Initially sold to an overseas buyer, a temporary export bar was placed on the manuscript by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, on the grounds that it is of outstanding significance for the study of cultural movements towards the Reformation in England, the earliest known translation of Erasmus into English, and of significance for the study of scholastic links between Erasmus and Tyndale.

The manuscript has been in the Duke of Northumberland’s collection at Alnwick Castle since at least 1872 and its significance was only realised when it was put up for sale last summer. The proximity of the date of the Northumberland manuscript to Tyndale’s putative Enchiridion now tantalisingly suggests a potential identification with his ‘lost’ translation.Ĭolophon: 'translated oute of latten into englisshe in the yere of our lord god mlvcxxiii ' ( Additional MS 89149, f. To date, there has been no secure evidence that Tyndale’s translation survived but its relationship to the text of the English translation, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1533, has long been a matter of scholarly debate. 1536) translated the Enchiridion into English in 1522 or 1523. Two contemporary accounts testify that the religious reformer William Tyndale (d. The large number of English printed editions of the Enchiridion demonstrates the importance of its influence in pre-Reformation England.ĭated 1523, the manuscript was written ten years before the English translation of the Enchiridion first appeared in print in 1533. Between 15 there were 13 editions in English, the first being published by Wynkyn de Worde for John Bydell in London. Between 1501, when Erasmus wrote the Enchiridion, and 1536 when he died, the original Latin text appeared in more than 50 printed editions. The Enchiridion evoked widespread interest throughout Europe and became one of the most influential devotional texts of the early 16th century. Erasmus’s revolutionary concept, given its first and definitive expression in the Enchiridion, was his elevation of the educated laity as the potential source of new life in a Church and society fallen into decay. As a compendium of humanistic piety, it endorsed the lay vocation to holiness in the Christian life. 1535), and for his translation of the New Testament from Greek but the Enchiridion was Erasmus’s first summing up of the guiding principles of his religious life, setting out his vision of a purified, Christ-centred faith based on essential points of doctrine. 1r)Įrasmus is perhaps best known today for his satire The Praise of Folly, which he wrote to amuse Thomas More (d.

This volume, which had been the subject of a temporary export bar, is also the only known manuscript of a contemporary English translation of Erasmus’s most popular work, the Enchiridion militis Christiani, or ‘Handbook of the Christian soldier’.Ī contemporary English translation of Erasmus’s Enchiridion militis Christiani, newly-acquired by the British Library ( Additional MS 89149, f. We are delighted to announce that the British Library has acquired a unique manuscript containing the earliest known translation into English of any work by the great humanist scholar and reformer, Desiderius Erasmus (d.

Medieval manuscripts dual blade