Duces caecorum: On Two Recent Translations of Wyclif

Two recent publications have greatly increased the amount of Wyclif available in translation: the Trialogus, translated by Stephen Lahey, and a thematic anthology translated by Stephen Penn. This review article documents the failings that make these translations worse than useless. A post mortem leads the author to claim that the publication of these volumes, the first of which has already been warmly received, is a sign of a gathering crisis in medieval studies, and one that we should take steps to avert.


Thakkar
Vivarium 58 (2020)  Every medievalist needs to know something about Wyclif, and some of us could do with knowing rather more. For six centuries, though, it has been an arduous task to get past all the propaganda and see what he had to say for himself. By the time his works started to appear in print, the intellectual framework needed to understand them had been largely forgotten,1 and the recovery of this framework over the past century has been offset by the decline of Latin as a reading language among students and scholars alike. Until recently, the only texts available in translation were the De universalibus (1985) and the De simonia (1992), plus a scattering of abridgements, extracts, and short pieces.2 And this for an author said to have written about two hundred works!3 The publication of the two volumes under review is thus an exciting development, not so much for Wyclif scholars, who should be able to read him without such 1 An exception must be made for the Trialogus, which was printed in 1525. Otherwise, be- assistance, as for the many researchers who work in adjacent fields, and for the many teachers who need to give guided tours of this terra incognita. The translators have therefore taken on an important responsibility: they are, to use a phrase that Wyclif himself borrowed from scripture, "leaders of the blind".4 Thakkar Vivarium 58 (2020)  shame that his rich and idiosyncratic sermon collections are not represented, though we do get the standalone sermon De demonio meridiano, here billed as a "treatise" (p. 294). Still, it is good to see a strong showing from the underappreciated biblical Postilla. Thematically speaking, Penn's approach is conservative: the topics are ones that already have a place in the secondary literature. This would have been more understandable if the literature had always been cited, so that the volume could have functioned as a companion piece for the Latinless reader.8 As it is, the selection feels a little unimaginative; it would have been easy to include, say, one of Wyclif's rants about women.9 Penn has packaged his translations with a fair amount of supporting material. Each selection is introduced with a paragraph or two, and although the footnotes are not uniformly helpful,10 readers are rarely left unassisted for more than two pages at a time. The broader context is provided in an overview of two or three pages at the start of each thematic chapter, and nearly half of the introduction is devoted to a selective outline of Wyclif's thought that almost 8 For instance, the selection illustrating the "problem of the virtuous heathen" (p. 204, #29) does not come with any references, even though it is discussed not only in John Marenbon's recent book Pagans and Philosophers (Princeton, 2015), 217-218, but also in Gordon Whatley's classic article "The Uses of Hagiography: The Legend of Pope Gregory and the Emperor Trajan in the Middle Ages," Viator 15 (1984), 25-63, at 56- 59. 9 Wyclif has much to say about women in his discussion of the ninth commandment (non desiderabis uxorem proximi tui) in De mandatis divinis, ed. J. Loserth and F. Matthew (London, 1922), 434-453. He discusses them more briefly in a sermon on ). Finally, to foreshadow a worry raised in n. 13 below, a sophism is not "a proposition that may be true in one sense but not in another" (p. 44 n. 14), but one that can apparently be conclusively proved and conclusively disproved (not necessarily because of ambiguity).
matches the thematic arrangement of the chapters (pp. 16-30).11 At the back of the volume (pp. 311-320) there is a glossary of forty-odd technical terms "that Wyclif uses frequently" (p. 33); this could have been expanded to include other predictably difficult terms,12 and it should have been more accurate.13 The volume has not been edited with care. In the overviews that introduce each chapter, eleven selections are not discussed at all, while three others are not explicitly referred to;14 there is no such overview for the three documents in the appendix, one of which lacks an introductory paragraph (p. 302). Walsingham's Chronica Maiora is confused with Knighton's chronicle (p. 3 n. 11), Bonaventure is confused with Bradwardine (p. 272 n. 1), and a translation of Augustine's De doctrina Christiana entitled Teaching Christianity is cited five times as "Translating Christianity" (pp. 68-69 nn. 32-39). There are 11 The thematic headings in the introduction are "Wyclif's metaphysics" (ch. 1), "Freedom, necessity and divine omnipotence" (ch. 1), "Scripture and the nature of scriptural truth" (ch. 2), "Lordship, the king and the church" (ch. 5-6), and "The eucharist and the other sacraments" (ch. 3-4). The last two could just have been swapped around, and an even closer match with the chapters (n. 5 above) would have been possible. 