On the margins of Bible translation: English decalogues and their circulation in the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries

Abstract

Although large-scale Bible translations into English were not carried out between c.1000 and the 1380s, Bible translation was still taking place on a daily basis both during public religious observances and during private devotional instruction. This article analyses a corpus of Middle English decalogue texts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and their relation to the source text of Exodus and Deuteronomy. The aims are to establish what Middle English texts of the Decalogue were in circulation and what shape they could take, what their Latin and vernacular sources were. Two types of primary Middle English sources are used: metrical mnemonic decalogues and metrical expository decalogues, as well as a number of contemporary Anglo-Norman and Latin texts. The analysis reveals not only the expected influence of the Vulgate but also that of the auxiliary mnemonic texts (e.g., Latin verse decalogues) and the contemporary theological thought (e.g., Robert Grosseteste or Mirour de seinte eglyse by Edmund of Abingdon). The vocabulary of the Decalogue and the gradual increase of the Romance element among the key terms in this text are examined next, compared to the general trends in the development of the Middle English lexicon and explained from a sociolinguistic and language-contact perspective.