Welsh Journals

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drive of the new Elizabethan church made the availability of the scriptures and the liturgy the most conspicuous feature of religious activity. In Wales the introduction of the Protestant Reformation was largely complicated by linguistic differences, cultural separateness, intellectual isolation and the demands of a newly reinforced national sovereign state. The provision of the scriptures for the Welsh people stemmed initially from the emergence of the Protestant state and, in the last resort, it was the authority of the Tudor Crown which decided the nature and direction of religious trends in the principality. The scriptures were sanctioned by statute, the chief manifestation of royal power in the legislative assembly of the House of Commons, the means by which laws appertaining to Wales were imposed. William Salesbury was well aware as early as 1546 of the need for royal injunction to ensure the introduction of the new faith into Wales on a secure foundation. Bishop Richard Davies had also manipulated constitutional channels to ease the provision of the scriptures by statute in 1563, and William Morgan considered his accomplishment in 1588 to have been the consequence of the Queen's bounty to her subjects in Wales. All Protestant scholars in Wales were totally aware of the crucial role of the monarchy in the religious life and welfare of the realm in those days. In the first instance the Holy Scriptures were to be published by law for public exposition; down to 1588 the Reformation changes in Wales were strictly imposed from above by statute. It is the vital consequences of these developments which provide the principal theme of the present study, namely the career and achievement of the scholarly vicar of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant who dedicated so much of his time to serving the spiritual needs of Wales. This short volume in the annual bilingual series published by the University of Wales Press is yet another important contribution to our knowledge and appreciation of scriptural translation. The danger in this year of celebration is for the same factual data and eulogy to be repeated several times over to the point of ridicule. It is hardly satisfactory to regurgitate material for the sake of drawing attention to a well-known event in Welsh history. The author of this volume has pleasingly tried to avoid this pitfall. He ranks among the nation's foremost Biblical scholars, and his writings in the past have proved to be immensely valuable in the task of interpreting and analysing the texts used by Morgan and other Welsh translators. He was doubtless the most admirable choice to undertake the work of assessing Morgan's achievement, and divides his study into three broad categories-biographical, historical and linguistic. It is lucidly written and examines the chief features of the translator's early background and education, his career in the church as a parish priest down to the publication of the scriptures, and the ways he set about to translate in the light of other contemporary translations and sources. Some speculation has grown around the time-span taken by William Morgan to complete his work. Dr. Thomas suggests (p. 45) that it had been done within six years or so, the crucial event, in his view, being the death of Bishop Richard Davies in 1581. As a church leader he ranked among the most formative ecclesiast of his day, and he was the most fervent advocate of the translation of the scriptures into Welsh. It is conceivable, however, that Morgan's active interest may well have originated at