12 The misleading term 'foreknown' , for instance, recurs throughout the volume (e.g. pp. 44, 125, 143, 153, 251) but is only explained once ("predestined to damnation", p. 170). Even terms that appear less often could usefully have been included in the glossary; 'capitular' , for instance, is explained in a footnote on p. 139, but there is no cross-reference when it recurs in the next selection (pp. 142-143), and it is not indexed either. 13 Logical terminology fares particularly badly. The glossary defines a "consequent" as "something that occurs as a consequence of something else", adding that the term is often used "to consider the consequence of a particular premise or assumption" (p. 313); this obscures the simple fact that a consequens is the conclusion of an inference or (where the antecedent is hypothesized) the consequent of a conditional, and it does not help that Penn translates 'consequentia' (inference) as "consequence(s)" (e.g. pp. 38, 51, 236). The entry for "paralogism" defines it as an "argument that was based on false premises, and which was therefore necessarily erroneous" (p. 315); this is very wrong, but in any case the entry is redundant, as Penn correctly translates 'paralogismus' as "fallacy" (p. 284). The "syllogism", a paradigm case of deduction, was obviously not represented in the Prior Analytics as "a form of induction" (p. 319); Penn's attempt to give an example from Wyclif is hampered by a broken cross-reference to selection "20" that is too vague to fix (the most plausible candidate being #22) but in any case the example is not in syllogistic form. As for non-logical terminology, the entry on the "absolute and ordained powers of God" illustrates a side-effect of Penn's decision not to support the glossary with references to the literature: when he says that this famously thirteenth-century distinction "was introduced in the twelfth century" (p. 311), readers with an interest in such things are left to guess whether this is a discovery or a mistake. 14 Selections ##5, 11ii-15, 18-19, 26 and ##21, 34i, 40 respectively. Thakkar Vivarium 58 (2020) 357-383 numerous typos,15 inaccurate dates,16 and faulty references,17 and the index, which was prepared by a professional, is poorly conceived and astonishingly incomplete.18 Still, these issues could be fixed in a paperback reprint, and they do not preclude Penn's anthology from providing a viable introduction to Wyclif's thought. It remains only to examine the translations that are the volume's raison d'être.
Inevitably, there is scope for disagreement about precise choices of terminology, as when Penn translates sensibilis as "sensible" (e.g. p. 141) instead of perceptible. Less inevitably, these can shade into mistakes, as when infidelitates is translated as "infidelities" (p. 143) instead of heathenisms, and 15 A selection: "Ann Hudson" for "Anne Hudson" (pp. ix, 2 n. 3, 5 n. 19), vel for sive (p. xii), scriptorium for scriptorum (p. 1 n. 1), "Beropols" for "Brepols" (p. 8 n. 28), Powers for Power (p. 13), "⟨in⟩ the sacrament" (p. 13), "Gillesprieste" for "Gillespie" (p. 16 n. 49), "Tractaus" for " descriptio as "description" (e.g. p. 138) instead of definition.19 One example of terminological inexactitude is worth pausing over: Penn translates philocaptus as "philo-captive", glossing it in a footnote as a "compound coined by Wyclif to describe scholars who, in his opinion, had fallen victim to fashionable philosophical trends that could only hamper their pursuit of knowledge" (p. 194). In fact, philocaptus means "love-captive", and it is thought to have been coined, albeit not as a pejorative, by Ramon Llull in the late thirteenth century.20 Wyclif knew it from the medical context of lovesickness,21 so an accurate translation would be "besotted" or "infatuated" (with worldly matters, that is, judging by his usage elsewhere).22 It is also unfortunate that Penn has not taken the opportunity to correct any of the errors that bedevil the Latin editions. For instance, when Wyclif's views on scriptural truth were apparently faced with the objection that "any scriptural proposition would have to be accepted, however sinfully spoken" (p. 80), the last phrase should have raised an eyebrow, and a little sleuthing might have exposed the unattested adverb 'recidive' as an error for 'recitative' (in reported speech). Again, when Wyclif apparently claimed that it was "not an act but a defect that redeems sins" (p. 112), this should have raised both eyebrows, and a glance at the apparatus would have exposed 'peccata redemit' as an error for 'peccata redeunt' (sins return). An especially glaring example has Wyclif making the outrageous claim that "everything that is absolutely necessary is contingent" (p. 43); here it turns out that the manuscript used by the editor had omitted 'non' before 'absolute' .23 It might be protested that editorial questions are beyond the translator's remit; for reasons that should become clear, my own view is that Wyclif must always be approached with daggers drawn, but I might add that John Kilcullen's translation of part of the De civili dominio provides numerous corrections to the 1885 edition, mostly from collation against two manuscripts, and that Penn has ignored these as well.24 Still, to linger on such niceties would be to fuss over the arrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic. The looming catastrophe is that Penn's translations are full of unforced errors that are collectively fatal to the enterprise. This is a serious charge, and it will therefore require more documentation than is customary for a review. I will start with a paragraph each on the four kinds of error that have driven me to this unhappy conclusion.
