The Wessex Gospels

The translation of parts of the Bible into Old English prose seems to have begun with the educational reforms of King Alfred in the late ninth century, resulting in the Prose Psalms and Mosaic Prologue to the Domboc (Alfred’s Lawcode). During the tenth and eleventh centuries, this trend continued with prose translations of the first seven books of the Old Testament (the Old English Heptateuch) and all four gospels (the Wessex Gospels). Together with the homilies produced by Ælfric and other anonymous authors, this impressive corpus of Old English biblical prose was designed to make the core teachings of the Bible accessible to all members of the Angelcynn (‘English people’) in their own language.

The Wessex Gospels were produced in the south of England by a team of anonymous translators in the second half of the tenth century. In contrast to the Old English glosses inserted above the Latin Lindisfarne and Rushworth gospels in the same period, which serve as a crib to help monks and nuns in reading the Latin, the style of the Wessex Gospels translation is that of a ‘communicative translation’, which aims to bring the meaning of the source text to a reader who does not know Latin. The translators stick closely to the wording of their source (the Latin Vulgate Bible) while freely altering the syntax to make the text readable in the vernacular. The result is a rendering of the gospels which reads as smooth, idiomatic Old English prose, as illustrated by the rendering of Matthew’s account of the crucifixion (Mt. 27.46–54) quoted below (to listen to a recording of this passage, click here):

46 And ymbe þa nygoðan tid clypode se Hælend mycelre stefne and þuss cwæð: ‘Heli Heli, lema zabandi.’ Þæt is on Englisc, ‘Min God, min God to hwi forlete þu me.’ 47 Soþlice sume þa ðe þær stodon and þis gehyrdon cwædon: ‘Nu he clypað Heliam.’ 48 Ða hrædlice arn an heora and genam ane spongean and fylde hig mid ecede and asette an hreod þæron and sealde hym drincan. 49 Witodlice þa oðre cwædon: ‘Læt utun geseon hwæþer Helias cume and wylle hyne alysan.’ 50 Þa clypode se Hælynd eft micelre stefne and asende hys gast. 51 And þærrihte ðæs temples wahryft wearð tosliten on twegen dælas, fram ufeweardon oð nyþeweard. And seo eorð bifode and stanas toburston, 52 and byrgena wurdun geopenode, and manige halige lichaman ðe ær slepon aryson. 53 And þa hig uteodon of þam byrgenum æfter hys æryste hig comun on þa haligan ceastre and æteowdon hig manegum. 54 Witodlice þæs hundreds ealdor and ða þe mid him wæron healdende þone Hælynd, þa hig gesawon þa eorðbifunge and þa ðing ðe þær gewurdon, hig ondredon heom ðearle and cwædon: ‘Soðlice Godes Sunu wæs þes […].’

[46 And about the ninth hour the Saviour called out with a great voice and said thus: ‘Heli Heli lema zabandi.’ That is in English: ‘My God, my God, who have you forsaken me?’ 47 Truly some of those that stood there and heard this said: ‘Now he calls Elias.’ 48 Then immediately one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and put it on a reed thereon and gave him to drink. 49 Indeed then the others said: ‘Let be, let us see whether Elias will come and wish to deliver him.’ 50 Then the Saviour cried out again with a great voice and sent his ghost. 51 And straightaway the temple’s curtain was rent into two parts, from the top to the bottom. And the earth trembled and stones burst. 52 And graves were opened, and many holy bodies that slept there before arose, 53 and then they came out of those tombs after his resurrection, they came into the holy city, and appeared to many. 54 Indeed, the centurion and those that were with him guarding the Saviour, when they saw the earthquake and those things that happened there, they were greatly afraid and said: ‘Truly this was God’s son.’]

Very little is added to the source text, except when the translator deemed it necessary to convey the sense. So, for example, where the Latin text of the Vulgate introduces the translation of the Hebrew of verse 46 with the tag hoc est (‘that is’), the Old English translator draws attention to the status of the Wessex Gospels as a translation by adding Þæt is on Englisc (‘that is in English’). The consistent front-placement of the Old English adverbs soðlice (‘truly’, verse 47) and witodlice (‘certainly, indeed’, verses 49, 54), for the Latin conjunctions autem (‘but, now, then’, verses 47, 54) and adverb vero/ vere (‘truly’, verses 49, 54), lends the narrative rhythm and rhetorical force. Where the Latin uses the personal name Iesus to refer to Christ in verses 46, 50 54, the Old English consistently employs the single epithet Hælend, an etymological translation of the Hebrew name Jesus (literally ‘saviour) which conveys its spiritual meaning to the reader. Alliteration is used occasionally to enliven the prose (e.g. verses 51–52: And seo eorð bifode and stanas toburston and byrgena wurdun geopenode; verse 54: Witodlice þæs hundreds ealdor and ða þe mid him wæron healdende þone Hælynd).

