus 1:15, where “mind” is taken as a synecdoche for a particular mental

faculty. Interestingly, these two doublets differ not in the explanatory translation offered by the

second component, but in the denotative translation offered by the first: “mynde or resoun” in 1

Corinthians and “soule or resoun” in Titus. We have already seen (Chapter II, section 3b) how

Ps(P) confronts difficulties of translating Latin vocabulary for mind, soul, and spirit into English,

43
ME “spier” can have both of these senses, not just the former as in MnE (MED).

225
and those difficulties had not disappeared by the ME period, as is shown by variation in how

words like anima and mens are rendered in ME translations from Latin. The difference between

“mynde” and “soule” in these doublets is therefore unremarkable. Both words, however, like

mens, refer to something broader than “reason,” which denotes one particular function of the

mind/soul. Mens, it is true, can stand in for specific functions of the mind/soul (see OLD

quotations), but the decision to single out “reason” strikes one as almost arbitrary in both cases.

Moreover, it should not be imagined that the EV translators only explicated “figurative”

uses along the lines of basic rhetorical tropes. For Augustine, there are two basic classes of

figurative language, and uerba quibus [figura] continetur aut a similibus rebus ducta inueniuntur

aut ab aliqua uicinitate attingentibus (DC 3.34), and the latter category especially allows for

considerable extension of the concept of “figurative.” Indeed, as Augustine’s own examples

show, it can allow for quite complex operations, such as what Quintilian calls metalepsis or

transsumptio (quae ex alio tropo id alium velut viam praestat [Inst. 8.6.37]). In this trope, as

Quintilian explains it, rather than a direct transfer of meaning, as from tenor to vehicle in a

metaphor, there is an intermediate step in which one figure is transferred into another (est enim

haec id metalepsi natura, ut inter id quod transfertur et id quod transfertur sit medius quidam

gradus, nihil ipse significans sed praebens transitum [8.6.38]). Quintilian’s examples are far

clearer than his definitions, and show that what this really means is that, as William Purcell puts

it, “A transsumptio/metalepsis provides the explicit link between two expressions possessing a

common quality, but not being synonymous” (Purcell 371). Thus, Quintilian suggests, Aelius

Catus might be referred to as Doctus (catus and doctus both denote intelligence), or cano [“I

sing”] might be used to mean dico [“I say”] because both are connected to canto [“I chant”]

(Inst. 8.6.38). Essentially, in other words, it is a principle of analogy; Purcell suggests that in a

226
transsumptio the expression used, the expression denoted, and the concept that connect them

operate like the major, minor, and middle terms of a syllogism (Purcell 372).

Certainly, though Quintilian was unknown in fourteenth-century England, such indirect

transfers of meaning were familiar to medieval rhetoric. Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. c.1200), to cite

a prominent instance, even uses the term transsumptio (more often in the verb form

transsumere), and, though for Geoffrey this often seems to mean simply “metaphor,” 44 his

explanation and examples show that he means something closer to the concept of transsumptio

as defined by Quintilian. Thus, he suggests that exornare [“to adorn”] can be “transsumed” to

pingere [“to paint”] not because of a direct contiguity between the concepts of adorning and

painting but because both verbs belong to the larger semantic field of ornatum faciens [“making

decoration”] (Poetria Nova 791). In general, for Geoffrey, talis transsumptio uerbi / est tibi pro

speculo, quia te specularis in illo / et proprias cognoscis oues in rure alieno (801-803)—i.e.,

there are points of similarity (“your own sheep”) but neither similarity in overall shape as in

metaphor nor direct contiguity as in metonymy and synecdoche (“in another’s field”). A number

of EV’s figurative doublets can only be explained in terms of similarly indirect transfers of

meaning. For instance, in “is and not or ȝhe and nay” for est et non at 2 Corinthians 1:17, each

component consists of a word denoting affirmation and a word denoting denial. They differ in

that the first component (like the lemma) expresses this in a verb and an adverb that denote

existence and non-existence, while the second component uses particles that denote affirmative

and negative answers to questions. In other words, the first component translates the lemma

literally, and the second supplies an alternative translation drawn from the same semantic field

44
Such is the view of most twentieth-century scholars, though Purcell regards this as a misinterpretation (see Purcell
376-380).

227
(“affirmation plus negation”) but referring to a different aspect thereof. Something similar occurs

in “first or best men” for primi and “more different or excellent” for differentius.

In addition to explicating single-word figurative expressions, the translators also

sometimes treated phrases in their source-text as periphrases. Instances of this are fairly rare, but

include expressions in which an adjective-noun phrase is simplified to a single noun (as in “stoon

fiirid or flyntys” for ignitae lapides) or a single adjective (“in noble fourme or shappli” for

formā...egregiā) and at least one expression in which a noun-phrase is reduced to a single word

(“þe þenkynge of ȝour soule or understondynge” for cogitatio mentis uestrae). Likewise, in

“weren bifore to þi puple or soverayns” for populo tuo praeerant at Ezekiel 27:27, the doublet’s

second component substitutes a noun for a prepositional phrase. In all of these, the second

component is not so far from the literal meaning of the lemma that it would on its own be

inexcusable as a denotative translation, unlike most of the other kinds of explanatory translation

discussed in this section, but it is still (in Holmes’s terms) less homologous to its lemma than is

the first component.

In some cases, a calque or other “etymological translation” (see Chapter II, section 1b) is

paired with a more direct expression of the lemma’s contextual meaning, such that the lemma is

treated in effect as a periphrasis despite being a single word. Here, in contrast to the synonymous

calque doublets discussed in section 1a, the calque is usually the first component, and the other

component is not morphologically related to the lemma and not synonymous with the calque

component. Instead, as with doublets for periphrastic expressions, the second component

expresses the underlying denotation of the lemma as a whole, as distinct from that of its

individual elements. Thus, for instance, animaequior is, at Baruch 4:5, translated first as “of

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evener [ = aequior] inwitt [ = anima]” 45 and then paraphrased as “more stable” (a reasonably

literal translation but formed without regard for the lemma’s individual elements). Similarly, for

reposuerunt at 1 Maccabees 4:46, the calque “puttiden [ = posuerunt] aȝein [ = re-]” is paired

with the more paraphrasal “kepten.” Further doublets of this sort are listed in Table 4.2.7.

Table 4.2.7. Figurative Doublets in EV: Compound/Affixed Lemmata Treated as

Periphrases
Bar. 4:5: animaequior = of evener inwitt or more stable
Bar. 4:27: animaequiores = of evener herte or stabler
Bar. 6:42: circumdatae 46 = ȝoven aboute or bounden
Ezek. 4:3: circumdabis = þou shalt about ȝyve...or cumpas
Jon. 3:4: subuertetur = shal be undirturned or distruyed
Nah. 3:4: maleficia = evel dedis or wicchecraftis
Zeph. 2:14: superliminari = þe lyntill or over þresfold
1 Mac. 2:11: compositio = makyng to gidre or ournyng
1 Mac. 4:46: reposuerunt = puttiden aȝein or kepten
2 Mac. 2:33: effluere = for to flete out or be longe
2 Mac. 13:13: exitum = þe out goynge or eende
Mt. 4:21: reficientes = makynge aȝein or beetynge
Rm. 2:23: inhonoras = unworschipist or dispisist
Gal. 2:2: contuli = to gidere seyde or disputide
Gal. 6:1: praeoccupatus = bifore occupied or overcomen
Eph. 1:4: inmaculati = wiþ oute wemme or undefoulid
Eph. 1:7: gratificauit = made us able to his grace or made dereworþe
Phil. 3:11: occurram = I schal come or renne aȝens
Heb. 4:6: superest = leeveþ or is ouer
Heb. 4:15: conpati = suffre to gidere or have compassioun
Heb. 13:16: beneficientiae = of wel doynge or ȝyvynge
Jas. 1:21: insitum = insent or ioyned
2 Pet. 1:5: subinferentes = undir beringe or ȝevynge
2 Pet. 3:17: transducti = overled or deceyved
Rev. 22:15: uenefici = venym doers or poyseners

45
Note how the difficulties of rendering anima into English become apparent in EV as in Ps(P) (see Chapter II,
section 3b). Though only one mind/spirit/soul word is used here, comparison with the translation of animaequiores
at Bar. 4:27 (“of evener herte or stabler”) reveals a multiplicity of “soul” vocabulary. This particular distinction,
however, does not seem to correspond to any contextual nuance, and may be purely capricious.
46
SV circumdatis, with circumdatae noted in the apparatus.

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 In most of these, the second component would be acceptable on its own, but the (usually

initial) “etymological translation” suggests that the translators have treated the individual

elements of the lemma as essential to the full sense of the biblical text. We might even connect

this with Wyclif’s view that, as Smalley puts it, it is best for the biblical exegete to be able to

“resolve the Latin into the original Greek or Hebrew, thus knowing the property of the thing and

the reason why its name was imposed on it” (Smalley [1964] 279), though here the Latin is taken

as proxy for the original languages which the English is forced to match. Certainly this emphasis

on etymology fits in well with trends in contemporary biblical scholarship and exegesis. Indeed,

at this period most copies of the Vulgate included the etymologically-oriented Interpretations of

Hebrew Names, a document examined in some depth by de Hamel (see de Hamel 112-113, 123;

cf. Poleg [2013a] 217-229). According to Eyal Poleg, the explanations given in this text “were

seen as an integral part of the literal sense of Scripture,” and its omission from WB is something

of an oddity (Poleg [2013b] 77)—though it should be added that these etymologies can be wildly

false and were often used quite fancifully in medieval homiletic literature (Poleg [2013a] 229).

Names are obviously a special case, but the emphasis on understanding these according to their

individual elements obviously fits with broader patterns in medieval treatment of language.

Concern for the constituent parts of the lemma is, however, in actual fact often gratuitous.

Examining a modern German translation of the Hebrew Bible that makes similar use of calques

and neologisms to emphasize the etymologies of Hebrew words (though not in the form of

doublets), Alter finds it doubtful that “the ancient speakers were always so acutely conscious of

etymologies,” and notes that words in the Bible are sometimes used in contexts in which the

etymological meaning seems to be irrelevant (Alter [2019] 25). The same doubts arise in EV. For

instance, maleficia is indeed derived from male (“evel”) and facere (“to do,” hence “dedis”), but

230
even in classical Latin the meaning “witchcraft” was so well-established that its individual

elements are clearly irrelevant in most uses of the word in this sense (see OLD quotations). In

cases like the doubled translations of circumdare at Baruch 6:42 and Ezekiel 4:3, the initial

calque translation may even be misleading, since the dare element of this word never really

means “give,” and circumdare is generally treated in Latin texts as a simple unit meaning

“surround” (“cumpas”) or “enclose” (as in “bounden”).

In closing this section, we may note one problem of classification. In many of these

examples, whether the lemma is treated as metonymic, metaphorical, synecdochic, or

periphrastic, the translators seem to have shown errors of judgment in determining the lemma’s

literal denotation. We have already noted this eventuality with “biholder” for speculator and with

“ȝoven aboute” for circumdatus, but it is, for instance, also common with certain types of

expression that seem to be treated as metonymies. For instance, in three of the four doublets cited

above as examples of cause-for-effect metonymy—“tauȝt...or wiise” for docti at Daniel 12:3,

“kyttyng or hoolis” for scissuris at Obadiah 3, “smytyng or printe” for percussura at 1

Maccabees 15:6—the second component corresponds to one of the dictionary definitions of its

lemma as used in classical and late-antique Latin. Nevertheless, the first component in each case

suggests that the translators understood these words in the Vulgate primarily in terms of the

verbs docere (“teach”), scindere (“cut”), and percutere (“smite”), not of the nouns/adjectives

doctus, scissura, and percussura. Instead, they treat the meanings of these as secondary

extensions, implied as effects of the processes denoted by the underlying verbs (teaching

produces wisdom; cutting leaves a hole; striking produces an imprint) and required by their

contexts rather than by the lemmata’s definitions (the Daniel passage refers to learning/wisdom

231
as a part of moral character, the Obadiah passage to hollows in a rock, the 1 Maccabees passage

to the minting of coins).

Despite these reservations and limitations, I cannot agree with Copeland’s assessment

that “Wycliffite thought” diverged from that of “earlier theorists, notably Aquinas, [who] had

recognized the presence of figurative language or rhetorical indirection in Scripture and had been

willing to separate its localized force from the profound and pervasive intended meaning of

Scripture” (Copeland [2003] 186). Rather EV’s doublets commonly acknowledge the Vulgate’s

use of “rhetorical indirection” in a quite direct way. 47 At the same time, it should not be

forgotten that the translators virtually never fail to present the lemma’s dictionary definition (or

the dictionary definitions of its etyma) in addition to indicating what that lemma denotes in

context. Thus EV’s figurative doublets serve to satisfy two conceptions of the “literal”

simultaneously, recalling Wyclif’s “biblical logicism” as explained by Brungs and Goubier: “the

truth of Scripture is conveyed by means of a set of well-defined logico-semantical rules leaving

no space for ambiguities” (Brungs and Goubier 203). Hence in a figurative doublet, the lemma’s

figurative meaning is presented unambiguously as a translation, but that meaning is derived only

indirectly through the semantic rules that are figurative substitutions. In that sense, these

doublets represent a tension between a wish for word-for-word literalism and the ideal of making

the biblical text “openere in English [than] in Latyn,” as LV’s General Prologue puts it (see

Chapter V). 48 It becomes “opener,” that is, by replicating the Vulgate’s rhetorical tropes but also

47
Brungs and Goubier suggest that Copeland’s view that Wyclif and the Lollards disdained rhetoric is based on
confusion about when “rhetoric” as such is at issue and that much of what Copeland classes part of “rhetoric”
Wyclif classed as grammar and logic, which he did not hold in contempt (Brungs and Goubier 205).
48
For Wyclif himself, dictionary meanings “have their place in the process of understanding, and we require them to
get off the ground, so to speak, in our effort to understand, just as a translator might sometimes consult a dictionary,
but then find his own wording instead of relying exclusively upon what he finds there” (Brungs and Goubier 209).

232
unpacking the semantic content of these tropes rather than (as the Vulgate itself does) leaving

readers to analyze these for themselves.

(2c) Figurative Doublets: Religious and Moral Expressions

Given WB’s association with a heretical sect, doublets that draw on exegetical

approaches more complex (and potentially more controversial) than interpreting basic rhetorical

tropes will inevitably be of special interest. In fact the WB translators do take more obvious

interpretive license in some matters, particularly in translating expressions with theological,

doctrinal, or moral significance. The religious matters on which doublets in this group touch are

many and varied, but a number of themes recur, and they provide some insight into the nature of

the exegesis built into EV. On the whole, the EV translators avoid outright allegorization in favor

of explaining the lemma’s primary and immediate moral/doctrinal import, in line with the

principle laid out by LV’s Prologue to Isaiah that “No gostli undurstonding is autentik no but it

be groundid in þe text openli eþer in open resoun suynge of principlis eþer reulis of feiþ” (Dove

[2010] 87). Nevertheless, doublets in this group may be distinguished from those discussed in the

previous section in that the secondary meanings assigned to them are not essential to a lexical

understanding of their lemmata even in context. In other words, they guide the interpretation of

particular lemmata on the basis of a particular exegetical understanding (“open resoun suynge of

principlis eþer reulis of feiþ”) rather than those lemmata’s properties and connotations in general.

A comparison between the renderings of soluere/soluerit in Matthew 5:17 (“undo or

distruye”) and 5:19 (“undoþ or brekeþ”) furnishes a good example (Vulgate: Nolite putare

quoniam ueni soluere legem aut prophetas: non ueni soluere sed adimplere...qui ergo soluerit

unum de mandatis istis minimis et docuerit sic homines, minimus uocabitur in regno caelorum).

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Here the difference in second component between the two doublets arises because in v. 17,

“undo” is taken to mean abolishing the Mosaic Law, but in v. 19 it is taken to mean violating it.

A distinction between the verbs in the original Greek confirms the difference, 49 but this has been

lost in the Vulgate, which thus provides no lexical clues to the nature of the distinction, given

that both repetitions of soluere take as their objects two nearly synonymous nouns (lex and

mandatum). Rather, the distinction is recovered through a broader understanding of Jesus’ point

about the Mosaic Law in this passage. As W.D. Davies and Dale Allison explain, in v. 17 the

verb must have the basic sense of “destroy” not only because of parallels (clearer in the Greek

than in either Latin or English translation) in which the sense is more unambiguous but because

Jesus here aims “to defend his loyalty to the Torah against those who made him out to be an

antinomian” (Davies and Allison 1.482), while v. 19 has to do with individual human actions

(493-494).

This is far from a controversial interpretation, finding its ground as it does simply in the

larger discourse of which the doublet is a part, but it shows that the EV translators were, like the

medieval Latin commentators discussed by Copeland and Sluiter, willing to use a “more flexible,

indeed ingenious, understanding of figurative expression” to “bring the grammatical usage of a

pronouncement into accord with theological principles” (Copeland and Sluiter 20). Again,

however, this “ingenuity” can take many forms, not merely that of disambiguating equivocal

words. First of all, it can entail reinterpreting the language of the Bible in terms of post-biblical

theological categories. This is found, for instance, with terms relating to judgment,

condemnation, or ruin, which are frequently understood as meaning “damnation” (Table 4.2.8).

49
The Greek verbs are καταλῦσαι in v. 17 (twice) and λύσῃ in v. 19—a difference smaller than that between
“destroy” and “break,” since it consists only in the presence or absence of a prefix, but still significant. Davies and
Allison see the echo of καταλύειν in λύειν as a rhetorical device emphasizing the connection between the two
statements (Davies and Allison 1.496).

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 Table 4.2.8. Non-synonymous Doublets in EV: “Damn”/“Damnation”
Mt. 7:13: perditionem = perdicioun or dampnacioun [also Jn. 17:12; Phil. 1:28; 2 Pet.
2:1]
Jn. 3:18: non iudicatur = is not demyd or dampnyd
Rm. 9:22: interitum = perdicioun or dampnacioun
Rm. 14:22: non iudicat = demeþ not or dampneþ not
1 Cor. 2:15: iudicatur = is demyd or dampned
1 Cor. 11:29: iudicium = dom or dampnacioun
2 Thess. 2:12: 50 iudicentur = be demyd or dampned
The doubled translation of abyssum as “depnesse or helle” at Romans 10:7 works similarly.

In each of these, the lemma and first component lack the specific religious denotation of

the doublet’s second component, which casts the “judgment” or “perdition” in question

specifically as condemnation to hell. This was not a controversial view in the EV translators’

day, but it is still an example of explicitly theological, rather than merely rhetorical, explanation

and elaboration, based on a particular understanding of what “judgment” and “perdition” mean.

Moreover, in this case, that understanding is not directly based on the passages in which any of

these expressions appear, given that, as modern New Testament scholars such as Dimitris

Kyrtatas have noted, “it is quite evident that hell, as a place of individual, corporal and eternal

torture, applicable to all ages (before and after Christ) and to all nations, is absent from the New

Testament” (Kyrtatas 282). Nevertheless, such a view of damnation had been current since the

Patristic Age, 51 and so, given the Lollards’ reliance on a tradition shaped by the Latin Fathers—

for whom, as Barth puts its, “Universality [is] the mark of what is apostolical and therefore

ecclesiastical” (Barth [1956] 549)—the EV translators would not have regarded this as an

anachronistic or non-authoritative interpretation.

50
Marked 2:11 in FM.
51
Kyrtatas observes that this doctrine had emerged within “a generation after all the New Testament documents had
been completed” and points to the Apocalypse of Peter (early to mid-2nd cent.) as one of the first documents to
express a conception of damnation as conscious, eternal torture (Kyrtatas 288).

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 Terms relating to faith, belief, and unbelief are also sometimes interpreted in light of

post-biblical conceptual categories, as when terms not normally denoting religious

categorizations are interpreted as meaning “Christian” or “heathen” (Table 4.2.9).

Table 4.2.9. Non-synonymous Doublets in EV: “Christian” and “Heathen”

Ac. 16:1: fidelis = feiþful or cristen
Ac. 28:1: barbari = barbaris or heþene men
Rm. 1:14: barbaris = barbaryns or heþene men
Rm. 2:25: praeputium = prepucie or custom of heþen men [also Rm. 2:26]
Rm. 3:30: praeputium = prepucie or heþen men [also Gal. 2:7]
Rm. 4:9: praeputio = prepucie or staat of heþene men
1 Cor. 7:12: infidelem = unfeiþful or heþen [also 1 Tim. 5:8]
1 Cor. 10:27: infidelium = of unfeiþful or heþen men
2 Cor. 6:15: fideli = a feiþful man or cristen man
2 Cor. 6:15: infidele = unfeiþful or heþene
Gal. 3:8: gentes = folkis or heþene men
1 Tim. 6:2: fideles = feiþful or cristene
The gloss “þat is maner of heþene men” on “prepucie” at Galatians 6:15 has a similar effect.

Essentially, these doublets map the New Testament’s vocabulary for belief and unbelief

onto the accepted categories and vocabulary of medieval Europe. The New Testament writers

themselves largely refer simply to having or lacking “faith,” but in EV’s day this opposition is

more familiarly expressed in terms of “heathen” and “Christian.” 52 (A similar forced alignment

of the New Testament’s vocabulary with the accepted vocabulary of the translators’ day also

seems to be suggested by the use of “baptise or cristen” for forms of baptizare at Matthew 3:11,

Mark 16:16, and Romans 6:3, though the distinction between the two components in this

instance is dismissed by Hugh Pope as “arbitrary” [Pope 80].) The case of “barbaryns or heþen

men” is especially striking, given that, as we have seen, the basic meaning of barbarus involves

a much different opposition than that between “heathen” and “Christian.” Indeed, in both Acts

28:1, where it refers to the natives of Malta, and Romans 1:14, which employs the conventional

52
The term Χριστιανός is attested in the NT, but only in Ac. and 1 Pet. Paul never uses it.

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opposition between βάρβαροι [“barbarians”] and Ἕλληνες [“Greeks”], the original sense of

“non-Greek” seems to be all that is meant. The religious element introduced by “heathen” is thus

totally absent from the source-text, and EV confounds the source-text’s national or cultural

designation with an expression pertaining to religious categories.

The various doublets for praeputium represent a particularly interesting attempt to

reconcile biblical and medieval categories. Throughout Romans and Galatians, Paul uses the

word translated praeputium (lit. “foreskin”) to refer to non-observance of Jewish law or to those

who do not observe Jewish law, 53 but does not explain this because it would have been obvious

to his original addressees. This metonymy becomes more complex, however, as it is clear from

the course of Paul’s overall arguments that “uncircumcision” can be associated more generally

with separation from God, not just with not being Jewish. As James D.G. Dunn explains Paul’s

train of thought in Romans 2, “The argument has narrowed from a vaguely defined ‘doing good,’

through the more specific ‘doing the law,’ and now to the single issue of circumcision, in a

progression the devout Jewish interlocutor [imagined in this passage] would have appreciated.

For such a one, all that had been so far discussed—what God approves, the point of the law, the

privilege of the Jew—could be quite properly and fittingly focused on the one question of

circumcision” (Dunn 1.119). By contrast, for medieval English readers of the New Testament,

the males among whom would generally have had intact foreskins and attached no religious

significance to the fact, the importance of the distinction between circumcisio and praeputium

has to be recovered through a more holistic understanding of Paul’s outlook and background

assumptions than can be provided by construing individual verses in isolation.

53
The original Greek is ἀκροβυστία, of which Latin praeputium and MnE “foreskin” are the obvious denotative
translations (LSJ). MnE translators since Tyndale have usually rendered it “uncircumcision,” a compromise between
the literal denotation and the kind of explanatory rendering exemplified by “state/custom of heathen men” (cf. Dunn
1.121).

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 A number of doublets work similarly to introduce explicitly religious terms even in

translating lemmata with secular meanings. Some examples are listed in Table 4.2.10.