Firstly, Penn's translations are vitiated by failures to identify the scholastic terminology that Wyclif "scatters liberally throughout his writings" (p. 33). For instance, 'simpliciter' (without qualification) is sometimes omitted (pp. 36, 235, 259-260) but otherwise receives a mishmash of translations, most of which are not opposable to 'secundum quid' (in a certain respect); thus e.g. "in a simple way" (p. 75), "wholly", "completely" (p. 112), "alone" (p. 196), "directly" (p. 224), "in simple terms" (pp. 236, 241, 258), "in any simple sense", "naturally" (p. 238), and even "implicitly" (p. 260). The contingens ad utrumlibet is not "contingent on either of these two" (p. 43) but contingent either way. The putative locus a testimonio Aristotelis is not "a passage from the work of Aristotle" (p. 68) but a maxim licensing an argument from the testimony of Aristotle. Philosophia sermocinalis is not "philosophy of preaching" (p. 70) but the philosophy of language, i.e. the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; philosophia realis is not "practical philosophy" (ibid.) but the philosophy of reality, which includes mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. In a disputation, someone who is redargutus is not "rejected" (p. 80) but refuted, and a proposition that is proposita is not "cited" (ibid.) but proposed. A propositio copulativa is not a "copulative proposition", i.e. "one in which a subject and predicate are linked by a copula" (pp. 86-87), but a conjunction. When grammar teaches us the quid nominis of terms, we learn not their "names" (p. 92) but their meanings. When the popes concludebant their authority from the life of Peter, they did not "close [it] off" (p. 198), they inferred it. And so on. Secondly, the translations play havoc with the structural devices that are crucial to scholastic prose. For instance, reason-giving 'enim' and 'nam' (for) are often omitted or mistranslated as "now" or "indeed" (and even, on p. 43, "paradoxically, therefore"). 'Sed' and 'autem' (but), marking the minor premiss, are generally ignored. 'Ergo' , 'igitur' , and 'ideo' (therefore) are mistranslated as "now" (pp. 40, 51), "and" (pp. 142, 194), "nevertheless" (p. 80) and "indeed" (p. 141); 'cum' (although) is mistranslated as "whenever" (p. 44); 'cum' (since) as "indeed" (p. 80); 'tamen' (nevertheless) as "therefore" (p. 198); 'nec' (nor) as "accordingly" (p. 271). Bullet-point 'item' (also), announcing the next argument in a series, is often mistranslated as "now" or "indeed", and once as "so" (p. 43). When 'principaliter' modifies an adverb like 'secundo' to indicate a first-level numbering of arguments, it is mistranslated as modifying the verb (pp. 104, 237, 270). 'Per idem' (by the same token), appealing to a parallel argument, is often omitted or disguised as "in the same way" (e.g. p. 241). A parallel is ruined when 'illud secundum est necessarium … ergo et primum' (the second is necessary, therefore so is the first) is glossed as "the second is necessary … therefore, the first also [applies]" (p. 43). Forward-looking 'ad hoc quod' (in order for it to be the case that) is mistranslated as "to whatever" (p. 264). A double error allows 'arguitur ad idem per hoc quod' (the same conclusion is argued for on the grounds that) to become "it is argued on this same point that" (p. 200). Wyclif's standard closing formula 'Et tantum [sufficiat/dixerim] de' (and this much about) goes unrecognized, so that 'tantum de morali disposicione affectum subiecti nostre sciencie disponente' (so much for the moral disposition that inclines the mood of its subject to our science) comes out as "only a sufficiently moral disposition inclines our mood towards knowledge" (p. 91). The regimented word order that underpins scholastic logic is ignored, so that 'alicuius hominis non omnis filius' (of some man not every son) comes out as "not every son of man" (p. 44). And so on.
Thirdly, the translations are shot through with misinterpretations of ordinary Latin words. What is in Peter's power is not to "claim" that the heavens were the remote cause of his free action (p. 40) but to make it so (facere). The Thakkar Vivarium 58 (2020) 357-383 mystical sense of scripture is not "literal to the highest degree" (p. 69) but most often the literal sense (ut plurimum).25 Important points of metaphysics are not "judged to be sophisms of absences" (p. 79) but nowadays judged to be sophisms (impresenciarum). Colours are misjudged not by a "hysterical person" (p. 91) but by a jaundiced person (hictericus). Logic can solve not "debates concerning the presence of God" (p. 93) but puzzles about his foreknowledge (dubia, presciencia). The pope regards the theologian not as "an unwieldy character" (p. 103) but as unqualified to hold office in the church militant (inhabilis ut). When absolution is commercialized, the faithful should not "wipe away" avarice (p. 126) but expose it (detegere). Unspoken contracts are made by not deaf people and "others" (p. 141) but deaf people and dumb people (muti). The quantity and quiddity of the church are not things we generally "ignore" (p. 143) but things we generally are ignorant of (ignoramus). Judges go wrong not "whether they make" judgements about predestinates or devils (p. 143) but as if they were making such judgements (ac si judicarent). If the clergy concealed the truth about the eucharist, heresy would sully not an "impressionable Christian" (p. 150) but a perfectly teachable one (valde disciplinabilis). Wyclif defends his position on the eucharist not because Grosseteste "raises objections" (p. 164) but because it is argued by appeal to Grosseteste (arguitur per).26 Faced with doctors who seem to think otherwise, Wyclif concludes not that they can be "interpret[ed] as specious" (p. 168) but that they can be glossed, i.e. interpreted so as to remove the difficulty (glozari). The ideal of poverty was recognized by Ockham, Bonaventure, and other friars not "by the glory of the Lord" (p. 212) but worthy of praise (laude digni). And so on.
