Jacob Van Maerlant and the Papacy: A Middle English Misreading of Middle Dutch Verse

Abstract

During the English Reformation, William Barlow and John Foxe found an unlikely champion for the translation of scripture into the vernacular in Jacob van Maerlant, the prolific thirteenth-century Flemish author whose surviving works consist of 230,000 lines of Middle Dutch verse, whereas a further three substantial works are apparently lost. ‘James Merland’, the story went, had translated the entire Bible into Flemish but was consequently summoned to the pope for an investigation of his work. On examination, the translation was approved, to the astonishment of Maerlant’s enemies. A brief account of Maerlant’s papal summons was included in a treatise that attracted Barlow’s interest; he brought the little work, ‘more than .C. yere...