The ʻGlamorgan School of Translationʼ: A No Politics Phenomenon?

Abstract

This article endeavours to assess issues of politics and policies related to a particular group of texts said to have been produced in South Wales in the second half of the sixteenth century within the so-called Glamorgan school of translation. There are doubts that all of the texts listed by G. J. Williams are indeed products of a single “school” of translators. For three particular texts—the translations of The Voyage of the Wandering Knight, Dives et Pauper, and Gesta Romanorum—some generalizations about a late sixteenth century Glamorgan textual community might be attempted. It could be suggested that the selection mechanisms at work in this culture of translation were steered by the conservatism of the target audience. This is reflected in both the language and the style of the works, as well as by trends in the choice of source texts for translation. For originals of the two texts, Gesta Romanorum and Diues and Pauper were composed before the Reformation. How exactly their confessional fluidity should be interpreted remains a question. It is unlikely that what we see here is a sign of religious toleration in the modern sense. However, these examples of “simple and generally acceptable Christian piety” might be investigated further as landmarks in the complex dynamics of confessional identities in a peripheral region during a turbulent era in British history.

Keywords

Confessional politics in England and Wales in the 16^th century and their frequent changes made the religious allegiances of people a matter of highest importance for the rulers.¹ Translations were central in the development of ‘the culture of persuasion’ as vehicles of teaching, and particularly so in Wales. Some of the translations were instrumental in the official politics of Reformation, thus the translation of the Bible and the Book of the Common Prayer into Welsh was required by the Act of Parliament in 1563.² Therefore, a connection can easily be made between these translations and politics in its specific definition by Peter Burke given for the early modern period:

What is politics? For the early modern period it may be appropriate to define it as ʻaffairs of stateʼ, not local issues but concerns of rulers, in other words the succession, war, taxation, and economic and religious problems in so far as they forced themselves on the attention of governments.³

There were also attempts to create a Catholic program of translation into Welsh as an antidote to the ‘heretical’ Protestant writings, undertaken on a high political level by the exiles in Italy.⁴ But the process of confessionalisation involved much more than top-down transfer of beliefs, recent research on Reformation has shown the importance of personal and communal levels in it.⁵ A group of Welsh texts which are said to belong to the ʻGlamorgan school of translationʼ, undertaken mostly by anonymous translators and transmitted in manuscripts, offers the possibility to discuss several aspects of the intricate interrelation between politics, devotion and the policies of translation in a region on the periphery.

But before I come to the texts themselves three issues must be discussed in the introductory part: first, the political context of religious change in the 16^th century and current trends in English historiography, then the Welsh developments.

In a very abbreviated way politics and religion at the highest level in England in the 16^th century may be presented as following: Henry VIII (reigned 1509–1547) declared the independence from papal overlordship in 1533, which was a decision taken for legal and not theological reasons. On a personal level the king was not an ardent reformer himself, in 1521 he wrote a theological treatise ‘The Defence of the Seven Sacraments’ (in Latin: Assertio Septem Sacramentorum) against Luther, for which he received the title Fidei defensor (ʻDefender of the Faithʼ) from Pope Leo X. After the break with Rome an influential group of reformists (such as Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer) succeeded in implementing some changes, such as the authorization of the official English Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, in the period known as ‘Henrician Reformation’, 1533–1540. After Cromwell’s execution in 1540, Henry’s politics wavered between occasional campaigns against the reformists and “periods when he allowed Cranmer to embark on cautious, partial reform of the so far barely altered old liturgy”.⁶ His son Edward VI (reigned 1547–1553) was educated by humanistic reformers, and in the time of his reign multiple measures towards ensuring the reform were undertaken. He was succeeded by Mary I (1553–1558), an ardent Catholic in whose reign hundreds of reformers were executed. Under Elizabeth I (1558–1603) the Religious Settlement was achieved, at first the policy was lenient, later the persecution of the Catholics became ever more intense. From 1588 substantial fines were introduced for recusancy, that is not attending the services of the official Church of England, and Catholic priests were harshly persecuted.

This sketch of the religious politics of the monarchs who reigned over England and Wales in the 16^th century can however only set an oversimplified frame for the complex process of religious transformation of the entire society that happened in this time. The understanding of the mechanisms of the development of confessional identities in Tudor England has undergone tectonic changes in the last 50 years, with the four models of Reformation introduced by Christopher Haigh,⁷ Eamon Duffy’s⁸ reassessment of the state of the Catholic church in Britain prior to the Reformation and numerous other works.⁹ “By examining material culture and material texts, scholars have reached a more nuanced sense of the ways that changes in doctrine and liturgical practice were adapted and used to inform domestic arrangements and personal piety”.¹⁰ All these findings are useful in analysing contemporary Welsh developments.