Table 4.2.10. Non-synonymous Doublets in EV: Expressions Given Ritual or Doctrinal

Interpretation
Jn. 6:14: signum = þe tokene or myracle [also Jn. 6:26]
Jn. 9:16: signa = syngnys or myraclis [also Jn. 10:41, 11:47, 12:37, 21:25; 2 Cor. 12:12]
Rm. 14:14: commune = comune or unclene
Gal. 4:24: allegoriam = allegorie or goostly undirstondinge
Gal. 5:21: sectae = sectis or heresyes
Eph. 1:11: sorte = by sorte or grace
Tit. 3:5: lauacrum = waischyng or baptym
Heb. 2:2: praeuaricatio = trespassyng or breking of þe lawe
Heb. 8:6: sanctum = helewid or confermyd
Here the religious meaning is sometimes quite context-sensitive indeed. The use of

signum to denote a miracle was discussed in Chapter II, section 2, where we saw a doublet quite

similar to those in EV John (differing from those at 6:14 and 6:26 only in the use of Germanic

“wonder” in place of its Latinate synonym “miracle,” which was not current in OE) used at one

point in Hep. Lauacrum in Titus 3:5, meanwhile, is understood to be a reference to baptism even

though nothing in the immediate context absolutely requires that the “washing” in question be

that kind of ceremonial washing. Likewise, with allegoriam in Galatians 4:24, allegory is

understood to be not simply the rhetorical trope as defined by classical grammarians, but

specifically interpretation informed by understanding of spiritual (“goostly”) matters. “Halewid

or confermyd” at Hebrews 8:6 seems to narrow its lemma still further by making it refer to rites

of confirmation that had not actually developed at the time Hebrews was written. These are all

isolated instances, but they fit into the same general pattern of inserting more explicit, and

usually post-biblical, religious language into the New Testament as does the use of the words

“heathen” and “Christian” as alternative translations for fidelis and infidelis.

The other major pattern that can be readily identified among doublets with a doctrinal

motivation relates to practical morality. In such cases, lemmata with concrete or secular referents

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are interpreted according to categories of medieval Christian moral thinking. Doublets of this

type include terms related to sin in general, as at 1 Corinthians 1:8, where crimen is rendered

“cryme or greet synne,” but more often deal with specific sins and virtues. Examples of both are

listed in Table 4.2.11.

Table 4.2.11. Non-synonymous Doublets in EV: Ethical Term in Second Component

Ecclus. 42:18: astutia = þe slyȝe wit or gile
Is. 30:19: miserans = rewende or doyng mercy
Ezek. 8:3: zeli = of zele or envye
Ezek. 16:49: saturitas panis = fulnes of breed or glotonye
Ezek. 18:18: uim = strengþe or violence [also Mt. 11:12]
Mal. 1:7: pollutum = defoulid or unclene
Mt. 11:19: uorax = devourer or glotoun
Mt. 26:41: infirma = seik or unstable
Lk. 7:34: deuorator = devourere eþer glotoun
Rm. 1:29: susurrones = privey bacbyteris or soweris of discord
Rm. 1:30: detractores = detractouris or opyn bacbyteris
Rm. 5:15: delictum = gilt or trespas [in pl. Col. 2:13]
Rm. 8:3: infirmabatur = was syk or freel
Rm. 11:29: paenitentia = forþinkynge or revokynge
Rm. 14:2: infirmus = syk or unstedefast
Rm. 15:1: infirmorum = of syke men or unsadde in feiþ
1 Cor. 7:6: indulgentiam = indulgence or forȝyvenenesse
1 Cor. 7:9: non se continent = conteynen not hem silf or ben not chast
1 Cor. 8:9: infirmibus = to syke men or freele
1 Cor. 15:33: mores = þewis or vertues
2 Cor. 10:1: modestiam = softenesse or pacience
Gal. 5:20: aemulationes = envyes or folowyngis in yvel
Gal. 6:1: lenitatis = of softnesse or mekenesse
Eph. 2:2: diffidentiae = of untrust or unbileve
Phil. 4:12: humiliari = be lowid or mekid
1 Thess. 2:2: contumeliis = wrongis or fals reprovyng
1 Tim. 3:10: crimen = cryme or greet synne
Heb. 2:17: delicta = þe trespassis or giltis
In at least one case (at Daniel 3:37), we see the same operation in play but with the ethical term

put first, when humiles is translated “meeke or lowe.”

The idea in all these cases seems to be that the perceived implications of the lemma

should be made more concrete and definite. As Nida points out, a high “degree of adaptation is

likely to occur in a translation which has an imperative purpose. Here the translator feels

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constrained not merely to suggest a possible line of behavior, but to make such an action explicit

and compelling. He is not content to translate in such a way that the people are likely to

understand; rather, he insists that the translation must be so clear that no one can possibly

misunderstand” (Nida 158). Thus, for instance, the two terms related to “backbiting” in Romans

1 are rendered, on the one hand, by a translation that closely approximates the lemma (in one

case the first component is simply an Anglicization of it) and, on the other, by a phrase that

refers to specific actions. Likewise, the second translation of paenitentia in Romans 11:29,

“revokynge,” is more suggestive of concrete action than is “forþinkynge,” though they are

closely related and both cover aspects of the semantic range of the lemma.

Likewise, in some of these examples, a phrase referring to concrete objects or actions,

translated literally in the doublet’s first component, is paraphrased into explicitly moral

vocabulary in the second. The second component in each makes explicit a moral dimension

which is either ambiguous or merely implied in the lemma and the first component. For instance,

in “conteynen not hem silf or ben not chast” at 1 Corinthians 7:9, the lemma and the doublet’s

first component represent what is essentially a physical metaphor for a moral concept, albeit a

conventional one; the second component introduces the vocabulary of moral virtue (likewise

with “fulnes of breed or glotonye”). This is even more plainly true with “lowid or mekid” for

humiliari, where the doublet’s first component is again literally a physical term and the second

makes clear that the primary reference is to moral or spiritual humility rather than physical

lowering. Something similar may be said for the variants of “sik or unsad” and “sik or freel” for

forms of infirmus and for several items on Table 4.2.11.

So far, nothing in EV’s doctrinal and ethical doublets has pointed to any sort of

interpretation that would have been controversial in late-medieval England. Poleg observes that

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“The gap between Wycliffite Bibles and Lollard ideology has been evoked by scholars for over a

century” (Poleg [2013b] 72), and in fact the absence of any definitely Lollard elements in WB is

one of the pillars of H.A. Kelly’s argument that the translations known as the Wycliffite Bible

are not Wycliffite at all. This is weak grounds for assigning an orthodox origin to the

translations, given that the Lollards placed a premium on the ipsissima verba of Scripture, but it

generally holds true. 54 There are, however, a few cases in which the interpretation furnished by a

doublet, if not advancing Lollard views, does point away from interpretations usually rejected by

Lollards. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the translation of confessionem at Hebrews 4:14 as

“confessioun or knowleching,” which ensures that the lemma is not taken to refer to oral

confession, a practice the Lollards uniformly rejected. 55 Less glaringly, in “seyntis or holi men”

sanctos at 1 Corinthians 6:1, the second component precludes “seyntis” from referring narrowly

to those canonized by the Church. To be sure, this latter interpretation is not definitively

Wycliffite (Nicholas of Lyra also clarifies that the sancti in this verse are christiani and fideles

perfecti), but it does echo a common topic of Lollard polemic. Similarly, the second and third

components of the triplet “supersticioun or veyn religioun or honour” at Colossians 2:23 seem to

have anti-clerical overtones. This is particularly true when it is observed that the verse as a whole

(quae [praecepta hominis] sunt rationem quidem habentia sapientiae in superstitione, et

humilitate, et non ad parcendum corpori, non in honore aliquo ad saturitatem carnis) condemns

superstitio in connection with the false teaching of religious leaders. “Veyn religioun” is

54
One possible counterexample: as Michael Sargent notes, the WB translators generally avoided using the word
“penance” in the NT, “as implying the practice of oral confession” (Sargent 61), though Simpson points out at least
one place (Mt. 3:2) in which WB does use “penance,” arguing that insistence on alternatives to this word arose only
as a response to the work of Erasmus and of Tyndale (Simpson 73-75).
55
“Knowleche” (“acknowledge”) is in fact EV’s ordinary translation of confiteri, including elsewhere in Heb.

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precisely what Lollards tended to consider the clerical teaching of their day, and the

condemnation of clerics’ “veyne honour” is a theme central to Lollard writings since Wyclif. 56

Conclusion
It is ironic that EV, whose translators on the whole seem to have believed in the

usefulness of a “naked” text in a fashion rejected explicitly by such earlier translators as Ælfric

and Rolle and implicitly by Alfred and the translator of PE, makes more use of the explanatory

functions carried out by translational doubling than do other ME translations. EV unquestionably

represents the first extant attempt at English Scripture without interpretive apparatus since

WSCp. Nevertheless, the use of doubling in EV makes clear that this is only an attempt. As has

often been found, orderly notions of the universality of meaning inevitably run afoul of

differences between linguistic systems, and the EV translators are not immune to this. Even a

reasonably literal translation of a single word can have significant interpretive effects, as Fowler

emphasizes when he points out that EV’s translation of egestas as “nede” at Job 41:13 furthers

an association “with the last days as described in Revelation” (Fowler [1984] 285; see Partridge

4 for additional, post-medieval examples). For the EV translators’ purposes, it emerges that even

conveying the “literal sense” of the text entails multiple and sometimes conflicting

considerations. Still, the WB translators generally adhere to something like the approach to

biblical translation advocated by A.C. Partridge: “The best translator adopts a middle course. His

task is to communicate the truth of the biblical message in the idiom of his language and to

introduce new words only when the context requires them. He avoids the temptation to interpret

key words with a personal or doctrinal basis” (Partridge 1). Hence, as Catto puts it,

56
Note that “vayne religion” also appears in a gloss on “supersticyouse” in EBV Acts (see Table 3.4.4), and so this
phrase on its own may not point to such anti-clericalism. The inclusion of “honour,” however, is more striking and
suggests a particular fixation on clerical abuses that is typical of the Lollards.

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“Paradoxically, the disciples of a condemned heresiarch had produced a scholarly text with its

roots in a long tradition of biblical learning, which would nourish the English church for more

than a century” (Catto [2017] 26).

The EV translators’ approach to the meaning of biblical texts may be (at the risk of over-

emphasizing the similarity between Lollards and modern Protestants) aptly summarized by a

remark of Barth’s: “[Scripture’s] written nature makes it a sign which, however differently it

may be seen and understood and, of course, overlooked and misunderstood, is still unalterably

the same, can always speak for itself, can always be examined and questioned as it is to control

and correct every interpretation. Its written nature guarantees its freedom over against the Church

and therefore creates for the Church freedom over against itself” (Barth [1956] 581-582). That is

to say, the translators were not naïve literalists, and not only realized that there were inevitable

difficulties in apprehending the meaning of scriptural texts, but built an acknowledgment of

many such difficulties into their translation. At the same time, unlike translations such as RRP

and PE, EV’s text, for all its difficulties, is not subjected to qualification by monolithic

interpretation. Even in those places where such interpretation is introduced (see sections 2b-c) it

is merely as one of two alternative readings, not a gloss that definitively declares “that is.”

In the main, the use of doubling in EV seems to spring from two concerns. On the one

hand, synonymous doublets do not involve uncertainties of meaning, but they do reflect

uncertainty about the proper register and style for EV as an English text. Frequently, fidelity to

the vocabulary and grammar of the Latin text produces bad English and, conversely, attempts to

improve intelligibility and idiomaticity threaten to cause excessive deviation from the source-

text. On the other hand, non-synonymous doublets are the result of an attempt to work different

sorts of context-sensitivity into the translation. When a given Latin word is either intrinsically

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polysemous or can have varying figurative meanings in particular contexts, a doubled translation

of it emphasizes the existence of a disconnect between its dictionary definition and its referent in

a particular instance. In a way, synonymous and non-synonymous doublets are two

fundamentally different phenomena. Nevertheless, they do have more in common than the form

“x or y.” Though there may be different motivations for each of these categories, both represent a

similar compromise between conflicting directives. Rather than side with strict literalness and

fidelity or with interpretive and more accessible renderings, the translators can, with doublets,

abdicate from the necessity of making a choice.

The question of WB’s intended audience is a vexed one. 57 As Aston observes, Lollardy

was “a variable creed—if indeed its heterogeneous and ill-assorted conclusions can be dignified

by such a name” (Aston [1960] 7), and so it becomes prima facie difficult to make general

proclamations about whom any “Lollard Bible” (as Deanesly calls it) would have been written

for. We have previously noted McFarlane’s view that EV was likely meant as an aid for readers

of the Vulgate (see section 1a), but most modern scholars reject this interpretation. In the first

place, as is well known, the Lollards laid a strong emphasis on the role of “comoun” or “lewid”

people (see, e.g., the tract printed at Hudson [1997] 107-109 and various other pieces in the same

volume). Certainly writing about biblical translation from this period associates vernacular

Scripture with those “þat kunnen rede but litil or noȝt understonde,” as one non-Lollard defense

of translation puts it (Dove [2010] 89), a category that includes “kyngus, princis, dukis, erles,

barons, knyȝtus, and squiers” but also “communers alle” (94). Thus it is immediately unlikely

57
As Copeland emphasizes, questions of audience are often a problem for understanding Wycliffite thought
generally. She says of Wyclif himself that “The relation between ‘reason’ and common sense in Wyclif’s thought is
a vexed one. But the efforts to connect this last principle, the profundity and reason of the literal sense, with his
evident interest in delivering scriptural teaching to a broad vernacular audience through an appeal to common sense,
seem to be articulated mainly in terms of distinguishing between what popular audiences need and what learned
audiences want” (Copeland [2001] 113).

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that this latter audience was ignored in the making of EV. Herbert Workman observes that “In

his assertion of the authority of Scripture Wyclif was not alone. But Wyclif added a new

doctrine, the right of every man, whether cleric or layman, to examine the Bible for himself”

(Workman 2.151; cf. Dove [2011] 220) and asserts, “All evidence shows that Wyclif’s plea for

the reading of the Bible by the laity was a revolution, not an extension of an existing practice”

(2.155). Deanesly is of course right to dismiss “The old fashioned, popular, idea of Wycliffe as

an early John Wesley, primarily concerned to promote the evangelisation of the masses,” who

could not afford books (Deanesly 225), but a text like EV clearly aims to remedy a situation in

which “Well born lay people who could read were...almost as dependent as the illiterate upon

services, plays, and the coloured windows and carvings of churches, for their actual knowledge

of the Bible” (209).

The effects of this ambiguity (or perhaps ambivalence) about whom Wycliffite teaching

was meant for are unquestionably felt in EV. Indicators in the text itself are mixed, especially

when we consider its doublets. As Hudson explains, “it seems that the first translation had aimed

to retain in English constructions from Latin alien to the vernacular...also, that many Latin words

had been retained though in anglicized form, even when they had not been adopted into normal

usage” (Hudson [1988a] 245), and yet it is “generally agreed that the literal version [EV] was the

first attempt at translation made by the Wycliffites and that this first version was subsequently

modified by them in the realization that...more concessions were needed to the vocabulary and

fixed word order of English” (239). Aston goes further in saying that, for the Lollards,

“Language held no barriers—if it did so these were barriers that called for crossing. As the

translator of the second version of the Lollard Bible made clear, lack of latinity must be no bar

to direct scriptural understanding” (Aston [1977] 351). In other words, it seems that the

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excessive Latinity of EV’s vocabulary was not intended to exclude those who knew no Latin;

certainly the “bilingual” doublets discussed in sections 1a-b show a definite move away from

reliance on Latin idiom even in EV, not just LV. Besides, as Gneuss points out, a loanword will,

in the borrowing language, normally have a more restricted semantic field than native vocabulary

(Gneuss 16-17), and thus a close imitation of the source-text’s Latin vocabulary could be seen

simply as a way of avoiding extraneous semantic content (though the occurrence of false friends

underscores the limitations of such thinking).

Nevertheless, as Aston observes, already in the fourteenth century the chronicler Henry

Knighton was claiming that Wyclif translated the Bible “so that it was more open to laymen and

ignorant people, including ‘women who know how to read’, whereas previously it had been the

preserve of well-read clerks of good understanding” (Aston [1977] 360), and so it is perfectly

reasonable to see an appeal to ordinary English-speakers in the use of Germanic and Romance

alternatives for obscure Latinate loanwords in EV. Besides, as John Fisher points out, in just this

period we see writers like Chaucer “naturalizing not only a French vocabulary but also the

perceptions which that vocabulary comprehended” where native vocabulary had often been

reduced to “barrenness” by multiple centuries of political subjugation (Fisher 100-103). The

pairing of Latin with restatements or circumlocutions in either native or more familiar Romance

terms could thus, as we saw in Chapter II is sometimes suggested about OE doublets, be used to

enrich the ME vocabulary of readers unfamiliar with Latin (or French). Certainly, some of the

terms which are used in bilingual synonymous doublets discussed in section 1a did catch on, and

terms such as “predestinate” and “providence” (both of which are, according to the OED, not

attested in English before EV and so seem to be neologistic there) have become the standard

English terms for certain biblical concepts. Indeed, Jean Delisle and Judith Woodsworth find that

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the number of Latinate words apparently introduced into English by “Wycliffe and his

associates” exceeds a thousand and helped to make endings like -able, -ible, -ent, -al -ive

common in English (Delisle and Woodsworth 29). In such cases, no doubt acceptance of the new

loanword into English was expedited by an alternative translation in words that less-educated

readers could already understand.

Even doublets in which neither component is obscurely Latinate may suggest sensitivity

to different habits of usage among different groups of people, whether defined by geography,

social class, or something else (e.g., “gravel or soond,” may show a minor dialectal difference—

to judge from the MED’s quotations, “gravel” is more common in northern than in southern

texts). Shannon Gayk says of Lollard writers generally that they were often “careful crafters of

words, both attuned to and happy to employ whatever formal and stylistic device most

appropriately and effectively communicates their message” (Gayk 137), and perhaps in thinking

of the EV translators along those lines we can find an explanation for what frequently seems to

be hair-splitting in lexical choices. Despite the marked inelegance in their translation as a whole,

in other words, the process of stylistic adjustment suggested by many synonymous doublets may

show a careful attempt to determine how best to express particular concepts for ordinary English

readers (and hearers).

Another vexed question is what the Lollard emphasis on the literal sense of Scripture

actually entails. The main issues related to this question were discussed in section 2b, but a few

points warrant further comment. Most importantly, it should be emphasized that the expansion of

the concept of “literal sense” really meant the introduction of multiple literal senses. Although,

as Gross-Diaz shows, the concept of duplex sensus litteralis espoused by Nicholas of Lyra is

more restricted in scope than is often acknowledged (Gross-Diaz 125-126), this term can be

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extended to encompass a number of issues faced by the Lollards. With reference to Nicholas,

Lesley Smith writes that “Viewing the literal as a sense both historicus et mysticus, he is able to

put forward interpretations ranging from matters of language and history to the fulfilment of Old

Testament prophecy, all under the same, literal aegis” (Smith [2000] 223). But historicus and

mysticus are still distinct from each other even if they are both literal, and, as Minnis points out,

in this view what is literal from God’s perspective may not be the same as what is literal from a

human perspective (Minnis 4-5), and the human author “may himself carry two or more senses

of a single passage in his mind” (10). In Ocker’s view, the “literalizing turn” of fourteenth-

century exegesis becomes simply “a difficulty in discriminating between literal and spiritual and

the predominance of doctrine” (Ocker 68). What sets literal exegetes like Nicholas apart is that

they, as Klepper puts it, “avoided recourse to theological interpretations and future significations

in the literal sense whenever possible” (Klepper 33); in particular, “Nicholas invoked a parabolic

literal interpretation when he felt there was no other reasonable option” (34). More simply, as

Corrine Carvalho explains, the “final signification depends on the proximate meaning: what

these texts signify literally must be understood, so that what they signify ultimately, although

indirectly, can be revealed” (Carvalho [2000] 39).

Moreover, though the WB translators seem to have inherited Nicholas’s views of the

literal sense without significant modification, they faced difficulties with regard to multi-level

exegesis that Nicholas did not simply by virtue of the genres in which they were working.

Whereas it is perfectly common for a commentary to give multiple interpretations of a single

sense-unit side by side, in a translation the conventional default is that a single sense-unit (word

or phrase) in the source-text will yield a single sense-unit in the translated text. As the mere

existence of translational doubling implies, this is not quite always the case, but a commentary is

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naturally better suited to presenting multiple alternatives in a larger number of cases, given that a

translation in which, say, every noun was doubled would be virtually unreadable.

The idea of multiple levels of meaning raises some further issues in the context of

interlingual translation. The recognition that some information is invariably lost in translation

from one language to another certainly existed in the Middle Ages, though modern translation

theory provides a more systematic analysis of the fact. Thus Nida makes the distinction between

obligatory and optional features, which do not align from one language to another (see Nida

173). For instance, in some languages verbs invariably carry markers for tense, while in others

tense is conveyed either not at all or through extrinsic features (such as adverbs). Thus in

translating from the latter to the former, one would either have to make a silent decision to

impose a particular tense on the tenseless verb or in some form note the ambiguity. The

particular issue of tense is usually not a problem in Latin-to-English translations, but the case-

endings of nouns can yield difficulties on a comparable scale (as in the translation of ablative

absolutes, which was touched on in passing in the opening pages of this chapter and will be

discussed more fully in the next).

What is true for grammatical features is true also for lexical ones: as Ferdinand Saussure

famously notes, every language divides the continuum of human thought into its own arbitrary

units (Saussure 111-114), and so what is merely an optional part of the definition of a word in

one language may be obligatory in its closest equivalent in another language. For instance, in

Latin nebula the concept denoted by English “cloud” is only one part of the term’s semantic

range, the concept denoted by English “mist” being another. English, in other words, must

specify which of these two related meteorological phenomena is meant in any given instance,

where such specification is in Latin represented only by optional contextual indicators. Thus the

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literalist translator is faced with parsing out what belongs obligatorily to the literal sense in a

given context and thus eliminating some possible denotations or connotations, or else separating

a single unit of meaning into multiple units (as the EV translators do at Amos 4:13 by translating

nebulam as “cloude or myst;” likewise with any number of other polysemous doublets).

As Hudson observes, “Modern analysts agree that the translations themselves (setting

aside for the present all paratextual material such as prologues, marginal glosses and liturgical

aids) are entirely uncontentious, orthodox and acceptable to mainstream medieval piety...Yet

association of the texts with Wyclif and his followers starts very early” (Hudson [2017] 134). In

essence, this is because of WB’s emphasis on the literal sense of the text, which, as I noted at the

end of Chapter III, was in many ways the dominant feature of fourteenth-century orthodox

exegesis as well. Where the Lollards stood out was in often allowing the expanded literal sense

nearly to displace the others. But—and this is the third major aspect of Wycliffite literalism that I

want to single out—even the literal sense could draw, and perhaps depend, on “paratextual

material,” as Hudson terms it. Wyclif himself certainly did not suppose, as some Protestants have

done, that any reader could arrive unaided at the correct literal interpretation of the biblical text

simply by knowing the meanings of the individual words on the page. He and his followers,

however, did take strong exception to what they saw as fanciful glossing that had no connection

to the meanings of those individual words on the page. If doublets are considered glosses, then

both EV and LV are riddled with glosses. It is, however, telling that doublets are the defining

form of “paratextual material” in EV. Glosses of a more abstruse and obtrusive kind are, as we

saw in the last chapter, generally far more prevalent than simple verbal alternatives in other late

ME biblical translations. By contrast, EV relies mainly on simple doubling, a technique that

250
occupies an ambiguous—perhaps ambivalent—position between “bare” translation and

explanatory glossing.

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 CHAPTER V: DOUBLING IN THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE—LATER VERSION

It was in the Reformation period that scholars first noted the existence of two versions of

the Bible in late ME, and since then the relationship between these versions has been a major

theme of Wycliffite Bible criticism. Initially, various explanations were proffered for the textual

bifurcation in the manuscripts, generally informed by the belief that John Wyclif had personally

translated the Bible into English. Even after it came to be realized that what Forshall and

Madden called the Later Version was dependent on what they called the Earlier Version and that

Wyclif himself was probably not the translator of either, speculation about the identity of the

translators continued. On the basis of a few early manuscripts, one name (Nicholas Hereford) can

confidently be associated with EV up to Baruch 3:20, and for much of the twentieth century John

Purvey was identified with equal confidence as the author of LV’s General Prologue (hereafter

GP) and either the sole revisor or one of the chief revisors of LV. Indeed, Purvey has often been

seen, in Maureen Jurkowski’s words, as “a link between Wyclif and the itinerant poor preachers

who popularized the teachings of the master” (Jurkowski 1180), though Hudson has shown that

the identification of Purvey as author of GP was always a shaky conjecture (Hudson [1985] 95-

108), encouraged by Thomas Netter’s description of Purvey as glossator Wicleffi and librarius

Lollardorum (Hudson [2004] 587). Though much of this speculation can seem fanciful and

pointless, it does underscore a serious philological problem that should inform any in-depth

examination of WB: its unevenness in style and translational approach. This unevenness exists

not only between the two versions but within each version and draws attention to some of the

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lexical, conceptual, and exegetical problems that the various translators encountered in

converting the Vulgate into English and then recasting it in a more legible form.

