| rdfs:comment | - The Geneva Bible was a Protestant translation of the Bible into English. This was the Bible read by William Shakespeare, by John Knox, by John Donne, and by John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress. It was the Bible that was brought to America on the Mayflower and used by Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War. Because the language of the Geneva Bible was more forceful and vigorous, most readers preferred this version strongly over the Bishops' Bible, the translation authorised by the Church of England under Elizabeth I.
- The Roman Catholic Church had spread throughout the territory that was once part of the Western Roman Empire. Yet the Church reserved for its own clergy the right to own the written text of the Bible--and no European monarch permitted any of his subjects actually to possess a copy of the Bible printed in any language other than Latin.
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| abstract | - The Geneva Bible was a Protestant translation of the Bible into English. This was the Bible read by William Shakespeare, by John Knox, by John Donne, and by John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress. It was the Bible that was brought to America on the Mayflower and used by Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War. Because the language of the Geneva Bible was more forceful and vigorous, most readers preferred this version strongly over the Bishops' Bible, the translation authorised by the Church of England under Elizabeth I.
- The Roman Catholic Church had spread throughout the territory that was once part of the Western Roman Empire. Yet the Church reserved for its own clergy the right to own the written text of the Bible--and no European monarch permitted any of his subjects actually to possess a copy of the Bible printed in any language other than Latin. In 1526, William Tyndale began his first efforts to translate the Bible into English. For this defiance of the royal edicts then in force, the authorities pursued him. He fled to Germany, where he met Martin Luther, and from there to Belgium. There he produced a mechanically printed edition of the New Testament, and his friends smuggled 6,000 copies of it into England. Authorities in Belgium hunted him, arrested him, and imprisoned him in Vilvoorde, and on March 6, 1536, he was executed. Tyndale's New Testament did not reach the common man in England. It did, however, influence the English clergy and might have been an impetus behind the Reformation in England. Significantly, Anne Boleyn was executed in the same year as was Tyndale--and subsequent to this, King Henry VIII began his sweeping purge of the monasteries in his realm.
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