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Enemy of The Bible In The Middle Ages ? The text below for the Catholic Response was taken, with permission, from Dave Armstrong’s web site. Protestant: Catholic Response: As Newman argued above, the orthodox Catholic viewpoint, in the patristic
period and ever since, was to interpret Scripture both in a literal and
mystical sense. Those who denied this tended towards heresy, as we saw
in the sad case of the See of Antioch.
Protestant: Catholic Response: This is classic contra-Catholic rhetoric, repeated endlessly ever since the 16th century and very difficult to dislodge from the Protestant's (or even secular person's) mind. But it is an outrageously selective and thus ultimately deceiving (again, I don't claim that this is deliberate, just misinformed) presentation. I shall treat this whole subject of the Catholic Church's reverence for, and attitude towards Scripture at some length, since it is supremely important and so vastly misunderstood, even by Protestant scholars, who ought to know better, to put it mildly. Well-known Catholic author Peter Kreeft observes:
The classic Protestant suspicion is that Catholics fear the Bible; that the Church forbade the laity to read it for centuries because if that had been allowed, people would have seen how unscriptural Catholic doctrines were. This is simply untrue, of course, but is still widely believed among Protestants. The belief is declining, though, in the face of the strong encouragement by Vatican II and all recent Popes to Catholic laity to read Scripture regularly. This has done more to win Protestant respect than perhaps anything from Rome since the Reformation. Protestants have suspected that we fear the Bible ever since Luther discovered its dynamite.{"Protestant, Catholic Views on the Bible," National Catholic Register, 3 November 1991, p.10} Likewise, Henry G. Graham:
The common and received opinion about the matter among non-Catholics in Britain, for the most part, has been that Rome hates the Bible . . . If she cannot altogether prevent its publication or its perusal, at least she renders it as nearly useless as possible by sealing it up in a dead language which the majority of people can neither read nor understand . . .{Where We Got the Bible, St. Louis: B. Herder, rev. 1939, pp. 1,4} And now three Protestant writers: Roman Catholicism has a high regard for Scripture as a source of knowledge . . . Indeed, official Roman Catholic statements concerning the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture would satisfy the most rigorous Protestant fundamentalist.{Robert McAfee Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1961, pp. 172-173} {Peter Toon, Protestants and Catholics, Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1983, p. 39} After quoting 19 eminent Church Fathers to the effect that Scripture
is infallible and held in the highest regard (bolstering his own thesis
in this book), Harold Lindsell, former editor of Christianity Today and
well-known evangelical scholar, has this to say about the Catholic reverence
for Scripture:
The view expressed by Augustine was the view the Roman Catholic Church believed, taught, and propagated through the centuries . . . It can be said that the Roman church for more than a thousand years accepted the doctrine of infallibility of all Scripture . . . The church has always (via Fathers, theologians, and popes) taught biblical inerrancy . . . The Roman church held to a view of Scripture that was no different from that held by the Reformers.{The Battle For the Bible, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1976, pp. 54-56} In the same way that Popes, Councils, theologians, always resorted to the scriptural argument as the really fundamental one, the practice of the great spiritual writers of every epoch attests the fully traditional character of a devotion based on the Bible . . . The same is true of the great teachers of the Middle Ages . . . Not only did they know the Bible and make abundant use of it, but they moved in it as in a spiritual world that formed the habitual universe of all their thoughts and sentiments. For them, it was not simply one source among others, but the source par excellence, in a sense the only one . . .{Louis Bouyer [convert from Lutheranism], The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, tr. A.V. Littledale, London: Harvill Press, 1956, pp. 164-165} Many more quotes could be produced. The reader desiring further evidence
is urged to peruse the Vatican II document "Divine Revelation," and the
papal encyclicals of Leo XIII (1878-1903):
and Pius XII (1939-58):
These are sometimes found in the beginning of Catholic Bibles, and can
be easily located online (note that I have linked to two above).