This chapter will deal primarily with just one aspect of the revision of EV into LV, but in

so doing it will aim to clarify some of the ways that the two versions differ from each other more

generally and illustrate how the overarching distinction between them is built up by differences

at the level of individual words and phrases. As discussed at the outset of this study, doubling

draws on some of the basic tensions inherent in any work of translation, and examining how this

feature of WB evolves in the course of revision will thus provide insight into the stylistic and

interpretive trajectory of the first English Bible’s development. In particular, we will begin with

an assessment of the major patterns of revision from EV to LV, in both grammatical and lexical

terms, before examining LV’s doublets in two basic divisions. First, though the LV revisors

eliminated most of EV’s doublets, a relatively large number remains in at least some copies of

LV, and here we will consider patterns in the elimination and retention of EV doublets in LV.

Second, the LV revisors added a large number of doublets not found in EV, and here we will

seek to understand how the addition of these doublets fits in with patterns of revision in LV more

broadly. In all of this, my basic argument will be that doublets form part of a program of revision

whose aim is to make the literal meaning of the WB text clearer to readers who do not know the

Vulgate. To help substantiate this argument, I will end this chapter with an examination of the

controversies surrounding vernacular biblical translation in the late fourteenth century and

suggest how ideas about Scripture advanced by both Wycliffite and non-Wycliffite writers can

be seen as informing the refinement of WB as it developed from EV into LV.

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(1) The Purposes and Principles of the LV Revision

By the time FM was published in 1850, it was well-established that the two versions of

the translation were clearly distinct but closely related. Since the nineteenth century, however,

examination of the extant manuscripts has shown the textual history of both the EV and LV to be

more complicated than the simple designations “Earlier Version” and “Later Version” imply (cf.

Somerset [2004] 199). Various scholars have identified an “early EV” (Kelly [2016] xiii and

passim; cf. Hargreaves [1969] 405), multiple “intermediate versions” (Hargreaves [1956, 1961,

1969]), and multiple further revisions of LV (see, e.g., Lindberg [1999] 1.47; Diem 250-252).

The relationships between the different recensions are impossible to determine with certainty,

but there are various grounds for reasonable speculation. Moreover, as Dove states, despite

scholarly awareness of versions different from EV and LV as found in FM, “the distinctiveness

of the Earlier and Later Versions is unchallenged” (Dove [2004] 6), and most manuscripts fit

neatly into the one or the other category. The textual history of WB is of only secondary interest

to us here, but the basic movements of that history as far as it can be reconstructed may be linked

to different translation strategies, of which doubling is one aspect. Indeed, as will soon become

apparent, doubling is one area in which there are particularly sharp and clear divergences

between EV and LV.

I remarked in the previous chapter on what Fristedt calls the “bigot literalism” of EV

(e.g., Fristedt 1.104-105) and on the problems this presents for EV’s intelligibility as English

prose. Some of the main ways in which LV improves on EV in terms of English style are

commented on by GP, which Copeland aptly calls “a central theoretical statement about the most

important vernacularizing project of the Lollard movement” (Copeland [2003] 187). Dove

summarizes the main assertions of GP thus: “Convoluted syntax has been unravelled, textual

254
errors have been corrected, the true meaning of equivocal words and phrases has been

determined, and obscure words have often been glossed” (Dove [2011] 213). This includes some

fairly straightforward matters, such as translating the connective particles autem and uero with

different English words (“forsoþe,” “but,” “and,” etc.) depending on context, and adding

clarificatory repetitions of nouns and verbs. But the issues discussed at greatest length in GP are

word-order and the translation of participles, which are generally regarded (by modern scholars

like Fristedt, as well as the author of GP 1) as the largest obstacles to intelligibility in EV.

Regarding participles and other features less common in English than in Latin, GP notes that “In

translating into English manie resolucions moun make þe sentence open, as an ablatif case

absolute may be resolvid into þese þre wordis, wiþ covenable verbe: ‘þe while,’ ‘for,’ ‘if,’ as

garmariens seyn” (FM 1.57). It goes on to add that this applies not only to participles in an

ablative absolute, but to participles generally, which, whether they are “of a present tens, eiþer

preterit, of actif vois eiþer passif, mai be resolvid into a verbe of þe same tens, and a

coniunccioun copulatif, as þus: dicens, þat is ‘seiynge,’ mai be resolvid þus: ‘and seiþ,’ eiþer ‘þat

seiþ’” (ibid.). As for syntax, the Prologue-writer asserts that “whanne riȝtful construccioun is

lettid bi relacion, I 2 resolve it openli” (ibid.), and shows what he means by giving a Latin

sentence (the beginning of 1 Samuel 2:10) accompanied by two English translations, the first

adhering more closely to the Latin word-order than the other. 3

1
GP at one point mentions “þe English bible late translatid” (FM 1.58), which evidently refers to a translation other
than LV itself, probably EV (but see Smith [2010] 160 for the view that this does not refer to EV).
2
GP’s author refers to himself as the sole translator of LV, though he acknowledges the help of “diverse felawis and
helperis” (FM 1.57). This is usually understood as a deliberate simplification.
3
The first translation of the sentence, while not identical to EV, contains the same kind of obscurity as EV’s
rendering of it. In fact, GP’s translation “bi þe lettre” modifies the syntax in a way EV does not. The Vulgate reads,
Dominum formidabunt aduersarii eius, translated in GP as “þe Lord hise adversaries shulen drede,” whereas EV
puts “shulen drede” immediately after “Lord,” aping the Latin’s O-V-S syntax. Very likely GP’s author had EV in
mind, but unthinkingly emended its syntax—which of course would further emphasize how unnatural EV’s Latinate
syntax is in English.

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 Examples of all of these issues are easy to find (resolution of participles marked in italics,

words and phrases moved to new positions in bold, clarifying repetitions of nouns, pronouns, or

verbs underlined, altered connective particles in SMALL CAPITALS):

Gn. 2:19
Vulgate: Formatis igitur Dominus Deus de humo cunctis animantibus terrae, et uniuersis
uolatilibus caeli, adduxit ea ad Adam.
EV: Fourmed þanne of þe moist erþe alle þingis of þe erþe havynge soule, and al volatile of
hevene, þe Lord brouȝte hem to Adam.
LV: ÞERFOR whanne alle lyvynge beestis of erþe, and alle þe volatils of hevene weren formed of
erþe, þe Lord God brouȝte þo to Adam.

Est. 2:7
Vulgate: qui fuit nutricus filiae fratris sui Edessae, quae altero nomine Hester uocabatur, et
utrumque parentem amiserat, pulchra nimis et decora facie; mortuisque patre eius ac matre
Mardocheus sibi eam adoptauit in filiam.
EV: Þe whiche was the nurse of þe doȝter of his broþer Edisse, þat bi an oþer name was clepid
Ester and eiþer fader and moder hadde laft, ful myche fair and semeli in face; and hir fader and
moder dead Mardoche clepid hir to hym in to doȝter.
LV: Which Mardoche was the nurschere of Edissa the douȝter of his broþir, which douȝtir was
clepid Hester bi anoþir name and sche hadde lost boþe fadir and modir; sche was ful fair and
semeli of face; and whanne hir fadir and modir weren deed Mardoche purchaside hir in to a
douȝtir to hym silf.

Mk. 1:32
Vulgate: uespere autem facto cum occidisset sol, adferebant ad eum omnes male habentes et
daemonia habentes.
EV: Forsoþe þe evenynge maad, when þe sone wente doun, þei brouȝten to hym alle havynge
yvel and havynge develis.
LV: BUT whanne þe eventid was come and þe sonne was gon doun, þei brouȝten to hym alle þat
weren of male ese and hem þat hadden fendis.

Heb. 1:1-2a
Vulgate: Multifariam multisque modis olim Deus loquens patribus in prophetis, nouissime diebus
istis locutus est nobis in filio.
EV: Manyfold and many maners sum tyme God spekinge to fadris in prophetis, at þe laste in þes
daies spak to us in þe sone.
LV: God, þat spak sum tyme bi prophetis in many maneres to oure fadris, at þe laste in þese
daies he haþ spoke to us bi þe son.
On the whole, LV’s revisions are based on an acknowledgment that Latin forms of

expression cannot be mapped directly onto English. GP makes the motivation of changes like

these explicit when it says that the purpose of liberties with the source-text is “so þat þe sentence

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[i.e., meaning] be as opin eiþer openere in English as in Latyn” (FM 1.57). Thus, in the example

from Hebrews, the subject of the sentence (“God”) is brought forward because initial position is

the primary marker of a subject in English but not in Latin, and the clarifying (but grammatically

redundant) pronoun supplied before the main verb reminds the reader what the subject is. The

latter type of clarification is a particularly noticeable and recurrent feature of LV, though it is

mentioned only in passing by GP, and it occurs not only with pronouns but also with nouns. This

can happen when the source-text has a relative pronoun (cf. Yonekura [1986] 74-76), as at

Genesis 3:10, where qui ait is translated “þe which seide” in EV but “and Adam seide” in LV. It

can also happen where the Vulgate features no explicit subject, as at Genesis 4:17, where et

aedificauit ciuitatem is translated “and he bildide a citee” in EV but “and Cayn bildide a citee” in

LV. Likewise a number of vocabulary changes serve to simplify and clarify meaning, as when

“þingis...havynge soule” is paraphrased to “lyvynge beestis.” All this is well-established and a

basic theme of modern discussions of the LV revision.

More recent scholarship, however, has emphasized that the improvement should not be

exaggerated (cf. Lawton [1999] 470). On the one hand, EV is now recognized as less ultra-literal

than it has sometimes been accused of being (see, e.g., Lindberg [1978] 50; Partridge 32; 4 Wilks

150); on the other, as Lis summarizes the issue, “There is no agreement in the relevant literature

as to how successful LV was in attaining its goals related to the sense-for-sense approach” (Lis

[2016] 89). Particularly conspicuous are cases in which EV translates autem or uero with one of

the conjunctions suggested by GP while LV uses “forsoþe” or “soþeli,” 5 though Hiroshi

4
Partridge in particular makes the interesting contention, which has never, to my knowledge, been picked up by
subsequent scholarship, that EV translates more freely in the OT than in the NT because of difficulties surrounding
Hebraisms in the Vulgate text of the former.
5
Thus, in Dt. 1:19, Vulgate profecti autem de Horeb appears as “Forsoþe we ȝeden forþ fro Оreb” in LV, but had
been translated “And goon forþ fro Оreb” in EV. LV here still, however, adheres to the principle of resolving
participles into finite verbs.

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Yonekura finds that this situation is still much less common than the reverse (Yonekura [1986]

77-79). Even the resolution of participles happens less often than we might expect (see Moessner

141-142; Yonekura [1986] 70-73). There are also, as Lindberg explains, some instances in which

LV translates two different Latin words with the same ME word while EV retains a distinction

between the two (Lindberg [2007] 29). 6 Moessner’s discussion of WB’s translation of prefixed

Latin words provides a neat emblem for the overall state of affairs, showing both how LV

improves on EV and how it fails to do so. We saw in the previous chapter (section 3a) that the

calquing of prefixed lemmata often produced unnatural expressions in EV, and Moessner finds in

fact that many such unidiomatic calques are eliminated in LV (Moessner 128-129). 7 But she also

finds that in a comparably large number of cases both versions feature a calque of the Latin verb,

whether a prefixed ME verb or a verb followed by an adverb (127-128), and that in a few cases

EV does not use a calque of the Latin but LV does (129-130).

This does not imply that the LV revisors were unconcerned with improving the

intelligibility of the text, but it means that the ways in which they sought to improve on EV were

not always the more obvious ones described in GP. Instead, increased focus on “sense-for-sense”

rather than “word-for-word” translation sometimes results in changes to the translation of

individual words that can be considered more distortive than EV’s renderings. As Moessner puts

it, “The most obvious difference between EV and LV consists in the degree to which the

translators manage to preserve the structural features of their source text” (Moessner 149). For

instance, at Acts 23:25, calumniam sustineret changes from “schulde suffre chalenge” (EV) to

6
Lindberg’s example is the rendering of uia and iter in Ps. 1:6; LV translates them both as “weie,” where EV has
“weie” and “goyng,” respectively.
7
Examples cited by Moessner include “ful oute nurshe” (EV) vs. “schalt nurische” (LV) for enutries and “befor
girtist” (EV) vs. “hast gird” for praecinxisti. Note that Moessner does not use the word “calque,” and speaks more
generically of “morphologically complex” Latin words corresponding to “morphologically complex” ME
expressions, but in such cases the ME expression is almost always a calque of the Latin.

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“miȝte be chalengid” (LV). More radically, at Acts 1:2, usque in diem qua...adsumptus est,

which appears in EV as “til into þe day in which he [Jesus]...was takyn up,” is simplified to “in

to þe daie of his ascencioun” in LV. While more dramatic than most of LV’s revisions to EV,

both of these examples illustrate the basic principle underlying most of the changes in syntax and

lexicon from EV to LV: increasing the text’s straightforwardness. 8

Perhaps more interesting are the changes in vocabulary. Lindberg has asserted that,

among the improvements made in revision, LV features far less unnatural Latinate vocabulary

than EV (Lindberg [1985] 129), though—unusually for Lindberg—he does not back this up with

numerical data. Yonekura has determined at least that Germanic vocabulary and Latin-derived

vocabulary (whether directly from Latin or filtered through French) are used with nearly equal

measure in EV (Yonekura [1988] 420), and the Latin-derived words in EV which he lists are

often replaced by Germanic words in LV (cf. Knapp 716 9). Even where LV continues to use

Latin-derived vocabulary, this is often made to conform more to ordinary ME usage. For

instance, in one case mentioned by Fisher, modification of “experyment” to “experience”

significantly increases the naturalness of the expression even though LV’s reading is not only

still Latinate but derived from the same ultimate root as EV’s (Fisher 105).

More interesting still are places in which shifts in the translation are influenced by

exegesis, and in fact a number of revisions in LV can be traced directly to Nicholas of Lyra. For

instance, Dove observes that LV eliminates the allegorical rubrics included in EV Song of Songs

8
Even the elimination of distinctions between words like uia and iter can easily be seen as part of this. Though
Lindberg cites the loss of such distinctions as a stylistic weakness, it can also be seen as increasing the text’s clarity
by simplifying its vocabulary. This is perhaps related to what many scholars see as “the poverty and plainness of
Lollard style” (Gayk 136; note, however, that Gayk sees this as an over-simplification).
9
Knapp shows, however, that both EV and LV have a higher proportion of Latin-derived vocabulary (and of
Latinate syntactical constructions) than do the biblical quotations in the English sermons attributed to Wyclif
(Knapp 716-719), so again the improvement in LV should not be exaggerated.

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probably because these rubrics (drawn mainly from Bede) conflict with Nicholas’s interpretation

of the book (Dove [2004] 15-17). It is also possible to find cases in which, as Bruce puts it,

“Lyra’s gloss has...become Purvey’s [i.e., LV’s] text” (Bruce 19). In some of these, consultation

of Nicholas’s work was used simply to establish better readings in the source-text (Dove [2011]

211-212), but in others it led to revisions that may strike the modern reader as strange. For

example, in Genesis 37:36 and Esther 1:10, forms of eunuchus are translated “geldyng” in EV,

but appear in LV as “chast and onest servaunt.” This somewhat awkward expression can be

traced directly to Nicholas, whose commentary on Genesis 39 explains that eunuchus can be

applied to an uncastrated servant and that uocatur talis eunuchus eo quod debet esse castus et

honestus. Hargreaves identifies several other such cases of Nicholas influencing LV but not EV,

including one at Psalm 8:4 (8:5), where “þe son of man” becomes “þe sone of a virgyn” with

obvious Christological implications (Hargreaves [1955] 80-81; see also Hargreaves [1965] 130).

There are, however, also places where LV completely disregards Nicholas’s comments, as at

Song on Songs 1:1, where Nicholas notes that Vulgate ubera (“breasts”) is incorrect and that the

Hebrew actually means “love” (qtd. Klepper 44-45), and yet LV retains EV’s “tetis.” Overall, it

is not for nothing that, as Klepper says, “A number of scholars have argued that Nicholas’s Bible

commentary played an important role in the development of vernacular literary traditions as well

as in the study of the Bible,” a point she makes with special reference to the Lollards (Klepper

131).

(2) Doublets in the Development of LV from EV

The use of doublets also experienced considerable change in the course of the WB’s

development and revision, and, as Dove observes, the use of doublets and lexical glosses is “by

260
no means consistent in any version of the Wycliffite Bible” (Dove [2011] 213-214). If we can

rely on the generally-accepted identification of Oxford University MS. Bodley 959 and Christ

Church Oxford MS. 145 as the oldest surviving manuscripts of WB, 10 constituting an “earlier

Early Version” (EEV, to use Kelly’s siglum), then the earliest iteration of WB is, as Hargreaves

observes, “almost completely without textual glosses [i.e., doublets]” (Hargreaves [1969] 405).

Still, by the time EEV had developed into the form of EV found in most manuscripts, 11 the

number of translational doublets had exploded, as discussed in Chapter IV. Curiously, however,

almost none of EEV’s few doublets are retained in EV. Then, as I have already noted multiple

times now, most of EV’s doublets are eliminated in LV. From here, the situation becomes still

more complicated, as some copies of LV eliminate many or all of the doublets found in other LV

manuscripts, while a few (notably MS. Bodley 277 and CCCC MS. 127) reverse this tendency

toward elimination yet again, adding new doublets not found in any other copies (see Diem 250-

251). Despite this reigning confusion, a few major strands can be singled out. First, regardless of

the specifics, it is apparent that there are definite changes in the distribution of doublets from EV

to LV. Second, there are variations in the distribution of doublets within each of the two main

versions of WB which may suggest insights into the process of translation and revision more

broadly. Third, the textual development of WB’s translational doubling fits, in discernible ways,

with broader patterns of revision and improvement in LV such as were discussed in the section 1.

We shall consider each of these points in turn.

10
It should be added that, though this is a majority view, the dissenters include some of the most important
twentieth-century scholars of WB, most notably Sven Fristedt, who identifies Christ Church College Oxford MS.
E.4 as containing the most primitive surviving form of EV (see Fristedt 1.107ff.).
11
The early MSS. Bodley 959 and Christ Church 145 are, however, not the only copies that fail to include doublets
found in most other MSS. For a discussion of doublets in EV manuscripts (under the broader rubric of “textual
glosses”), see Fristedt 1.32-33. As Fristedt notes, only one copy “always omits the gloss” and one other “sometimes
adopts the gloss instead of the text”—i.e., omits the doublet’s first component (Fristedt 1.33).

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(2a) Differences between Versions

Krygier has attempted to establish differences in the use of doublets (“binomial glosses”)

between EV and LV quantitatively, using the two versions of Romans as a test-case.

Unfortunately, while the resulting analysis does provide some useful insights into Krygier’s

corpus, the specifics of his approach largely invalidate his conclusions for any part of WB except

the New Testament. The first problem is the selection of the sample corpus itself. As noted in

passing above, the frequency of doublets varies from book to book in both EV and LV, and does

so differently in each version. In particular, EV’s doublets are concentrated in the section after

Baruch 3:20, with a smaller but non-negligible set in Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaiah, and

Jeremiah. Indeed, in examining the ways in which EV’s approach to translation changes after

Baruch 3:20, Lindberg points to the considerable increase in the frequency of “glosses” in the

text (mainly doublets) as one characteristic feature (Lindberg [1978] 36-37). LV’s doublets,

meanwhile, are almost all in the Old Testament, in fairly uniform distribution.

The second problem with Krygier’s analysis is his choice of base-texts. For both

versions, Krygier draws on Lindberg’s editions (Krygier 160-161), which are based on Christ

Church 145 for EV and Bodley 277 for LV. Though these manuscripts are notable in their own

right, both are atypical on precisely the front that Krygier examines, a fact which Krygier himself

briefly acknowledges (168). He is, therefore, simultaneously correct and misleading when he

concludes that “Bodley 277 does not rely on binomial constructions to elucidate the meaning of

concepts used in biblical translation, even though it is a heavily revised manuscript of the LV”

(169). This is accurate for Romans, and for the New Testament broadly. He would, however,

have reached precisely the opposite conclusion if his sample corpus had been any book of the

Old Testament from Genesis to Lamentations (in which no redaction of EV features extensive

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doubling and most copies of LV do), and would have had to qualify his conclusion greatly if he

had considered Ezekiel, Daniel, the Minor Prophets, or 1-2 Maccabees (where numerous

doublets are present in most copies of both versions, though there are still more in EV than in

LV).

Nonetheless, with these reservations in mind, we can still make some use of Krygier’s

observations. First, his suggestion that doublets should be common in LV as “a more colloquial,

non-academic rendering of the Latin exemplar” (169) has more merit than he thinks. It is still

true only in a qualified sense, but, as we shall see, where LV does feature doublets it uses them

in a way that aligns with its general tendency to prefer explanatory paraphrase to the “bigot

literalism” often found in EV. Moreover, Krygier’s assessment of where and how LV simplifies

EV’s doublets does seem to have broader applicability than does his assessment of doubling

unique to LV. He points out, for instance, that, in cases where EV Romans features a bilingual

doublet, LV features only a Latinate translation about half the time and only a Germanic

translation (either the Germanic component of the EV doublet or an entirely new word) about

half the time (166). 12 Likewise, he notes that in the majority of cases in which neither component

of an EV doublet is an Anglicization of the lemma, both MS. Christ Church 145 (an EEV copy

mostly without doubling) and LV use the same single word (ibid.). Where they do differ, he

thinks, this “is oftentimes motivated by the adequacy of translation” (167), but the other

instances would seem to suggest that the second component of an EV doublet, more commonly

less literal than the first, was regarded by the revisors as superfluous.

12
This lack of consistency in preference when simplifying EV doublets seems to hold true throughout LV, though I
have not examined the matter systematically.

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(2b) Variation within Versions

Although LV features more variation in the use of doubling from manuscript to

manuscript than does EV, still, as with EV, it is possible to think in terms of a “standard” set of

doublets for the translation. This does not mean that these doublets appear in every manuscript

containing the book in which each doublet appears, but that their uniformity across the numerous

manuscripts in which they do appear indicates that they are not the work of independent

glossators. A number of manuscripts omit most or all of the doublets in this “standard set,” but

those they do contain are identical to those found at the corresponding points in other copies. 13

This “standard” group contains about two hundred items, making it much smaller than EV’s

“standard” set, which more nearly approaches two thousand, but is still fairly substantial. There

are also several copies of LV that contain some stray additional doublets which seem likely to be

the work of independent glossators, but it also happens in some cases that these “nonstandard”

doublets appear in multiple copies. In general, then, with regard to LV’s doublets, it is probably

not possible to draw an absolute line between the work of the main translators and that of

independent emenders and glossators. At any rate, for the purposes of this discussion, we will

focus on doublets that appear in most or all LV manuscripts for each of the relevant books, as

these are less likely to be independent additions, and more likely to reflect the modus operandi of

the primary LV revisors.

When we add to all this the observation made in section 2a that each version features

doublets in different places, the situation becomes bewilderingly complicated. But this in itself

may suggest something about the textual history of WB. Not too much should be hung on the

13
Forshall and Madden for some reason preferred manuscripts of this type for their base-texts of LV, but their
apparatus reveals that many of the doublets omitted from FM’s main text appear in most of the LV manuscripts
which the editors collated with their base-text.

264
point, but the extremely scattered use of doublets may point to the roles of different individual

translators. In Chapter I we saw abundant evidence that translational doubling is too common to

be regarded simply as a peculiarity of a few isolated writers, but that does not mean that some

translators did not have more of an affinity for it than others. Waldron illustrates this well when,

as we noted in Chapter I, he associates doubling both with the late ME period in general and with

John Trevisa in particular (Waldron 269). Waldron’s reference to Trevisa is particularly

interesting in this connection, as Trevisa is somewhat infamously claimed as a Bible translator

by William Caxton. Caxton’s assertion has been called “but a vague surmise repeated in various

histories of the English versions [of the Bible]” (Pope 30) and “an unlucky guess” (Deanesly

301) by some scholars, but others have suggested that he was in fact involved with the

production of WB. 14 Dove notes that some seventeenth-century scholars attributed LV to Trevisa

(Dove [2007] 390), though more recent scholarship has preferred to associate him with EV (see,

e.g., Lindberg [1985] 129-130). Dove herself considers it “not unlikely” (389) that Trevisa

helped produce EV, and notes that Trevisa was part of a contingent of scholars expelled from

Queen’s College Oxford in 1378 or 1379 who “took with them several books relevant to the

translation project” (ibid.). This contingent, moreover, also contained Nicholas Hereford, who, as

noted above, is the only person identifiable with near certainty as one of the EV translators (see,

e.g., Deanesly 252-254; McFarlane 88).