Fourthly, the translations are riddled with misconstruals of Latin syntax. For instance, after noting that Jews are in a sense sons of Abraham, Wyclif apparently adds that "as the apostle said, we, together with those following our [Christian] customs, are sons and imitators of Abraham" (p. 44); but the Latin is 'eciam nos sequentes ipsos in moribus, ut dicit Apostolus, sumus filii Abrahe imitatorii' (we too, following them in customs, are, as the Apostle says, "sons of Abraham", imitative ones).27 Arguing against the authority of the pope, Wyclif apparently suggests that "that fiction, imitating the devil, is established" (p. 198); but the Latin is 'ista simulata ficcio in dyabolo est fundata' (this simulated fiction is founded on the devil). Dismissing the metaphysical reduction of lordship to its individual relata, Wyclif apparently says: "Nor should we even entertain the laboured reasoning of slick logicians in relation to this question" (p. 231); but the Latin is 'nec est difficile argucias ad hoc nitencium statim tollere' (nor is it hard to immediately demolish the stratagems of those who strive to do this). Lamenting the state of his country, Wyclif apparently pauses to reassure us that "The kingdom of England is blind to such worldly prosperity and love of the name of the world" (p. 295); but the Latin is 'Ad tantum enim mundana prosperitas et nominis temporalis cupiditas regnum Anglie excecavit' (for this is how far worldly prosperity and desire for temporal renown have blinded the kingdom of England).28 For that matter, Wyclif has also just accused Englishmen of being "blinded to such an extent that" (adeo excecati quod) they believe that the church prevails against God's law; here Penn has him saying they have become blind "because" they believe this (p. 295).29 And so on.
These kinds of errors are often found in combination. To take a simple example, Jesus's famous aphorism that "many are called, but few are chosen" (multi sunt vocati, pauci vero electi) is jaw-droppingly mistranslated as "many of the elect are called poor" (p. 292). Naturally, matters do not improve when the prose is more complex. For instance, in his inaugural lecture as a master of theology, Wyclif makes the revealing claim that logic is useful cum ipsa detegit veritates inertibus absconditas, dilucidat universales substancias plebeis incognitas, et extendit presenciam successivorum et per consequens permanencium extra instans (because it reveals truths hidden from the unskilled, elucidates universal substances unknown to common people, and extends the presentness of successive entities and thus of permanent entities beyond the [present] instant). Penn's translation omits the opening conjunction, stumbles over the technical term 'successivum' , misconstrues the syntax twice, and silently adopts a conjecture from Smalley's edition (in visceribus nature) that was corrected in Benrath's edition (inertibus):30 "It reveals truths hidden in the bowels of nature, explains unperceived universal natures to the common people, and extends the presence of successive instants. It thereby extends the presence of those permanent things beyond instants" (p. 93).31 Sentence by sentence, these errors conspire to make Wyclif unintelligible. Take, for instance, the opening paragraph of the De ecclesia, where he tries to motivate the treatise. In the first half of the paragraph, Penn has him claiming irrelevantly that "among all the metaphysical systems [metaphysicas] under the orbit of the sun, none is held to be more necessary than the Christian one [non reputo quod sit alia christiano necessarior]" (p. 173). The major error here is an untenable construal of the syntax, Wyclif's claim being instead that the metaphysics of the church is more necessary for a Christian than any other metaphysics under the sun. His argument for this claim is itself subjected to at least ten further errors; he ends it, for instance, with the observation that both the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed contain professions of belief in the Catholic church ('credo ecclesiam catholicam' dicit utrumque simbolum), which Penn translates as: "the words 'I believe in the Catholic church' represent a symbol everywhere!" (p. 173). Errors continue to plague the second half of the paragraph, where Wyclif gives a separate argument (not identified as such in the translation) as to why it should please the bishops that a treatment should be given of the Christian belief on the quiddity of the church (quod tractetur fides christiana de quiditate ecclesie) -or, as Penn mystifyingly has it, "that the Christian faith is drawn from the quiddity of the church" (p. 173).
