A Cambridge graduate and reformer, a contemporary of Tyndale. During Tyndale's months of imprisonment Coverdale published the first edition of Tyndale's complete translation of the Bible. He is given credit for having translated the first complete English Bible in 1535.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, English-Bible, history, Miles-Coverdale, Reformation, Tyndale[/tags]

After King Henry VIII's break with England he seemed intent on creating an English Catholic Church, for instance the Statute of Six articles upheld many basic Catholic articles. Only two serious changes marked the new way within the Church of England. The first was the suppression of the monasteries; the second was the publication of the English Bible for use in the churches. In the latter years of William Tyndale's life he produced translated portions of the Old Testament (including the Pentateuch) and an improved edition of the New. In 1536 he died, burned at the stake. Yet, during his imprisonment Miles Coverdale published an edition of the Bible which was essentially Tyndale's work, supplemented by Latin and German versions. Then, a year after Tyndale's death, the Matthew Bible appeared. It was the work of another English reformer named John Rogers, it was virtually a well-edited compilation of Tyndale and

King of England from 1509-1547. Under King Henry, England rejected the authority of Rome. King Henry had no son born of his queen, Catherine of Aragon, who had delivered five children (the only survivor beyond infancy was the princess Mary). England was in no mood to accept a girl as heir to the throne because of the nation's only previous queen who had occasioned bloody wars of succession. As Catherine grew older, Henry grew more troubled. In 1525 the queen was forty and Henry pondered more and more the ways of God: "Am I under some curse of God?" (Catherine had been Henry's deceased brother Arthur's wife for several months.) In his mind was Le 10:21, "If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing, they shall be childless." The Church of Rome recognized the curse, but had granted the marriage for reasons of its own

Educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and possibly later at Cambridge. He became tutor to the family of Sir John Walsh. While living in Walsh's household, Tyndale saw at first hand the ignorance of the local clergy. The bishops had banned the English Bible since 1408 because they feared the Lollards, who had their own translation (the Wycliffe Bible). Because this translation had been made only from the Latin Vulgate and was inaccurate, Tyndale set out to make a translation from the Hebrew and the Greek. He hoped to win the support of the learned bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall. But the bishops were more concerned with preventing the spread of Lutheran ideas than promoting the study of Scripture. In due course Tyndale obtained financial support from a number of London merchants, especially Humphrey Monmouth.

Because England was no safe place to translate the Bible, Tyndale left for the Continent,