William Whittingham

Life

Whittingham was born around 1524 in Chester, England. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1540 and became a fellow of All Souls College in 1545. From 1550 to 1553 he traveled in France (at Orléans), Germany, and Geneva, returning to England a committed Protestant.

In 1553 the Catholic Mary I came to the throne. Within a few months Whittingham left England again, going in 1554 to Frankfurt, Germany, where he took the lead in organizing a congregation of English exiles. The congregation soon split into two factions: one led by Richard Cox, who wished to retain the Book of Common Prayer of Edward VI's reign unchanged, and one led by John Knox, who sought a more thoroughgoing reformation. Whittingham supported Knox. After Knox was expelled in March 1555, Whittingham moved to Geneva that September. In the English church at Geneva he served successively as elder and deacon before becoming a minister, and he succeeded Knox as its pastor. In 1556 he married Catherine, daughter of Louis Jacquemayne. An epitaph in Durham Cathedral reportedly described his wife as Calvin's sister, but this is regarded as an error.

Whittingham returned to England in 1560, and in 1563, through the patronage of the Earl of Leicester, he became Dean of Durham Cathedral (the cathedral church in which the bishop's seat is located). He died on June 10, 1579, and was buried in Durham Cathedral, but his tomb was destroyed in 1640.

Ministry and Achievements

• Geneva New Testament (1557): A small-format English New Testament that was easy to hold in the hand. It was the first English Bible to include verse numbers, it was printed in roman type, and it carried explanatory marginal notes. An epistle by John Calvin was included.
• Geneva Bible (1560): Whittingham translated the entire Bible together with Anthony Gilby (who supervised the Old Testament), Thomas Sampson, and others. After the death of Mary I most of the other exiles returned home, but Whittingham remained in Geneva to see the work through to publication in 1560. This Bible is reported to have gone through some 140 editions over a period of 84 years.
• Metrical psalms: He composed metrical versions of the Psalms and of the Ten Commandments so that they could be sung to tunes. Some of these were included in English and Scottish psalters.
• Reforms at Durham: He instituted services twice daily, removed images from the cathedral, and reorganized its school.
• He is believed to have written A Brieff Discours off the Troubles begonne at Franckford (1575), an account of the course of the Frankfurt controversy.

Influence on the Korean Church

There is no confirmed record of any direct influence by Whittingham on Korean Bible translation or on the Korean church. In Korea his name appears mainly as a translator of the Geneva Bible in works introducing the history of the English Bible or the Puritans. Korean renderings of his name vary, including 휘팅엄, 휘팅햄, 휘팅험, and 위팅험. Writings from the Reformed tradition often present the Geneva Bible as an annotated Bible produced under Calvin's influence.

Assessment

The Geneva Bible never received official state authorization. Nevertheless, it was widely read in homes and in education, and Whittingham is therefore counted among the important translators in the history of the English Bible. It is not clear, however, whether he translated the 1557 New Testament on his own. For this reason, some scholars hold that it is safest to say only that he played a major role in it.

His attitude toward the ceremonies of the Church of England was controversial. Elizabeth I disapproved of his Puritan leanings. In 1566 proceedings were initiated against him for refusing to wear the surplice, the white vestment worn by clergy during worship, but he eventually conformed. In 1577 he came into conflict with Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, by refusing to accept Sandys's visitation of Durham. Sandys sought to remove Whittingham by challenging the validity of his Genevan ordination. The Earl of Huntingdon, by contrast, opposed his removal, arguing that it would be wrong to refuse recognition to ministers ordained in the Reformed churches. Whittingham died before a decision was reached, and the case was never resolved. According to one interpretation, the question at issue was not whether he had received episcopal ordination, but whether he had been properly ordained according to the Genevan procedure.