The circumstantial evidence meshes suggestively with the textual evidence furnished by

doubling. Deanesly and some others have suggested that everything up to Baruch 3:20 (see

Chapter IV) is Hereford’s work and that “the break in the original manuscript must shew where

his work was interrupted in the summer of 1382, when he fled to Rome” (Deanesly 254; cf.

14
See Fowler (1960) 81-93 for a summary of the main evidence for Trevisa’s involvement in WB.

265
Workman 2.161). This, if the theory of Hereford’s authorship is correct, is thus the point at

which Trevisa would have become involved. Thus the use of a translational technique notably

associated with Trevisa begins to appear at precisely the point where the work of one of EV’s

major translators seems to have ended. The presence of doublets, in other words, may be taken as

an argument in favor of Trevisa’s involvement after the section commonly attributed to

Hereford.

It is, unfortunately, not so easy to arrive at an explanation which completely covers the

data, and the theory just presented is too facile not to have some holes in it. For one thing,

Lindberg argues that even if Trevisa worked with the WB translators, “he had little to do with

them after 1380” (Lindberg [1978] 50), as he was never himself a Lollard and would have

wanted to distance himself from the Wycliffites once they were condemned as heretical. If,

therefore, the break at Baruch 3:20 has something to do with Hereford’s journey to Rome in the

1380s, we would expect to find any work contributed by Trevisa to appear before Baruch 3:20,

not after it. In fact, Lindberg finds that consonance between EV’s vocabulary and that of

Trevisa’s works is greatest in the Heptateuch (Lindberg [1988] 388). 15 Moreover, looking at the

more concrete evidence of extant texts, we note that WB’s doublets almost invariably use “or” to

join the two components, while Trevisa’s use “and.” In short, evidence both for Trevisa’s

involvement with the translation and for the connection between the break in EV and Hereford’s

summons to Rome is entirely circumstantial, so it is not only difficult but probably fruitless to

weigh them against each other. What these types of speculation bring out that is worth

considering is that different translators use doubling in different ways. Whether or not Trevisa

was involved in the production of EV, the edition of EV found in most manuscripts for Baruch 4

15
As if merely to make things more confusing, he finds a similar agreement with Trevisa’s usage “in the Old
Testament in [LV] as far as the Prophets” (Lindberg [1988] 388).

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onward uses doubling in a manner and to an extent similar (except in preferred conjunction) to

the works of Trevisa, while other versions of WB and the earlier sections of EV use doublets

differently.

When I speak of using doublets similarly to or differently from Trevisa, furthermore, it is

not simply a matter of frequency, but also of the kinds of pairings used. Both in Trevisa’s

translations and in EV (as discussed in Chapter IV), doublets tend not to stray far from literal

denotations, unlike some of the doublets we have seen in earlier texts such as Ps(P); Waldron

explains that, as he understands it, Trevisa tends to use doublets to cover a broader range of their

lemmata’s literal denotations (Waldron 277) rather than for any more “exegetical” purpose. This

is, of course, true of any number of translations in which Trevisa certainly had no part (such as

EBV Acts), but the similarities with Trevisa’s modus operandi do help underscore some of the

more subtle differences between the doublets of EV and those of LV. Some time was spent in the

last chapter, for instance, examining the case of synonymous doublets, the most prevalent variety

of which was the “bilingual” doublet, which we noted in passing is also fairly common in the

works of Trevisa. Bilingual synonymous doublets are not, however, a notable characteristic of

LV. Although synonymous doublets are far from absent in LV, its doublets tend more often to be

markedly non-synonymous, and indeed to shy away from exegetical insertion less than EV does.

Certainly it would be impossible to identify and distinguish the contributions of individual

translators, but the variation both within and between versions does seem to point to variety in

translational approach among the translators, and we can reasonably think in broad terms of

translators who found doubling useful or necessary (the translators responsible for EV Baruch 4-

Revelation and for LV’s Old Testament) and translators who did not (Hereford and anyone else

involved in EV Genesis-Baruch 3:20, the translators of LV’s New Testament).

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(2c) Literalism, Glossing, and Paraphrase

The suggestion, made in passing at the end of the previous section, that the doublets in

LV’s Old Testament shy away from “exegetical intervention” less than do those in any part of

EV deserves further exploration. Dove observes that “there is no hard and fast line between

literal translation and supplementary explanation” (Dove [2007] 153), and this is especially

apparent when considering LV. Whereas manuscripts of EV are largely free of glossing (other

than doublets), manuscripts of LV are considerably more variable in this respect. In particular,

Hargreaves explains that a few LV copies contain what he calls “systemic glosses,” which are

“numerous enough to fill all the margins, with a comment for something in nearly every verse”

(Hargreaves [1961] 285), while others contain “sporadic” marginal comments (ibid.; cf. Hudson

[1988b] 382-384). In most cases, the material in these glosses derives from Nicholas of Lyra, as

should be unsurprising in light of what we have already seen about the translators’ use of his

biblical commentaries, and many of the marginal glosses in the glossed manuscripts (as

documented in FM) conclude with the words “Lire here.” There is also a standard set of brief

glosses incorporated directly into the text found consistently across LV manuscripts and clearly

part of the “original” of LV. Some of these are brief definitions of unfamiliar words (whether for

familiar or for unfamiliar objects): e.g., “tribunes þat is sovereyns of a þousynd” at 1 Samuel

8:12, “prepucies þat is mennus ȝerdis uncircumcidid” at 1 Samuel 18:25, “a councubyn þat is a

secoundarie wiif” at 2 Samuel 3:7. Some take on functions fulfilled by “or” doublets in EV as

discussed in Chapter IV. In fact, the example from 2 Samuel 3:7 just quoted closely parallels the

doublet “concubynes or secundarie wyves” at EV Daniel 5:3. We also find glosses explicating

metaphorical uses (e.g., “hond þat is punyschyng” at Joshua 22:31, “hond þat is werk” at 2

Samuel 18:18) and glosses that explicate the moral, doctrinal, or theological significance of their

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lemmata (e.g., “strengþe þat is greet preier” at 2 Kings 5:16, “of propiciacioun þat is of mersi” at

1 Chronicles 28:11).

The overlap between the categories “alternative translation” and “explanatory comment”

is perhaps most obvious in the case of expressions which appear in some manuscripts as doublets

and in others as (sometimes marginal) glosses introduced by “that is.” For instance, at 1 Samuel

12:17, Samuel tells the people of Israel that God will send uoces et pluuias, meaning (as Douay-

Rheims renders this phrase, literalizing the metaphor) “thunder and rain.” In most copies of LV,

uoces is translated denotatively and followed by a “that is” gloss: “voices þat is þundris.” Other

copies, however, alter “þat is” to “or,” presenting “þundris” not as an interpretive comment but

as a second translation. Moreover, when we consider the content of “or” doublets and glosses

introduced by “that is” more broadly, we find that there are no simple distinctions. A gloss

introduced by “that is” may consist simply of a second, still fairly literal rendering or a close

paraphrase of its lemma, and, conversely, an “or” doublet may elaborate on its lemma to the

point that the second component is not really a translation at all, but a brief piece of commentary.

Instances of the former are in fact not uncommon: e.g., “crist þat is anoyntid” at 1 Samuel 24:11,

“seere þat is profete” at 2 Samuel 15:27. Doublets that read more like explanatory notes than

alternative translations are somewhat less common, but examples may be found at verse 6 of the

apocryphal Prayer of Manasseh, 16 where inuestigabilis est is translated as “unserchable eþer may

not be comprehendid bi mannus wit,” and in some of the doublets discussed in section 4d, below.

The overlap between glosses and doublets, however, does not seem to imply that the

translators regarded “or” and “that is” as interchangeable. Though there are exceptions, there is

still a tendency for “that is” to introduce longer, more explanatory comments, and for “or” to

16
In copies of WB which contain this book, it appears as chapter 37 of 2 Chr.

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introduce simple alternative translations. It is, at any rate, plain that the “that is” glosses are

generally explanatory to such a degree that they cannot easily be considered simple translations.

The comparative prevalence of these in most copies of at least the Old Testament books in LV,

furthermore, points to an interesting change in orientation relative to EV. While, as we have

already seen, the later books of EV make much more use of doubling than does LV, no part of

any version of EV features extensive use of “that is” glosses. EV manuscripts also all lack

marginal glossing of the type studied by Hargreaves in LV manuscripts. 17 Although there is at

least one set of texts, the so-called Glossed Gospels, that feature EV books with extensive

commentary, on the whole EV seems intended to present, as much as possible, the naked text of

the Scriptures without interpretive commentary. At least some of the LV revisors, by contrast,

seem to have been less concerned to limit themselves to simple literal translation.

Similarly, it is notable that, where LV simplifies EV’s doublets, it does not always do so

in favor of greater obvious literalism. When the LV revisors settled on one of the two alternative

translations contained in an EV doublet, they did not consistently favor the first over the second

(or vice versa). We have already seen (see section 2a) that in simplifying EV’s bilingual doublets

LV does not consistently prefer the Latinate component or consistently prefer the Germanic or

Romance component. In a more striking vein, in the case of figurative doublets, LV frequently

settles on the explanatory translation, dispensing with the source-text’s figurative language

entirely. Thus, for instance, in places where EV renders forms of caro as “flesh or man,” LV

actually tends to have only “man” (e.g., at John 1:14) and so to eliminate the source-text’s use of

synecdoche in these cases. This dovetails clearly with the concept of the literal sense of Scripture

17
It is worth observing that, as Hargreaves shows on the basis of the catch-words that introduce them, at least some
of the glosses found in LV were actually developed for a version of EV (Hargreaves [1961] 286). Nevertheless, they
are still by all indications a later development; Hargreaves thinks they “were clearly composed to accompany the
most revised form of the earlier version” (ibid., emphasis added).

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not as the dictionary denotations of the words contained in the text but the meaning that the

author had in mind when writing those words.

Overall, the basic concerns that motivate EV’s use of doubling remain the same for LV,

but with changes of emphasis. Most conspicuously, although essentially all variants of LV

contain some synonymous doublets, these comprise a far smaller proportion of the total corpus

of doublets in LV than they do in EV. In general, then, there is a stronger tendency for the two

components of each doublet to differ markedly in meaning in LV than in EV. This is true not

only in the sense that most synonymous doublets are eliminated, but also in that the components

of LV’s non-synonymous doublets are more commonly more different from one another than are

their counterparts in EV. This is not because of an entirely new approach, but arises from a

preference to use doubling mainly for lemmata which are either polysemous or used in figurative

or otherwise unclear senses. There is, in a few notable instances, also more freedom in drawing

on exegetical considerations in the doubled rendering, with the second component not really a

translation at all but an interpretive explanation. With all that cleared away, let us now begin to

consider LV’s doublets in detail.

(3) Doublets in LV Retained from EV

Probably the easiest way to begin the comparison between the doublets of EV and those

of LV is to collate the section (Baruch 3:21 to the end of 2 Maccabees) in which both versions

feature extensive doubling. 18 In this section of the Old Testament, just as Hargreaves and others

who see EV’s doublets as stopgaps would expect, there is clearly a deliberate reduction of the

number of doublets. New doublets are introduced, but they are far outnumbered by those found

18
EV and LV both also feature at least fifteen doublets in Ecclus., Is., and Jer., but doubling is not as markedly
common in either version for these books as for the last sixteen books of the OT.

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in EV but eliminated in LV. This is true of all manuscripts of LV, but it is more true of some

copies than of others, as is demonstrated strikingly by FM. As Fristedt realized, Forshall and

Madden selected their base-manuscript for LV (British Library Royal 1 C VIII) “not for being

the most reliable reproduction of the original translation, but because it offered the most accurate

text when corrected, and emendated” (Fristedt 1.25, his emphasis). As noted in section 2a, these

corrections and emendations include the elimination of a large number of doublets that, as

documented in FM’s apparatus, are found in most other copies of LV. Forshall and Madden

themselves comment in their description of Royal 1 C VIII that “one of the most remarkable

variations occurs in the discarding of the verbal glosses [i.e., doublets] from the text, which as far

as Numb.xx. are almost always omitted” (FM 1.xl). Still, many of the doublets which Royal 1 C

VIII omits are likewise omitted in multiple other copies, so that there seems to be something of a

trajectory in the development of LV’s doublets, tending toward the reduction, but not complete

exclusion, of doublets. One way or another, we may think of the manuscripts that eliminate these

doublets as “more revised” copies, as opposed to “less revised” copies whose doublets are still

fairly uniform across different manuscripts. To begin, however, the revisors’ use of doubling can

be helpfully explored by considering the doublets from EV that they did not eliminate.

(3a) Doublets Copied from EV without Modification

Though manuscript variants make the exact composition of LV’s “standard” set of

doublets somewhat open-ended and a precise count impossible, even an inexact reckoning will

make clear the difference between EV and LV. In Ezekiel, most copies of EV feature

approximately 176 instances of translational doubling, while LV’s standard set brings this down

to about 35; these yield an average of 4 per chapter and 0.795 per chapter, respectively. In

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Hosea, the numbers are 18 for EV and 4 for LV, yielding the averages 1.286 per chapter and

0.286 per chapter. In Zephaniah, the numbers are 11 for EV and 6 for LV, yielding the averages

3.667 per chapter and 2 per chapter. The difference between the two versions thus varies from

book to book, but these examples are typical in displaying an incidence of doubling that ranges

from slightly less than two to slightly more than five times higher for EV than for LV. There are

exceptions, all among the Minor Prophets, in which both versions contain about the same

number of doublets in most copies; in Zechariah and Malachi, there are in fact slightly more

doublets in most copies of LV than in EV, but this is not true in the “more revised” manuscripts.

Even in the final books of the Old Testament, most of LV’s doublets are different from

EV’s, except in the Books of Maccabees and some of the Minor Prophets. At any rate, the

retention of doublets from EV in these books does not seem to fit any narrow pattern, but

synonymous doublets are most commonly eliminated. The LV doublets that are found in the

same form and same place as in EV are listed below (Table 5.3.1), with 1-2 Maccabees excluded

for convenience. Items excluded from FM’s base-text are marked with one asterisk, and items

also (according to FM’s apparatus) excluded from multiple other manuscripts with two asterisks.

Table 5.3.1. EV Doublets Retained in LV: Baruch 4-Malachi

Bar. 4:5: animaequior = pacienter eþer of betere coumfort**
Ezek. 3:7: adtrita = defoulid eþer of unshamfast**
Dan. 8:23: propositiones = proposiciouns eþer resouns set forþ
Dan. 8:27: interpretaretur = interpretide eiþer expounede**
Hos. 2:12: corrumpam = y schal corumpe eþer distrie**
Am. 4:13: nebulam = cloud or myist*
Am. 5:9: uastitatem = distriyng or wastnesse*
Am. 6:7: factio = þe doyng or tresoun**
Am. 7:7: litum = pargetid eþer plastrid**
Am. 9:6: fasciculum = knycchoun eþer birþun**
Ob. 1: legatum = legat eþer messenger**
Ob. 2: contemptibilis = contemptible or worþi to be dispisid*
Ob. 7: insidias = aspies eþer tresouns
Ob. 7: inluserunt = scornyden eþer disseyveden*
Ob. 20: transmigratio = transmygracioun or overpassing**

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 Jon. 3:8: conuertatur = be convertid or al turned**
Jon. 4:3: animam = soule or lif**
Mic. 1:7: sculptilia = sculptils eþer gravun ymagis**
Mic. 3:6: uisione = visioun or profesie
Mic. 4:8: nebulosa = cloudi or derk**
Mic. 5:5: primates homines = primatis men eþer þe firste in dignytee
Mic. 5:11: diuinationes = dyvynaciouns eþer tellingis bi devels craft**
Mic. 5:12: sculptilia = sculptilis eþer graven ymagis**
Mic. 6:16: uoluptatibus 19 = voluptees eþer lustis*
Mic. 6:16: sibilum = hissing eþer scornyng*
Mic. 7:6: contumeliam = wrong eþer dispite*
Mic. 7:6: domestici = þe homeli eþer houshold meynee
Mic. 7:10: lutum = clei eþer fen*
Nah. 1:6: dissolutae = dissolvyd eþer brokun*
Nah. 3:10: transmigrationem = transmygracioun eþer passing over*
Hab. 3:14: sceptris = þe ceptris eþer powers
Hab. 3:16: scateat = buyle eþer sprynge*
Zeph. 1:6: non quaesierunt = souȝten not eiþer axiden not**
Zeph. 1:8: peregrina = pilgrimys eþer straunge
Zeph. 1:15: miseriae = of myseiste eþer wrecchidnesse**
Zeph. 2:3: mansueti = myelde eþer pacient*
Zeph. 3:2: disciplinam = techynge eþer chastisyng
Zech. 3:5: cidarim = cappe eþer mytre**
Zech. 4:12: spicae = eeris eþer ripe fruyt
Zech. 6:10: transmigratione = transmygracioun eþer caitiftee
Zech. 7:10: pupillum = fadirles eþer modirles
Zech. 7:11: adgrauauerunt = aggregiden eþer maden hevy**
Zech. 8:23: linguis = tungis or langagis**
Zech. 9:8: exactor = exactour eþer uniust axere**
Zech. 9:15: proteget = schal kyvere eþer defende*
Zech. 10:4: exactor = exactour eþer uniust axere**
Zech. 10:8: sibilabo = y schal hisse eþer softli speke
Zech. 11:8: uariauit = variede or chaungide*
Zech. 12:4: stuporem = drede eþer leesynge of mynde
Zech. 14:12: tabescet = schal fail eþer rot**
Mal. 1:7: pollutum = defoulid eþer uncleene**
Mal. 1:10: gratuito = of his owne wille eþir freli
Mal. 1:12: contemptibile = contemptible eþer worþi for to be dispisid**
Mal. 2:7: scientiam = science eþer kunnynge**
Mal. 3:8: primitiuis = premyssis eþer firste fruytis**
Mal. 3:9: penuria = myseiste eþer nedynesse**
Mal. 3:11: corrumpet = corrumpe eþer distrie**

19
SV uoluntatibus.

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 That there has, even here, been some deliberate editorial work on the part of the LV

revisors is suggested by the minor but noticeable dialectal shift in the conjunction: on the whole

EV prefers the form “or,” and LV prefers “eþer;” this is clearly on display with their doublets. 20

Combined with the selectivity of LV’s inherited doublets, that would seem to suggest an

approach that goes beyond arbitrary, automatic retention of doublets from EV. Moreover, it will

be found that fewer than half of the items on Table 5.3.1 were classed in Chapter IV as

synonymous doublets, whereas these made up the majority of EV’s doublets. This further

suggests conscious exercise of editorial privilege and an emphasis on simplifying doublets in

which the difference between the two components is minimal. Eliminated items include bilingual

pairings like “preceptis or heestis” for praeceptis at Ezekiel 5:6, “vapour or smoke” for uapor at

Ezekiel 8:11, and “empire or lordship” for imperium at Daniel 2:37, as well as purely Germanic

pairings such as “hiire or mede” for mercedem at Ezekiel 16:33 and “hirt or harmed” for laesus

at 2 Maccabees 14:28. Again, the elimination of EV doublets is, for the “less revised” copies,

less extensive toward the end of the Old Testament than it is from Ezekiel to Amos, but the

trajectory toward minimizing synonymous doublets is apparent in all manuscripts. This

observation is particularly true of the “more revised” copies (note that most of the doublets in

Table 5.3.1 classed in Chapter IV as synonymous are marked with at least one asterisk).

The synonymous doublets carried over to LV from EV tend, furthermore, to be ones

whose components possess obvious differences in register or connotations. This includes some

that serve disambiguating functions, as discussed with “false friends” in Chapter IV, section 1b.

For example, in “homeli or houshold,” “homeli” can have some secondary meanings (such as

“meek, gentle, kind, gracious” [MED]) that neither “houshold” nor domesticus possesses, and so

20
Some LV manuscripts do change “eþer” to “or” with some consistency, and “or” is sometimes found in copies
that normally use “eþer,” but the manuscript evidence on the whole solidly points to “eþer” as the default in LV.

275
the second component may act as a restricting corrective to the first, though they are still

basically synonymous. Synonymous pairings in which the first component is an Anglicization of

the lemma, meanwhile, are commonly those in which that Anglicization is some kind of

technical expression (cf. Chapter IV, section 1b), as in “legat eþer messenger,” “proposisiouns

eþer resouns set forþ,” “premyssis eþer firste fruytis,” and “morus or mulberie trees.” 21 Indeed,

there has been enough of a shift on this front that Hudson has asserted that LV “uses Latinate

vocabulary only for those words of peculiarly biblical nature that have remained limited to

scriptural occurrence” (Hudson [1986] 94). Nevertheless, it should not be supposed that all

inherited doublets are carefully chosen along these lines, and there are still some synonymous

pairings that do not have such neat justifications, including the calque doublets “contemptible or

worþi to be dispisid” and “transmygracioun eþer passing over,” simple bilingual pairings like

“interpretide eiþer expounede,” “dissolvyd eþer brokun,” and “variede or chaungide,” and more

anomalous items like “knycchoun eþer birþun.”

Most EV doublets retained in LV for this section of the Bible are, then, non-synonymous,

especially in the “more revised” manuscripts. Among these doublets, we find examples of all our

usual categories. Because these categories were always imprecise and provisional, it is hard to

make direct comparisons between EV and LV, but it seems to me that there is a greater emphasis

in LV than in EV on a) polysemous doublets in which the difference between components is

stark and obvious, and b) figurative doublets in which the figurative meaning is not self-

explanatory. Thus in polysemous doublets the components tend more strongly than in EV to

show little semantic overlap. For instance, in “tentis eþer oost” for castra and “lace eþer noche”

21
In this last example, it is of course not the concept but merely the term that can be called “technical.” As pointed
out in the MED, although “mor” does simply mean “mulberry [tree],” the Latinate name for this plant has special
associations with its medicinal uses that “mulberry” does not.

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for fibula, there is still some connection between the two components—“tentis” and “oost” both

relate to military operations; “lace” and “nouche” are both jewelry—but they refer to completely

different aspects of military campaigning and to different pieces of jewelry, 22 respectively. By

contrast, EV is full of polysemous doublets in which the components are different enough from

the other that they cannot be thought of as true synonyms, but are still closely related: e.g., “seek

or soor” for aegrotum at Ezekiel 34:4, “barris or lockis” for uectes at Ezekiel 38:11 and Nahum

3:13, and “souȝten or axiden” for quaesierunt at Zephaniah 1:6. All of these drop out of the

“more revised” manuscripts of LV, and most of them also out of the “less revised” copies,

evidently because the revisors wished to minimize the use of doublets in which the components’

meanings do not diverge strongly.

Gone likewise, at least in the “more revised” copies, are figurative doublets like “torne or

kutt” for scissas at Baruch 6:30 (cf. Obadiah 3), “defoulid or unshamfast” for attrita at Ezekiel

3:7, and “an hangynge lyne or mesure” for perpendicula at Zechariah 1:16 in which the second

component provides so direct and immediate an extension of the first component’s meaning as to

be otiose. Meanwhile, the kinds of figurative doublets that are carried over from EV tend to be

those in which the meaning of the figure is not immediately plain, as with sceptrum at Habakkuk

3:14 (“þe ceptris eþer powers”), dextra at 1 Maccabees 11:62 (“riȝt hond eþer pees”), effluere at

2 Maccabees 2:33 (“to flete out eþer be long”), and dormitio at 2 Maccabees 12:45 (“slepyng

eþer deþ”). As was discussed in Chapter IV, in these cases the tenor of the figurative usage is not

hopelessly obscure, but may not be obvious either, or else it may not be obvious that the usage in

context is figurative, resulting in potential confusion in a cursory reading. All in all, with the

retention of doublets from EV to LV, it appears that the revisors have prioritized those that serve

22
The MED does list “necklace” as one of the possible meanings of “nouche,” but more commonly it refers to a
jeweled brooch, pin, or clasp.