It would be to perpetuate a prejudice . . . founded on Luther's often false or at least exaggerated statements, were one to fail to recognise how widely the Bible was known even before Luther's day and to what extent it was studied among educated people. Modern research, not seldom carried out by open-minded Protestants, has furnished some surprising results in this respect.{Hartmann Grisar, Luther, tr. E.M. Lamond, ed. Luigi Cappadelta, 6 vols., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1917, v. 5, p. 536} The publisher of the Cologne Bible [1480] writes . . . :{Johannes Janssen, History of the German People From the Close of the Middle Ages, 16 vols., tr. A.M. Christie, St. Louis: B. Herder, 1910 (orig. 1891), v. 1, pp. 58-60}All Christians should read the Bible with piety and reverence, praying the Holy Ghost, who is the inspirer of the Scriptures, to enable them to understand . . . The learned should make use of the Latin translation of St. Jerome; but the unlearned and simple folk, whether laymen or clergy . . . should read the German translations now supplied, and thus arm themselves against the enemy of our salvation.The rapidity with which the different editions followed each other and the testimony of contemporary writers point to a wide distribution of German Bibles among the people. It says at the end of a Koberger Vulgate of 1477:{Ibid., v. 14, pp. 381-383}The Holy Scriptures excel all the learning of the world . . . All believers should watch zealously and exert themselves unremittingly to understand the contents of these most useful and exalted writings, and to retain them in the memory. Holy Scripture is that beautiful garden of Paradise in which the leaves of the commandments grow green, the branches of evangelical counsel sprout . . .These words admirably describe the attitude which the Church in the Middle Ages held with regard to Holy Scripture. That the Bible at that time was a book lying under a bank is an unhistorical assertion . . . In Catholic countries the walls of churches and monasteries and convents, and even cemeteries, are covered with pictures representing Scriptural scenes . . . Stained glass windows may be mentioned in the same category . . .{Graham, ibid., pp. 85-6} The Canon of the Bible . . . was framed in the fourth century. In that same century Pope Damascus commanded a new and complete translation of the Scriptures to be made into the Latin language, which was then the living tongue not only of Rome and Italy, but of the civilized world. If the Popes were afraid that the Bible should see the light, this was a singular way of manifesting their fear. The task of preparing a new edition of the Scriptures was assigned to St. Jerome, the most learned Hebrew scholar of his time. This new translation was disseminated throughout Christendom, and on that account was called the Vulgate, or popular edition.{James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, NY: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, rev. ed., 1917, p. 74} There were just two classes of people then: those who could read, and those who could not read. Now, those who did read could read Latin, and, therefore, were perfectly content with the Scriptures in Latin. Those who could not read Latin could not read at all . . .{Graham, ibid., pp. 89,91} The Bible and other books were chained in the libraries and churches in the Middle Ages to preserve them from theft, and especially to make them accessible to students . . . The Reformers adopted this custom of having chained Bibles in their churches, and the practice lasted for over 300 years. There were chained libraries at Grantham (1598), Bolton (1651) and Wimborne (1686), England, and chained Bibles in most of the English churches . . . The Oxford Colleges of Eton, Brasenose and Merton did not remove the chains until the 18th century, while some libraries removed them only in the 19th (Manchester, Cirencester, Llanbadarn). At the present time we have records of over 5000 chained books in eleven Protestant and two Catholic libraries.{Bertrand Conway, The Question Box, NY: Paulist Press, 1929, p. 86. Sources: Lenhart, Chained Bibles, Savage, Old English Librarie} The desire to possess the Holy Scriptures in the mother tongue is already met with on German soil in the time of Charlemagne [742-814]; and, strange to say, it is just the earliest translators of the Middle Ages who have come nearest to perfection in this task.{Janssen, ibid., v. 14, p. 384} The number of translations . . . of the complete Bible, was indeed very great . . . Between this period [1466] and the separation of the Churches at least fourteen complete editions of the Bible were published in High German, and five in the low German dialect. The first High German edition was brought out in 1466 by Johann Mendel, of Strasburg . . .[Other editions in High German: Strasburg: 1470,1485 / Basel, Switzerland: 1474 / Augsburg: 1473 (2),1477 (2),1480,1487,1490,1507,1518 / Nuremburg: 1483]. Bible Translations in Low German: Cologne: 1480 (2) / Lubeck: 1494 / Halberstadt: 1522 / Delf: before 1522] {Janssen, ibid., v. 1, pp. 56-57; v. 14, p. 388}