Let us now turn to Wales. The defining narrative of the Welsh religious history in the 16^th century is found in the works of Glanmor Williams. I will first give a summary of his presentation of ‘Wales and the Reformation’.¹¹ In the 16^th century Wales was a rather poor country, mostly rural, with a dire poverty among the population¹² and correspondingly among the priesthood and no facilities to educate the ʻrank-and-fileʼ clergy.¹³ Therefore, there was a huge lack of those who could preach the faith—and that had to be done in Welsh. Since 1535 everyone to hold a public office in Wales had to be able to speak English,¹⁴ which means that the gentry was increasingly becoming at least bilingual, but the majority of population remained monoglot Welsh speaking. In this way the first efforts of the Reformation, with translating of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer into English, particularly active in the reign of Edward VI, remained inaccessible for the larger part of the Welsh. At least some groups of the population remained unrelentingly opposed to Protestant teaching, thus a poet from Glamorgan, Tomas ap Ieuan ap Rhys, rejected in his poems, circulated only in the time of Mary I, but likely composed earlier, the innovations he criticised as ffydd Saeson, ‘English faith’, “inflicted willy-nilly on the Welsh”.¹⁵ In the time of the ‘Marian reaction’ the foundations of Welsh Catholic opposition to Elizabeth were laid, but “[t]he battle for the soul of the Welsh people had still to be fought and would be waged for decades to come”.¹⁶ By the beginning of the Elizabethan reign “the majority of populace were confused, bewildered, ignorant, or apathetic; many of them were left so ʻpunch-drunkʼ by frequent change as to become unmoved by either Catholic or Protestant extreme”.¹⁷ It is noticeable that in the religious debates of the Reformation “most of the leading Welsh controversialists on both sides were to be found in the ranks of émigrés in England”.¹⁸ It was a “small but ardent cultivated minority” with strong connections behind the borders of Wales who lobbied at the highest quarters of political powers in London¹⁹ and ensured that in April 1563 the Act of Parliament was passed giving official sanction and mandate to the Book of Common Prayer and the whole Bible to be translated into Welsh. These printed translations were to make Wales “a committedly Protestant country” (and ensured the longevity of the Welsh language),²⁰ although by the end of Elizabeth’s reign conversion to the Protestant faith was not yet firm-rooted and “plenty of vestiges of the conservative past” remained.²¹

As might be seen already from this abstract, Williams’s book emotionally involves the reader with the Protestant cause from its onset till the end of Elizabethan reign when it was finally ensured. This is hardly surprising, since Sir Glanmor Williams (1920–2005), considered in his lifetime a greatest authority on the Welsh church history, was “a keen member and deacon of Capel Gomer Baptist chapel”.²² Another defining figure in the Welsh scholarship of the 20^th century was Saunders Lewis (1893–1985)—being a Catholic convert and a nationalist he saw in the period before 1530 s “the great century” of Welsh literature, which was then cut short by the forced union with England in linguistic and religious terms.²³ The same confessional divide used to exist in the study of English Protestants and Catholics,²⁴ but more recent trends offer ‘post-confessional, post-revisionist’ approaches²⁵ to the religious history of England. And therefore, although following the steps of the giants of the Welsh scholarship is inevitable, it is important to remain aware of possible denominational and / or political conditioning in the modern-day historiography they have shaped.

7.1 The ʻGlamorgan School of Translationʼ and its Sixteenth- Century Texts

With all these points in mind I will turn now to the so-called Glamorgan school of translation. Foibles of historiography, although probably not of a political or denominational kind, might be responsible for the creation of this construct. In 1948 Griffith John Williams, a prominent Welsh scholar, published the book Traddodiad Llenyddol Morganwg (‘The Literary Tradition of Glamorgan’). Glamorgan is a county in south-east Wales, and G. J. Williams was especially interested in this area because his main academic focus was the life and works of one of the most fascinating and bizarre figures of the Welsh literature, Edward Williams, known under his pseudonym Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826), Morgannwg being the Welsh name for Glamorgan. Iolo was one of the creators of the modern Welsh culture, his fantasies about pre-Roman knowledge of bards and druids, kept in secret for hundreds of years in Glamorgan, are still the foundation of the most popular Welsh yearly event, the Eisteddfod with its Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys Prydain (ʻThe throne of the Bards of the Island of Britainʼ).²⁶ One of the main scholarly achievements of G. J. Williams was the proof that many of Iolo Morganwg’s collections, in which he allegedly richly drew from ancient regional material, were full of forgeries. The book on the Glamorgan literary tradition was conceived originally as a preface to the biography of Iolo, in order to provide a background for Iolo’s literary activities. However, in the course of time this supportive study developed into a book in its own right of more than 300 pages. And while G. J. Williams dismisses many statements by Iolo, who would ascribe most of the Welsh literary tradition specifically to Glamorgan, Iolo’s idiosyncrasies were possibly still too strong for him to reject in some points.

