Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
The real question is not when did it cease but when did it begin?

So true. It's simply a stylistic convention. Here's an image of a 14th century MS of the John Wycliffe (d.1384) translation of the Gospel of St John (link). The only capital visible is the one that starts the first chapter of the book. That was the style then. Interestingly enough, in the few transcribed versions of this passage which I consulted, the capitalization usage of today is used (link).

Moving along to the Early Modern English period, looking at the William Tyndale (ca.1494–1536) translation (1526) of the same book (link) shows no capitalization for the word god either. By the time (1539) of the Great Bible by Myles Cloverdale (sic)(1488–1568), we find capitalization (link).

There are other English translations of the Bible to investigate, but I leave that as an exercise to the reader. So, the answer is probably sometime in the early 16th century.


That's very interesting history, thanks for that excellent detective work. I wonder where it came into English from? Was it a renaissance invention? Was it applied first to Latin? Did Coverdale invent it himself? Or did it come from German? Did Luther's German translation have capitals? Unfortunately I have no time to investigate these fascinating footnotes in history further at the present moment!