W. Tyndale                                                                                                    "Lord, open the king of England´s eyes"    W. Tyndale

                                                            He was killed by strangulation and then burned in public on September 6, 1536

Killed for defending the Biblical  truths

Thousands of Christians were burned at the stake, victims of
the hate and  of  the devilish extremism from  the Catholic
Church and other falsely denominated christian organisations. Among these  innocent, scholar, and  invaluable christians is  William Tyndale (1494–1536).

He was an English Catholic priest who lived under the early
years of reigning the English king Henry VIII. Tyndale  became
a christian martyr because of  his  translating  and publishing
the first Bible into English.  The Catholic bishop of London,
John Stokesley,  is believed that he ordered to kill Tyndale.
After a trial composed,  among others, by three Catholic
bishops from Louvain (Brussels), Tyndale was condemned to
be strangled  and later burnt (his death is commemorated on
he 6th of  September 1536). Tyndale  is  known for being the
father of the "English Bible" 

Tyndale  Bible was a challenge to the power of  the Catholic Church of England which  maintained uncountable privileges and a powerful position in all the country. Tyndale´s Bible was also a defy to the absolutist laws of England and to Henry VIII despotic power.  Defending the truth whatever the consequences could
be Tyndale wrote The Practyse of Prelates in 1530 and
obviously he got the royal rage as in this work Tyndale
opposed to  Henry VIII's divorce from  the Spaniard Catherine
of Aragon on the principle that it contravened the Holy
Scriptures. 

But, even despising Tyndale,   Henry VIII  utilized  him when the king  got a copy of The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528) written by Tyndale.   Here the king found the grounds  to
segregate  the Catholic Church  in  England from the  Catholic Church in Rome, what he did  in 1534 to become his Head.

Tyndale's Bible was the first  Bible translated from the  Hebrew and  Greek  into English.  As in 1378, John Wicleff and his
friends had already translated into English the Vulgata.

Tyndale wanted that
the Bible was
accessible to all
people including the
most humble ones. At those times the main
Bible in England was
the Vulgata which was written in Latin. It
meant that only  the "illustrated" classes,
mainly the Church
clergy, could read it. 

He wanted to change
this ungodly situation
by translating the
Bible into  English
which was the vulgar language.   Something that exemplifies
his determination to do this was his brave position when he
had an argument with a "cultured" but "unchristian" priest, who affirmed to Tyndale that, "We had better be without God's laws
than the Pope's." Tyndale answered him: "I defy the Pope, and
all his laws; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will
cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the
Scriptures than thou dost!"

Tyndale tried unsucessfully to translate and publish the Bible in England, but  owing to the fierce opposition of the Catholic
Church leaders Cardinal Wolsey and the bishopTunstall, he
had to move to Germany. But even in Germany the long hand
of these enemies in England  continued.

Once in Germany he finished his translation and started to
print it in Colonia,  but short later  his enemy John Doneck
known also by the name Cochlaeus, learnt about his printing
of the Bible and told it to a Henry VIII close friend who did all needed to stop the printing of the Bible.
Tyndale and his helper William Roye had to  flee to save their lives. Nevertheless they managed to arrive to Worms where
they finished their work.

Later, in 1535, Tyndale was betrayed by his friend Henry
Phillips who was suspected to work for the bishop Stokesley.
As a result Tyndale was jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde,10kms from Brussels. Next year, in 1536, he was wickedly charged of heresy and he was brutally killed by strangulation and after that
his body was burnt at the stake.

But in spite of his killing his work fructified and was not in vain. Tyndale´s prayer when he was being killed:  "Lord open the
King of England's eyes" found its fulfillment  two years after his
killing when   Henry VIII authorised  the Great Bible version. 
Almost all of this Bible and of  the following King James
Version (1604)  were rendered from Tyndale´s Bible.  This
KJV, quickly became the usual version for people.
So Tyndale´s bible translation (1526, 85 years before)
became the source for the two  bible translations most widely
used  in the  English language since then, and had also an
inmense influence in the field of literature.
All this acomplished Tyndale´s  goal of affording the bible to
all the common people.

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