Pennod 43 – Testament Newydd 1567

In this episode we begin focusing on a subject which is of the greatest importance to the history of the Old Language and its literature – publishing the Bible in Welsh.

We begin this time with the Welsh translation of the New Testament published in 1567, explaining that one needs to understand the political context as well as the religious context in order to understand this milestone development. Although some like to see the Welsh Bible as ‘compensation’ given by Elizabeth for that which her father, Henry VIII, did to the Welsh language with the ‘Acts of Union’, we argue the opposite and suggest that both developments stemmed from the same political desire to centralize power and ensure uniformity in the realm. It’s interesting to note that political and religious uniformity were important to Elizabeth, not linguistic uniformity.

We discuss the contribution of Bishop Richard Davies and raise a topic which will also get attention in the next episode – the pseudo-history which Saunders Lewis called ‘The Protestant Church’s propaganda’.