The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530-1700 by Kevin Killeen

Author:Kevin Killeen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

MOVER AND AUTHOR: KING JAMES VI AND I AND THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE

JANE RICKARD

‘THERE are infinite arguments of this right Christian and Religious affection in your MAJESTIE’, the translators of the Bible that was to become known as the King James Bible announce in their ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’. ‘[B]ut none is more forcible to declare it to others’, they continue, ‘then the vehement and perpetuated desire of the accomplishing and publishing of this Worke’. The new Bible translation, as this assertion renders explicit, constituted a public statement about James’s religious commitment. The translators identify another of the ‘infinite arguments’ for the King’s ‘right Christian and Religious affection’ as his own anti-Catholic publications, implicitly aligning royal authorization and royal authorship, the divine word and the royal word. The dedication also presents James as ‘author’ in the sense of ‘creator’, stating that his subjects bless him as ‘that sanctified person, who under GOD, is the immediate authour of their true happinesse’. The King is beneath God, but reflects the divine in his ability to originate, to create. These different but interconnected conceptions of royal authorship inform the translators’ more well-known assertion that the King is ‘the principall moover and Author’ of the translation.1

These prefatory comments reflect the fact that James’s sponsorship of the translation early in his English reign was no one-off act of religious devotion but an extension of a highly politicized project of moving, authoring, and authorizing. These were endeavours which he had pursued since the 1580s when he was a young King of Scotland, and which he would continue to pursue throughout his reign. James’s political use of the Bible took three main forms. His employment of scriptural interpretation in his own publications, including those anti-Catholic works highlighted by the Bible translators, was the first. The second was his interventions in the work of his preachers, which in various ways sought to shape what was preached and when. Sponsoring the Bible translation was the third and most ambitious dimension of James’s attempts to mediate and direct the access of his subjects to the Word of God. This direct and visible royal participation in scriptural interpretation, preaching, and Bible translation reflects James’s political shrewdness. These activities also, however, put the King in some awkward and exposed positions.

There has been some important work on sermons in recent years, and the King James Bible attracted more critical attention than ever around the quartercentenary of its publication.2 Yet there still has not been sufficient recognition of how sermons and translation were for the King only parts of a larger project in which his own publications were vital. The present chapter explores James’s writings alongside some of his other interventions in the work of the church in Scotland and England, and highlights how central his role as an interpreter of scripture was to his conception and exercise of his authority. The chapter also considers how James’s self-construction as scriptural interpreter was greeted by his English subjects. It argues that contemporaries such as

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