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explanatory functions over those that serve stylistic functions, and have sought to simplify

doublets where the meaning of the text is just as readily intelligible without a doublet as with

one. Where EV showed a high degree of concern for close homology with the source-text, often

correcting for this with a second translation to form a doublet, in LV the concern for homology is

(as I have already attempted to show) fairly restrained, and this leads to the simplification of

most synonymous doublets and many polysemous and figurative doublets. Viewed another way,

LV shows a tendency to eschew EV’s attempts to appeal to two different types of reader with

synonymous doublets in favor of giving one generally-acceptable translation and using doublets

only where they serve a genuinely explanatory function or point to meaningful ambiguities.

(3b) EV Doublets Modified in LV

It also frequently happens in the last section of the Old Testament that an EV doublet is

retained but modified in one or both of its components. The extent of the alteration is variable,

sometimes simply rephrasing the second component to clarify its meaning, sometimes replacing

the second component with a translation more clearly different from the first, sometimes entirely

replacing both components. A non-exhaustive sampling of such doublets is given in Table 5.3.2.

Table 5.3.2. EV Doublets Altered in LV

Ezek. 10:13: uolubiles = volible or turnynge about [EV] / eþer able to go al aboute [LV]
Ezek. 22:18: scoriam = drosse or syndre [EV] / eþer filþe of irun [LV]
Ezek. 29:7: dissoluisti = dissolvyd or undon [EV] / hast loosid eþer discoumfortid [LV]
Dan. 2:5: coniecturam = þe coniecturyng or menyng [EV] / eþer expouning [LV]
Dan. 2:35: testa = pott or mater maad of erþe [EV] / tiil stoon eþer erþene vessel [LV]
Hos. 2:11: neomeniam = neomynye or new feest [EV] / eþer feeste of newe moone [LV]
Joel 1:10: elanguit = langwishide or failide [EV] / was siik eþer failide [LV]
Zech. 6:12: oriens = eest or springynge [EV] / comynge forþ eþer borun [LV]
1 Mac. 5:64: fausta = prosperite or blessid þingus [EV] / eþer preisyngis [LV]
2 Mac. 6:6: simpliciter = symply or pleynly [EV] / eþer opynli [LV]
2 Mac. 6:19: complectens = biclippynge or desiirynge [EV] / biclippide eþer chees [LV]

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 Though the difference between EV and LV is in many cases trivial, there is still a

noticeable stylistic shift in several of these revisions, mainly in the direction of concreteness and

specificity. For instance, although both doubled renderings of neomenia in Hosea 2:11 contain

the same basic information, LV’s “feeste of newe moone” is more informative than “new feest”

in EV. In a similar vein, “syndre” and “filþe of irun” (as alternatives to “dross” for scoria in

Ezekiel 22:18) refer effectively to the same substance, but LV’s second translation explains more

fully what this substance is. In other cases, the LV revisors substituted a term that is not more

explanatory but nevertheless more concrete or dynamic. Thus, for instance, in Daniel 2:5,

“expouning” (LV) refers to the act of interpretation (as does “coniecturyng,” the first component

shared by both versions), where EV’s second component had referred to the product of

interpretation, namely “menyng.” Likewise, in 2 Maccabees 6:19, the second, explanatory

translation of complectens changes from EV “desiirynge,” an unintentional state, to LV

“chees,” 23 an intentional action. In both cases, the second component of EV’s doublet had lost

something of the concreteness of the lemma and first component, whereas the revisors seem to

have been trying to ensure that this aspect of the verb’s meaning is apparent in both alternatives.

The preference for increasing concreteness may also extend beyond a concern for

literalism, as is suggested by the modification of EV “or blessid þingus” (for fausta at 1

Maccabees 5:64) to “eþer preisyngis.” In this instance, EV’s second component is a translation

more literal than LV’s, but LV’s second component refers to a more tangible and specific

concept than does EV’s. Similarly, in the alteration of EV “langwishide” to “was siik” for

elanguit at Joel 1:10, the revisors narrowed the meaning of the first component more than the

lemma literally justifies, but they thereby also made it more concrete. As with much else in LV,

23
Incidentally, LV’s translation of this phrase furnishes another example of the resolution of participles.

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this seems to display an intention to make grasping the sense of the text easier for a reader who

has no commentary except what appears in the manuscript at hand, even at the expense of the

literal dictionary-meanings of the Vulgate’s words. At the same time, the fact that the LV

revisors chose still to use a doublet in each of these places suggests that they wished to show that

the text does draw on multiple levels of meaning even as they narrowed the range of meaning at

one of those levels. The innovation in LV should not be overstated, then, but it nevertheless

warrants acknowledgment as it relates to broader patterns in the creation of the revised version.

(4) Doublets Peculiar to LV

The doublets newly added in LV also display no radical innovation relative to EV. Thus,

rather than repeat the framework of the previous chapter and apply it to LV, I shall take this

framework as a given and simply examine some areas in which LV follows trends not present or

less prominent in EV. In broad terms, the LV revisors worked apparently with the same basic

ideas of what is acceptable in using doubled translations, but regularly shifted the emphasis from

small distinctions of register or meaning to more substantial issues of ambiguity and interpreting

figurative language. Often the revisors seem still to be concerned with style rather than meaning

per se, but for the most part LV’s doublets are easier to explain in terms of function than many of

those in EV. It is, however, still impossible to make generalizations with complete certainty,

especially since it often happens that the initial revisors added new doublets that were in turn

eliminated in the “more revised” copies. Indeed, the one generalization that can be made is that

the use of doubling remains, as in EV, an ad-hoc matter, unevenly distributed throughout the

text, although there are recurrent concerns. If, for EV, those recurrent concerns had mainly to do

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with fidelity to the source-text and simplicity, for LV they also include clarity, precision, and

explicitness, in line with the underlying principles of the revision in general.

(4a) Synonymous Doublets

It is true for doublets peculiar to LV as well as for those inherited from EV that the

category of synonymous doublets shrinks more than the corpus of doublets as a whole. The

revisors add some new synonymous doublets, but the number of doublets found in “more

revised” copies that fit into this category and are not inherited from EV is comparatively small

(Table 5.4.1 attempts to be comprehensive).

Table 5.4.1. Synonymous Doublets Peculiar to LV

Ex. 31:7: propitiatorium = propiciatorie eþer table
Num. 1:50: caeremonias = cerymonyes eþer sacrifices
Num. 12:8: detrahere = bacbite eþer deprave
Num. 14:31: praedae = preyes eþer raveyns
Num. 31:51: speciebus = spices eþer kyndis
Num. 35:6: fugitiuorum = of fugityves eþer of fleynge men
Dt. 10:1: arcam = arke eþer a cofere
Dt. 15:15: liberauit te = delyvred þee eþer made þee free
Dt. 18:8: successione = successioun eþir eritage
Dt. 21:20: monita = monestyngis eþir heestis
Dt. 24:1: libellum = libel eþir litil book
Dt. 24:17: peruertes = perverte eþir waiwardli turne
Dt. 28:57: feminum = scharis eþir hipe bonys
Dt. 28:58: uolumine = volym eþer book
Jos. 10:21: muttire = to grutche eþer to make privy noise
Jos. 20:2: fugitiuorum = of fugytyves eþer of men exilid for unwilful schedyng of blood
Jdg. 9:14: rhamnum = ramne eþer þeve þorn
Jdg. 10:16: doluit = hadde rewþe eþer compassioun
Jdg. 12:4: fugitiuus = fugitif eþer exilid
1 Sam. 1:24: amphora = amfore eþer a pot
1 Sam. 22:4: praesidio = forselet eþer stronghold
1 Sam. 23:22: curiosius = more curiousli eþer intentifli
2 Sam. 14:7: reliquiae = relikis eþir remenauntis
2 Sam. 17:2: desolatum = desolat eþer left aloone
1 Kg. 3:1: adfinitate = affynyte eþer aliaunce
1 Kg. 4:7: praefectos = prefectis eþer cheef minystrys
1 Kg. 7:50: cardines = herris eþer heengis

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 1 Kg. 11:28: praefectum = prefect eþer sovereyn
1 Kg. 14:10: purum = þe purete eþer clennesse
1 Kg. 18:3: dispensatorem = dispendere eþer stiward
2 Kg. 25:27: transmigrationis = transmigracioun eþer passyng over
1 Chr. 16:25: horribilis = orible eþir griseful
1 Chr. 16:42: portarios = portours eþer bereris
2 Chr. 15:16: simulacrum = symylacre eþer licnesse
2 Chr. 19:10: caerimoniis = cerymonyes eþer sacrifices
2 Chr. 25:18: carduus = a cardue eþer a tasil
2 Chr. 28:15: curam = cure eþer medecyn
2 Chr. 34:11: lapidicinis = delves eþer quarreris
Neh. 2:3: deserta = desert eþer forsakun
Neh. 7:6: transtulerat = translatid eþer led over
Tob. 2:6: lamentationem = lamentacioun eþer weilyng
Jb. 5:21: calamitatem = myseiste eþir wretchidnesse
Jb. 8:15: innitetur = schal leene eþer reste
Jb. 10:19: translatus = translatid eþir borun over
Jb. 24:9: spoliauerunt = spuyliden eþer robbiden
Jb. 28:2: solutus = resolved eþir meltid
Ps. 6:6 (6:7): rigabo = y schal moiste eþer make weet
Ps. 16:4 (15:4): conuenticula = conventiculis eþir litle coventis
Ps. 33:17 (32:17): abundantia = habundaunce eþer plentee
Ps. 74:4 (73:4): signa = signes eþir baneris
Prv. 6:6: formicam = amte eþer pissemyre
Sg. 6:5: gemellis fetibus = double lambren eþer twynnes
Ecclus. 31:23: cholera = colre eþer bittir moisture
Is. 3:3: mystici = mystik eþir goostli
Is. 3:19: mitras = mytris eþer chapelettis
Is. 5:6: desertam = desert eþer forsakun
Lam. 3:28: solitarius = solitarie eþer aloone
Bar. 4:20: stola = stole eþer long roobe
Ezek. 8:10: reptilium = reptils eþer crepynge beestis
Ezek. 27:16: chodchod = cochod eþer aver de peis
Ezek. 44:10: Leuitae = Levytis eþer men of þe lynage of Levy
Ezek. 45:17: kalendis = kalendis eþer bigynnyngis of moneþis
Dan. 2:48: praefectum = prefect eþer cheef iustise
Mic. 5:5: primates homines = primatis men eþer þe firste in dignytee
Hab. 2:16: uomitus = casting up eþer spuyng
1 Mac. 5:42: scribas = scribis eþer writeris
2 Mac. 4:21: primates 24 = primatis eþer princes
2 Mac. 9:29: transferebat = translatide eþer bar over
Ac. 28:29: quaestionem = questioun eþir musyng

24
SV has primatus, and its apparatus notes the variant primatos.

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 “Less revised” manuscripts add further synonymous doublets, but not especially many of

them. Compared with EV, then, there is not only less doubling, but a narrower focus in the use of

synonymous doublets. As was discussed in the previous chapter, many of the bilingual

synonymous pairings in EV seem otiose—the Germanic translation is not needed to explain the

Latinate translation and would also be an adequate translation on its own. Thus, in EV doublets

like “benygnyte or good wille” (Romans 2:4), “a festu or a litil mote” (Matthew 7:3), or

“yconfigurid or maad lik” (Philippians 3:10), the lemma is a fairly ordinary word (benignitas,

festucam, configuratus), as is the second component of the doublet, and so the latter should be

sufficient for understanding the former. By contrast, it will be observed that most expressions in

Table 5.4.1 are in some way technical or specialized (a pattern we have explored for EV in

Chapter IV, section 1b). These include expressions with legal (fugitiuus, successio, libellus,

dispensator), political (praefectus, magistratus), military (signum, cohors), religious

(propitiatorium, 25 caeremoniae, hymnus, monstrum, Leuites), academic (quaestio), agricultural

(rhamnus, carduus), or other technical associations. For such lemmata, it may have been

considered desirable to retain something close to the Latin in order to emphasize their status as

technical expressions, for which the doublet’s second component furnishes a simplified

explanation.

This kind of motivation is clearly in play for doublets which translate special

designations. For instance, doublets which refer to the paraphernalia of Israelite religious

ceremonies, such as “arke eþer a cofere” (referring to the Ark of the Covenant) and “cochod eþer

25
The interpretation of the propitiatorium as a “table” is also probably influenced by Nicholas of Lyra, who notes at
one point in his commentary on Mt. that “Certain other doctors say that it [the propitiatory] was not the cover of the
ark, but a table of gold raised above it, carried by the cherubim themselves who were at the ends of the ark” (qtd.
Klepper 54). Nicholas does not endorse this interpretation, but he does not endorse the alternative with which he
contrasts it, either.

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aver de peis,” use the first component to indicate the precise word (in an Anglicized form,

usually) for the item in question, and the second to give a more definite idea what that item

actually is. This is especially obvious in the doubled translation of the name Liber as “Liber eþer

Bacchus” at 2 Maccabees 14:33. In this case, a well-known Roman deity is, in the Vulgate text,

referred to by a less-common name, and the English translators seek both to follow the

nomenclature used by the source-text and to use the god’s more familiar name for the guidance

of the reader. The latter move is natural because a medieval English reader would have been less

likely to know Bacchus’s alternative name than would the Vulgate’s original readership. 26

Fairly few items remain in Table 5.4.1 that cannot be explained as putting a more

technical designation alongside a more pedestrian explanatory label. Even if not totally

negligible, this subset is much smaller than the corresponding group in EV. These doublets

would seem to suggest that there was continued disagreement among the translators about low-

level stylistic matters such as diction. As with EV, it is not really possible to link any of these

clearly with dialectal differences, though some would seem to reflect variations in preference

that were probably more than personal. For instance, in “amte eþer pissemyre,” the two

components are interchangeable, and neither of them is a nonstandard “dialect” word, but “ant”

might nevertheless be more familiar than “pismire” to certain readers and conversely for others.

Without more knowledge about the translators, it is impossible to say whether this is the result of

actual conflicting preferences among the translators or an attempt to accommodate both readers

who more commonly used “ant” and readers who more commonly used “pismire.” One way or

26
This is well illustrated by the fact that, in EV, the name Liber is misconstrued in all three of its occurrences in 2
Mac.: as a common noun at 6:7 (twice), yielding the translation “free chiild,” and as an adjective at 14:33, yielding
“free” as a modifier of “fadir.” As it happens, moreover, the use of Liber is an innovation of the Vulgate, and the
original Greek text refers to this god as “Dionysus” (Διόνυσος).

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another, it shows that the LV revisors did not entirely avoid minor stylistic open-endedness of

the sort that is characteristic of EV.

Likewise, the LV revisors largely eschew “grammatical doublets.” Such doublets are not

especially common in EV, but in LV they become an absolute rarity. I can find only five

instances documented in FM (Table 5.4.2).

Table 5.4.2. Grammatical Doublets in LV

Jdg. 1:28: fecit eos tributarios = made hem tributaries eþir to paye tribute
Ps. 16:4 (15:4): conuenticula = conventiculis eþir litle coventis
Ecclus. 37:23: sophistice = sofisticali eþer bi soffym
1 Mac. 1:1: in Graecia = in Grece eþer in þe lond of Grekis
2 Mac. 4:9: Antiochenos = Antiochienus eþer men of Antioche
It is probably no accident that most of these are either technical terms in ways discussed

above (“tributaries,” “sofisticali,” and possibly even “conventiculis” 27) or derived from foreign

place-names. In such cases, it is at least conceivable, if not likely, that the component which is

more homologous to the lemma should seem obscure to some readers, but also obvious why this

“more obscure” form should be retained. (As it happens, moreover, in manuscripts which

simplify these doublets, the decision is invariably in favor of the first component.) The doubled

translations of Graecia and Antiocheni are harder to account for, but perhaps are intended to

make concessions to two common ways of phrasing demonyms and names of regions.

(4b) Non-Synonymous Bilingual Doublets

LV’s increased focus on non-synonymous doublets is well illustrated by an examination

of doublets in which the first component is an Anglicization of the lemma. In EV, such doublets

are usually synonymous, but in LV the proportion of non-synonymous pairings becomes much

larger. Table 5.4.3 is by no means comprehensive, but provides a representative sampling.

27
See Hudson (1988a) for a discussion of Lollard “conventicles.”

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 Table 5.4.3. Non-synonymous Doublets in LV: Latinate-Germanic/Romance Pairings
Dt. 32:10: horroris = orrour eþir hidousnesse
Jdg. 6:4: herbis = eerbis eþir grene corn
1 Sam. 18:5: acceptus = acceptid eþer plesaunt
1 Sam. 20:20: exercens = excercisynge eþer pleiynge
1 Sam. 23:22: curiosius = more curiousli eþer intentifli
2 Sam. 24:13: delibera = delyvere þou eþer avyse þou
2 Kg. 22:3: scribam = scryveyn eþir doctour
1 Chr. 26:18: cellulis = sellis eþir litle housis
1 Chr. 28:11: descriptionem = discryvyng eþer ensaumple
Jb. 32:8: inspiratio = enspiryng eþer revelacioun
Ps. 115:14 (113:22): adiciat = adde eþer encreese
Ps. 119:15 (118:15): exercebor = I schal be excercisid eþer bisily ocupied
Prv. 1:9: addatur = be addid eþer encreessid
Prv. 22:28: terminos = termes eþer markis
Ecc. 7:30: solutionem = þe soilyng eþer expownyng
Wis. 10:18: transtulit = translatid eþer ledde over
Ecclus. 22:30: uapor = vapour eþer heete
Is. 58:6: impietatis = of unpitee eþer of cruelte
Is. 59:14: aequitas = equyte eþer evenesse
Jer. 8:8: stilus = styl eþer writing
Jer. 31:4: choro = queer eþer cumpeny
Lam. 5:15: chorus = queer eþer song
1 Mac. 10:44: ratione = resoun eþer rente
2 Mac. 9:27: communem = comyn or tretable
This kind of pairing is to be found in EV, but it is easier to produce examples from LV

than from EV even though the overall number of doublets is greater in the latter. At any rate,

what these examples emphasize is that the pairing of an Anglicization of the lemma with an

unrelated native or Romance term does not always indicate close synonymity. Thus, for example,

although in “enspiryng eþer revelacioun” a Latinate term is paired with a Romance term from a

different root, the semantic ranges of the two components differ significantly. These semantic

ranges are certainly related, but they are not precisely synonymous. In this case, in fact, we see

an instance of a phenomenon suggested for some of EV’s doublets in the preceding chapter: the

first component renders the lemma as literally as possible by simply Anglicizing it, and the

second component restricts the meaning. More concretely, ME “enspiryng” literally renders

Latin inspiratio, and can hardly be called a false friend. The translators, however, wish to make

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clear that inspiratio/“enspiryng” refers in this context to a divine communication, and so they

add a second translation, “revelacioun,” which singles out the “revelatory” sense of “enspiryng.”

This is an unusually clear-cut example, but the basic principle can be found acting in a

number of other doublets, such as “orrour eþir hidousnesse” or “more curiousli eþer intentifli.”

We also find the reverse, in which the second component broadens the meaning of the

expression: e.g., “discryve þou eþer write” or “vultur eþir ravenouse brid” (for uulturis at Job

28:7). Here, the second component reacts to a potential in the first to mislead by suggesting

something narrower than is denoted by the lemma. Thus, Latin describere and uultur are seen to

refer to a broader range of actions (in the first case) or creatures (in the second case) than English

“describe” or “vulture,” and the second component in each case clarifies this by supplementing

the first by a word with a noticeably broader range of denotation. That the narrower Latinate first

component is retained at all suggests that even the LV revisors preferred where possible to use an

English derivative of the lemma, in line with the ideas of fidelity reflected also in EV.

(4c) Polysemous Doublets: Increasing Difference between Components

Another noticeable feature of LV’s doublets is that, in comparison with EV, polysemous

doublets are quite prominent. Again, there is nothing qualitatively new relative to EV, but there

seems to be a difference of focus or emphasis in the selection of terms to be doubled. Table 5.4.4

presents a representative sample of polysemous doublets added in LV (some found only in “less

revised” copies). 28

Table 5.4.4. Polysemous Doublets Peculiar to LV

Ex. 8:16: sciniphes = litle flies eþer gnattis
Ex. 23:3: iudicio = cause eþir doom
Ex. 29:2: lita = bawmed eþer fried

28
In this case, I have opted to include an atypically large number of examples, regarding this as necessary to
demonstrate just how much more common this kind of stark difference between components is in LV than in EV.

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Num. 4:43: ritus = customs eþer services
Num. 21:28: oppido = citee eþir greet castel
Num. 32:14: alumni = nurreis eþer nurschid children
Num. 35:20: inpulerit = hurtliþ eþir schoufiþ
Dt. 12:15: maculatum = spottid eþer wemmed
Dt. 19:11: insidiatus = settiþ aspies eþer tresouns
Dt. 32:10: horroris = orrour eþir hidousnesse
Jos. 8:2: insidias = aspies eþir buyschementis
Jos. 16:1: sors = lot eþir part
Jos. 18:3: ignauia = cowardise eþir slouþe
Jdg. 3:22: capulus = pomel eþer hilte
Jdg. 16:3: fores = closyngis eþir leeves
1 Sam. 17:5: hamata = hokid eþer mailid
1 Sam. 20:20: exercens = excercisynge eþer pleiynge
1 Sam. 22:4: praesidio = forselet eþer stronghold
1 Sam. 22:8: coniurastis = han swore eþer conspirid
2 Sam. 3:31: exequias = heersis eþer dirige
2 Sam. 3:33: ignaui = dredeful men eþir cowardis
2 Sam. 20:8: gladio = swerd eþer dagger
2 Sam. 21:5: adtriuit = al to brak eþir defoulide
2 Sam. 22:21: secundum = up eþir aftir
2 Sam. 24:13: delibera = delyvere þou eþer avyse þou
1 Kg. 6:38: utensilibus = vessels eþer purtenauncis
1 Kg. 7:9: atrium = street eþir court
1 Kg. 7:12: atrium = court eþir voide space
2 Kg. 3:16: alueum = wombe eþer depþe
2 Kg. 4:30: dimittam = leeve eþer forsake
2 Kg. 19:32: munitio = strengþing eþir bisegyng
2 Kg. 25:19: tirones = ȝonge knyȝtis eþer men able to batel
1 Chr. 11:11: hastam = schaft eþir spere
1 Chr. 27:28: apothecas = schoppis eþer celeris
2 Chr. 13:7: rudis = buystuouse eþer fonne
2 Chr. 18:9: area = cornfloor eþer large hows
2 Chr. 21:19: maioribus = grettere eþer auncetris
2 Chr. 24:23: euolutus = turned aboute eþer endid
2 Chr. 29:16: uestibulum = porche eþir large place
2 Chr. 29:35: cultus = worschip eþir ournyng
2 Chr. 33:6: incantatores = enchaunteris eþir trigetours
Ezr. 7:20: fisco = comyn arke eþir purse
Ezr. 7:23: ritum = custom eþir religioun
Neh. 9:36: serui = þrallis eþir boonde men
Jdt. 15:14: peculiaria = propir eþer synguler
Ps. 61:6 (60:7): adicies = adde eþer encresse
Ps. 119:66 (118:66): disciplinam = loore eþer chastisyng
Ecc. 9:14: munitiones = strengþis eþer engyns [also Is. 29:3, translating munimenta]
Wis. 12:19: humanum = benygne eþer merciful

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 Wis. 15:12: lucrum = wynnyng eþer coveitise
Ecclus. 23:6: infrunitae = unsaveri eþer undiscreet
Is. 11:3: arguet = schal repreve eþer convicte
Is. 22:23: paxillum = a stake eþer a perche
Is. 24:12: solitudo = oleyntee eþer desolacioun
Ezek. 8:3: cincinno = heer eþer lockis
Dan. 2:2: malefici = wicchis eþer treietouris
Am. 4:7: superessent = weren...residue eþer to comynge
Am. 4:9: aurigine = rust eþer myldew
Ob. 5: racemos = rasyns or clustris
Mal. 4:2: orietur = schal rise eþer be borun
1 Mac. 10:28: praestationes = ȝyvyngis eþer rentis
1 Mac. 10:33: gratis = wilfuli or wiþout money
1 Mac. 10:44: ratione = resoun eþer rente
2 Mac. 9:4: perurgente = droof eiþer constreynede
2 Mac. 9:8: gestatorio = a bere eiþer hors litere
2 Mac. 11:27: senatui = senat or eldere men
2 Tim. 3:5: pietatis = of pitee eþer of religion
It is difficult to make precise comparisons since, again, EV and LV use doublets most

commonly in different places, but it seems that, in adding new doublets just as in retaining old

ones, LV more consistently uses doublets only where the difference of meaning between the two

components is stark and plain. Obviously, in grouping certain doublets from EV as polysemous,

I automatically suggest that there is a difference in meaning between the two components of all

doublets in that set, but those differences are often fairly subtle. That can be said about fewer

doublets in LV. For instance, as remarked in the last chapter, EV uses doubled renderings in a

few places for prepositions, the alternate translations of which reflect only slight nuances. In LV,

this happens exactly once, with secundum at 2 Samuel 22:21—and it is doubtless no coincidence

that GP comments specifically on this preposition, noting that it can be translated multiple ways,

and suggests “up” and “after,” the two alternatives that comprise this doublet.