Raban Maur, born in Mainz in 776, translated the Old and New Testament into the Teutonic, or old German, tongue. Some time later, Valafrid Strabon made a new translation of the whole Bible. Huges of Fleury also translated the Scriptures into German, and the monk Ottfried of Wissemburg rendered it into verse . . .{Patrick F. O'Hare, The Facts About Luther, Rockford, IL: TAN Books, rev. ed., 1987 (orig. Cincinnati, 1916), pp.183,185} The well-known Anglican writer, Dr. Blunt, in his History of the Reformation (Vol. I. pp. 501-502), tells us that: There has been much wild and foolish writing about the scarcity of the Bible in the ages preceding the Reformation . . . that the Holy Scripture was almost a sealed book until it was printed in English by Tyndale and Coverdale, and that the only source of knowledge respecting it before them was the translation made by Wyckliffe. The facts are . . . that all laymen who could read were, as a rule, provided with their Gospels, their Psalter, or other devotional portions of the Bible. Men did, in fact, take a vast amount of personal trouble with respect to the productions of the Holy Scriptures . . . The clergy studied the Word of God and made it known to the laity; and those few among the laity who could read had abundant opportunity of reading the Bible either in Latin or English, up to the Reformation period.{O'Hare, ibid., pp. 185-186}
To begin far back, we have a copy of the work of Caedmon, a monk of
Whitby, in the end of the 7th century, consisting of great portions of
the Bible in the common tongue. In the next century we have the well-known
translations of the Venerable Bede, a monk of Jarrow . . . In the same
(8th) century we have the copies of Eadhelm . . . of Guthlac, . . . and
of Egbert . . . these were all in Saxon, the language understood and spoken
by the Christians of that time. Coming down a little later, we have the
free translations of King Alfred the Great . . . and of Aelfric, Archbishop
of Canterbury . . . After the Norman conquest of 1066, Anglo-Norman or
Middle-English became the language of England, and consequently the next
translations of the Bible we meet with are in that tongue . . . such as
the paraphrase of Orm (about 1150) and the Salus Animae (1250), the translations
of William Shoreham and Richard Rolle . . . (d.1349) . . .
The translators of the Authorised Version, in their 'Preface,' refer to previous translations . . . : Much about that time [1360], even our King Richard the Second's days, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age . . . So that, to have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up . . . but hath been . . . put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any nation.{Graham, ibid., pp. 98-101} From 1450 to 1520 [there were] many translations of the whole Bible . . . seventeen German, eleven Italian, ten French, two Bohemian, one Belgian, . . . and one Russian edition.{Grisar, ibid., v. 5, p. 536. Data from Franz Falk, The Bible in the Middle Ages, Cologne: 1905, pp. 24, 91 ff.} Says another Protestant scholar, . . . : It can no longer be said that the Vulgate alone was in use and that the laity consequently were ignorant of Scripture . . . We must admit that the Middle Ages possessed a quite surprising and extremely praiseworthy knowledge of the Bible, such as might in many respects put our own age to shame.{Ibid., v. 5, p. 537. Citation of E. v. Dobschutz, Deutsche Rundschau, 101, 1900, pp. 61ff.} We know from history that there were popular translations of the Bible and Gospels in Spanish, Italian, Danish, French, Norwegian, Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian for the Catholics of those lands before the days of printing . . .{Graham, ibid., pp. 98,105-106,108,120} The online Catholic Encyclopedia article on
SCRIPTURE,
VI. ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH TOWARDS THE READING OF THE BIBLE IN THE VERNACULARSee also the online articles:
Catholicism
and the Bible (Albert Vanhoye) For those wishing to see Dave Armstrong's web site see below. Click on this link to go to Dave Armstrong's web site for more information -
Also see Dave's critique of the movie, Luther. At this location, the inquirer can
instantly purchase the book wholesale by clicking
the link to the publisher.
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