Was the Bible Really off Limits to Our Ancestors?

[callalily]

The Pope in Rome wouldn’t allow the people to read the Bible, the manuscripts were kept locked away in the monasteries. This was in order to keep the people in ignorance and that way they could be controlled. Just as with the black slaves, who were not permitted to learn to read and write, but were to be kept in ignorance so they would be easy to control.

…That was the analogy which a co-worker used today while trying to make a point. She obviously wasn’t aware that I am a Catholic. I was so caught off guard, since our conversation had nothing at all to do with religion, that all I could manage to utter was, “I guess, being that I’m Catholic, I know a different history.” That reply, I think, sort of threw her off, and thankfully, the conversation got back on its original track. For the life of me, while I stood there, I just could not recall all of the facts regarding this issue. I’d like to help her understand the truth regarding it if the opportunity comes up again. However, I need to thoroughly understand the facts myself, and then I want to present them to her in the most factual, charitable and precise manner possible. Has anyone ever run into this problem, and if so, how did you handle it? Can it be summed up in a nut shell?

Thanks!

 

[NotWorthy]

For years the Bible was kept strictly in Latin, with very few vernacular (local) language versions available.

To you and me, that smites of obstruction since no one today reads Latin, except for clergy and a few doctors. Back in the Middle Ages thought, if you could read your native language, you could read Latin. Latin was the universal language throughout the civilized world, so this was the easiest way to keep bad translations from occurring while having the widest access to readers.

With that said, a Bible was still very expensive to produce. Some figures show that in todays numbers, it cost the equivalent to $50,000 to write a complete bible. It took monks and priests nearly 8 months of daylight to dusk writing just to produce one bible, let alone the cost of the deerskins (some 80 or so(?) needed) just to provide the writing surface. Because of that Bibles were often chained near the front of the chair - not to prevent reading, but to prevent stealing. You see this same phenomenon today with phone books being chained to phonebooths.

 

[mercygate]

For years the Bible was kept strictly in Latin, with very few vernacular (local) language versions available.

To you and me, that smites of obstruction since no one today reads Latin, except for clergy and a few doctors. Back in the Middle Ages thought, if you could read your native language, you could read Latin. Latin was the universal language throughout the civilized world, so this was the easiest way to keep bad translations from occurring while having the widest access to readers.

With that said, a Bible was still very expensive to produce. Some figures show that in todays numbers, it cost the equivalent to $50,000 to write a complete bible. It took monks and priests nearly 8 months of daylight to dusk writing just to produce one bible, let alone the cost of the **deerskins (**some 80 or so(?) needed) just to provide the writing surface. Because of that Bibles were often chained near the front of the chair - not to prevent reading, but to prevent stealing. You see this same phenomenon today with phone books being chained to phonebooths.

Sheepskins.

 

[NotWorthy]

Sometimes the Church restricted various translations, for example in France in the 1100’s or 1200’s. This wasn’t because the Church didn’t want the French to read the Bible, but because a certain heretical cult had made translations of the bible that justified their suicidal and abortive tendencies. The Albigensiens felt that all flesh was evil and had some bizarre ideas. They had distorted some bible verses to justify these ideas when they made their translations. So the Church prohibited French Translations until they could rid themselves of the Albigensiens.

An English writer, Wycliffe, did the same thing in the middle ages, maybe around 1500(?), distorting his translations to blast the Catholic priesthood and papacy. He was later executed, but by the Anglican King of England, Henry the (6th or 8th(?)).

So, no, the Catholic Church rather than preventing people from reading the Bible, lovingly preserved the Bible. No other organization can be credited with preserving the Bible for the ages for 1100 years until our Separated Brethren came along.

 

[NotWorthy]

Sheepskins.

Our friend, Henry Graham, who wrote “Where we got the Bible - Our debt to the Catholic Church” claims that it was also deerskins.

To the OP, I would highly suggest reading his book. I think you can find it free, online, at certain sites. It’s a great, quick, read.