Finally, as an illustration of the broader pitfalls that await the reader, take the concluding paragraph of Wyclif's argument against the presiding authority Here he has just said that hardly anyone dares to speak the gospel truth in this matter for fear of punishment. And now Penn has him saying: "I protest that nobody saying these things, if he was taught or if any viator knew how to teach, that that sentence is contrary to the faith of scripture or to reason, would wish humbly to revoke it" (p. 198). Charitably parsed, this amounts to a stubborn assertion that his conviction is unshakeable. And yet Wyclif's own words say quite the opposite: "but the person asserting these things solemnly declares that if he is taught, or if any earthly pilgrim can teach him, that this opinion is contrary to the authority of scripture or to reason, he wishes to humbly retract it" (persona tamen hec asserens protestatur quod si docta fuerit, vel aliquis viancium docere sciverit, quod ista sentencia sit fidei scripture vel racioni contraria, vult ipsam humiliter revocare). This is, in fact, a familiar kind of proviso, highlighted as a protestatio in the margins of some of the manuscripts; it is easy to find similar declarations elsewhere in Wyclif's works.32 Anyone with reading competence in Latin will be able to add to my examples by opening the book at random.33 The upshot is that, throughout the volume, Penn's translations manage at best to obscure Wyclif's thought and at worst to make a nonsense of it. The rot goes so deep that it would be a pedagogical crime to inflict this material on students. It is worrying enough that "scholars in the field" (as the blurb has it) might consult the index to find out what Wyclif thought about, say, tithes, in which case they will read that "priests could easily do without temporal lordship and tithes and gifts, which is part of 32 E.g. Wyclif, Sermones, vol. III, 37: "protestor quod si ipse [sc. dictus frater] vel alius docere voluerit, vel racione vel scriptura, quod quecunque sentencia quam ego detego sit falsa vel ad edificacionem ecclesie non dicenda, volo paratissime ipsam revocare"; ibid., 254: "Ego autem protestor, sicut sepe confessus sum, quod si quidquam scripsero vel dixero in quacunque sciencia quod non sit fundabile in scriptura, illud dolenter revoco, confitens quod sepe erraveram, et rogo ut ecclesia illud habeat ut errorem." 33 Here are six test cases from a chapter on marriage (pp. 137-139): "disagreement or even murder between men, together with many other inappropriate things that philosophers believe emerge from nature" (hominum contentio atque occisio cum multis aliis inconvenientiis quas vident philosophi naturales); "Two men would thus become married when they were affectionately united to their wives as spouses" (et sic duo viri uxorati et caritative sociati ex hoc contraherent conjugium); "the base acts of the adulterer exist falsely under the cloak of matrimony" (tales permanent graves adulteri ex falsa palliatione matrimonii); "The conversion of virgins … must therefore be blessed" (ideo benedicta sit conversatio virginum); "the human proscription that says that love between people is forbidden not only by kinship but also by affinity" (humana ordinatio quae dicit non solum ex cognatione sed ex affinitate amorem inter homines dilatari); "since each partner combines with the other to produce offspring" (cum utrique conveniat prolem producere).  1-37) is marred by wild speculation about the purpose of the Trialogus39 and the significance of its characters,40 and by factual errors concerning early modern historiography41 and the transmission of the Trialogus in previous occurrences of the noun, which he translated variously as "food(s)", "foodstuffs", "comestibles", and "eating" (pp. 163-164). And on p. 346, referring to the medieval Latin 'spongiositatibus' in a passage that I discuss at n. 63 below, he claims that "OED marks first English usage as 1400"; in fact, 'spongiosity' is first attested in the OED in around 1541, and 'spongy' (Lahey's translation) in 1539; the date of 1400 may have been taken from the entry for 'spongious' (from the Classical Latin spongiosus). 39 Lahey believes that the Trialogus forms part of Wyclif's "plans for an evangelical crusade" to be carried out by an anti-fraternal cadre of poor preachers, plans "cloaked in the form of respectable theology" (pp. 14-17). The uncloaking proceeds via an argument that may be summarized as follows: (1) given Wyclif's "remarkable" admiration for Aquinas, it would be "logical" for his plans to follow the tripartite (albeit unfinished) schema of Aquinas's Compendium Theologie: faith and the creed, hope and the Lord's prayer, love and the law; (2) in the Floretum and the Rosarium, Lollard pastoral florilegia compiled after Wyclif's death, the four most cited of his works are the Sermones, the Trialogus, the Opus evangelicum, and the De mandatis divinis; (3) in these four works we may discern a "hypothetical structure" that fits the tripartite schema: faith is "effectively covered" by the Lahey cites in support of his claim. 