Mumpsimus and Sumpsimus

In an August 1516 letter to Henry Bullock, Desiderius Erasmus speaks of the willful stubbornness of those who opposed his recent Greek edition of the New Testament on the grounds that no changes to the text of Scripture should be permitted unless by a general council of the church. He makes his point cleverly by referring to the story of a priest who had recited the Latin postcommunio prayer in the canon of the Mass, where the word 'sumpsimus' (the first-person plural perfect indicative of 'sumere,' or 'to take up') was mistakenly pronounced as 'mumpsimus'. Even after being corrected, the elderly priest, according to Richard Pace's (see below) account, replied, "I will not change my old 'mumpsimus' for your new 'sumpsimus'." Erasmus himself wrote:

There is another problem, which let them clear up if they can. Do they allow any changes in Holy Writ, or none at all? If they allow any, why not examine in the first place whether it is right or no to make the change? If they do not, what will they make of those passages in which the existence of a corruption is too obvious to be denied or overlooked? Would they rather imitate on this point the mass-priest who refused to change the word mumpsimus which he had used for twenty years, when someone told him that sumpsimus was what he ought to say?

The story was repeated by another of Erasmus' correspondents, Richard Pace, in De Fructu Qui ex Doctrina Precipitur (1517), whom the OED erroneously credits as the originator of the word 'mumpsimus' (Pace himself credits Erasmus for the story in a letter to Erasmus dated August 5, 1517: "They ought to be satisfied by your story of the mass-priest and his mumpsimus for sumpsimus.").

William Tyndale was the first to employ mumpsimus in a book, The Practice of Prelates (1530), where he refers to Roman Catholic theologians as "mumpsimuses of divinity."

On December 24, 1545, King Henry VIII gave a speech in which he lectured Parliament on the shame of religious divisions plaguing England at that time, and famously declared that "some by to styff in Mumpsimus, other be to busy and curious in their newe Sumpsimus". Ironically, Henry here echoed Tyndale, the man whom he hunted to the death for his efforts to publish the Bible in English, the martyr whose last words were reported to be "Lord! Open the King of England's eyes." Henry was never of Tyndale's spiritual mind, but it seems that Tyndale's expression made an impression.

In this way, over the course of time, and in the centuries since, Erasmus' tale of an old priest's stubborn refusal to correct his Latin liturgy bequeathed a word to our vocabulary that is still used proverbially today to describe a willful, obstinate adherence to an erroneous notion or tradition in the face of honest correction.

Birth of the Boy King

On October 12, 1537, a baby born was born, the first male heir of King Henry VIII. England rejoiced at the birth of Edward VI, and though his life was brief, he shined brightly as England's first Protestant king (as some describe him).

He died at the age of 15 having left an example of personal piety and having steered his country and his church away from Romanism and towards developing Anglicanism. His Literary Remains include for example a poem on the Eucharist that shows forth his Protestant conception of the Lord's Supper.

Among his papers is a treatise that he wrote identifying the Pope as Antichrist. He wrote this treatise against the supremacy of the Pope in French, having commenced it in December 1548 and completing it on August 31, 1549 at the age of 11. It can be read in French and English translation online here.

When he died on July 3, 1553, Protestant England had great fears for the future, despite Edward's specific appointment of Lady Jane Grey to the throne in his stead, and her brief 9-day reign, followed by her arrest and execution by Queen 'Bloody' Mary, and the failure of Wyatt's Rebellion, led to a reign of terror that grieved the hearts of god-fearing people in England and elsewhere. But, like Camelot, for one brief shining moment, a godly boy king ruled England, and indeed his light still shines.

Tribute to the KJV

The following is smattering of quotes from notable examples of piety and/or scholarship as to the merits of the Authorized, or King James Version of the Bible.

Ashbel Green, Lectures on the Shorter Catechism of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, Vol. 1, pp. 52-53:

The author is not willing to close this extended note, in which he has attempted to correct what he conscientiously believes to be an error in the common English version of the New Testament, without remarking, that he is not among those who believe that version to be very faulty, and of course to need very frequent corrections. On the contrary, he considers it as one of the very best translations that ever was, or ever can be made; and he has never seen any other English version, even of a single book of this part of the sacred volume, which, taken as a whole, he thought equal to the vulgar version. Yet to suppose that this version, the work of fallible men, is absolutely perfect, is an extreme on the other side. Nothing but the original is perfect. If it can be shown that, in a few instances, the eminently learned, and upright, and pious men, who formed the vulgar version, have, through that imperfection which cleaves to every thing human, not given the best rendering of a particular phrase or passage, let this be candidly shown; and if it be satisfactorily shown, a service is certainly rendered to the cause of truth. Whether this has been done, in the present instance, let competent judges decide.

William S. Plumer, Commentary on Romans, p. 20:

Some of the older English versions from quaintness, if not from elegance, do often give the sense in a striking way. But none have, as a whole, been comparable to the authorized English version. Its amazing mastery of our mother tongue, its pure Anglo-Saxon diction and its very careful rendering of the true idea of the author still place it far above all competition.

George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, pp. 62-67:

In all these instances the Bible means the translation authorized by King James the First of the best examples in ancient Jewish literature of natural and political history, of poetry, morality, theology, and rhapsody. The translation was extraordinarily well done because to the translators what they were translating was not merely a curious collection of ancient books written by different authors in different stages of culture, but the Word of God divinely revealed through his chosen and expressly inspired scribes. ... In this state of exaltation they made a translation so magnificent that to this day the common human Britisher or citizen of the United States of North America accepts and worships it as a single book by a single author, the book being the Book of Books and the author being God. Its charm, its promise of salvation, its pathos, and its majesty have been raised to transcendence by Handel, who can still make atheists cry and give materialists the thrill of the sublime with his Messiah. Even the ignorant, to whom religion is crude fetishism and magic, prize it as a paper talisman that will exorcize ghosts, prevent witnesses from lying, and, if carried devoutly in a soldier’s pocket, stop bullets. ... As to Bible science, it has over the nineteenth-century materialistic fashion in biology the advantage of being a science of life and not an attempt to substitute physics and chemistry for it; but it is hopelessly pre-evolutionary; its descriptions of the origin of life and morals are obviously fairy tales; its astronomy is terra centric; its notions of the starry universe are childish; its history is epical and legendary: in short, people whose education in these departments is derived from the Bible are so absurdly misinformed as to be unfit for public employment, parental responsibility, or the franchise. As an encyclopedia, therefore, the bible must be shelved with the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica as a record of what men once believed, and a measure of how far they have left their obsolete beliefs behind.

The Continuators of Matthew Poole's English Annotations:

After this, King James coming to the crown, being a prince of great learning and judgment, and observing the different usage of some words in his age from the usage of then In King Henry VIII or in Queen Elizabeth's time, and also the several mistakes (though of a minute nature) in those more ancient versions, was pleased to employ divers learned men in making a new translation, which is that which at this day is generally used. With what reverence to former translators, what labor, and care, and pains they accomplished their work, the reader may see at large in their preface prefixed to those copies that are printed in folio, and in their epistle to King James in our Bibles of a lesser form; of which translation (though it may not be with its more minute error) yet I think it may be said that it is hardly exceeded by that of any other church.