In terms of where the LV revisors opt to preserve ambiguities from the Vulgate with

doublets, we should exercise caution, given the many signs of capriciousness in the use of

doublets generally, but a few observations may be made. As in EV, first of all, many of these

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expressions represent concrete nouns. Among these, it may or may not be incidental that a

seemingly outsize number refer to weapons and other military accoutrements (e.g., “pomel eþer

hilte,” “forselet eþer stronghold,” “swerd eþer dagger,” “schaft eþir spere”), and in fact this trend

extends to other parts of speech (“hokid eþer mailid,” “excercisynge eþer pleiynge” [i.e.,

practicing archery either for training or for sport]). If it is not incidental, however, I can offer

little by way of conjecture about why the revisors fixated on military matters. Certainly it is

notable that this group contains some of the most trivial distinctions between two components

represented on Table 5.4.4, as in the aforementioned “pomel eþer hilte” (a sword’s pommel is

part of its hilt, though the two terms are distinct in usage) and “schaft eþir spere” (again a minor

distinction between part and whole), which may suggest something as idiosyncratic as a personal

interest on the part of one or more of the translators. Religious expressions are also well

represented on Table 5.4.4, particularly as concerns elements of public ritual. This can be seen in

doublets like “customs eþer services,” “worschip eþir ournyng,” “custom eþir religioun,” and

doublets used for various parts or appurtenances of the Jerusalem Temple. In some ways, this

tendency is easier to explain, given the subject-matter of much of the Old Testament, but it is

also not as pronounced as one might expect in view of the Lollards’ doctrinal emphases. Indeed,

compared even with EV, LV seems to show little interest on its makers’ part in clarifying

particular terms related to religious or moral matters.

(4d) Figurative Doublets: Increasing Context-Sensitivity

With figurative doublets, we find essentially the same tendencies in LV as in EV. These

also are less commonly applied in LV to doctrinal or moral categories than they are in EV,

though this is also true for most of EV’s Old Testament and probably has more to do with the

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content of the sections that feature extensive doubling than with anything else. What seems

significant is that LV often shows more variation than EV in the kinds of secondary meanings it

attaches to doubled translations. For one thing, it is more common to find a wider variety of

doublets translating identical lemmata in different contexts. A few instances of this phenomenon

in EV were discussed in Chapter IV, and some of these are retained in LV. The revised

translation, moreover, adds a number of new instances, translating lemmata that appear in a more

consistent form (as doublets or otherwise) in EV. For the most part, once again, this has to do

with LV’s generally freer use of context-specific paraphrase. A few examples are laid out in

Table 5.4.4.

Table 5.4.5. Comparison of Select Doublets in EV and LV

EV LV
anathema = cursid or departid 29 cursyng eþir hangyng up
cursid eþir distried
cursyng eþer perfit distriyng 30
anima = soule or liif soule or lif
soule or lyvyng man 31 soule or...consience 32
atrium = porche or large hous 33 street eþir court
court eþir voide space
stretis eþer forȝerdis 34
disciplina = disciplyne or chastising 35 doctryn eþir knowyng of treuþe
loore eþer chastisyng
lernyng eþir nurture
techyng eþer chastisyng

29
Rm. 9:3.
30
Num. 21:3; Jos. 6:17; Jdg. 1:17.
31
Ecclus. 4:24, Ezek. 7:19, Ezek. 22:25, Am. 2:14, Jon. 4:3, 1 Mac. 12:51, 1 Mac. 13:5, Mt. 20:28, Mk. 10:45, Lk.
10:27, Ac. 15:26, Ac. 27:10, Rm. 16:4, 1 Cor. 14:7, 1 Thess. 2:8, Heb. 4:12, Rev. 8:9; Ac. 27:44, Rm. 13:1.
32
Jon. 4:3; Tob. 1:12.
33
Ezek. 40:17.
34
1 Kg. 7:9; 1 Kg. 7:12; Neh. 8:16.
35
Zeph. 3:2; the adj. form “disciplynyd or chastisid” occurs at Jas. 3:13.

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 chastizing eþer lerning 36
fugitiuus = fugityves or fleeynge men 37 of fugityves eþer of fleynge men
of fugytyves eþer of men exilid for unwilful
schedyng of blood
fugitif eþer exilid 38
scriba = scribe or man of lawe scribis eþer men of lawe
scribis or writeris scribis eþer writeris
writer or man of lawe 39 scryveyn eþir doctour 40

What has occurred in some of these is that EV has stuck more consistently to denotative

translations, while LV has introduced a wider range of explanatory translations. No doubt the LV

revisors kept in mind the principle outlined by Augustine (see DC 3.35) that the same vehicle

may be used for different tenors in metaphors and similes.

To look in greater depth at one example of LV diversifying the translations of a recurring

term, let us consider forms of pius. In essentially all instances, EV has forms of

“pitous”/“pitevous” for the adjective and “pite” (and once the rarer form “pitoustee”) for the

noun pietas; the sole partial exception is the doublet “piteous or merciful” at Revelation 15:4.

This translation, however, is potentially imprecise. Compared with its MnE usage, “pity” was in

ME a quite polysemous word; the MED gives four definitions current in the fourteenth century,

encompassing not only “pity” and “piety” in more or less their modern senses, but also “the

quality of being merciful” (1a) and even “the expression of grief, distress, misery, etc.” (3b). To

a large extent, this open-endedness is justified by a similar open-endedness in Latin pius/pietas,

which can encompass faithfulness to both religious and secular “moral obligations” (OLD,

36
Jb. 17:4; Ps. 119:66 (118:66); Ecclus. 31:20; Prv. 5:23, Dan. 2:21, Zeph. 3:2; Dan. 1:4.
37
1 Mac. 1:56; cf. “ferr fugitif or fleynge” for profugum at Wis. 10:10.
38
Num. 35:6, 1 Mac. 1:56; Jos. 20:2; Jdg. 12:4.
39
Ecclus. 10:5; Mt. 23:34; 1 Cor. 1:20.
40
1 Mac. 6:18; 1 Mac. 5:42; 2 Kg. 22:3.

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“pius” 1a), but the overlap is imprecise and the English word was probably favored by the

translators for etymological rather than semantic reasons. Be that as it may, it becomes apparent

that the LV revisors regarded certain senses (whether of “mercy” or of “religious faith”) as so

predominant in certain contexts that an entirely new word was more suitable. We therefore find

“mercyful” where EV has “pitevous” at Judith 7:20 (as well as where EV has the aforementioned

doublet at Revelation 15:4), “feiþfuli”/“feiþfulnesse” at Ecclesiasticus 43:37, 2 Maccabees 3:1,

and 2 Timothy 3:12, and the doublet “pitouse eþir benygne” at 2 Chronicles 30:9. Whether or not

a doublet is used, the LV revisors thus introduce a greater degree of contextual flexibility in

these translations, making selections based on interpretations that usually foreground one sense

of pius to the exclusion of others. Especially notable is “pitouse eþir benygne,” which introduces

an explanatory translation never used for pius in any other context. The uniqueness of this

doublet probably has to do with the difficulty of applying a sense of “piety” when the subject is

God, and this lends itself to a modification. Nevertheless, even when the paraphrase “benign” is

introduced, it is given alongside the more typical and literal translation “pitouse.”

Indeed, even apart from this kind of variation in the doubled translations of recurrent

lemmata, an increased desire to make contextual meanings clear is suggested by the comparative

“extravagance” of many figurative doublets that occur only once in LV. I mean “extravagant”

not in the sense of genuinely unreasonable, but in the more etymological sense of departing

noticeably from the lemma’s denotative meaning. For instance, in a few cases the revisors add

doublets in which the second component interprets the lemma synecdochically or metonymically

even if context does not require this: thus “cave eþir derke place” for antro at Job 37:8, “kyngis

ȝerdis eþer regaltees” for stemmatibus at Wisdom 6:22, “styl eþer writing” for stilus at Jeremiah

8:8. We might similarly note that praeputia (in the phrase praeputia cordium uestrorum) is at

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Jeremiah 4:4 translated “þe prepucies eþer filþis,” a doublet with a similar motivation to EV’s

doubled translations of this same lemma as discussed in Chapter IV, section 2c, but which

abstracts the meaning of “prepuce” to a greater degree than does “state of heathen men.”

Likewise, some perceived metaphorical uses seem more strained than any in EV: “take eþer

preve” for deprehendere at Numbers 5:13 (in reference to “catching” an act of adultery), “greet

hete eþer strong veniaunce” for zelo at Numbers 25:11 (referring to the wrath of God), “a

geldyng eþer chast man” for eunuchus at Isaiah 56:3 (the same interpretation of eunuchus drawn

from Nicholas of Lyra that we noted in section 1). Continuing difficulty with Latin “soul”

vocabulary also leads to yet another figurative doublet, “wille eþer herte” for animum at Judges

16:18, notable for its omission of the usual basic translation “soul” (cf. Genesis 26:35,

Deuteronomy 17:17, etc.) in favor of two context-influenced alternatives, 41 the second closer

than the first to the lemma’s normal meaning.

A greater willingness to make exegetical interventions into the text is on full display in

what seems to be the only doublet in either version of WB that unambiguously draws on an

allegorical interpretation, at LV Zechariah 3:8. In this verse (as found in both “more revised” and

“less revised” manuscripts), the phrase seruum meum orientem is translated “my servaunt

spryngynge up eþer Crist borun.” EV contains no trace of this allegorical explanation, and in no

other case does LV use a doublet to explain alleged Christological allusions in the Old

Testament. Interestingly, however, this is not the only time that LV (but not EV) inserts a

reference to Christ into the Old Testament. At Psalm 45:2 (44:3), LV reads “Crist þou art fairer

in schap þan þe sones of men” for Vulgate speciosus forma prae filiis hominum, where EV has

41
The full phrase in the Vulgate is uidensque illa quod confessus ei esset omnem animum suum, referring to
Samson’s confession of the secret of his strength to Delilah.

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simply “Fair in forme befor þe sonus of men.” 42 Generally, then, although LV sticks to the literal

sense of the text at least as much as does EV, the revisors’ wish to be clearer about the text’s

meaning than EV here results in liberties that seem to have been inadmissible for the EV

translators. If one takes the Psalms and the oracles of Zechariah as primarily Christological

predictions, then these are excusable as part of the literal sense as the Lollards understood it.

Doubtless, too, it is not irrelevant to note that, as Carvalho finds, Nicholas of Lyra considered

some passages of the Old Testament to have been corrupted by the Jews to obscure a

Christological reference (Carvalho [2007] 772). 43

Nevertheless, the EV translators more consistently avoided such interventions apparently

because they could not be justified by the words of the Vulgate text on their own. LV’s

interpretation of seruus meus oriens is different from “literalizing” a figurative expression

because the latter is conventional and, though context-dependent, is not bound to a single context

but is a function of language more generally, whereas something like understanding “servant” to

mean “Christ” draws on a particular exegesis of a particular passage. Thus we find here that, as

Copeland says of Lollard exegesis generally, “The marked effects of the policy of openness [in

the sense expressed by GP] are not to be found in the content of Lollard biblical exposition, for

that is no more ‘literalist’ in a fundamentalist sense than its counterpart orthodox productions. In

practice Lollard exegesis is just as receptive to allegorical readings as orthodox

exegesis...Lollard hermeneutics could be said to divide itself between the theoretical attempt to

42
Hargreaves notes that the translation of calix as “passioun” at Ps. 16:4 (15:5) is also Christological in nature
(Hargreaves [1965] 139).
43
Both of these insertions are probably drawn directly from Nicholas. On the phrase adducam seruum meum
orientem in Zech. 3, Nicholas claims that the Aramaic (chaldaica) translation, which he calls autentica apud Iudeos,
has messiam instead of orientem, and asserts that this is to be “understood of Christ” (de Christo...intellegitur).
Likewise, on Ps. 45 (44), Nicholas says that at this point describitur regis Christi magnificentia.

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fix meaning at the sensus litteralis and a practice that actually retains the interpretive flexibilities

of traditional multi-layered exegesis” (Copeland [2001] 127).

(4e) Figurative Doublets: Simplification and Paraphrase

LV’s use of doublets also connects with its tendency to paraphrase the source-text more

freely than EV does. Again, this is not an innovation in comparison with EV. It was observed in

the previous chapter that sometimes in EV’s doublets one component is longer and more

explanatory than the other. Thus, for instance, we find in EV such unwieldy expressions as

“venym or deedli þing that bryngiþ deeþ” for mortiferum at Mark 16:18 and “temporal or

duringe bi short tyme” for temporalia at 2 Corinthians 4:18. Instances like this are also to be

found in LV, but again with a slight shift. For one thing, they appear to be less common; while

the two translations are difficult to compare on this front because their doublets generally appear

in different places, I can find only about fifty or sixty instances in LV’s standard set in which a

doublet used to translate a single word has more words in its second component than in its first,

whereas in EV the figure is in the hundreds. This might be surprising, since one might expect

more explanatory elaboration in the more paraphrasal translation, but such explanatory phrases

can be clumsy and interfere with readability, which seems to be one of LV’s priorities.

LV’s more strategic use of “expanding” doublets, furthermore, results in greater

consistency in how the second component of the doublet elaborates on the first. Perhaps the best

example of this is in the translation of adjectives ending with -ibilis/-abilis. In both EV and LV,

adjectives of this sort are frequently translated with a doublet in which the first component is

simply an Anglicized form ending in “-ible”/“-able” and the second is a multi-word expression.

For EV, that expression takes a variety of forms: e.g., “unquenchable or þat never shal be

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quenchid” at Matthew 3:12, “unportable eþer þat moun not be born” at Matthew 23:4,

“contemptible men or of litil reputacioun” at 1 Corinthians 6:4, and “contemptible or worþi for to

be dispisid” at 2 Corinthians 10:10. By contrast, LV generally uses only forms which follow two

basic synonymous patterns, using “able,” “may,” with one or two using a “worþi to be”

construction. These are perhaps less context-sensitive than the more varied renderings of EV, but

they do promote greater stylistic uniformity (Table 5.4.6).

Table 5.4.6. Doublets in LV: -Ibilis/-abilis Suffix

Prayer of Manasseh 5: insustentabilis = unsuffrable eþer may not not be susteyned
Prayer of Manasseh 6: inuestigabilis = unserchable eþer may not be comprehendid bi
mannus wit
Ezek. 10:13: uolubiles = volible eþer able to go al aboute
Ob. 2: contemptibilis = contemptible or worþi to be dispisid
Jer. 17:9: inscrutabile = unserchable eþer mai not be souȝt
2 Mac. 12:21: inexpugnabile = unexpungnable or unable to be overcome
Incidentally, this move toward stylistic uniformity helps to explain one of the doublets listed

earlier in this chapter as being retained but modified from EV to LV. At Ezekiel 10:13, the

second rendering of uolubiles is “or turnynge about” in EV; LV’s addition of “able to” seems to

show that the choice to see a sense of “able” in the -ibilis suffix was a conscious one.

Nevertheless, the pattern is imperfect, and some individual LV copies still feature doublets of

this type using various expansions, most of them either identical to or modeled on particular

doublets from EV.

Conversely, in a relatively large proportion of LV’s doublets the second component

consists of fewer words than the first. The absolute number of such doublets is comparable for

both versions, at somewhere around twenty-five or thirty, but again the overall corpus of

doublets is much larger in EV. In such cases, what has frequently occurred is that the source-text

and the first component of LV’s doublet have used a periphrasis which the second component of

the doublet makes simpler and more direct. We have already seen two instances of LV doing

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something similar, in using exclusively a paraphrasal translation in phrases like “þe daie of his

ascencioun” for diem qua...adsumptus est in Acts 1:2, but in other cases a word-for-word literal

rendering is given first. Some examples are collected in Table 5.4.7.

Table 5.4.7. Doublets in LV: Fewer Words in Second Component Than in First Component
Jdg. 20:16: in alteram partem = in to þe toþer part or asiide
1 Sam. 5:9: sedes pellicas 44 = seetis of skynnes eþir cuyschuns
1 Sam. 13:19: cauerant = weren war eþer eschewiden
2 Sam. 3:33: ignaui = dredeful men eþir cowardis
2 Sam. 12:19: musitantes = spekynge priveli eþer moterynge
1 Kg. 12:15: auersatus...fuerat = hadde turned awey eþer hadde wlatid
1 Kg. 18:32: aquaeductum = a ledyng to of watir eþer a dich
2 Kg. 11:14: coniuratio = swerynge togidere eþer tresoun
2 Chr. 5:13: in aeternum = in to þe world eþer wiþ outen ende
2 Chr. 9:1: gemmas...pretiosas = preciouse gemmes eþer peerlis
Ezr. 6:13: exsecuti sunt = diden execucioun eþer filliden
Tob. 1:2: in captiuitate...positus = set in caytifte eþer takun prisoner
Jb. 12:19: optimates = principal men eþir counselours
Jb. 27:13: uiolentorum = violent men eþer ravenours
Jb. 28:19: conponetur = be set togidere in priis eþer comparisound
Ecclus. 42:21: adiectum = leid to eþer encressid
Is. 29:24: mussitatores = idil men eþer gruccheris
Is. 52:4: colonus = an erþe tiliere eþer a comelyng
Jer. 52:19: hydrias = stoondis eþer water pottis
Ezek. 44:18: uittae lineae = lynnun cappis eþer mytris
Nah. 3:5: ignominiam = yvel fame eþer schenschipe
1 Mac. 13:51: cinyris = instrumentis of musik eþer giternys
2 Mac. 14:31: praeuentum = bifore comun eþer aspied
With doublets in Table 5.4.7 whose lemmata are single words, it may seem that, if

anything, the second component of the English doublet is more homologous to the lemma than

is the first. There are, however, reasons for thinking that the translators meant the first

component of the doublet to be more literal, the second more paraphrasal, even in these cases.

Most obviously, it would be odd for the translators to include the more verbose first component

at all if the second component were not only more compact but also more literal. In most of these

44
This phrase is absent from SV’s main text, but is noted in its apparatus and appears regularly in medieval Bibles.

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instances, the doublet’s first component is recognizably a calque of the lemma 45 which is then

treated as periphrastic (cf. Chapter IV, section 2b). More distinctive to LV are the doubled

translations of ignaui, optimates, and uiolentorum first as adjective-noun phrases, then as single

nouns. It appears here that the revisors saw the lemmata as substantivized adjectives, 46 and

wished to translate them as such. “Cowardis,” “counselours” and “ravenours,” then, rephrase

their lemmata as simple nouns, whose inclusion would seem to indicate that the makers of LV

were thinking about concision of phrasing as well as fidelity. Something like that would seem to

be in operation also with the doubled translation of cinyris at 1 Maccabees 13:51. In this

instance, the presence of the more general first component “instrumentis of musik” would

suggest that “giternys” was not agreed upon by the translators as a sufficiently exact translation,

since otherwise the first component would be superfluous. At the same time, even if “giternys” is

not precisely accurate, it matches the concision of the Latin as “instrumentis of musik” does not,

and this seems to motivate its inclusion alongside the more “accurate” translation. This kind of

pairing again suggests that a tension existed in the translators’ minds between exact fidelity and

readability. Overall, regardless of exact motivations, all these types of “compacting” doublet can

be seen as part of a tendency to increase the naturalness of the ME text as English, even at the

expense of reduced homology to the Vulgate, while also showing ambivalence about departing

from the source-text.

45
E.g., in “turned awey” for auersatus, “turned” = uersatus and “awey” = a-; in “swerynge togidere” for coniuratio,
“swerynge” = iuratio and “togidere” = con-; even more obviously with the elements of aquaeductus.
46
Originally optimas was an adjective (OLD), though by the time Jerome translated Jb. its use as a noun, especially
in the plural, had so long been conventional that Jerome presumably did not think of it as a substantivized adjective.

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(4f) Doublets Influenced by Textual Scholarship

Finally, LV’s doublets also show that the revisors undertook some additional text-critical

work, just as GP claims. 47 For the most part, where this concerns doublets is in the elimination of

the EV doublets based on textual variants (see Table 4.2.5; as far as I can tell, in all cases the

revisors decided in favor of the more accurate reading). Their additional textual collation,

however, turned up a few further cases of variants between which they could not decide.

Notably, it may also be added, the reading generally regarded by modern editors of the Vulgate

as more accurate is given first in most cases, which suggests that the makers of LV also had at

least some sense of which reading was more likely, even if they could not definitively exclude

the other, and that their textual scholarship was reasonably sound for its day. Again, it can

sometimes be hard to say with certainty when a doublet does reflect two variant lemmata rather

than two different interpretations of the same lemma, 48 but the following seem probably to fit

into this category (Table 5.4.8; variants not documented in SV are bracketed).

Table 5.4.8. Doublets in LV: Variant Reading in Source-Text

Jos. 7:17: uiros / domos = men eþir housis
1 Chr. 20:3: [tribulos] / tribulas = breris eþir instrumentis bi whiche cornes ben brokun
Jdt. 2:13: [opulentissima] / opinatissimam = richeste eþir famouse
Ecclus. 3:28: successus / requiem = prosperitees eþer reste
1 Mac. 6:11: dilectus / [delicatus] = bolnyde eþer delicat
1 Mac. 8:3: patientia / [sapientia] = pacience or wisdom

47
“First, þis symple creature [the translator] hadde myche travaile, wiþ diverse felawis and helperis, to gedere manie
elde Biblis and oþere doctouris aand comune glosis, and to make oo Latyn Bible sumdel trewe” (FM 1.57)—an
assertion about textual scholarship that Hudson calls “hard to parallel elsewhere” (Hudson [2011] 304).
48
As an example of such ambiguity, we might note that Kuczynski considers the doublet “equyte eþer evennesse,”
found at Ps. 11:7 (10:8) in one copy of LV to reflect the discrepancy between the Gallican Psalter’s aequitatem and
the Hebrew Psalter’s rectum (Kuczynski [2017] 361). I find this an extremely doubtful explanation, given a) that
“evennesse” is not normally used to translate rectus in WB, b) that this latter word had been common as a translation
of aequitas since the OE period (Gneuss 110), and c) that the same doublet is found, evidently without a similar
variant in the source-text, at Wis. 5:20 and Is. 59:14 in a number of LV MSS. But at the same time Kuczynski’s
explanation is not prima facie unreasonable and cannot be dismissed absolutely.

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A further, particularly interesting instance, is found at Job 34:20, where most manuscripts

explicitly note the presence of a variant: “schulen be troublid eþir schulen be bowid as oþere

bookis han” where SV has turbabuntur. The variant is not documented in SV, but curuabuntur is

the natural conjecture, given the similarity of “c” and “t” in Gothic script and the occasional

alternation between “b” and consonantal “u”/“v” in medieval Latin orthography. It is rather

curious that the presence of a variant in the biblical text should be explicitly commented on only

in this case, though perhaps the difference in meaning was seen as more substantial than in other

instances. That the remaining instances are mostly in the apocrypha is probably incidental, but

may also indicate that the LV translators exerted less care in arriving at definitive readings for

the apocryphal books than for the protocanon, reflecting the former’s secondary status.