40 Lahey claims that Pseustis, Wyclif's captious objector, "is a friar" (p. 3). There is no evidence for this in the text, whose silence on the point would be odd given how often the other characters complain about the friars. He then uses this claim to join the dots between Wyclif's Pseustis and the Athenian goatherd of the same name (misgendered as a "maiden") who "represents the pagan mythos" in the Eclogue of Theodulus: since "many" friars used classical images in their sermons, maybe Wyclif "intended the reader … to be on the alert for opponents likely to trot out pagan myths if given half the chance" (p. 4). This, too, will require some brave hermeneutics; besides a few unremarkable references to Plato and Aristotle, Wyclif's Pseustis makes only one classical reference, which is to the Trojan War as an example of a historical event (p. 172 Nevertheless, my main concern is with the translation itself. Bearing in mind my criticisms of Penn's anthology, it is only fair to say upfront that Lahey's Trialogus is even worse: here we find the same kinds of mistakes, but they are more frequent and more flagrant. Lahey might have expected a free pass on scholastic terminology, because he reassures us that Wyclif mostly "leaves the technical terminology behind" (p. 36). But this claim is belied by the fact that even the workaday scholastic term 'instantia' (objection) and its companion 'tollere' (to dispose of, demolish) are repeatedly mistranslated, e.g. "this is the way to take the sophists' arguments" (sic tollitur instantia sophistarum, p. 42); "the sophists would take up every one of these instances" (sophistae tollerent omnes istas instantias, p. 93);46 "To the third instance, having touched it widely when I was a logician, I raise it now" (Ad tertiam instantiam, tollebam eam diffuse quando fui logicus et nunc tollo eandem, p. 127); "that I … take your issues seriously" (ut … tollam tuas instantias, p. 186); "in taking on this case" (ad tollendum tuas instantias, p. 187);47 "we should address a sophistic problem" (tollamus instantiam sophisticam, p. 355). Occasionally, 'instantia' even becomes "instant", e.g. in the bizarre claim that a certain argument "scampers under the same in a trifling instant" (currit sub eadem instantia frivola, p. 161). Conversely, 'illae quandalitates non sunt instantia' (these whennesses are not instants) is misread as involving instantiae: "there are not instances of these whennesses" (p. 75). Unsurprisingly, 'instantia' is not the only scholastic term that has been lost in translation; to take a more technical example, 'partes intensive' (intensive parts) is translated as "intensity" (p. 114) and, resurrecting an error from the editio princeps, as "intellective [ideal, non-substantial] parts" (p. 80).48 Let's rewind to the first half of the prologue, where Wyclif justifies his use of the dialogue form: Сum locutio ad personam multis plus complacet quam locutio generalis (since personal discourse is more agreeable to many people had 'sibi innatam' and Lechler (p. 260) correctly had 'servatam' (retained); here the significant error shared by Lechler's MSS ABC is also shared by MS Vienna ÖNB 4516 (f. 165v) but not by the Florence manuscript (cit. n. 42 above, f. 119v). 46 Here Pseustis is accusing Phronesis of giving a treatment of immortality that even an undergraduate could demolish, ac si dormiens vel a peritis absconditus loqueretur (as if talking while asleep or out of earshot of experts). Lahey renders this as "spoken as if asleep or unmindful of experience" (p. 93).

Thakkar
Vivarium 58 (2020) 357-383 than impersonal discourse), et mens multorum qui afficiuntur singularibus ex tali locutione acuitur (and the mind of the many who are fond of singulars is sharpened by such discourse), videri posset multis utilis quidam trialogus (a certain trialogue could seem useful to many people). Lahey's translation reads (p. 38): "It is more pleasing to speak to an audience of many people who desire more than common talk, and it is more influential to the minds of all those who need more than a single voice, whose minds are sharpened by dialogue; so it is suitable to make use of a 'Trialogue' ." From this half-sentence alone, it is clear that we are in for an extremely bumpy ride. We may as well finish the prologue, since the second half provides the ). Here Lahey's translation is wobbly but not bizarre (p. 38): "where first one named Alithia speaks solid philosophy, then a second fallacious unbeliever named Pseustis makes objections, and a third subtle and mature theologian named Phronesis leads the discussion to the truth." Matters deteriorate at the start of Book I. Alathia argues that everyone should believe that God exists: we must concede that something exists, on pain of instant self-refutation, and a first-cause argument will then demonstrate the existence of God. This opening speech receives another wobbly translation,50 but we are back in the realm of the bizarre when Pseustis gives his three objections. The first is that it is not formally self-contradictory for nothing to exist, because ex nulla negativa sequatur formaliter affirmativa (no negative 49 Lechler noted (p. 38) that his four manuscripts had 'Alathia' throughout; since the same is true of both the Florence manuscript (cit. n. 42 above) and the Vienna manuscript unknown to Lechler (ÖNB 4516), the 'Alithia' of the printed editions seems a heavy-handed intervention. A more interesting textual question concerns Alathia's characterization. Lechler found it obvious (p. 7) that Alathia could not be differentiated from Phronesis (the subtilis theologus et maturus) unless his MS D was right to call Alathia a solidus philosophus, as against the solidus theologus of his MSS ABC. The fact that the latter camp also includes the copies unknown to Lechler (Florence f. 57v, Vienna f. 88r) should at least give us pause for thought, especially as Alathia clearly has some theological training rather than being a mere philosopher. A philologically informed critical edition from all the known witnesses might shed some light on the matter; readers of this