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Exhibit 528

Thomas More, A Dyaloge ... of the pestylent sect of Luther and Tyndale (1529), book 3, ch. 16

Exhibit 528 ยท Printed polemical dialogue

Thomas More, A Dyaloge ... of the pestylent sect of Luther and Tyndale (1529), book 3, ch. 16

For as for other olde onys, that were before Wyclyffys days, [these] remayn lawful, and be in some folkys handys had and red.

More states that the clergy keep from the laity only translations 'not yet approued for good' or 'reproued for naught', as Wycliffe's and Tyndale's, and that older English translations before Wycliffe remain lawful and are in some hands; elsewhere he proposes translations approved by the ordinaries and delivered to the lay by the bishop.

Source
Thomas More
Date
1529
Quoted from
Pollard, Records of the English Bible (1911), Record II, p. 81 (from fol. xciii verso); Record III, pp. 84-85
Grade
Primary record
Document
https://archive.org/details/recordsofenglish00polluoft
Accessed
2026-11-09
Cited by
Findings citing this exhibit
Note
More's own statement of the defense and his proposal; Tyndale's reply (Answere vnto Sir Thomas Mores dialoge, fol. cv, in Pollard p. 82 n.) is that the bishops could have shown which translation was lawful and let it be printed.

Cited by

Finding REL-2.9
Reported Innocent III in 1199 called the desire to understand the divine Scriptures "commendable" while condemning secret lay assemblies and usurped preaching; Thomas More wrote in 1529 that the clergy kept from the laity only translations not yet approved or already condemned; the 1559 Act of Supremacy limited what commissioners could adjudge heresy; and Anne Hudson reports about 250 surviving manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible, including a copy owned by Henry VI.
Finding REL-2.10
Open question How far vernacular Scripture was restricted in Europe and England before 1520, given licensing, noble and orthodox ownership and the limits of the Toulouse and Oxford texts, is disputed and is not settled by the documents cited here.