IT WAS a day in May in the year 1530.a St. Paul’s churchyard in London was crowded with people. Instead of milling around the booksellers’ stalls and exchanging the latest news and gossip as usual, the crowd was visibly agitated. A fire was roaring at the center of the square. But it was no ordinary bonfire. Into the fire, some men were emptying basketfuls of books. It was a book burning!

Those were not ordinary books either. They were Bibles​—William Tyndale’s “New Testament” and Pentateuch—​the first ever to be printed in English. Strangely, those Bibles were being burned at the order of the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall. In fact, he had spent a considerable sum buying all the copies he could find. What could possibly have been wrong with the Bibles? Why did Tyndale produce them? And why did the authorities go to such lengths to get rid of them?

The Bible​—A Closed Book

In most parts of the world today, it is a relatively simple thing to purchase a Bible. But this has not always been the case. Even in 15th- and early 16th-century England, the Bible was viewed as the property of the church, a book to be read only at public services and explained solely by the priests. What was read, however, was usually from the Latin Bible, which the common people could neither understand nor afford. Thus, what they knew of the Bible was no more than the stories and moral lessons drawn by the clergy.

But by translating the Bible into English, Tyndale incurred the wrath of the authorities. Why? Because as early as 1408 a council of clergymen met at Oxford, England, to decide whether the common people should be allowed to have copies of the Bible in their own tongue for personal use. The decision read, in part: “We therefore decree and ordain, that from henceforward no unauthorised person shall translate any part of the holy Scripture into English or any other language . . . under the penalty of the greater excommunication, till the said translation shall be approved either by the bishop of the diocese, or a provincial council as occasion shall require.”

More than a century later, Bishop Tunstall applied this decree in burning Tyndale’s Bible, even though Tyndale had earlier sought the approval of Tunstall.b In the opinion of Tunstall, Tyndale’s translation contained some 2,000 errors and was therefore “pestilent, scandalous, and seductive of simple minds.”

To escape the persecution of the authorities, Tyndale fled to mainland Europe to continue his work. But he was at last caught. Convicted of heresy, he was strangled and burned at the stake in October 1536. His final prayer was: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”