The main bulk of the book is dedicated to poetry, which mirrors the relative values of poetry and prose in Welsh culture and literary scholarship. But in one chapter G. J. Williams draws a vast panorama of translations from the 14^th century onwards which he locates in South Wales and tentatively in Glamorgan specifically.²⁷ This tradition, according to G. J. Williams, included such texts as Welsh versions of La Queste del Saint Graal²⁸ or Relatio Fratris Odorici²⁹ in the late Middle Ages and was continued into the Early Modern period. 16^th century manuscripts of this school include two types of texts: first, much earlier, mostly religious texts known from manuscripts of the 14^th century³⁰ and secondly translations created by this school in the 16^th century. G. J. Williams’s list of the six most important works of the second group gives the following texts:³¹

• 1. Y Marchog Crwydrad—The Voyage of the Wandering Knight (published London, 1581)

• 2. Dives a Phawper—Dives et Pauper (first published in English 1493)

• 3. Darn o’r Ffestival—Liber Festialis by John Mirk (first printed by Caxton in 1483)

• 4. Y Gesta Romanorum (published in English 1510)

• 5. Y Drych Cristianogawl

• 6. Translations of Gospel Readings

The penultimate item, Y Drych Cristianogawl ‘The Christian Mirror’, although found in a manuscript produced by one of the scribes who is central to G. J. Williams’s notion of the Glamorgan school, Llywelyn Siôn (1540–c.1615), is not strictly speaking a translation and is the work of a Catholic author of northern Welsh origin, Robert Gwyn.³²

G. J. Williams thinks that Iolo must have had access to the manuscripts containing these texts, but they had no interest for this antiquary, since in his construction these works were products of superstitious Papists who would be irreconcilable enemies of the scholars of the druidic tradition.³³ This narrative of a regional textual community with a strong support of the Catholic cause in the second half of the 16^th century became rather influential, thus in the edition of one of the texts included into this group, Y Marchog Crwydrad, its editor D. Mark Smith enumerates exactly the same list of works.³⁴ He claims that all of them belong to a network of prolific Glamorgan scribes of the period, Ieuan ab Ieuan ap Madog, Llywelyn Siôn, and Antoni Powel, and are part of the efforts to help the local Catholics to preserve their faith despite Protestant persecution.³⁵ All of these texts are unmistakably religious, but are they indeed Catholic? Do they all belong to one textual community? A detailed discussion of these texts might help us to evaluate G. J. Williams’s statement, clarify the confessional affiliation(s), and possibly revise the list.

7.1.1 ‘Havod 22’

Two of the texts on G. J. Williams’s list, numbers 3 and 6 in the list above, are found uniquely in one manuscript, Havod 22 (Cardiff 2.632), written in the second half of the 16^th century.³⁶ This is a remarkable collection, which brings together texts that at least retrospectively seem to be incompatible. I will first introduce the two texts from G.J. William’s list.

The first of these texts, Darn o’r Ffestival, is a collection of Welsh translations of fourteen and a half sermons from the Festial of John Mirk, “the sermon collection par excellence”³⁷ in England before the Reformation, written probably in the late 1380s³⁸ and transmitted in English both in manuscripts as well as in multiple prints (from 1483 by Caxton to the last edition by Wynkyn de Worde in 1532, just before the Reformation). After this point the text was never reprinted until 1905,³⁹ but continued to be read, as notes in extant manuscripts and prints show, although it was very much disfavoured by the reformers, who tried to dispose of it both physically and verbally.⁴⁰ The Welsh translation found in the manuscript on pages 80–195 was edited and discussed by Henry Lewis.⁴¹

Another text in this manuscript mentioned by G. J. Williams as the product of the Glamorgan school are Gospel readings (pp. 391–413), edited by Henry Lewis,⁴² which have been shown to be based on the Vulgate, but also bear the influence of Tyndale’s New Testament as printed in the Matthew’s Bible.⁴³ Matthew’s Bible appeared 1537, which gives the terminus post quem for the translation. The other possible temporal boundary is the publication of William Salesbury’s New Testament in 1567, which the translation of Gospel Readings must predate⁴⁴—one might suppose that after this publication there would be no further need for independent Gospel translations, although its Latinised style made the text not easily understandable.

