The little known story of England’s first evangelical QueenThe modern evangelical movement owes an awesome debt to England’s first evangelical queen. This is the story …
14th century Church politics
The politics of mediaeval Europe were complicated. In 1378, there was a Schism within the Catholic Church and there have been two rival Popes, Urban VI in Rome and Clement VII in Avignon in France. These rival Popes formed political alliances to get support, and excommunicated one another. In the early 1400s, there was even a period of three rival Popes, and the mess was not sorted out until 1417.
Such was the chaos, that it effectively sowed the early seeds of the Reformation, because many individuals began to query the entire papal system, and were dismayed that the Church was getting entangled in politics and accruing wealth, relatively than helping the poor. Discontent with the Papacy had been brewing for a while. In England, one of the radical voices of protest was John Wycliffe (c1324-1384), sometimes generally known as the Morning Star of the Reformation, who was supported by the Black Prince.
Richard II
In 1377 Edward III died. His son the Black Prince had died in 1376, and so his young grandson was crowned as King Richard II. As he got older he became an eligible bachelor, and he received offers of marriage from around Europe.
In the midst of this, Pope Urban VI, the Pope in Rome, tried to form alliances between his supporters, against his rival Pope. So it was that a wedding was arranged between King Richard II of England, and Princess Anne of Bohemia, half-sister of King Václav (Wenceslas) IV of Bohemia.
In 1381, Anne left Prague, crossed Europe and waited at Calais until the weather was favourable to take them to Dover, after which on 18th December crossed the Channel and travelled on to London. She brought a big court of Bohemians along with her, and a few later married English courtiers. Richard and Anne were married on twentieth January 1382 at Westminster Abbey and were each crowned two days in a while twenty second January 1382.
Anne of Bohemia
Anne of Bohemia was born in 1366. She was the kid of King Karl (Charles) IV of Bohemia, who ruled over Bohemia and Moravia together with Silesia, which is roughly the realm of the Czech Republic today. He is probably the most famous of Czech kings and in Prague his name lives on in Charles University, Charles Bridge, Charles Square and the nearby fairytale Karlstejn (Karlstein) Castle, in addition to within the Bohemian spa town of Karlovy Vary (also generally known as Karlsbad).
The Czech Bible
King Charles encouraged learning and the Czech language. He encouraged writers and poets to put in writing neither in Latin nor in German – the language of the Holy Roman Empire – but within the language of the people which was Czech. In 1347, King Charles IV commissioned scholars to translate the Bible from Latin into Czech. In 1348, King Charles began Charles University in Prague.
King Charles had many children who were brought up at Prague Castle, within the newly transformed and prosperous city of Prague. They received a very good education in three languages and were literate in Czech, German and Latin. The Bible played a very important role of their upbringing. Princess Anne was born in 1366. She could read the Bible in Czech, German and Latin, and he or she memorised portions of it. She had ladies-in-waiting who read along with her, who held to a faith which we’d today call evangelical.Good Queen AnneAlthough the wedding to King Richard II of England was arranged, it was clearly a hit. Richard was dedicated to Anne, fondly calling her “My beloved Bohemian”. During an era when royal infidelities were unsurprising, they were each faithful and dependable.
Queen Anne interceded on behalf of individuals to moderate the actions of her husband, and warned him against shedding innocent blood. People were spared death on quite a few occasions as a result of her pleading on their behalf. After the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, she persuaded the king to pardon the rebels and brought them her goodwill.
She was generous with the needy. She encouraged her husband to share the leftovers from their lavish banquets with the poor within the streets of London, and the food was delivered with kind words, long before food banks were a thing! The people called her “Good Queen Anne”. It is extremely likely that Chaucer’s poem called “The Legend of a Good Woman” was a tribute to Queen Anne.
Commissioning the English Gospels
Contemporary accounts describe Anne as a humble, kind and compassionate queen, living out a quiet pious Christian faith. She used to read and study the Bible at a time when that was unusual, even though it didn’t help that few were literate in Latin or had access to a Bible. Wycliffe noted that she dropped at England copies of the Gospels in Bohemian, Teutonic and Latin i.e. Czech, German and Latin.
When she arrived in England Queen Anne desired to learn English and he or she was disenchanted to seek out that there have been no Gospels in English, so she asked for translations to be made for her of the 4 Gospels, to assist her learn the language.
John Wycliffe
Anne developed a friendship with John Wycliffe of Oxford, who shared a typical interest within the Bible, and he got here under her patronage. Anne’s Scriptures in Czech and German interested Wycliffe. He is purported to have remarked that if a small nation just like the Czechs could have their very own translation, why shouldn’t the English? In 1382, when Wycliffe was on trial for heresy, Queen Anne interceded and ended the trial and he was freed. Later Anne cherished and browse her own hand-written copy of the 4 Gospels in English.
It seems likely that the Gospels were translated for Queen Anne by John Trevisa, vicar of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. This is mentioned in the unique preface to the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible published in 1611. Here within the preface called “The Translators to the Reader”, there may be a bit documenting the history of translations of the Gospels, which says “even in our King Richard the seconds dayes, John Trevisa translated them into English”.
Wycliffe died in 1384, but Queen Anne had made it possible for Bohemian students to come back and study at Oxford, which began an mental interchange between Oxford and Prague, using the then academic lingua franca of Latin. Wycliffe’s followers – the itinerant poor priests later generally known as Lollards – were England’s first evangelical movement.
DeathQueen Anne died in London, probably of the plague, on seventh June 1394, aged just 28. King Richard II and Queen Anne had no children, so our current royal family is just not descended from her.After her death the king was distraught. He ordered the primary ever royal double tomb in England, where the king and queen were to be buried together, each with effigies in Westminster Abbey. At the funeral address the Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury commented on her knowledge and study of the Bible. He said that although she was a foreigner, she continually studied the 4 gospels in English, and explained them. The Archbishop said that in her knowledge of the Gospels, and the reading of godly books, “she was more diligent than even the prelates themselves, though their office and business require this of them”.
The Latin inscription by her effigy, when translated, reads: “She was dedicated to Christ and well-known for her deeds; she was ever inclined to offer her gifts to the poor; she calmed quarrels and relieved the pregnant. She was beauteous in body and her face was gentle and pretty. She provided solace to widows, and medicine to the sick.”
The king vowed that for a whole yr he would enter no constructing except a church where he had hung out with Anne. He was a widower and later remarried. After he died, it was along with his first wife Queen Anne that he was entombed within the double tomb he had commissioned, which might still be seen in Westminster Abbey.
Symbol of Anglo-Czech relations
For the Czech community in England Queen Anne was a very important figure. Prior to the Great War when Czechs were in search of support for independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she became an emblem of an ancient Anglo-Czech friendship which they desired to restore. A delegation of London Bohemians (Czechs) would visit the tomb every year on the anniversary of her death, where with the permission of the dean of the Abbey they’d lay red and white roses – being the colors of the arms of Bohemia. This is recorded in London newspapers for the years 1904 to 1907, and once they learnt of it, the Czech Embassy repeated it in 2022.
Evangelical legacy
However greater than the political symbolism, Queen Anne’s legacy has had ramifications in a direct line of influence down through Protestant history. After her death in 1394, her friends and servants returned to Bohemia with copies of Wycliffe’s writings. These in turn influenced the Czech scholar Jan Hus (John Huss), who had begun teaching at Charles University in Prague in 1398. Soon after in 1399, he first publicly defended the beliefs of John Wycliffe. He openly stated that he was influenced by Wycliffe’s writings and translated some into Czech.
In 1415, Jan Hus was brought before the Council of Constance (Konstanz), where he admitted his admiration for the writings of John Wycliffe. The Council condemned Hus for heresy and burnt him on the stake, and it also retrospectively condemned John Wycliffe for heresy.
The Lollards of England and the Hussites of Bohemia and Moravia were precursors to the Reformation. In 1521, when Martin Luther was on trial on the wonderfully-named Diet of Worms, it was the confirmation that he agreed with Hus which condemned him as a heretic.
Further down the centuries the Hussite movement led to the Moravians, who began the primary Protestant missionary movement. It was in 1738, through contact with the Moravians in England, that John Wesley’s heart was strangely warmed, which was the catalyst for the Evangelical Revival.
You can trace a line from Queen Anne of Bohemia, the girl who wanted the Scriptures in English, and John Wycliffe, to the Hussites, to the Moravians, to John Wesley and to the Evangelical Revival. She was never canonised as a saint, and so doesn’t have a day of remembrance in any liturgical church calendar. Yet she played a very important role in the primary Bible in English, and the entire Evangelical movement owes deep gratitude to Anne of Bohemia, England’s first evangelical queen.
