Attempts at translating the Vulgate into European vernacular languages date back to the Middle Ages, but these were often limited to manuscripts for the aristocracy. England saw one of the earliest popular movement toward translating the Vulgate in response to the teachings of fourteenth century theologian John Wycliffe.

Wycliffe taught that the Bible comes directly from God and provides inerrant truths which should guide religious and political government. He and his followers, called “Lollards” by their contemporaries, pressed for ecclesiastical and social reforms throughout the late fourteenth century. Wycliffe’s emphasis on the Bible’s unique authority naturally led to the Lollards’ assertion that the Bible should be available to all people in their own language – in the case of the peasants and middle class, English. Scholars disagree as to whether Wycliffe actually participated in translating the Vulgate Bible, but the earliest versions of the Wycliffite, or Lollard, Bible certainly originate from Oxford in the 1380’s. But since the Wycliffite Bible was translated into common English during a period of social and political unrest, as well as religious dissent, English-language Bibles became symbols of heretical beliefs. Wycliffe’s teachings were condemned in 1382. In 1409, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, issued thirteen Constitutions which prohibited the translation of any biblical text into English as well as the public or private reading of such texts. Violators were excommunicated and charged with heresy, which was punishable by death. English-language Bible manuscripts were pushed underground throughout the next 130 years, kept carefully by lay readers. Over 250 Wycliffite Bibles have survived to the present.

In Germany, several vernacular Bible manuscript translations had circulated for several centuries before Johannes Mentelin printed a German Bible in Strassbourg in 1466. The most influential German Bible, however, would come as a result of the Protestant reformation. In 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther, like Wycliffe and other reformers, believed that scripture should be available to all people in a language they could understand, and shortly after he broke with the Roman Church he began translating the Bible into the vernacular. Rejecting the Vulgate for its ties to Catholicism, Luther based his translation on the Greek text published by Erasmus. Luther’s translation of the New Testament was first printed in September 1522, after which he began work on the Old Testament. The complete Luther Bible was issued in 1534. Inspired by Luther, other scholars also issued Bible translations in their local language, including Huldrych Zwingli of Switzerland, Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Pierre Robert Olivétan of France, and Englishman William Tyndale.