Both of the texts are written, according to the editor Henry Lewis, in a style completely different from that of William Salesbury, one of their features being abundance of English loanwords—but it is a difference in style and possibly in register, not another historical period of the development of the Welsh language. There is no direct evidence for the dating of the translations, and for the Festial Henry Lewis suggested that the manuscript could contain the ‘ur-translation’, since he could not see any traces of copying.⁴⁵ So although at least Festial could theoretically have been translated earlier, as the English source was available in print since 1483 and in manuscripts before, there are no convincing arguments for the dating.

To evaluate the texts, it is important to look at the manuscript they are contained in. Havod 22 is 700 pages long and includes at least two different groups of texts. On the one hand, it has a number of older devotional texts, such as the Welsh translation of Elucidarium, an extremely popular dialogue text on many aspects of Christian teaching faith composed in the 12^th century and known in Welsh from 14^th century manuscripts, an epitome of pre-Reformation religious teaching,⁴⁶ and some other similar texts.⁴⁷ On the other hand, it includes two translations from the works of Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), the archbishop of Canterbury and one of the architects of the Reform both under Henry VIII and Edward VI. These are “Cranmer’s liturgy” of 1544 (pp. 1–4) and “y kyminiwn ynghymraec”, from Cranmer’s Order of Communion of 1548 (pp. 413–21)ʼ.⁴⁸ The latter text is a response to the introduction of an English order for receiving communion, which would be unintelligible for the Welsh monoglots, and is, in the words of G. J. Williams,⁴⁹ “an early indication of some earnest but unknown Protestant’s wish to make it more widely understood”.

It seems that the main reason for the inclusion of the translations from Festial and of the Gospel Readings into the list of works of the Glamorgan school is the identification of one of the two scribes of the manuscript as Antoni Powel (c.1560–1618/9), an antiquary from south Wales (Llwydarth, Llangynwyd). This idea came from Iolo Morganwg and was accepted by G. J. Williams. However, the identification of this scribe with Antoni Powel has recently been rejected by the leading authority on Welsh manuscripts, Daniel Huws.⁵⁰ He suggests that “[h]is writing [i.e., of the scribe of Havod 22—E.P.], that of a bard rather than of a gentleman-scholar, looks a generation earlier”,⁵¹ and proposes to label this hand as X50 and to date it, basing on the two other manuscripts containing the work by the same hand, to the third quarter of the 16^th century.⁵² It is therefore possible to suggest that the manuscript was created shortly after Cranmer’s Order of Communion was published in 1548, and to put it into the context of the Edwardian Reformation.

Daniel Huws calls Havod 22 “a substantial collection of medieval religious texts”, adding that it also contains two translations from works by Cranmer.⁵³ The editor of the two Welsh translations of Cranmer’s texts in this manuscript, R. Geraint Gruffydd, suggested that those were translated by the same person who had translated the Gospel Readings and the sermons from the Festial.⁵⁴ In his opinion, all of these translations were part of a pioneering effort to produce Welsh language material for the church services, an effort that must have been made in the late 1540-s—early 1550-s. Gruffydd⁵⁵ refers to some Dimetian, i.e. southwestern, dialect features found in the language of the Festial translation by Lewis⁵⁶ and suggests despite the assumption that the manuscript itself comes from Glamorgan (being penned by Antoni Powel, a suggestion which is now rejected, see above), that the translation of this complex of the texts must have been undertaken in south-west Wales. One of the centres of the early Reform in Wales was St David’s and Gruffydd proposed that it could have been done by a cleric from this diocese.⁵⁷ The combination of texts that might look to us as incompatible, the Festial, that was assessed by English Reformers as an example of the false Catholic preaching, full of insipid narrations and fables, and the brand-new liturgic texts by Thomas Cranmer, one of the founders of the English Protestant Church could serve as a good illustration of the uncertainties of this early stage of the Reformation. Thus it offers a unique opportunity to get an insight of the period where the construction of confessional identities on a periphery were just beginning. However, although it contains many earlier translated texts, some of which might have been produced at some point in Glamorgan, the 16^th century translations in it and the manuscript in its entirety should probably be excluded from the discussion of the ʻGlamorgan schoolʼ, since the main argument for it, the identification of one of the scribes, is now rejected.

We now turn to the other texts of the list, for which the attribution to Glamorgan seems to be more certain.