In any case, the retention of doublets documenting textual variants even in the more

polished, more idiomatic translation is in some ways remarkable. In Dove’s estimation, “There is

no more cogent evidence of the Wycliffite commitment to the letter of the law of God than the

fact that alongside thorough-going stylistic revision they chose to undertake meticulous study of

the text of the Bible” (Dove [2011] 212), but to acknowledge that sometimes the text remains

uncertain threatens to undercut this commitment. Richard Ullerston had noted the existence of

variants and corrupt readings in the source-text as an impediment to translation: “If formerly the

[Vulgate] translation was faithful and is now corrupt, it is dangerous to translate according to it”

(qtd. Dove [2006] 367). The LV revisors were therefore adopting something of a defiant pose in

not only acknowledging that their translation contained uncertain readings but, as shown by the

changes from EV to LV, actively accepting new variant readings as they found them. It is

possible, moreover, to connect this boldness with the attempt to put the ME translation on an

equal footing with the Latin. That is, one may see an implication that if the Vulgate text is

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considered acceptable despite the existence of textual corruptions, the same may be true of the

English Bible. As Dove notes, Wyclif himself acknowledged that corruptions in the biblical text

had existed as far back as the time of Ezra (Dove [2006] 373). At one point in his Trialogus,

moreover, he also uses a translational doublet, panem nostrum quotidianum uel

supersubstantialem (IV.4 [257] 49), in a quotation of the Lord’s Prayer, reflecting a well-known

variant in the Vulgate, and so, if nothing else, the WB translators had a strong precedent in

disregarding the relevance of minor textual variants.

(5) LV and Fourteenth-Century Translation Theory

I have argued throughout this chapter that LV’s doublets reinforce the general stylistic

improvement of LV over EV and help to advance the aim of making the text “opener” than the

Vulgate—an aim that Copeland calls “one of the most important connecting threads of the

General Prologue” (Copeland [2001] 114). Along the way, I have occasionally pointed out some

specific ways in which these doublets echo and mesh with other revisions to the WB text. What

remains to consider is how these revisions, both doublets and others, relate to broader ideas

about biblical translation. We have already seen that EV is grounded in a conservatively (or

better yet cautiously) ultra-literal approach to translating Scripture. Where LV breaks with this,

as it often but not invariably does, it is worthwhile to address the question of what kinds of

justifications can be offered by fourteenth-century translation theory for the liberties that LV but

not EV takes with its source-text. This is a matter on which we can turn both to non-Wycliffite

(sometimes even anti-Wycliffite) sources and to the writings of Wyclif and the Lollards

themselves, and we shall consider each of these in turn.

49
For all citations of Wyclif’s works, I give first the chapter-number and then the page-number for the edition cited
in the bibliography.

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(5a) LV and Contemporary Debates about Translation

In some respects, the changes made in LV represent a capitulation to ideas that were used

to argue against the permissibility of vernacular Bible translation. Obviously this is not to say

that the LV revisors agreed with these anti-translation arguments. Rather, what I mean by

“capitulation” to these ideas is an increasing acceptance of them coupled with a rejection of the

conclusion that they make translation impermissible. As Ralph Hanna points out, the 1409

Constitutions of Thomas Arundel, which nominally proscribed the transmission of WB, offered

no justifying authority except Jerome’s conclusion that translation is not easy (Hanna [1990]

319). Hanna in fact argues that Arundel’s chief reason for limiting future translation is “Jerome’s

failure as translator” (320), 50 Arundel’s point essentially being that WB’s translators should not

presume to translate the Scriptures if even Jerome could not overcome the reality that

“conversion of a text from one language to another necessarily misrepresents its source text”

(325). 51 The impossibility of intelligible word-for-word translation was to some extent always

recognized by ME translators, as I have suggested in Chapter III, but the “bigot literalism” of EV

at its worst shows that its translators often tried to deny this. Thus, as Peggy Ann Knapp says,

50
As explained more fully by Copeland, in Arundel’s Constitutions, “Jerome’s open-ended theoretical and practical
questions contract into the rigid dictum that linguistic idiom resists and precludes translation. Arundel does not
broach questions of the literal sense as a hermeneutical model because, significantly, such questions are already
contained in the assumptions of the proscription of translation. If linguistic idiom is the barrier to translation, then
the material effects of language are clearly also where meaning is deposited (even if that is not necessarily where
meaning originates). The proscription of translation is an effective statement on the politics and hermeneutics of the
literal sense because it forecloses any further debate about how the letter carries meaning, whether the letter is the
vehicle (proper or figurative) of the author’s intention...or an exhangeable exterior sign (itself subject to corruption)
of a literal sense contained elsewhere, beyond material words...Thus in the manner of the fetish, the letter of the text
comes to function, in the Constitutiones, as itself the object of investment and proscribed desire, rather than as the
embodiment of a system of relations” (Copeland [2001] 203).
51
Nor has the idea that this non-correspondence renders translation impossible disappeared: writing in 1998, Ricœur
cites the view of some contemporary scholars that “the diversity of languages gives expression to a radical
heterogeneity—and in that case translation is theoretically impossible” (Ricœur 13; ironically, I quote this statement
in translation). This view is discussed more fully by Steiner in Chapter 2 of After Babel (see especially pg. 73-93),
and a restricted form of it yields Quine’s famous thesis of the “indeterminacy of translation.”

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“Rather than mere ineptitude in the English idiom...the literalness of the early version may have

been part of a careful plan to meet the most rigid specifications for an English Bible” (Knapp

714). The impossibility of meaningful word-for-word translation had been used to argue against

the permissibility of vernacular translation before Arundel, moreover, and some earlier

documents explain the line of thought more fully than do Arundel’s Constitutions.

The texts that are most commonly linked with WB by modern scholars are the documents

of the so-called Oxford translation debate of c.1401. These comprise a series of academic

“determinations” by several authors, including the Franciscan William Butler, the Dominican

Thomas Palmer, and the priest Richard Ullerston, some in favor of and some opposed to

vernacular translation of the Scriptures. More in-depth discussion of these documents is provided

by Hudson and by Ghosh (see Hudson [1985] 67-84; Ghosh [2002] 86-111) among others, so we

will content ourselves here with examining a few points that have special pertinence for

translational issues faced by the makers of WB. Translational doubling is not discussed in any of

these texts, but their authors do consider the related issues of glossing and paraphrase as means

of clarifying the translated text, as well as the status of figurative language. Though the Oxford

determinations seem to postdate WB, some of the changes made in revising EV into LV reflect

points raised in them and shared by many other anti-translationists.

One central question addressed by most fourteenth-century discussions of translation,

including not only the Oxford determinations but also Trevisa’s Dialogue between a Lord and a

Clerk, is whether one language can be considered objectively superior to another. Most

commonly, this takes the form of an assertion that Latin is a better vehicle than any vernacular

for discussing intellectual concepts, and Trevisa’s clerk echoes another common attitude when

he suggests that Latin is beautiful (“boþe good and fayr” [Jacobs 291]) in addition to being more

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versatile than English. Hanna summarizes the idea thus: “Latin differs from English, not just in

degree (another language) but in nature (a better language, one whose grammatical categories,

for example, directly mirror the shape of the external universe)” (Hanna [1990] 321). Most of the

Oxford determinations reject this notion, but some of those that ultimately favor vernacular

translation still discuss the idea. Obviously, this kind of thinking would, in its extreme form,

preclude all translation from Latin into English, and a few authors made precisely that inference

(Watson [1995] 842-843). But a reserved and qualified acceptance of the idea that Latin has a

richer, more suitable vocabulary than English can be seen in the use of extreme Latinity of some

English texts, such as EV and some of the translations discussed in Chapter III. LV, of course,

does not wholly reject EV’s tendency simply to Anglicize individual words from the source-text,

nor does it eschew neologism—but it does reduce the frequency with which its English

vocabulary comprises merely Anglicized Latin. This can be seen in the relatively high frequency

with which the LV revisors simplify EV’s bilingual doublets by excluding the Latinate

component (though they exclude the native component with similar frequency).

Closely related to this, at least for the anti-translation writers, is the status of figurative

language. In particular, what writers such as Palmer find objectionable in translating from Latin

into English is the inability of English to replicate what Quintilian calls figurae uerborum

(“figures of speech”) as distinct from figurae sententiae (“figures of thought”)—i.e., figures

having to do with conformatio quaedam orationis remota a communi (Inst. 9.1.4), operating at a

purely formal rather than a conceptual level. As Palmer expresses it, sacra scriptura in multis

locis saluari non potest aliquando incongruitate et falsitate nisi per figuras et regulas

grammaticales...igitur in nullam linguam quae non regulatur regulis et figuris grammaticalibus

est ipsa transferenda (Deansely 426). The examples he gives make clear that the “grammatical

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rules and figures” he has in mind are almost purely morphological rather than semantic: for

instance, he says, the preponderance of monosyllables in English means that middle syllables

cannot be lengthened and shortened as in Latin (427). Obviously, these kinds of argument are

highly sophistical (Palmer brings up but dismisses without argument the idea of using

circumlocution to approximate Latin figures [428]), but they do show an awareness of the limits

of adopting Latin idiom into English which exceeds that of the EV translators, who commonly

retain foreign grammatical constructions such as the ablative absolute and S-O-V/O-S-V syntax.

LV is by no means free of attempts to ape the Latin in ways that produce unnatural English, 52 but

we have already seen that, in line with the precepts of GP, it moves away from many of EV’s

“foreignizing” habits. In other words, though the LV revisors agreed with their critics in

accepting the incapacity of English to reproduce the verbal figures of Latin, they sidestepped the

issue by drawing on resources that the anti-translationists could never effectively discredit.

Relatedly, it was also sometimes argued that, whether there is a hierarchy of languages or

not, translation is inherently distortive. According to this line of thought, even if Latin is not

inherently better at conveying ideas than English in general, in the particular case of the Bible

the meanings conveyed by the Vulgate text could not be precisely conveyed by a vernacular

tongue. 53 This was thought to hold true especially for obscure or difficult passages, which

Palmer (who favored vernacularization, albeit with significant reservations) argued should be

52
Dove outlines some of these in LV Sg.: as she explains, in LV, EV’s “ungendered endearments lemman and leef
are consistently replaced with gendered endearments” (Dove [2004] 19), and “These coinages and gender-specific
choices on the part of the translators, in defiance of normal English usage, reveal how concerned they were that the
simple reader should not mistake God’s words or Christ’s words for the words of humankind” (20).
53
The Vulgate’s status as a translation in its own right was necessarily acknowledged even by authors opposed to
vernacular translation, but it was typically regarded as virtually a divinely-inspired translation, whose correctness
was authenticated by the holiness and piety of Jerome’s life. Palmer, however, skirts around the idea that the
Vulgate is defective since Greek figures of speech cannot be translated directly into Latin, though he raises this issue
only to argue that English is an even more unworthy vehicle for Scripture since it lacks the kind of strict
grammatical rules governing both Greek and Latin (see Deansely 427-428).

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definitely excluded from vernacular Bibles. 54 Butler’s determination, which opposes translation

in general, goes so far as to argue that the Bible is too obscure to be interpretable by, as Ghosh

paraphrases, “‘rational’ readings which are accessible to all” (Ghosh [2002] 95). Linked to this is

the view that the scriptural text could not be understood without guides to interpretation which

are absent from the “naked text.” Butler’s determination, for instance, features a prolonged

discussion, based on an analogy from the Dionysian celestial hierarchy, of why truth should be

handed down from echelon to echelon in descending order from the highest ranks of the Church

to the laity, and why direct access to the top for the bottom would be harmful (Deansely 406-

408). EV of course, in blatant contrast with earlier ME biblical translations like RRP, defies this

principle by presenting the whole of the Bible with almost no commentary and including some

sort of equivalent to essentially every word of the source-text.

LV also features the whole of the biblical canon, unabridged, but at the same time it

allows for more interpretive intrusion in two ways. First, as we have already seen, the makers of

LV show a greater willingness than the makers of EV to paraphrase in a clarifying fashion. That

is essentially what GP is calling for when it speaks of resolving the ablative absolute. Copeland

and Sluiter note that, in post-thirteenth-century understanding, this construction in Latin

“specifically reflects the absence of regimen” such that “the reconciliation between construction

and its absence in one and the same grammatical phenomenon becomes an issue” (Copeland and

Sluiter 312), and this issue becomes pointed when one translates from Latin into a language that

lacks an equivalent construction. Thus, in GP’s example (“‘þe maistir redinge, I stonde’ mai be

resolvid þus: ‘while þe maistir rediþ, I stonde,’ eiþer ‘if þe maistir rediþ,’ etc., eiþer ‘for the

maistir,’ etc.”), the resolution represents a minor interpretive act, but an interpretive act

54
Patet quod scriptura sacra in aliqua sui parte est ita difficilis quod comprehendi a uiatoribus perfecte non potest,
quare non est communicanda simplicibus in uulgari (Deansely 425).

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nevertheless, construing the relation between the participle and the main clause as either

temporal (“while”) or causal (“if,” “for”) where the original is ambiguous. Second and more

obviously, LV manuscripts usually have a larger number of glosses than do EV manuscripts,

including some copies that have extensive marginal commentary derived from Nicholas of Lyra

and others.

Ghosh points out that Ullerston’s determination almost, but not quite, deals with the idea

“that translation itself might be a form of ‘glossing’” (Ghosh [2002] 109). Something similar can

be said for the LV translators, especially as represented by GP. Aside from the increased

presence of marginal glosses noted above, GP’s idea of making the English text “openere” than

the Vulgate could be taken to suggest that the translation should interpret the text not only

linguistically but conceptually. Indeed, though the full phrase from GP, “so þat þe sentence be as

opin—eiþer openere—in English as in Latyn” (FM 1.57), is commonly quoted or mentioned in

modern scholarship, no one has had much to say about what GP’s author has in mind with “eiþer

openere.” Quite likely it is a polemical exaggeration to which we should not attach too much

significance. It may, however, also point to the idea of an explicitly interpretive translation. If so,

this would resonate also with GP’s reference to the translators having to “studie it [the Latin

Bible] of þe newe, þe text wiþ þe glose, and oþere doctouris...and speciali Lire [i.e., Nicholas of

Lyra] on þe Elde Testament þat helpide ful myche in þis werk” (ibid.).

Still, for Nicholas, the second (and more important) of the two authorities cited by GP,

“The notion of equivocality is important, as it suggested that the choices made by Hebrew

interpreters were not necessarily superior to the choices made by Jerome in composing his

translation” (Klepper 44), and the LV revisors generally follow him in not monolithically

imposing particular interpretations. That also means not precluding allegorical interpretations, as

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we have seen with LV’s two Christological insertions. As Klepper explains, “Like earlier

exegetes, Hugh of St. Victor, for example, [Nicholas] readily acknowledged that the literal sense

was to serve as the entry point for understanding the multifaceted mystical sense embedded in

Scripture” (36). The WB translators seem to have learned that also from their favorite

commentator. Thus ironically the commentator most closely associated with scrupulously literal

exegesis can be cited as a justifying authority for working interpretation into the very text of the

translation, as long as this is not unduly narrowing. The studying of “þe glose” (presumably the

Glossa Ordinaria) likewise need not imply that the translators were in any way trying to impose

the interpretations of the glosses onto their translation yet also suggests a consciously exegetical

turn in the process of linguistic translation, consistent, for instance, with the comparative

“outlandishness” of a few of LV’s doublets (as discussed at the end of section 4d). It is certainly

striking that Nicholas, rather than the more allegorically-charged Glossa Ordinaria, is the source

for most of the more extensive comments in the text and margins of many copies of LV and for

some of the interpretive translations discussed earlier in this chapter. At the same time, however,

it is significant that Nicholas-inspired translations are found exclusively in LV, while EV sticks

to basic equivalents, even if they do not make obvious sense. 55

In that respect, LV really does make the text “openere” not only than EV but than the

Vulgate by sometimes ignoring the literal meanings of the words in favor of contextually-

influenced notions of the ultimate or underlying sense. The change from EV thus underscores a

growing acceptance of the need to go beyond the most basic understanding of the text to arrive at

the “genuine” meaning, and this could necessitate recourse to outside sources. Still, it should be

55
For instance, to return to a case cited in section 1, the term eunuchus is applied to Potiphar, who has a wife,
presumably meaning he could not have been a “geldyng” (EV’s translation), such that LV’s Nicholas-derived
translation “chast and onest servaunt,” while needlessly narrowing, is closer to the contextual sense.

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kept in mind that, as Copeland emphasizes, “late into the fourteenth century, even among those

polemicists who engaged directly with Wyclif’s writings, such as the Franciscan William

Woodford, as well as those whose engagement was more indirect, such as Richard Ullerston,

there is no diminution of regard for the literal sense as a privileged hermeneutical category”

(Copeland [2001] 103). Hence Minnis’s remark that “The English Bible translation was,

ironically enough, a continuation of an interest fostered by the very orders of friars which the

Lollards professed to despise” (Minnis 11). WB does reflect Lollards’ distaste in general for

fanciful allegorizing or “spiritual” interpretations, but the attempt to make the text more “open”

draws on just the kinds of external resources that the anti-translation writers deemed necessary.

The difference seems to be that the LV translators regarded the necessary intrusions of outside

sources as small and few enough to be worked easily into a primarily literal translation of the

biblical text. Certainly at least they, unlike Butler, regarded the English reader not as incapable

of understanding the “dark” passages of Scripture, but rather as in need of a translator’s

assistance.

(5b) Wycliffite Views of Scripture and Translation

Though the Lollards thus shared much with some of their contemporaries in their

understanding of biblical exegesis and its relation to vernacularization, it will also be helpful to

consider what we know of specifically Wycliffite views on these matters. Although few modern

scholars still identify Wyclif as a major player in the production of WB, 56 his views on the nature

of Scripture, which seem to have had considerable influence on the Lollards who translated the

Bible into English, are probably a good place to start. What exactly those views are is commonly

56
Fristedt and Lindberg are probably the most important exceptions (see Fristedt 1.1ff; Lindberg [2007] 78).

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misunderstood and even caricatured, so it is worth first of all pausing to look at what he had to

say about understanding and interpreting the Bible. Admittedly, Brungs and Goubier are right to

say that “Wyclif’s formal, and perhaps, philosophical idiosyncrasy makes it more difficult to

understand his position on important technical notions, such as the sensus litteralis and its

relation to the ‘mystical senses’” (Brungs and Goubier 202), but some basic points may be laid

out with reasonable confidence.

Perhaps the most important point to consider is the question of whether Wyclif advanced

a sola scriptura understanding of Christian doctrine. That he did so is the conventional view, as

articulated for instance (with characteristic pugnacity) by McFarlane: “Wycliffe does not seem to

have thought any form of interpretation necessary” (McFarlane 77). Even in Minnis’s estimation,

Wyclif’s focus on the necessity of divine illumination, rather than traditional teaching, for

understanding Scripture is “obsessive” (Minnis 25). According to Hudson and Anthony Kenny,

this understanding of Wyclif’s views “may oversimplify, in that it ignores the complexity of

Wyclif’s hermeneutics, his respect for patristic writers such as Augustine, and his acceptance of

certain traditions...that cannot be traced to scripture, but it rightly identifies what for Wyclif was

the sole unassailable source of law” (Hudson and Kenny 626). Hudson elsewhere emphasizes,

however, that Wyclif’s attitude toward the Bible “did not entail a narrow literalism: Wyclif was

well aware that Scripture contained different levels of truth, and that at places allegory was built

into its structure” (Hudson [1989] 708). On the whole, it may be true that Wyclif endorsed an

“endogenous hermeneutics, that is, with the idea that each and every tool for understanding

Scripture is to be found within Scripture itself” (Brungs and Goubier 236), but that is not the

same as holding that a correct understanding will be self-evident to every reader, however ill-

informed. Wyclif’s writings, furthermore, explicitly allow for some freedom with the words of

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the Bible, as we shall see in a moment, and this must have been welcome to those who had to

deal also with the practical problems of making one language align with another.

There are actually two distinct but closely-related issues at play here, each with

implications for the work of scriptural translation. First, there is the question of whether the

literal denotations of the words of the Bible are sufficient for conveying the full meaning of the

text to the reader. If the answer to this question is no, then a translator must be willing to alter the

words to make the underlying sense clear (an extreme form of “dynamic equivalence”). Second,

the translator must consider whether the scriptural text can be understood entirely on its own

terms, without reference to outside sources. On both of these fronts, Wyclif’s own views tend to

point away from the strictest sort of adherence to the words of the biblical text, but with

considerable reservations, and these reservations are even stronger in some of his followers. As

Hudson puts it, “It has often been argued that to Wyclif sola scriptura was the single validating

law....Whether or not this is a fair representation of Wyclif’s own argument (and it seems to me

that it is not), it is probably a reasonable summary of many of his followers’ attitudes” (Hudson

[1988a] 228).

Wyclif admitted as readily as anyone that a consideration of the words of the Bible on

their own did not yield an understanding of Christian doctrine. As Copeland says, “Wyclif

himself employs the language of childish limitation when distinguishing between the surface

literal sense of words or verbal images and the true literal sense of divine intention that inheres in

the text, even in its mystical senses...It is a nice historical irony that Wyclif was to be impugned

for the very kind of literalist puerility that he explicitly shunned” (Copeland [2001] 107). In his

De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, he in fact went so far as to say that ista scriptura sensibilis in

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uocibus uel codicibus non est scriptura sacra nisi equiuoce, 57 sicut homo pictus uel ymaginatus

dicitur homo propter similitudinem ad uerum hominem (VSS 6 [1.111]). More broadly, Wyclif

holds that there are five gradus sacre scipturae (VSS 6 [1.108]), of which the highest is the

“Book of Life” as described in Revelation 20-21, from which the other “levels” emanate in

descending order of authority, with codic[es] et uoc[es] aut ali[a] artificiali[a] que sunt signa

memorandi ueritatem priorem as the lowest. At the level immediately above this, we should

note, sumitur scriptura sacra pro ueritate credenda, ut inscribitur libro hominis naturalis ut

anima (ibid.), such that even at the lower levels emphasis is laid on the abstraction of meaning,

with virtually no regard for peculiarities of wording. Dove calls this view of Scripture “neo-

Platonist” (Dove [2006] 375; cf. Minnis 13), 58 and unquestionably his emphasis on a Platonic

“form” of Scripture allows him to evade issues raised by writers like Palmer (who goes so far as

to cast doubt on the adequacy of English for conveying Scripture because it uses a different

alphabet than Hebrew, Greek, or Latin [Deanesly 435]) about the weaknesses of vernaculars

without traditions of formalized grammar.

Though Wyclif does not anywhere discuss biblical translation as such, his view of what

“Scripture” is has definite implications for translation. Most pertinently for our purposes, it

provides an obvious justification for explanatory translation and exegetical insertions into the

text. If the “form” of Scripture exists apart from the written texts, then it becomes justifiable to

57
A key word in Wyclif’s writings, according to Brungs and Goubier, who explain that “the notion of equivocatio is
employed [by Wyclif] as a key concept for safeguarding statements from being true and false at the same time and,
more generally, for allowing Scripture to unfold its network of meanings presenting themselves to us as metaphors
in all legitimacy” (Brungs and Goubier 207). For instance, with reference to Jesus’ “I am the door of the sheep:” “if
it is true that Christ is and is not a door, it is because two different (types of) doors are involved. For doors—and
many other things—are equivocal” (215). “Equivocation makes possible the constitution of one of the pillars of
biblical hermeneutics: the contextuality of de virtute sermonis interpretations” (228).
58
As Ghosh notes, the association of Wyclif with Platonism (and of both with heresy) goes back to Wyclif’s
contemporary Jean Gerson (Ghosh [2011] 17).

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render that text in whatever words best convey the idea it, not only those that most closely

approximate the words of the source-text. This point of view is endorsed also by GP, which, as

was noted in Chapter I, acknowledges the possibility that in some cases “þe lettre mai not be suid

in þe translating” and affirms that “þe wordis owen to serve þe entent and sentence, and ellis þe

wordis ben superflu eiþer false” (FM 1.57). For this, Dove’s summary of Wyclif’s own views as

advocating “not sola scriptura...but a renewal of the authentic tradition of biblical interpretation”

(Dove [2006] 378) furnishes a reasonable gloss.

In this context, exegesis is thus given a considerable role to play. G.R. Evans notes that

Wyclif “cites commentators (both Augustine and Gregory) as ‘authorities’ for the view that

interpreters should not allow the actual wording of Scripture to get in the way of the clearest

possible understanding of the text by the faithful” (Evans [2005] 118). It need hardly be added

that this principle, if taken on consistently, inevitably applies to translation, not just exegesis.

Smalley in fact asserts that “Wyclif was far too medieval to reject the Fathers or to imagine the

sacred page wiped clean of its glosses” (Smalley [1969] 208), and this would naturally apply to

any translation along Wycliffite lines. Indeed, as Dove notes, GP actively reinforces the

importance of “goostly undirstonding” and “the metaphoricity of scripture” (Dove [2011] 215).

