Many a writer has had his works banned from schools and libraries. Only a few were considered so dangerous, so heretical to orthodox cultural norms, that they had to pay with their lives.
One who did pay the ultimate price was William Tyndale. Born in Tudor England, Tyndale graduated with a Masters in theology at Oxford and was ordained into the priesthood shortly thereafter. Fluent in eight languages, Tyndale bounced around from job to job as private tutor, chaplain to the rich, and eventually found his passion in translating classical and religious works into English.
Under the influence of some of the Reformation’s greatest thinkers (he may have studied with Erasmus), Tyndale came to challenge the belief that the study of Scripture was the sole privilege of clerics. Finding no sympathetic ear to his ideas in England, he traveled to Germany, where he continued his work. Even on the Protestant mainland, however, Tyndale was considered too democratic, too populist a reformer to be ignored. England’s king, Henry VIII, asked the Emperor Charles to extradite him, and Tyndale was arrested and imprisoned in Belgium. He was burned at the stake, after being mercifully garotted beforehand. His books were burned in the streets.
His crime? Translating the Latin bible into English without permission of the authorities.