 

[Jennifer_G]

I’ve heard this argument too. (My counter arguments never seem to be effective though)

Basically, many people back in that era couldn’t read, much less read something in another language. (Even if it was translated, it would’ve taken time to write just one copy) Chains were there just to prevent stealing (Bibles often had detailed artwork. What kind of thief wouldn’t want such a valuable piece of artwork?). People in the Middle Ages were also too busy worrying about surviving (starvation, war, plague, etc.). Not to mention during the first 400 years, the Church was persecuted, so there really wasn’t any time to write stuff down on a large scale.

 

[mercygate]

Our friend, Henry Graham, who wrote “Where we got the Bible - Our debt to the Catholic Church” claims that it was also deerskins.

I stand corrected. Thank you. :tiphat:

 

[callalily]

Thank you, everyone, for the very helpful replies. And thank you for jogging my memory, NotWorthy! I just checked my “little” home library and found that I do have, Where We Got the Bible! I bought it many years ago, but don’t recall ever reading it through. Guess that will by my new reading assignment! Thanks again, gang!
God bless you…

 

[Zooey]

I read “Where we got the Bible” online, & it is excellent!!
Have to tell you–I grew up in an old-fashioned Methodist household, & one thing that I learned before I was old enough to read the Bible for myself, was how much we owe to those amazingly faithful men in the monasteries of Europe, who spent so many days & nights, copying the Bible!

 

[Mystophilus]

Our friend, Henry Graham, who wrote “Where we got the Bible - Our debt to the Catholic Church” claims that it was also deerskins.

Yes, both: sheep skins and deer skins, also calf skins, and many others.

Our term ‘vellum’, the hide-material used for the pages of old scrolls and books, comes from French velin, from veel (veal): i.e., calf was the origin of the name, but any skin which would do was used.

 

[NotWorthy]

Basically, many people back in that era couldn’t read, much less read something in another language. (Even if it was translated, it would’ve taken time to write just one copy) Chains were there just to prevent stealing (Bibles often had detailed artwork. What kind of thief wouldn’t want such a valuable piece of artwork?).

You bring up a very good point, here.

Why do Catholics have so many stained glass pictures and statues??? To spread the Gospel!!! If someone can’t read, do you tell them, “Tough, you can’t share the Gospel”? No, you bring it to them in a way that helps tells the story of Christ.

How do you do that? Pictures! Statues! Stained Glass Artistry!!!

 

[NotWorthy]

Jennifer G.,

You also bring up another good point. St. John’s Bible is a hand-written bible, with beautiful art-work that is being printed by St. John’s Monastery in Minnesota. We just bought one of the volumes, which includes the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, for our priest. It’s 2’ tall and 1-1/2’ wide!!!

And it’s beautiful!!! Our priest absolutely loved it. I can’t suggest a better gift for your priests from the parish then something like this.

 

[jmcrae]

Our illiterate ancestors knew the Bible better than most literate people do, today - they saw Mystery Plays being acted out in the streets for their entertainment (Mystery Plays were skits of various scenes in the Bible - our Christmas pageants are a hold-over from these), they saw art of all kinds that depicted Biblical events, including woodcuts and little plaster figures that they could buy and take home, along with stained glass windows, mosaics, frescos, weavings, statues, and paintings; and of course they heard it read out at Mass, and heard commentaries on it during the homily. They also heard and sang hymns and songs that were based on Scripture. They also had the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross - they had the Mass and the Sacraments - and I feel like I’m forgetting something - but yeah - they knew the Bible.

 

[Genesis315]

Now that everyone has access to the Bible, the Church is bigger than ever! What we were allegedly hiding couldn’t have been that bad.
Plus, why even preserve any Bibles if we wanted to create some anti-Biblical empire?

 

[LilyM]

For years the Bible was kept strictly in Latin, with very few vernacular (local) language versions available.

To you and me, that smites of obstruction since no one today reads Latin, except for clergy and a few doctors. Back in the Middle Ages thought, if you could read your native language, you could read Latin. Latin was the universal language throughout the civilized world, so this was the easiest way to keep bad translations from occurring while having the widest access to readers.