review may be interested to note Lahey's stated hope of producing such an edition (p. 30 proposition formally entails an affirmative proposition); or, as Lahey has it, "an affirmative can follow formally from a nothing." The second is that stat veritatem esse cum hoc quod non sit aliquid, cum veritas potest esse quod nihil sit, et tunc non est aliquid (it is possible for there to be a truth even if there is not anything, because it may be a truth that nothing exists, in which case there is not anything); or, as Lahey has it, "this truth -this, which is not a something, truly can be -holds with this -this is a nothing; and so it is not a something." And in the third objection, Pseustis illustrates the possibility of infinite causal chains by observing that diviso lumine in suas partes proportionales, minores versus luminosum, prima pars proportionalis causatur a secunda, et sic in infinitum (if light is divided into its proportional parts [e.g. half, quarter, etc.], decreasing in the direction of its source, the first proportional part is caused by the second, and so ad infinitum); or, as Lahey has it, "one might divide light into its proportionately lesser parts, as against luminosity, the first part is proportionately caused by the second, and thus infinitely". Phronesis' reply is likewise garbled from start to finish (pp. 40-41). And this is just the first chapter. As will already be apparent, it is the schoolboy errors that make Lahey's translation so hopeless. Clauses are routinely dismembered and reconfigured, so that, to take one example out of at least a thousand, 'Samaritanus noster usus fuit signis' (our Samaritan used signs) becomes "in our use the Samaritan was a sign" (p. 195). Vocab errors often make matters worse, as when 'adhuc mussitas penes quid attendi debeat gravitas peccati' (still you hesitate over what the gravity of a sin should be attendant on) becomes "to this muttering, the penalty should attend the gravity of the sin" (p. 127). Ironically, the word 'grammaticus' (grammarian) is a case in point: 'pro intellectu sano laboret et interim in litera tanquam grammaticus conquiescat' (he should strive for a sound understanding, and meanwhile, like a grammarian, be satisfied with the literal text)51 becomes "he ought labor hard for understanding, and in the meantime agree with the letter and the grammar of the word" (p. 194); 'Similiter tales blasphemi includunt52 praelatos insolubiliter in negligentia quo ad grammaticos, cum grammatici doceant verba supradicta Latina construere' (similarly such blasphemers include prelates inextricably in negligence towards grammarians, because grammarians teach people to construe the above Latin words) becomes "Priests inextricably include similar such blasphemies in grammatical negligence, since they would teach to construe grammatically the abovementioned Latin words" (p. 208); and 'sciant isti rudes grammatici … notitiam terminorum' (these untrained grammarians should be versed in the knowledge of terms) becomes "these fools should know the grammar of terms" (p. 275). The resulting philosophy is unintelligible. Take, for instance, Wyclif's argument against a recursive hierarchy of ideas (pp. [67][68]. Here Lahey misses several genitives, so that e.g. 'ydea universalium' (the idea of universals) becomes "a universal idea" and 'ydeae alia est ydea' (of an idea there is another idea) becomes "the idea of something is another idea". The latter construction is misread in other ways besides: 'ydeae est ydea' (of an idea there is an idea) becomes "an idea of an idea", and 'quantitatis est alia quantitas' (of a quantity there is another quantity) is glossed as "[the generation] of a quantity is another quantity". Wyclif's accusations of nugatory repetition are misrepresented by translating 'incongruus' (ungrammatical) as "incongruous" or "inconsistent"; the nugatoriae incongruitates quas balbutiendo objicimus are not "incongruities that are nonsensical, with which we might emptily object" but nugatory solecisms that we interject in stammering. The regress-avoiding conclusion that standum est in primo (the process should stop at the start) is enigmatically rendered as "We must adhere to the first." A farcical note is intruded when the verb 'geminare' (to double, repeat) is mistranslated as "croak aloud", so that 'sic geminantes intelligunt superflue atque male' (those who iterate like this have a redundant and faulty understanding) becomes "croaking aloud in this way they understand wastefully and evilly". Finally, though this is not an exhaustive list of the problems in this short stretch, Wyclif concludes that tam grammatica quam metaphisica destrueret talem vagationem frivolam ultra limites rationis (both grammar and metaphysics would abolish this kind of frivolous straying beyond the bounds of reason) -or, as Lahey has it, "they cause havoc as much in grammar as in metaphysics with such silly rambling beyond the limits of reason." There are also pitfalls for historians who are not interested in the precise content of the arguments. For instance, Wyclif apparently says "I have left a special treatise of perspective about these objects of the five interior senses" (p. 86). The Latin, though, reads: 'de objectis istorum quinque sensuum interiorum tractatum specialem reliqui53 perspectivis' (I have left the specific treat-  64 The upshot is that, throughout the volume, Lahey's translation manages at best to obscure Wyclif's thought and at worst to make a nonsense of it. Like Penn's anthology, this will be a rotten foundation for the "scholars and students" identified in the blurb as the target readership. And here I might borrow an admonishment from the Trialogus itself: "it is necessary for those who involve themselves in this matter to be trained in correct grammar and precise logic."65

