The Middle English Bible. Henry Ansgar Kelly

Furthermore, only the first four of his negative arguments are those of the first doctor, which were supplied to him by a friend. When Ullerston begins to list the arguments against the proposition, he says: “The first doctor asks: ‘Should Sacred Scripture be interpreted into all languages,’ which somewhat coincides with my article” (that is, the positive position taken in his treatise).⁴¹ Then, after giving the first four arguments, he says: “Now these arguments a certain man, a friend, set down, as written in the hand of the aforesaid first doctor.”⁴² He continues by giving twenty-six additional arguments against his own article (not against the question debated by the two doctors).⁴³ Later on, at the end of his response to the fourth argument, he says that this concludes his response to the arguments of “the reverend doctor.”⁴⁴

      In proceeding as he does, Ullerston is not trying to give the appearance of being evenhanded,⁴⁵ but rather is following (or inventing) a modified form of scholastic argumentation. In the classic scholastic method, as demonstrated most familiarly by St. Thomas in his Summa theologica, a proposition is stated and arguments given in favor of it, and then the professor comes to the opposite conclusion, giving his reasons; finally, he responds to the original arguments one by one.⁴⁶ What Ullerston does is to start with a question, rather than a proposition; he gives arguments on the negative side and then he refutes the arguments, thereby affirming the positive side.

      Let us examine Ullerston’s treatise. It is divided into twenty-four chapters, and, whether this division was Ullerston’s doing or not, it will be useful to follow it.⁴⁷ There is some hesitation on the part of the scribe as to where the divisions go, and some rubrics are crossed out. The chapters are as follows:

      Chapter 1 (195ra): introduction; negative arguments 1–4 from the first doctor; negative arguments 5–10 from Ullerston.

      Chapter 2 (195va): negative arguments 11–20.

      Chapter 3 (196ra): negative arguments 21–30.

      Chapter 4 (196rb): discourse on translacio and interpretacio.

      Chapter 5 (196vb): discourse on what is licit and illicit.

      Chapter 6 (197rb): discourse on translation; assurance of relying on Church teaching; preview of next three chapters.

      Chapter 7 (197va): listing of Ullerston’s motives for taking the affirmative side.

      Chapter 8 (198rb): response to objections to his motives.

      Chapter 9 (198vb): conjectured motives of those holding the negative side.

      Chapter 10 (199rb): responses to arguments 1–2 of the doctor.

      Chapter 11 (199vb): responses to arguments 3–4 of the doctor.

      Chapter 12 (200rb): response to argument 5.

      Chapter 13 (201ra): responses to arguments 6–8.

      Chapter 14 (201rb): response to argument 9.

      Chapter 15 (202ra): responses to arguments 10–12.

      Chapter 16 (202va): responses to arguments 13–14.

      Chapter 17 (202vb): responses to arguments 15–16.

      Chapter 18 (203rb): responses to arguments 17–18.

      Chapter 19 (203vb): responses to arguments 19–21.

      Chapter 20 (204va): responses to arguments 22–23.

      Chapter 21 (205ra): response to argument 24.

      Chapter 22 (205va): responses to arguments 25–29.

      Chapter 23 (206ra): response to argument 30.

      Chapter 24 (207va): some extended arguments and nine brief arguments in favor of translation.

      At the end of chapter 6, after stating his desire to conform to Church teaching,⁴⁸ he lays out what he will cover next: namely, some of the reasons that move him to take the affirmative side of the argument, followed by what he thinks might be reasons that others have for taking the opposite view.⁴⁹

      The last chapter is a puzzle. Ullerston has spent a huge amount of space in chapter 23 on the thirtieth objection, that the Gospel should not be preached to everyone, and he fails to come to a satisfying conclusion, moving instead in chapter 24 to support what he claims to have advocated somewhere above, that the law of Christ should be published with moderation in every idiom;⁵⁰ perhaps he is still responding to the thirtieth objection. He continues with an elaborate statement that prohibiting the translation of the Bible would be contrary to Christ’s plan for his church, and that the work of translation is virtually inspired by the Spirit of God:

      Si enim Dominus Jhesus Christus peregre proficiscens ab hoc mundo tradidit servis suis bona sua, unicuique viz. secundum propriam virtutem, per quorum usum laudabilem possunt regnum ecclesie adipisci, quis prohibere potest fidelem servum ejus cui Dominus dedit talentum, interpretacionem viz. sermonum ejus in vulgare, ne sic transferat in vulgare, cum talis, Spiritu Dei actus, non minus posset aliud loqui quam [quod] Dominus in ore ejus posuerit, quam [quod] propheta gentilis Balaam, qui dixit, ut habetur Numeris 23, “Num aliud possum loqui nisi quod jusserit Dominus?” Et hoc idem senciendum est de illis qui habunt industriam aquisitam ad consilia peragenda, que et omnia alia ad sui laudem perficere nos concedat Jhesus Christus, qui sine fine vivit et regnat, amen.⁵¹

      For if the Lord Jesus Christ in passing from this world gave to His servants His goods, each according to his power, through the laudable use of which they can acquire the kingdom of the Church, who can prohibit His faithful servant to whom the Lord gave a talent, that is, the interpretation of His words into the vernacular, from thus translating into the vernacular, since such a one, driven by the Spirit of God, could speak nothing other than [what] the Lord had placed in his mouth, than [what] the gentile prophet Balaam [spoke], who said, as is read in Numbers 23.12, “Can I speak anything else but what the Lord commandeth?” And the same is to be thought about those who have acquired the skill to carry through with such tasks—which, and all things else, may Jesus Christ grant to us to perform to His praise, who lives and reigns without end, amen.

      This statement and prayer have the look of a conclusion to the treatise. But there follows a list of nine succinct reasons for translating Scripture, in which Ullerston might seem to be including himself among the ranks of capable translators.⁵² These reasons are clearly an afterthought, since they are not mentioned in the plan that Ullerston stated at the beginning. In the Caius fragment, where a later hand has numbered the reasons in the margin, the colophon follows, identifying Ullerston.

      Perhaps a clue is to be found in the seventh of the nine propositions, which says that, just as preaching the Word of God and administering the sacraments is to be supervised by the wise counsel of prelates, the same is true of the use of translation.⁵³ This would seem to be a reference to the constitution dealing with Bible translation, Periculosa, proposed at the council of the province of Canterbury held at Oxford in November 1407. Ullerston was in residence at Queen’s College at the time of the council, and may even have participated in it, as a member of the lower house or as an onlooker. Hudson and others have uniformly taken a more severe view of the purport and effect of the constitutions passed at this time, saying, for instance, that they forcibly closed down the debate on translation and formally forbade the vernacular translation of the Scriptures.⁵⁴ But, in fact, as we will see in Chapter 5, all that the legislation required was episcopal or provincial supervision or license approving recent translations before being used for lectures.

      The deference to bishops noted in the added proposition at the end of Ullerston’s treatise is actually entirely in keeping with his response to the second argument of the first doctor, which said that Bible translation was properly a task for bishops to perform, but that the English bishops at that time were not adequate for the task.⁵⁵ Ullerston agrees that it would be fitting if bishops were sufficiently expert to accomplish the task, but says that it does not follow that if they are not able to do it on their own, all others would be insufficient. It only requires good men to be chosen