William Tyndale
- See also: Tyndale Bible for many influential expressions created by Tyndale - far more than William Shakespeare.
William Tyndale (1494-1536) was a religious reformer and an important translator of the Bible into English. His translation of the New Testament from Greek has been acclaimed as one of the finest translations ever undertaken, and much of its language survived into the King James (Authorized) Bible of 1611, and from there into most modern English Bibles. He was born circa 1494, in the tiny hamlet of North Nibley, Gloucestershire. Tyndale was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he was admitted to the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1512. In 1515 he was made Master of Arts and ordained into the priesthood.
Originally, Tyndale sought the approval of the Roman Catholic Church authorities for his planned translation of the Bible; he went to London to meet with Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, a well-known scholar of Greek and Latin. Tunstall, however, held strongly to the Church's belief, held since the days of Wyclif, that to translate the Bible into English would be to make it vulnerable to all kinds of misreadings and disputes. Tyndale, however, was not discouraged, and with the help of patrons in London began his translation of the New Testament, which he completed at Hamburg in 1524. According to some accounts, he visited Martin Luther at Wittenberg, though there is no documentary evidence of their having met. In 1526, his New Testament was published in Worms, at the time a Protestant stronghold, and copies were smuggled into England. Cardinal Wolsey, when he saw these books and learned of Tyndale's involvement, condemned him as a heretic and wrote out a warrant for his arrest.
Execution
Tyndale was betrayed by Henry Philips, a well-educated Englishman who had lost his inheritance due to his own gambling addiction. For more than a year the Roman Catholic Church had control of him, and allowed him to continue to translate the Old Testament. Ultimately he was then transferred to local authorities under the jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who had previously presided over the trial of Martin Luther. King Henry VIII, who disliked Tyndale for outspokenly opposing his divorce to Catherine of Aragon, and for opposing authority by the English monarchy over the church, declined to intervene to protect Tyndale.
The Edict of Worms (1521) required punishment by death to anyone who spread Lutheran or reformist ideologies, as Tyndale was doing. Pope Paul III had no jurisdiction over this, and certain could not overturn Charles V's decrees. Moreover, Charles V had sacked Rome and imprisoned the Pope's predecessor, so Pope Paul III had no influence over Charles V.
Tyndale was arrested and imprisoned in the castle of Vilvoorden, tried and convicted on secular criminal charges that did not include anything about translating the Bible. Neither King Henry VIII nor Charles V intervened. Tyndale was first strangled, and then burnt in the prison yard, Oct. 6, 1536. [1]