With that said, a Bible was still very expensive to produce. Some figures show that in todays numbers, it cost the equivalent to $50,000 to write a complete bible. It took monks and priests nearly 8 months of daylight to dusk writing just to produce one bible, let alone the cost of the deerskins (some 80 or so(?) needed) just to provide the writing surface. Because of that Bibles were often chained near the front of the chair - not to prevent reading, but to prevent stealing. You see this same phenomenon today with phone books being chained to phonebooths.

EVERY book that was kept in any library or school or university college, for that matter, would have been chained to the shelves or desks as well. As has been said, they were all quite rare and extremely valuable.

 

[Mystophilus]

The Pope in Rome wouldn’t allow the people to read the Bible, the manuscripts were kept locked away in the monasteries. This was in order to keep the people in ignorance and that way they could be controlled. Just as with the black slaves, who were not permitted to learn to read and write, but were to be kept in ignorance so they would be easy to control.

NotWorthy has already done a very good job on this one; I would just like to add a few contextual details.

Remember the Goths and Visigoths and Vandals? Well, they descended upon the Roman Empire and effectively smashed the whole western end of it. Civilisation, in the sense of an interconnected net of cities and towns under a centralised government, collapsed. When something like that happens, you throw out luxuries, like ice imported from the mountains and tutors imported from Greece, and you go back to the basics: shelter, food, and a big enough axe to keep away the brigands.

Western Europe became a series of isolated pockets of humanity. Some of those pockets were monasteries. Because they needed to read the Scriptures, the Fathers, the rules of their Order, etc, they continued to teach the art of reading. This is good, because they managed to preserve not only the Christian texts, but also an enormous number of classical Greek and Latin works.

My Beloved has a print of the only copy of one of Plato’s works, with one of the Gospels written between the lines of the Plato, to save paper! This is another issue to consider: books were made entirely by hand, and the text was copied entirely by hand, with groups of scribes working for many months to produce just one of them. Imagine how much it would cost you to pay someone to do that now! Books were items of great value, and very few people had the wealth necessary to own one.

In general, the monks recopied the Bible in Latin, because that was the language of learning in the west, because their Latin was often better than their Greek, and because it was the language of international communication, in much the same way that English is now. Europe was inhabited by dozens of different people-groups, all of whom spoke different languages. However, if you wrote in Latin, then those very few people who had been taught to read could read it, even if they came from another country. This condition persisted right up into the C19th, when some philosophical and scientific texts were still being produced in Latin. Today, it is still the norm for editions of classical Greek texts to be named, prefaced and annotated in Latin.

Bible versions did appear in vernacular languages from quite early on. Parts of the Bible were available in Old English (i.e., Anglo-Saxon) in the C10th. It was not until the advent of the printing press that it actually became economical to mass-produce Bibles, and it was the economics of mass-production which led to mass-distribution of Bibles.

 

[RCCDefender]

For years the Bible was kept strictly in Latin, with very few vernacular (local) language versions available.

To you and me, that smites of obstruction since no one today reads Latin, except for clergy and a few doctors. Back in the Middle Ages thought, if you could read your native language, you could read Latin. Latin was the universal language throughout the civilized world, so this was the easiest way to keep bad translations from occurring while having the widest access to readers.

Yes, actually the “oldest German document of any kind is a translation of the Bible done in 381 by a monk named Ulfilas; he translated it into Gothic, which is what German was back then. You often hear that Martin Luther was the first to liberate the Bible from the Church’s grasp and give it to a Scripture-starved people, but that’s obviously nonsense… [there were] at least twenty-one printed German editions before Luther.”

“The first things written in many modern languages was often the Bible, or at least the Gospels - that’s where written Slavonic, Gaelic,and even German came from. The first written Bible in an English language (Saxon) seems to be a seventh-century translation by a monk named Caedmus, and a hundred years later the Venerable Bede started another but he died before finishing it.”

With that said, a Bible was still very expensive to produce. Some figures show that in todays numbers, it cost the equivalent to $50,000 to write a complete bible. It took monks and priests nearly 8 months of daylight to dusk writing just to produce one bible, let alone the cost of the deerskins (some 80 or so(?) needed) just to provide the writing surface. Because of that Bibles were often chained near the front of the chair - not to prevent reading, but to prevent stealing. You see this same phenomenon today with phone books being chained to phonebooths.