7.1.2 Gesta Romanorum

The first of these texts is Gesta Romanorum, found in Welsh in one manuscript, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 13076 B (Llanover B 18), dated s. xvi/xvii. The manuscript is written by one of the most prominent scribes of his time and a central figure in the whole concept of the Glamorgan school, Llywelyn Siôn (1540–c.1615), whom we will discuss later. Gesta Romanorum is a collection of narratives of ultimately Latin origin, that was translated into Welsh from English. The exact source and dating of the translation poses a knotty problem which includes confessional issues. Although the Latin versions are much more numerous, it has been convincingly demonstrated by Patricia Williams that the Welsh translation must be based on an English printed source. According to P. Williams, the first English printed version was published by Wynkyn de Worde between 1510 and 1515 and reprinted six or eight times, only four of those editions remaining, the last dated 1557.⁵⁸ In 1577 a revised edition was produced by Richard Robinson, published seven times between 1577 and 1602.⁵⁹ The Welsh translation is definitely based on the translation published by Wynkyn de Worde, whether from its first editions or the one printed 1557, in the time of the return to Catholicism under Mary I, remains unclear, since, as far as I could see, these editions vary only orthographically. There is possibly also an edition of the same text by Wynkyn de Worde prior to 1510, not mentioned by P. Williams—a copy held in Queen’s University Library, Belfast, Shelfmark Percy 394, is tentatively dated by 1502.⁶⁰ More importantly, there is no way to assess the exact date of the revised Protestant version of Gesta Romanorum by Richard Robinson. Of the new editions attested in authoritative catalogues (as STC) the first is dated only by 1595 (STC 21288). There is no Gesta Romanorum edition of 1577, but only a text “Certain selected histories for christian recreations vvith their seuerall moralizations. Brought into Englishe verse, and are to be song with seuerall notes: composed by Richard Robinson citizen of London” (STC 21118), which is a completely different verse text, not prose, as in the case of the Gesta, and resembles Gesta Romanorum only in its combination of a ʻrecreationalʼ story with a moralisation and the person responsible for the edition. Richard Robinson (c. 1544–1603) published several translations “from Latin and French, […] predominantly moral and religious, and often strongly Protestant”, the second strand in his translations being chivalric,⁶¹ one of the two examples thereof being, according to the short biographical sketch, Gesta Romanorum.⁶² Whenever this new version was created, its description as a translation by Richard Robinson is unjustified, since its relation to the Wynkyn de Worde’s English version is more adequately characterised in the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads database: “The work was revised by the translator Richard Robinson, who says he ‘reformed and repolished it’ and ‘corrected the Moralitie in many places’. He also added an Argument before each story and changed the title”.⁶³ The new tripartite structure of each story—narration, ‘the morallʼ, and ʻthe argumentʼ—distinguishes the revised version from all the editions up to 1577.

The relation between the older and the newer English versions can be demonstrated with two examples. One example was already discussed by P. Williams:⁶⁴

By this Emperour ye maye vnderstonde euery crysten man that purposed to vysyte the holy londe / that is to saye to gete euerlastynge lyfe thrugh werkes of mercy.⁶⁵

By this Emperor ye maye vnderstãd every Christian man that purposeth to v[is]it the Citie of Hierusalem, that is to saye to get euerlastynge life through fruitfull faith.⁶⁶

Wrth yr amherawdr hynn i y mae i ni ddeall pob kriston, a sydd yn meddwl myned i weled dinas Kaerysalem, hynny yw i ennill bywyd tragwddol [sic] trwy ffydd ffyddlon.⁶⁷

By this emperor we are to understand every Christian who thinks of going to see the city of Jerusalem, that is, to win eternal life through faithful faith [sic, the literal translation of the Welsh text by E.P.]

Here we see that ʻthe holy landʼ and ʻwerkes of mercyʼ of the earlier English version are substituted by ʻthe Citie of Hierusalemʼ and ʻfruitful faithʼ in the revised version, which has correspondences in the Welsh translation, although the Welsh translator substitutes fruitful by ‘faithful’ in trwy ffydd ffyddlon, literally,ʻthrough faithful faithʼ. Both changes are not stylistic, but theologically driven. But these ʻreformedʼ changes are not consistently incorporated into the Welsh text, as the next example shows:

This Emperour betokeneth the fader of heuen His sone betokeneth our lorde Ihesu cryste whome many men desyre to nourysshe at eester whan they receyue the sacrament. Neuerthelesse he y^e best Iusteth with y^e deuyl & ouercometh hym thrughe penaūce The knyght y^e toke this chylde with hȳ betokeneth a good crysten man y^e fasted truly & blyssedly all y^e lente before⁶⁸

This Emperour betokeneth the father of Heauen, his sonne beetokeneth our Lord Jesus Christ, whome many men desired to nourish, at such time as they receiued the sacrament of his death and passion. Hee nourisheth him that best iusteth with the diuell, & ouercommeth him through godly life. The knight that tooke this childe with him, beetookeneth a good christian man that euermore absteineth truely from doing euill, and laboreth cōtinually to doe good to all men.⁶⁹

