Rare Books @ NLS

2011 is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. To mark this achievement, we have put on a Treasures Display which charts the story of the Bible in English. It runs from 4 November 2011 until 8 January 2012.

The display starts with two Wycliffite manuscripts dating from the late 14th and early 15th century, and finishes with a first edition copy of the King James Bible of 1611.

It didn’t get off to a great start: it was not an immediate bestseller, and because it relied heavily on Tyndale’s translation from the 1530s its language was already a bit archaic when it was published. It was not licensed by James VI / I because it was only regarded as a revision; and it was not authorised until 1824. Nevertheless, the King James Bible has become the most famous and popular bible in English, and is still used in churches today, at least on some occasions: the poetry of its language has been unsurpassed, even if modern translations are linguistically more accurate.

You can also see copies of the first complete authorised Bible in English (1537), the Great Bible of 1539 which measures 34cm x  24 cm (closed!), the Geneva Bible produced by Protestant exiles in 1560, the first Catholic Bible in English (1582), a copy of the beautiful Bishops’ Bible of 1568, and portraits of John Wyclif, William Tyndale and King James VI / I.

John Knox (1510-1572) is probably the best-known figure of the Scottish Reformation. He also has a reputation of being sort of anti-women, but I think we have to take this with a pinch of salt: after all, Knox was married twice! He had two sons with his first wife, Marjorie Bowes, who died early during Knox’s time as minister in Edinburgh; his second wife Margaret Stewart was only 17  when Knox, himself just over 50, married her. They had three daughters, and they all appear in his will. So it’s not as if he didn’t have a heart for women!

Knox’s problem was not with the female species in general, but with powerful women; it was in fact a theological problem. According to his understanding of the Bible, men are supposed to rule over women, not the other way round. Now this is not the place to enter into a debate about right and wrong interpretations of Scripture, but the fact is: Knox took his clue from the Bible, and he ran with it. The result was his famous, or infamous, First blast of the trumpet against the monstruous regiment of women, as the original title of the book read.

Actually, “monstrous regiment” has nothing to do with monsters; in modern English we would say something like “ungodly rule”. Knox’s main gripe was with Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary Stuart who ruled Scotland as Queen regent while her daughter was under-age; with Catherine of Medici, a powerful representative of that Italian dynasty; Mary Tudor, also known as Bloody Mary and Elizabeth I’s half sister; and, of course, with the youthful Mary Stuart herself: all of them Catholic women in high positions.  I’m sure it didn’t help that both Mary of Guise and Mary Tudor were responsible for the often violent suppression of Protestants during their reign.

Knox had his book published anonymously in Geneva in 1558: this was not to cover his tracks, but because he was a minister in Geneva at the time, looking after his flock of Scottish and English Protestant exiles. He did not identify himself as the author of the book because, as he said in the preface, he planned to launch another two blasts, and to reveal his identity with the third one. Sadly, or maybe not, he blasted no more. History overtook him, so to speak, because less than two years later he became the key player in the establishment of the Presbyterian Kirk in Scotland.

The first blast of the trumpet remains one of Knox’s best known works, and because of its popularity we are displaying a copy of it (shelfmark Ry.III.g.40) in the current exhibition. It has nothing directly to do with the Reformation.

You can read the entries for John Knox, Mary Stuart, Mary of Guise and Mary Tudor in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; it is accessible through NLS licensed digital collections.