Wyclif himself had reiterated and commended Augustine’s principle that comparison of textual

variants can be useful ut lector concipiat autoris sentenciam (VSS 9 [1.195]). He adds, lest it be

unclear that this has to do not only with sifting through corrupt readings but also with

independent translations of the same text, that ad hoc prodest...uarietas interpretum (ibid.). This

passage might even be argued to provide the justification for WB’s use of alternative translations

(doublets) in its own text, though if anything the translators would have been thinking of

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Augustine, not Wyclif. 59 Minnis indeed observes that GP goes further than Augustine in

asserting that failure to translate “equivok wordis” according to the “sense either understonding

of the autour” is an outright “errour” (Minnis 23, citing FM 1.59).

Wyclif’s and the GP author’s citation of authorities like Augustine also underscores the

second aspect of their rejection of a strict sola scriptura doctrine that has implications for WB:

their use of outside sources. For Wyclif, “The scientific disciplines that reach beyond basic

language training, in particular, natural philosophy and metaphysics, do not supply foundational

knowledge in the aforementioned sense of forming the starter-knowledge indispensable to any

process of understanding, but are nevertheless useful and necessary tools at the more advanced

levels along the way to an understanding of Sacred Scripture’s universe of significations”

(Brungs and Goubier 240). In this respect, Wyclif was much less of a radical than he is

sometimes accused of being. But it should still be borne in mind that the exegetical authority

most commonly cited in WB’s glosses (and the only fourteenth-century commentator mentioned

by name in GP) is the arch-literalist doctor de Lyra, licet nouellus, tamen copiosus et ingeniosus

postillator scripture, as Wyclif calls him (VSS 12 [1.275]). It is likewise interesting to observe

that, as Smalley points out, Wyclif elsewhere cites Julian of Aeclanum and other Antiochene

exegetes (Smalley [1964] 256-257), whose heavy emphasis on literal-historical exegesis was

discussed in Chapter II. In any case, Wyclif shared the Antiochenes’ belief in the usefulness of

ancillary disciplines for understanding the Bible; in his early work at least, as Smalley puts it, he

“goes...to the point of asking how anyone ignorant of pagan ethics can hope to penetrate the

meaning of Scripture even superficially” (278) and “shows that...scientific literature in general

59
Copeland points out that GP’s citation of DC is more systematic than is Wyclif’s in VSS, suggesting that GP’s
author was not relying on Wyclif as an intermediary for Augustine’s ideas about biblical interpretation (Copeland
[2003] 192-193).

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can help the exegete to moralize biblical texts and to understand the significance of ritual actions

performed in the Old Testament” (280). Likewise, Hargreaves says that GP’s author “accepts

that the text needs interpretative aids, but stresses the pre-eminence of the literal meaning and

handles his sources with scholarly care (Hargreaves [1965] 140).

At the same time, as Maurice Keen explains it, “In scholastic terms, [Wyclif] believed

that the divine truth articulated in [Scripture] had of itself intelligible being” (Keen 4; cf. Robson

168). Thus there is an underlying unity behind the Bible’s various forms of signification, literal,

figurative, etc. In J.A. Robson’s paraphrase of Wyclif, Scripture’s “natural eternity...ensures its

literal truth...As the immutable word of God it can have but one interpretation” (Robson 168); for

Wyclif, “a sense of the very fulness of meaning resulted in a rigidly literal interpretation”

(169). 60 Thus, while he was far from rejecting the the importance of glossing or commentary tout

court, he did reject the views of writers like Palmer and Butler who regarded much of Scripture

as hopelessly opaque for the ordinary reader without the aid of Church-approved tradition and of

ecclesiastical authorities and, as Evans points out, sometimes feared that “the technique of

glossing the Bible could be misused so as to distort its meaning” (Evans [2007] 1065). This, of

course, is where comparisons between the Lollards and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century

Protestants cease to be inappropriate, and where we find the basis of fifteenth-century

authorities’ association of the vernacular with heresy. Nicholas Watson points out that, in GP,

“the Holy Spirit is seen as completing the project of translating the Bible in the hearts of all those

60
Hence, as Ghosh explains, in Wycliffite writings, “contemporary philosophical and theological plurality and
debate are seen to constitute a pernicious deviation from and perversion of an originary unitary truth, generally
described in this tract as embodied in Christ’s ‘logic’, transmitted to his apostles and early disciples, and faithfully
recorded and adhered to by them” (Ghosh [2011] 27).

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spiritually prepared to receive it” (Watson [2008] 79), an attitude related to Wyclif’s view that

Scripture is ultimately spiritus sancti sciencia (VSS 10 [1.228]). 61

The practical implications of this view can be ambiguous, but in actual fact it seems to

promote increasingly loose translation, as any defects in the translation become excusable on the

grounds that all translation is provisional. 62 It authorizes verbal imprecision on the grounds that

meaning is ultimately about mental and spiritual understanding, not words. Indeed, at one point

in his De Trinitate, Wyclif seems to flirt with the idea that all words with the same referent can

be treated as totally interchangeable. Here, when discussing terms for God specifically, he asserts

that capio terminos significantes Deum sine connotacione creature, ut puta “Deus,” “natura

diuina,” “persona diuina,” “trinitas increata,” “pater, filius, et spiritus sanctus,” et ceteros

terminos illi conuertibiles. uidetur enim quemlibet horum terminorum conuerti cum quolibet

eorundem, eo quod quilibet eorum precise idem significat (De Trinitate 9 [96]). Though he

rejects the absurd extremes of such thinking—sicut ergo non sequitur iste terminus “hoc”

primarie et principaliter significat hoc et hoc est homo, ergo primarie et principaliter significat

hominem; ita non sequitur iste terminus “pater” primarie significat patrem et ille est Deus, ergo

primarie significat Deum, quia iuxta istam deduccionem sequitur quod quilibet terminus de

genere substancie esset synonymus cuilibet, quia quilibet primarie significat substanciam

generalissimam (9 [104])—the mere fact that he has to explain why this view is wrong shows

how close his reasoning brings him to it. Still, at the very least Wyclif supposed, as Hudson

61
It is probably significant that this remark comes in a passage dealing with corrupt readings in MSS. of the Bible.
More fully: talia sunt multa in quibus est quedam uocalis discrepancia stante sentencia quod ideo, credo, factum est
ut noscamus uoces uel codices non esse nisi signa scripture sacre, que est spiritus sancti sciencia.
62
This view, incidentally, is also defended by the lord in Trevisa’s Dialogue, who points to Jerome’s three separate
translations of the Psalter as proof that “no synfol man doþ so wel þat he ne myȝte do betre, noþer makeþ so good a
translacyon þat he ne myȝte make a betre” (Jacobs 293).

317
points out, that language was merely a habitus (“garment”) and the biblical message not in any

essential way dependent on the words used to express it (Hudson [1986] 90).

At the same time, the idea that any translation of Scripture is completed only by the

devout reader’s understanding also implies that interpretive aids may be useful but should be

kept clearly distinct from the text except inasmuch as they are based on direct inference from it.

That is, the reader should be allowed to know what the Bible says (or rather means) and what is

particular, disputable interpretation. Even the Christological doublet in LV Zechariah (see

section 4d) can present itself as simply an alternative translation rather than an extrinsic gloss on

the text because Nicholas of Lyra has assured the translators that an explicit reference to the

Messiah is found in an authoritative ancient translation of the verse in question. This view of the

relationship between text and commentary in turn provides a nice explanation for why LV but

not EV sometimes features extensive glossing and why this glossing is mostly marginal. It may

also explain why the use of doubling decreases from EV to LV: the translation is increasingly

accepted as non-definitive, and so imprecision is more allowable, so that dithering about exact

points of phrasing is mainly restricted to contexts in which the disputed word is genuinely crucial

to the reader’s understanding. Overall, in any case, it is clear that an increased emphasis on

“dynamic” rather than “formal” equivalence, as well as an increased emphasis on explanatory

aids, is not only justified but perhaps demanded by Wycliffite views of Scripture. Ultimately, in

other words the evolution of WB—including in its doublets—shows not merely a response to

practical concerns but also a manifestation of previously-held theological convictions.

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Conclusion: Doubling and the Transmission of the Biblical Message

LV is a suitable text with which to end this study not only because it is likely the latest of

the translations we have examined but because it is a text both backward- and forward-looking. It

is ironically just as true for the WB translators as for the anti-Lollard writer Nicholas Love that,

as Christopher Bradley says of Love, “The author/translator’s job is in a sense to be a careful

student of the past, and of the techniques of transmitting knowledge of the past, all with an eye

towards making it speak powerfully in the present” (Bradley 124). LV is thus backward-looking

in that it presents itself as part of a tradition of biblical translation and interpretation that reaches

back into ancient times. GP especially, in ways we saw in section 1, identifies LV as existing in

both continuity and contrast with “the English Bible late translated” (EV?), and points out some

ways in which scholarship, both textual and exegetical, affects the words of the translation. At

the same time LV is forward-looking in that it presents a text virtually designed to be

repurposed. Certainly, as Mary Raschko concludes, whatever its translators had in mind, WB’s

disseminators “encouraged readers to find new forms of coherence and ways of integrating

biblical revelation with their lived experience” (Raschko 478), and from very early on “the

translation project itself opened up new textual, codicological, and interpretive possibilities”

(479). GP itself had entreated that “if ony wiys man fynde ony defaute of þe truthe of

translacioun, let him sette in þe trewe sentence and opin of holi writ” (FM 1.57), and it is

probably not beside the point that, in its closing pages, GP commends multiplicity of translation:

“Grosted [i.e., Robert Grosseteste] seiþ þat it was Goddis wille þat diverse men translatiden and

þat diverse translacions be in þe chirche, for where oon seide derkli, oon eiþer mo seiden openli”

(59). Taken with GP’s refusal to identify any intended audience more specific than common

319
English-speakers, this serves to lay the ground for a widespread adoption of this text that, as we

shall see in a moment, extended far beyond the Lollard circles that originated WB.

The WB translators, if GP is any indication, might justifiably be called obsessed with

precedent. Lollard writers generally have a marked tendency, when discussing translation, to

invoke earlier works of translation, especially the Septuagint and the Vulgate, as models

authorizing the conversion of biblical texts into a language understood by common people (for

examples, see various pieces in Hudson [1997] and Dove [2010]). 63 What is interesting about

GP, the Lollard tract most closely associated with a particular work of translation, is how much it

multiplies examples (emphasizing for instance that “þe noumbre of translatouris out of Greek

into Latyn passiþ mannis knowing, as Austyn witnessiþ in þe ii. book of Cristene Teching” [FM

1.59]) and dwells especially on precedents close to the cultural and linguistic context of WB

itself. Indeed, this latter emphasis grows rather gratuitous in multiple respects. For instance,

when discussing the Vulgate, the GP author makes a point of stating that not only was Latin in

Jerome’s time “a comoun langage to here puple aboute Rome...as Englishe is comoune langage

to oure puple” (ibid.), but it still is, in a “corrupt” form, the vernacular of Italy. Meanwhile, the

subsequent assertion that “Bede translatide þe Bible and expounide myche in Saxon” strongly

suggests that the author’s wish to claim precedent outstrips his knowledge of the actual content

of any OE biblical translations, given that Bede, if the traditional account is true, translated only

the Gospel of John. Andrew Breeze shows in fact that at least one of the precedents in other

vernaculars that GP mentions (the language of the “Britons,” probably meaning Welsh) simply

never existed in any form (Breeze 16-17).

63
This is not unusual for medieval translators, especially where the Bible is concerned. The lord in Trevisa’s
Dialogue similarly rattles off a long list of precedents (most of them cited also by GP) when the clerk challenges the
validity of English biblical translation (Jacobs 291-293).

320
 This should not be taken to imply that GP’s invocations of precedent are entirely hollow.

Certainly WB drew something of its translational approach from earlier works of

vernacularization. It has been one of the major arguments of the last two chapters that figurative

doublets in both EV and LV are informed by a view of figurative language in Scripture that is

precedented and articulated in both Wycliffite and non-Wycliffite theological writing and that

draws on accepted practices of glossing. As the texts examined in Chapter III will have shown,

application of these practices to vernacular translation was far from unique to WB in the

fourteenth century. While it is unlikely that the WB translators knew either PE or EBV (parts of

the latter may postdate WB anyway), what we find in these two specimens of biblical translation

which happen to have survived may well have existed also in versions that happen not to have

survived. It is also interesting to note that GP’s assertion that “King Alvred...translatide in hise

laste daies þe bigynning of þe Sauter into Saxon, and wolde more if he hadde lyved lengere” is

consistent with what is known of Ps(P) and, unlike the reference to Bede, does not immediately

rule out the possibility that the WB translators had access to a copy. Whether any of the WB

translators could read Ps(P) even if they did have access to it is another question, the answer to

which is probably no. I invoke the idea not to raise a real possibility, but to emphasize the

similarities between Ps(P) and LV in their use of doublets: though they are separated by five

hundred years, the translators of both texts find, for instance, that the best way to deal with some

body-part metonymies is to lay two levels of meaning side by side. While this idea is not so

strange that two translators could not arrive at it independently, the parallel does give one the

impression of survival rather than reinvention—a technique of translation familiar from earlier

texts, for whose translators it was familiar from earlier texts, and so on.

321
 No doubt it is for reasons of just these sorts that WB proved so easily appropriated by the

orthodox. When L.G. Kelly remarks that “the Lollards tried to forestall condemnation by

scholarship...And much good it did them” (Kelly [1979] 113-114), his sarcasm is rightly applied

to the Lollards themselves, but in fact non-partisan scholarship did do much good for WB. To

use Hudson’s words, the circulation of WB “in itself testifies to the uncontroversial content of

WB—the text was not in any way heretical even if it was hereticated” (Hudson [2011] 308). WB

acted in the fifteenth century as what is sometimes called a “hospitable text,” allowing for uses

removed from its original Lollard associations. Dove observes that “neither in 1409, when the

constitutions issued at the Council of Oxford by Archbishop Thomas Arundel were promulgated,

nor at any other time, did the opponents of translation offer any specific criticisms of the text of

the Wycliffite Bible, and although of course it contains infelicities and what we now know to be

errors, there is nothing in it that could be called tendentious, let alone heretical” (Dove [2011]

212). As Poleg and others have noted, GP (which is preserved in a tiny number of manuscripts)

is the only real hint at WB’s origin, and in its absence one could easily be oblivious to the link

between LV and Lollardy (Poleg [2013] 79; McSheffrey 63; cf. Wilks 154). It is not for no

reason that, in the sixteenth century, Thomas More could infamously mistake WB for the work

of an orthodox author with no ties to Wyclif.

More was plainly far from alone in this mistake. Though Kathleen Kennedy does not

endorse the old theory (recently revived by H.A. Kelly) that WB is orthodox in origin, 64 her

revisionist account of the manuscript evidence has satisfactorily established that the actual

circulation of WB was entirely dependent on acceptance in non-sectarian circles (see Kennedy 8-

64
Wilks in the 1970s advanced a qualified form of this thesis, arguing that EV up to Bar. 3:20 was the work of
Nicholas Hereford but that EV’s NT was an independent non-Lollard production that came to be attached to
Hereford’s work and was later revised by Purvey and other Lollards to produce LV (Wilks 159-160).

322
9, 13-14, 188-193, etc.). Poleg adds that WB manuscripts’ very layout “reflects Latin Bibles and

orthodox liturgy” (Poleg [2013b] 71). For instance, as Matti Peikola has found, tables of

liturgical readings are a “frequent paratextual companion to the Wycliffite Bible,” occurring in

approximately 40% of surviving WB manuscripts (Peikola 351), with rubrics and other markings

in the text itself often used to indicate the lections listed in these tables (358-360). As Solopova

says of the rubrics in one such manuscript, “It is difficult to imagine that any of this would have

been necessary if the book were intended only for private reading and study...in fact the rubric

and underlining make [the text] more difficult to read, and would have been fully

comprehensible only when it was performed” (Solopova [2013] 336). De Hamel likewise finds

that in WB manuscripts the Psalms are “usually constructed more like a liturgical Psalter than as

an ordinary book of the Bible” (de Hamel 182). 65

The use of WB (mainly LV) by orthodox readerships has been a popular theme in recent

scholarship, in large part because there are so many avenues to explore here. Copies of WB were

owned by Henry IV (Summerson 109, 112), Henry VI (Solopova [2016] 60; Hudson [2006] 736-

737), and Henry VII, the last of whom, according to Kennedy, marked his copy in a way

consistent with books he used personally (Kennedy 166). Henry VI donated his copy to a

Carthusian abbey, and Hudson points out that it now contains annotations which show that its

new owners put it to official use (Hudson [2006] 737-738). Other members of both the

aristocracy (see, e.g., Hanna [2005] 311) and the clergy (Solopova [2013] 333, 345-348) also

owned WBs, and some of the latter are known to have approved production of new copies for lay

patrons (Lindenbaum 192). Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that the unique text of Henry VI’s

copy shows that the translation was not only copied but specially revised for an aristocratic

65
As Raschko points out, “Most likely, this apparatus facilitated private reading before or after the Mass” rather
than demonstrating official use (Raschko 467), but it still points clearly to ownership by a non-heretic.

323
audience (Diem 275-278). Similar inferences may be drawn from the fact that, as Kennedy finds,

WB was incorporated into some English Books of Hours (Kennedy 160-166), and perhaps also

from the wide variety of contexts in which partial WBs appear, as discussed by Raschko

(Raschko 464-467). Looking beyond the upper orders, Michael Sargent insists that, as shown by

the manuscript evidence, “It was not only the great and powerful among the orthodox who

owned copies of the Wycliffite Bible versions, but many others—including a large number of

people (or local churches or chapels) whose copies were apparently formatted for para-liturgical

use” (Sargent 71-72). Following a less direct line, Bradley finds that Love’s Mirror of the

Blessed Life of Our Lord “demonstrably relies on prior knowledge of biblical stories,” and

argues that this prior knowledge might have been expected to come from WB (Bradley 125).

Moreover, most LV manuscripts show clear signs of being professional or even

commercial productions. The evidence for this has been examined by de Hamel (see de Hamel

178-183) and especially by Kennedy (see, inter alia, Kennedy 35-51), so I will rehearse only a

few major points here. Perhaps most significantly, Lynda Dennison and Nigel Morgan find that

around 40% of WB manuscripts contain decoration (Dennison and Morgan 266) and conclude

that “from the 1390s until c.1420 many such books were produced, some with lavish

illumination” (303). Thus even in the decade immediately after Arundel’s Constitutions one of

the most conspicuous marks of professional production (illumination) is practically standard in

WB. Poleg points out that WB manuscripts lack ownership marks more commonly than do, for

example, Italian vernacular Bibles, but argues that this is not because of fear of persecution but

because these Bibles were not personalized precisely because they were mass-produced

commercially (Poleg [2013b] 74-75). Moreover, a number of copies, including the royal

manuscripts already mentioned, are large deluxe volumes which, as Hanna observes, cannot have

324
been products of a “clandestine” movement but imply “extended professional involvement”

(Hanna [2015] 184). Indeed, though it is still true that most WBs are in small formats (186ff.),

these also often display such marks of professionalism as initials decorated in red and blue.

Nevertheless, Hanna also finds evidence that, in London at least, the copying of a text

like WB “may have appeared dangerous” already in the 1380s “in the context of a go-getter local

bishop like Robert Braybrooke” (Hanna [2005] 31). Though Watson’s famous argument that

Arundel’s proscription of WB led to a massive decline in vernacular religious writing and a

paranoid association of vernacular writing with heresy (Watson [1995] 830-835) has been

heavily qualified by subsequent scholarship, 66 it still has basic validity. As Catto expresses

matters, Watson’s thesis “is a bold claim, but to all appearances a plausible explanation for the

undoubted sparseness of theological and other works originating in the English universities after

1409” (Catto [2011] 44). There is certainly no denying that ownership of a copy of WB could be

used at least as additional evidence of heresy against someone already suspected of heresy on

other grounds, even if not as prima facie evidence. 67 In fact, this continued to be true as late as

the 1510s, when Richard Hunne was tried for heresy, one of the prosecution’s main arguments

being that he owned a manuscript of what we know as LV. In short, WB’s status, despite its

popularity, was always ambivalent, and acceptance of it by political and religious authorities

could easily be withdrawn under the right circumstances.

66
I could give any number of references at this point, but the most convenient thing will be simply to point the
reader to the collection After Arundel, ed. Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh and specifically to the essays from
this collection listed in my bibliography.
67
According to Shannon McSheffrey, by the sixteenth century Catholic authorities paid more attention to the
intention of those using vernacular religious works than to the content of those works or the fact that they were in
English (McSheffrey 52); indeed, it was not the technical heresy of the books’ content that was the primary issue, in
the eyes of either the prosecutors or the prosecuted: the goal for the Lollards was to achieve direct knowledge of the
scriptures without clerical mediation, and ecclesiastical officials saw this, with justification, as showing intention to
disobey the authority of the Church” (64). Fiona Somerset navigates these difficulties neatly with her argument that
Arundel’s proscription was intended mainly or even exclusively to limit the activities of the clergy, not the laity
(Somerset [2003] 146-147, 153), though obviously this did not prevent the circulation of WB among both groups.

325
 The question which all these currents and counter-currents induce us to ask is how a text

officially condemned in 1409 could become the single most-copied work of ME literature not

before but after its condemnation. The fact that owning an English Bible could in the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries count against one in a heresy trial seems to show that not all ecclesiastical

authorities made More’s mistake of identifying WB as an orthodox pre-Wycliffite production.

The short answer to this question is expressed by Hanna: “Rather than heresy, it [WB] has

become the only game in town...For a time, it progressively infiltrated earlier, orthodox biblical

versions, perhaps as a form of camouflaged circulation...But ultimately the banned text became a

full substitute and drove out, destroyed the circulation of, competing biblical versions” (Hanna

[2005] 309-310). But this in turn demands explanation, and the best explanation lies, it appears,

in WB’s (especially LV’s) approach to translation. Other ME biblical translations, such as PE

and RRP, could never have been repurposed and adapted as variably as was WB for several

reasons, which Hanna sums up thus: “Whatever its ultimate source and mechanics of generation,

Lollard scripture worked. While a tool that might foster heresy, the very fidelity to the Latin text

and absence of sectarian additions, both integral to sustaining Lollard biblical reading, also made

the book useful to a general interest audience. Moreover, Lollard scripture...was textually

complete and an accurate rendition of its source, relatively compact, and (in the Later Version)

readily legible. The translation, in fact, turned out to be so good an idea that, whatever official

pronouncements said, it could be re-appropriated to orthodoxy and used, without particular

anxiety, as a convenient consultation text” (310). In short, WB’s success is tied to a) its lack of

abridgment and b) its minimizing of built-in commentary.

It might be said that LV achieved success because it was a translation in which doubling

is the defining form of explanatory elaboration. I have attempted to demonstrate throughout this

326
study that doubling is associated with concepts of “literal sense,” though these are multifaceted

and variable. At the very least it can be said that, in all translations that feature them, doublets

function to clarify their lemmata’s (supposed) contextual referents while also retaining some of

the peculiarities—lexical or semantic—of the source-text. What sets translations like WB apart is

that most more intrusive forms of commentary are either excluded entirely or cleanly

distinguished from the text. Even the doublets are, unlike in OE texts, often marked in the same

manner as glosses in WB and other ME translations As de Hamel points out, such demarcation

of text and commentary was atypical even in Latin Bibles in the earlier Middle Ages (de Hamel

106), and in general it can be associated with the post-twelfth-century turn toward the literal

meaning of Scripture as a primary exegetical focus. Thus doubling, whether we regard it as a

form of glossing or not, helps satisfy a demand to clarify at least some points of the Bible’s

meaning while also making clear what the Bible itself (as opposed to the commentators) says. In

this, we may end by saying, translations like WB anticipate the attitudes of many modern biblical

translators. I have noted in passing a few times that alternative translations are commonly given

as notes in MnE Bibles, and this has been true since the sixteenth century. Examples are so easy

to find that I will not bother to cite any here. Though these alternatives are relegated to the

margin or the foot of the page—and though in MnE versions the less-literal translation is often

given in the main text—the conceptual, if not historical, continuity with medieval doubling

should be obvious. For both, there is an urge to gloss without glossing, to make the meaning of

the biblical message more explicit yet ground this explicitation on the text itself, and to

acknowledge that Hebrew, Greek, or Latin forms of speech are not English forms of speech,

though the latter can, as necessary, also be adapted to meet the former.

327
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