Yr amherawdr hynn a arwyddoka y Tad o’r nef, a’i vab ef a arwyddoka yn Harglwydd ni, Jesü Grist, yr hwnn i mae llawer yn daisyf i gael ef yddy vagv y Pasg, pan vont yn rysevo y sakraven. A’r vn a ymladdo yn orav a’r diawl, ag a’i gorchvygo ef drwy benyd, a sydd yn magv y mab. Y marchog, a gymerth y mab hynn yddy vagv gydag ef, a arwyddoka y kriston da a sydd yn ymprydio y Grawys o’r blaen yn ddevosionol.⁷⁰

This emperor signifies the father of Heaven, and his son signifies our Lord, Jesus Christ, whom many desire to nourish, when they receive / are receiving the sacrament. And he who fights the best with the devil, and overcomes him through penance, nourishes the son. The knight, who took the child to be brought up by him, signifies the good Christian who fasts with devotion throughout Lent beforehand / during the preceding Lent. [the literal translation of the Welsh text by E.P.]

Here none of the changes that are connected with Reformation (penance substituted by godly life, change of literal fasting to metaphorical abstinence from doing evil) are incorporated into the Welsh text, which closely follows the earlier version.

Patricia Williams⁷¹ suggested that at some point a Welsh translation was made from the Wynkyn de Worde version of the text, which was later corrected using the new Robinson version.⁷² The structure of each story in the Welsh version is definitely the one of the earlier version, not the new tripartite one. Parallels with the new version, of which a two instances occur in the first example above, are not consistent and rather superficial. P. Williams rightly notices that we cannot know for sure whether Llywelyn Siôn was aware of arlliw’r Diwygiad ‘a touch of the Reformation’⁷³ in the version he copied. Whatever his personal awareness of its confessional affiliations, a textual analysis shows that it cannot to be classified as an unambiguously anti-Protestant, pro-Catholic text that would suit only one confession.

7.1.3 Dives a Phawper

Llywelyn Siôn is also responsible for the transmission of another text that was published in England before the Reformation, Dives et Pauper. This early 15^th century dialogue on faith of English origin is transmitted in seven manuscripts and at least three early prints—first published by Pynson in 1493, by Wyncyn de Worde in 1496, and by Bertheleti in 1536, but never after the Reformation.⁷⁴ The Welsh version thereof appears in two manuscripts dated to around 1600, both in the hand of Llywelyn Siôn. Cardiff 2.618⁷⁵ contains only this text, while Cardiff 3.240, dated 1600, contains two texts, Y Drych Kristnogawl and Dives a Phawper.⁷⁶ At the end of the text in the latter manuscript the following remark is found:

Yma i diwedda yr ymddiddan a vü rhwng Dives a Phawper, sef yw hynny, o’r deg gorchymyn; yr hwnn lyfr a orffennwyd y pvmed dydd o vis Gorffenaf, pan oedd oed Krist 1493, ag a brintiwyd gan Risiart Pinson ymyl Barr y Deml yn Llvndain. Ag velly i terfyna y llyfr hwnn om llaw j Llen Sion o Langewydd, y 30 o Orffennaf oedran Krist 1600, o dernasad Elzabeth yn grasysaf vrenhines

Here ends the dialogue between the Rich and the Poor, that is, on the ten commandements; the which book [i.e. the English edition] was completed on the 5^th of July of the age of Christ 1493, and published by Richard Pynson near the Temple Bar in London. And so ends this book by my hand, Llywelyn Siôn from Llangewydd, the 30^th July of the age of Christ 1600, of the reign of Elizabeth the most gracious queen, the 42 year.⁷⁷

Daniel Huws⁷⁸ notices that the text must have been transmitted as a recusant tract and the combination with Robert Gwyn’s text clearly points in that direction, but it would be worth investigating how usual the reference to the recusant-persecuting Elizabeth by the formula the “most gracious queen” was in recusant manuscripts. What is also unclear is the date of the translation—was it done before the Reformation and thus belong to the strata of older texts that remained popular or was it translated later as an antidote to the newer Protestant teachings? The answer to that might be found in a detailed linguistic analysis of the text, although even so it might remain open.

7.1.4 Treigl y Marchog Crwydrad

The last item on the list of G. J. Williams is possibly the most illuminating case for the fluidity of confessional affiliations. It is the text known in Welsh as Treigl y Marchog Crwydrad ʻThe Voyage of the Wandering Knightʼ, found in five manuscripts, three of them dating from the 16^th century.⁷⁹ Two of the copies are penned by Ieuan ab Ieuan ap Madog of Betws, Glamorgan (fl.1575), who was associated with Llywelyn Siôn and was thus part of the Glamorgan network of scribes.

As in the case of Gesta Romanorum, the Welsh text is a translation of a translation. The original text Le Voyage du Chevalier Errant was published by Jean Cartigny, a Carmelite Friar (c.1520–c.1578–80) in Antwerp in 1557. It is a “religious allegory masquerading behind the trappings of chivalric romance”⁸⁰ and is an example of Counter-Reformation didactic literature of the time.

On the 27^th of May 1581 its translation into English was published in London, where printing of Catholic works was prohibited at the time. The text was preceded by a long and florid dedication “to the right worshipfull sir frauncis drake, knight”, written by Robert Norman, an instrument-maker and hydrographer. This edition “must be seen as an immediate reaction to Drake’s freshly received knighthood, awarded by the queen herself on board Drake’s vessel, the Golden Hinde, on 4 April in that same year in Deptford”.⁸¹ The preface praises Francis Drake, newly returned from his three-year voyage around the world. The author of the preface describes the circumnavigation in religious terms, drawing clear parallels with the following text an d representing Drake’s voyage as “the spiritual pilgrimage of human life”.⁸² The translator, William Goodyear “of South-hampton, Merchant”, about whom nothing else is known “alters little in the narrative, apart from aligning its theology with that of the Elizabethan Church, and tacitly and tactfully removing a reference to the evils of piracy from Cartheny’s text (cf. Voyage, 63)”.⁸³ Dorothy Atkinson Evans, who prepared the 1951 edition of the English text, suggested that “[p]robably Goodyear knew much less than we do about Cartigny [implying his confessional affiliation] and perhaps he saw in the story an instrument for good and a symbol of universal human experience which bore no stamp of dogma”.⁸⁴ To me this suggestion of the translator’s ignorance is unnecessary and I would rather follow Nievergelt and see in this French–English translation “an interesting phenomenon in itself: it transplants a clearly Counter-Reformation text to a foreign theological soil with few alterations, and thus raises interesting questions about cross-confessional translation practice and the fluidity of denominational affiliations in Elizabethan England”.⁸⁵

A few years after the text is published in English it is translated into Welsh—we know for sure that the English edition is the immediate source since Wiliam Godyar is named in the Welsh text. The earliest manuscript can be dated ca. 1585. There is no Francis Drake dedication and no preface by Robert Norman in the Welsh text. The English-Welsh translation is rather close, with one specific exception: French and English editions give full versions of canonical texts, such as the Ten Commandments, Apostlesʼ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. In the Welsh version only the first sentences of the canonical texts are indicated:

Wherefore I am sorye and doe heartelye repent mee for the breach of them, and in token whereof I make my confession, saieng.

I Beleeue in God the Father almightie, maker of heuen & earth. And in Iesus Christ his only sonne our Lord. Which was conceaued by the holy Ghost. Borne of the virgin Marie. Suffred vnder Ponce Pilate. Was crucified, dead & buried. He descended into hell, the third day he rose againe frō the dead. He ascended into heauen, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almightie. From thēce he shal come to iudge the quick & the dead. I beleeue in the holy Ghost. The holy Catholike Church. The communion of Saints. The forgiuenesse of sinnes. The resurrection of the body. And the life euerlasting, Amen.⁸⁶

Ac am hynny yr wyf i yn ddolyrys ag ynn etifarhay am y dryllio hwynt, ag yn arwydd ar hyny yr wyf yn gwnaethyr fy nghyffes, gan ddwedyd fal hyn, ʻYr wyf i yn credy mewn vn Duw Dad hollallyog, gwnaethyrwr nef a dayarʼ ac felly adrodd gwbl o byngcay y ffydd Gatholig.⁸⁷

The exact wording byngcay y ffydd Catholig (ʻpoints of Catholic faithʼ) does not necessarily imply Papist inclinations—pynkey yr ffydd Catholig is the alternative title of the Credo in the 1546 Reformist book Yn y lhyvyr hwnn, a small collection of basic texts about the Christian faith ([p]ynkey yr fydd gatholic), so this adjective could be used in the broader ecclesiastical sense of ‘universal’.⁸⁸ But the omission of the full versions of all three canonical texts (the Ten Commandments, Apostlesʼ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer) is intriguing. By 1581 printed versions of these texts translated by Reformists existed (in the Yn y lhyvyr hwnn all three texts and in Llyfr Gweddi Cyffredin (William Salesbury’s translation of The Book of Common Prayer published 1567), Lord’s Prayer and the Creed)—and the first sentence of the Creed does not correspond to these printed versions. The editor of the Welsh text suggested that at the points indicated those who would read out the text and the hearers of the Welsh text read aloud for them would be familiar with the Catholic versions of the translations⁸⁹ and therefore would not need the entire text. His strong statement implies that Treigl y Marchog Crwydrad was one of the texts that were used by some Catholics to strengthen their faith in the time of Protestant persecution and encourage them to keep to the old faith.

7.2 On the Entire Group of Texts

We can now reassess G. J. Williams’s list of the translations believed to have been undertaken by the Glamorgan translators in the 16^th century. It is difficult to pinpoint exact linguistic or stylistic features that would be exclusive to his group of texts. It has been said that “the prose found in these texts follows the pattern of the Middle Ages rather than that of the Renaissance humanists”,⁹⁰ but it seems to be true for other translations not associated with Glamorgan, e.g., the collection transmitted in a northern manuscript Llanstephan 34 (1580–1600).⁹¹

Inherent features of the traditional manuscript transmission to which these texts belong are in most cases their elusiveness for exact dating and their anonymity. Both of these factors undermine the possibility of their clear denominational classification.

Some, like Treigl y Marchog Crwydrad can be dated safely, but the translations of Mirk’s Festial or of Gesta Romanorum could have been produced prior to the Reformation. If so, how can we interpret their transmission? It has been noted that “[d]uring England’s period of transition from a near-uniformly Catholic to a largely Protestant society, the popery or the catholicity of a previously existing Catholic text depended not on its contents, but on the individual recipient’s degree of ideological awareness. At some irrecoverable point, a medieval celebration of Corpus Christi or a folk carol about the Virgin would have become a Catholic text to a singer or copyist, not simply a religious one”.⁹² This must be true for Wales as well, but the texts like Gesta Romanorum do not bear such clear signs of dogma and there is also the question of how fast confessional awareness spread across the textual community.

Connected to this issue is the prevalent anonymity of this textual community—of the translators of the texts and the owners of the manuscripts. Whether this continues anonymity as a feature of medieval culture or is due to contemporary persecutions of Catholics during the Elizabethan period is impossible to say. We know more about the scribes, as mentioned above, three of six texts in G. J. Williams’s list, Gesta Romanorum, Dives a Phawper and Drych Cristianogawl, were penned by Llywelyn Siôn, “the greatest professional copyist of his time”, and also a poet himself. He was registered in recusant rolls⁹³ and the copying of Robert Gwyn’s treatise was clearly an act in support of the Catholic faith, but the reference to Elisabeth I as Elzabeth yn grasysaf vrenhines (‘Elizabeth our most gracious queen’)⁹⁴ and the fact that at least one of the texts he has copied derives from the mainstream Protestant print culture imply that we should not necessarily see him and his audience as ardent Counter-Reformists. It might be time to re-evaluate the assessment of these texts’ intentions as ‘raising the hearts of Papist recusants of their time by encouraging them to stick to the old faith and not to subjugate to the new Protestant ideology’.⁹⁵

7.3 Conclusions

In this paper I attempted to assess the issues of politics and policies connected with a particular group of texts said to have been produced in South Wales in the second half of the 16^th century.

The discussion above has shown that, first, we cannot be certain that these texts are all indeed a product of one ‘school’ of translators, the Gospel readings and translations from Mirk’s Festial might belong to another context, and Y Drych Cristianogawl is an original text, not a translation and therefore has a different status—it is, however, a recusant text.

As for the other three texts, some generalizations about a late 16^th century Glamorgan textual community might be attempted. Politics, as in Peter Burke’s definition, ʻaffairs of stateʼ are only distantly linked with this local and low-key strand of textual transmission, and most of the actors of this literary community remain anonymous.

Although it is risky to attempt any broad conclusions on the basis of rather small manuscript evidence, it could be suggested that the selection mechanisms at work in this culture of translation are steered by the conservatism of the target audience.⁹⁶ It is reflected both in the language and style of the works, as well as by the trends in choosing the source texts for translation. For two of the texts, Gesta Romanorum and Diues and Pauper, the originals were composed before the Reformation and do not deal with sophisticated theological questions, but rather with everyday piety and basic tenets of Christian faith. The tendency to classify these texts as clearly pro-Catholic might be affected rather by the politics or rather vagaries of historiography. How exactly to interpret their confessional fluidity remains a question. It is unlikely that we see here a sign of religious toleration in the modern sense,⁹⁷ but these examples of “simple and generally acceptable Christian piety”⁹⁸ might be investigated further as landmarks in the complex dynamics of confessional identities in a peripheral region in a turbulent age of British history.⁹⁹