Exhibit 494 ยท Provincial constitutions (in translation)
Constitutions of Archbishop Thomas Arundel against the Lollards (Constitutions of Oxford), 1407-1409
therefore we enact and ordain that no one henceforth do by his own authority translate any text of Holy Scripture into the English tongue or any other by way of book, pamphlet, or treatise.
Constitution 7 forbids anyone to translate a text of Scripture into English on his own authority and forbids reading any such translation, already made or to be made, until the diocesan or a provincial council approves it, under the greater excommunication. Constitution 1 requires a diocesan license to preach; constitution 6 bars Wycliffe's books from the schools; constitution 12 bars offenders from benefices for three years.
- Source
- Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, with the clergy of the Province of Canterbury
- Date
- 1407-1409 (Oxford 1407/8; ratified at St Paul's, London, 14 January 1408/9)
- Quoted from
- Constitution 7 (trans. J. Johnson, 1851, rev. M. Marlowe; Latin in Wilkins, Concilia III, p. 317)
- Grade
- Primary record
- Document
- https://bible-researcher.com/arundel.html
- Accessed
- 2026-11-09
- Cited by
- Findings citing this exhibit
- Note
- Also printed, with the Latin of constitution 7 from Lyndwood's Provinciale and Wilkins and a modern translation, in Pollard, Records of the English Bible (1911), Record I, pp. 79-81. Dating differs between sources (1407, 1408, 1409); Pollard gives Oxford 1408 and St Paul's 14 Jan 1408-9. Further quotes read: reason ('a dangerous thing; as blessed Jerome testifies, because it is not easy to make the sense in all respects the same'), approval clause, and constitution 1's license 'gratis'. Pollard, Records of the English Bible (1911), p. 80 n. and intro p. 3, states that licenses came to be granted to specified readers and that a license could be procured; this is a 1911 editor's gloss and is not quoted.