I’ve heard this argument too. (My counter arguments never seem to be effective though)

Basically, many people back in that era couldn’t read, much less read something in another language. (Even if it was translated, it would’ve taken time to write just one copy) Chains were there just to prevent stealing (Bibles often had detailed artwork. What kind of thief wouldn’t want such a valuable piece of artwork?). People in the Middle Ages were also too busy worrying about surviving (starvation, war, plague, etc.). Not to mention during the first 400 years, the Church was persecuted, so there really wasn’t any time to write stuff down on a large scale.

Okay, for how much it would cost today just think of how much a new church would cost…“Remember that a new Bible would cost a community about as much as a new church building, and the finished book was easily worth a manor. Books in the middle ages were done on parchment or vellum (made from the skins of young sheep or cattle) and lettered, gilded, and illuminated by hand. A whole Bible took maybe four hundred animals and years of work by a score of scribes and artist. Then as now there were plenty of unscrupulous collectors, so a stolen Bible could always be converted into an immense sum of cash. Plus there were the customary “garnitures”, the covers and bindings that could run to tweny pounds of gold, decorated with jewels and enamels (when Henry VIII burned all of the Bibles in England, he was careful to keep the bindings for himself). The miracle is that so many survive.”

Yes, both: sheep skins and deer skins, also calf skins, and many others.

Our term ‘vellum’, the hide-material used for the pages of old scrolls and books, comes from French velin, from veel (veal): i.e., calf was the origin of the name, but any skin which would do was used.

Okay, I kept thinking “it was vellum, it was vellum.” I just forgot what vellum actually was!!!

Whoops! I guess I need to cite my qutoes! They are taken from Why Do Catholics Do That? by Kevin Orlin Johnson pp.24-25.

 

[Trelow]

I reckon they were locked up mostly to avoid that befell the Sears’ catalogue. Lot’s of folks got it that couldn’t read, and it’s smoother than a corncob.

 

[VociMike]

EVERY book that was kept in any library or school or university college, for that matter, would have been chained to the shelves or desks as well. As has been said, they were all quite rare and extremely valuable.

I never knew this, but it makes perfect sense. And a little googling turns up the term “libri catenati” (chained books) as well as the concept of a chain library, where the books are indeed chained. And, as you say, this includes secular books, not just bibles.

 

[Mystophilus]

“The first things written in many modern languages was often the Bible, or at least the Gospels - that’s where written Slavonic, Gaelic,and even German came from. The first written Bible in an English language (Saxon) seems to be a seventh-century translation by a monk named Caedmus, and a hundred years later the Venerable Bede started another but he died before finishing it.”

Someone has made this error, and a number of sites have propagated it: Caedmon, who died in the late C7th, rendered a number of Biblical stories in Anglo-Saxon poetry form. He did not translate a Bible.

Cadmus was the legendary founder of Thebes, in Greece; apparently, someone confused the names.

Cuthbert of Jarrow said that Bede was translating the Gospel of John while on his deathbed, but no trace of such a work can be found.

Alfred’s C9th/10th translations covered several parts of the OT, but the Bible was never completely translated in English until Wycliffe, in the C15th. Wycliffe was involved in a proto-Protestant attempt to wrest ideological control from the Church, and his followers, the Lollards, distributed his Bible and accompanied it with anti-Church commentary, condemning clerical practices and Church doctrine as immoral and anti-Scriptural. When the clerics reacted against criticism of themselves and their actions, the Lollards had the perfect excuse to claim that it was all just religious persecution and an attempt to hide the Truth from the people, i.e., the standard line of every conspiracy theorist. The Church lacked the power to suppress the movement.

Then, when the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt was seen to include Lollards, the English Crown acted against it. In 1401, King Henry IV’s parliament issued an edict called De heretico comburendo (‘Concerning the heretic needing to be burnt’), which made translation of, or ownership of a translation of, the Bible into a capital crime! The reason for this was simply that Wycliffe’s Lollard version was the only translation in England: possession of it was seen as proof of involvement with Lollardy, and, therefore, treason.

It was not the Church which suppressed the Bible for religious reasons, it was the Crown which suppressed it for political ones.