Post Mortem
The publication of work of such conspicuous incompetence is a poor advertisement for the peer-review process. Penn acknowledges the assistance of "Stephen Lahey, reader for Manchester University Press," which helps to explain matters, but there was also an "anonymous reviewer who examined the final manuscript for the press" (p. ix). Lahey's own translation likewise acknowledges an "anonymous reader for Cambridge University Press" (p. 37). And yet it should be obvious by now that neither volume was given even a cursory vetting by anybody who was up to the task. 66 But there is worse. Lahey's Trialogus has already received five reviews, and these are all unambiguously positive. Ian Levy, the leading authority on Wyclif's exegesis, got in early with the claim that Lahey's style of translation "keeps the reader close to the text and thereby reduces the risk of misconstrual". Sean Otto, who had completed a PhD on Wyclif's sermons, followed suit by claiming that the translation "sticks quite closely to Wyclif's Latin"; he further commended Lahey for presenting "an accessible, if sometimes difficult and challenging, overview of the essentials of Wycliffism straight from the founder's pen." Lesley-Anne Dyer, who had also worked on Wyclif, found Lahey's footnotes rather sparse, but reassured us that "the translation itself is carefully edited and does a good job of making a difficult Latin prose text as readable as possible." Jennifer Illig, who was completing a PhD on English Wycliffite sermons, welcomed Lahey's "lucid" translation for its "accessibility". A briefer review by a doctoral student working on the history of Protestantism likewise found the translation "accessible". 67 The collective failure to hold Lahey to account has been underwritten by the myth that Wyclif's Latin is especially difficult.68 Henry Kelly's version is Thakkar Vivarium 58 (2020) 357-383 overblown but still revealing: "For some reason Wyclif had never learned to speak and write Latin properly; his academic style may have been the worst in medieval Christendom … The great mystery is that he went through the entire master of arts (MA) and bachelor of theology curricula with defective language skills and emerged at the level of theological master."69 Other verdicts have been more sober, but they share Kelly's confidence that the trouble lies with Wyclif. Here is Penn's, for instance (p. 33): "What makes him especially challenging … is the nature of his Latin, which is uniformly dense and rather eccentric, and his written style, which often appears tangled, repetitive and highly digressive." Lahey himself acknowledges the role of scribal errors, but he adds that Wyclif "was guilty of … occasionally mystifying leaps of association in many of his treatises" (pp. 35-36).
It is high time that this myth was put to rest. Wyclif's Latin is actually quite typical for a fourteenth-century Oxford scholastic. He does use some apparent neologisms -'ubicatio' , for instance, a short step from 'ubicatus' as used e.g. by Duns Scotus -but his prose style is not especially difficult for anyone who can read the likes of Grosseteste, Bradwardine, and FitzRalph. Such people will find his Latin to be carefully structured, clearly signposted, and far less mystifying than the translations offered by Lahey and Penn; genuine puzzles can often be traced to mistakes made by editors who were unfamiliar with the intellectual context, which is why no Wyclif scholar can afford to ignore textual questions. Anyone who is not familiar with the idiom of the schools, on the other hand, is bound to find Wyclif difficult. There is no royal road here, but there are at least some useful pointers in a wonderful new booklet by Dylan Schrader that aims "to help remove syntactical and stylistic obstacles to Scholastic Latin".70 That said, of the four kinds of error that I catalogued in §1 above, only the first two can be put down to a weak grasp of scholastic Latin in particular. This brings me to a more delicate point, although since I already seem to have my tanks on the lawn, it is probably too late to start tiptoeing around the flowers. The fact is that in countries like the UK and the US, where secondary-school Latin has collapsed outside the private sector, where few medievalists have an undergraduate background in Classics, and where lecturers would be embarrassed to sit in on language classes, most medievalists are only ever taught Latin while they are graduate students. What's more, we have already reached the stage where, in some universities, medieval Latin is taught from scratch to graduate students by people who were taught it from scratch when they were graduate students. This is not necessarily unsustainable, but it can only be sustainable if the language is taught seriously and intensively as a major component of graduate study, which it almost never is. And of course the problems we are storing up here are not confined to Wyclif: they will affect almost all areas of medieval studies. If, therefore, we do not drastically improve the level of graduate training in medieval Latin, hopeless misunderstandings of medieval sources will increasingly come to scar the scholarly landscape.71 In the meantime, it is evidently worth reminding translators and reviewers alike, as Wyclif used to remind his contemporaries, that "if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit.