Early bible translations

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Montie_Claunch

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I was reading Mr. Karl Keatings book What Catholics really baleive and he was talking about accecsability of bibles to the public. He stated that there were many translations of the bible into the vernacular. Could anyone be so kind as help me find out about some?
As well as many popes and councils throughout history (he mentioned Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XII I think as giving two such examples) of encourageing bible studies. I was wondering if anyone knows of any more examples of this?
I think this would be very useful in talks (scince most surely something like “Catholics are bible illeteral” will come up).
Thanks and God bless.
 
Montie: There were translations of the Vulgate into Old English - the language of the Anglo-Saxons. I’d have to go look it up as to how early. What you have to remember is that the vast majority of the people living in post-Roman times were illiterate. There were no printing presses back then. Everything had to be written by hand. As a calligrapher I can tell you that it took a loooooong time to write out a Bible. Because of this and the fact that they used gold leaf to “illumine” the Bible, Bible’s were very expensive and were often chained to the ambo (lectern) in the church. Protestants use this to say that HMC locked up the Bible but they fail to tell you why.

Now here is just plain logic. What good would it do to have the Gospel read in Latin to a church that spoke Old English? How could you teach? How could you evangelize? So I think it is pretty fair to say that the Bible had to be translated into the local language.

BTW the stained glass windows of Gothic cathedrals was a way of reinforcing the Gospel.
 
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