This highly readable, fluent and uncomplicated style suggests that this translation was made for readers who were unable to read the Gospels in Latin and for whom sophisticated exegesis was not a goal. The most likely candidates are members of the lay nobility for whom English rather than Latin was the main language of literacy, beneficiaries of the programme of lay literacy set out by King Alfred in the Prose Preface to the Pastoral Care. There is strong evidence that lay noblemen (and perhaps women) such as these wanted translations of the Latin books used by monks and nuns in this period. The Wessex Gospels might also have proved useful for secular priests, that is priests who were not in monastic orders. A chaplain may have kept a copy of the Wessex Gospels for reading aloud to a noble household at mealtimes and other social occasions. Such secular priests were also responsible for explaining the meaning of the Gospel pericope (the Latin reading used in the Mass) to their congregations in the vernacular in the course of their homilies. In several later manuscripts, Latin chapter headings and the first words of the Vulgate verse have been added to help such a reader match the Old English translation up to the passages used in the Mass:

Wessex Gospels with Latin heading in red, Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 140, fol. 3r.

Reproduced by permission of The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

The Wessex Gospels seem to have been something of a hit, with six complete manuscripts and multiple fragments surviving from the tenth to the twelfth or even thirteenth centuries. Old English prose translations of two apocryphal gospels, the Gospel of Nicodemus and Avenging of the Saviour, follow the text of the Wessex Gospels in the eleventh-century manuscript Cambridge University Library Ii.2.11, written out in the same hand. In the sixteenth century, John Foxe presented a print edition of the Wessex Gospels for Queen Elizabeth I, framed by the 1568 Bishop’s Bible, to indicate continuity of vernacular biblical translation and religious practice:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/The_gospels_of_the_f...

Despite their obvious popularity among medieval and early modern English readers, this major translation of the gospels has attracted little attention from modern scholars though the text was edited for the Early English Texts Society in 1994 by Roy Liuzza. While dazzling Old English poems such as The Dream of the Rood and the three Christ-poems of the Exeter Book provide a glimpse into how monastic readers meditated on and prayed with the Gospels in their own tongue, the Wessex Gospels bear witness to how some educated lay people experienced the Bible in their own private reading.

Select Bibliography

Complete Manuscripts

Cambridge University Library Ii.2.11 (MS A)

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 441 (MS B)

London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho C. I, vol. I (MS C)

Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 140 (MS Cp)

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 38 (MS H)

London, British Library, MS Royal I.A XIV (MS R)

Editions

Foxe, John, ed. The Gospels of the fower Evangelistes translated in the olde Saxons tyme out of Latin into the vulgare toung of the Saxons, newly collected out of Auncient Monumentes of the sayd Saxons, and now published for testimonie of the same (London: John Daye, 1571).

Liuzza, Roy M., ed., The Old English Version of the Gospels, 2 vols, EETS o.s. 304, 314 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, 2000).

Secondary Reading

Grünberg, M., ed. The West-Saxon Gospels: A Study of the Gospel of Saint Matthew with Text of the Four Gospels (Amsterdam: Scheltema and Holkema, 1967).

Leneghan, Francis. Old English Biblical Prose: Translation, Adaptation, Interpretation, Anglo-Saxon Studies 54 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2026), pp. 91–109.

Lenker, Ursula. ‘The West Saxon Gospels and the Gospel Lectionary in Anglo-Saxon England: Manuscript Evidence and Liturgical Practice’, Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999), 141–78.

Liuzza, Roy M. ‘Who Read the Gospels in Old English?’, in Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson, ed. Peter S. Baker and Nicholas Howe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 3–24.

———. ‘Scribal Habit: The Evidence of the Old English Gospels’, in Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, ed. Mary Swan and Elaine M. Treharne, CSASE 30 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2000), pp. 143–65.

———. ‘Reconstructing a Lost Manuscript of the Old English Gospels’, in Medieval English and Dutch Literatures: The European Context: Essays in Honour of David F. Johnson, ed. Larissa Tracy and Geert H. M. Claassens (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022), pp. 15–28.

Magennis, Hugh. ‘Not Angles but Anglicans? Reformation and Post-Reformation Perspectives on the Anglo-Saxon Church, Part I: Bede, Ælfric and the Anglo-Saxon Church in Early Modern England’, English Studies 96 (2015), 243–63.

Marsden, Richard. ‘Biblical Literature: The New Testament’, in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 234–50.

Rudolf, Winfried. ‘A Fragment of the Old English Version of the Gospel of Mark in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC’, The Library 7 (2017), 405–17.

Francis Leneghan is Professor of Old English at the University of Oxford. He is the author if The Dynastic Drama of ‘Beowulf’ (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020) and Old English Biblical Prose: Translation, Adaptation, Interpretation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2026) and, with Niamh Kehoe, editor of ROEP: Resources for Old English Prose.