You wrote:
"So it wasn't "Latin" versus "German"--no one wrote anything in German at the time. Even the German version of the Gospels, the Heliand, was transmitted orally and written down later, like Beofwulf or the Dream of the Rood."
I'm not so sure about the Heliand being oral before written. Murphy seems to say otherwise in his edition (page xiii).
"Germanic languages, Anglo-Saxon etc. were oral languages, poems and songs and homilies were composed in them but not written down until the 10th or later centuries."
Yes and no. Beowulf was written earlier than that.
"That the Bible in the West was in Latin was simply a matter of course. NO one who could read could not read Latin."
I don't know how that myth got started, but it is clear that Germanic peoples had their own written languages and there were people who could read and NOT read Latin. How many vikings read Latin? Few, but we know they read Runes. Even much later, in a thoroughly Christian nation like France, there were people who read the local dialects, but knew no Latin. I think this idea that no one could read unless they could read Latin is way over blown.
"No other written language existed in the West."
Gothic? Ogam? Runes?
"It was not the Vulgate that was being mandated but a corrected, standard, clean, precise, accurate text that was being mandated."
But it wasn't mandated as the only Bible. That's the point. It was mandated for use by the clergy.
"These guys were pioneering the same methods of textual criticism (not higher criticism) that even the Fundamentalists accept as legitimate: Charlemagne was telling his "professors" (the best scholars of his day) to produce a more accurate version of the Bible's text. That it would be in Latin was a foregone conclusion. No one could have imagined it being in any other language."
Well, the official version would have been in Latin yes. There were vernacular versions in England and other places.
"So the point Harley was using the fact to demonstrate is absurd but the fact is true."
No, the fact is not true. He said that Latin was mandated. It wasn't. 1) Charlemagne was not the Church, 2) Mandating a Bible for the Frankish clergy is not what Harley described, 3) What Harley described never happened.
"Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Harley made a true statement but the point he thought he was proving by it is false and absurdly false. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
He has a little knowledge? I haven't seen it yet. Seriously though, he was wrong. What he said happened, never happened.
In short, no one able to read a Germanic written text (Anglo-Saxon, Saxon, Frankish) was able to read that text without first having learned to read in Latin. Most people, having learned Latin, did their reading in Latin and that was that, translating as necessary into the vernacular. For some purposes, writing something down in the vernacular made sense and it was done, but it was done by those already literate in Latin.
This meant that for the most part, monks and clerics who knew Latin did what reading of such occasional vernacular texts as existed. Your average Joe German Peasant who was illiterate never learned solely to read German. This was true well into the high Middle Ages. In the 12th century things began to change. In the late Middle Ages, yes, direct vernacular reading was taught, beginning first with people engaged in commerce, for pragmatic reasons--not peasants.
You can see this in the vernacular manuscripts that have survived--they spell German words in phonetic ways that vary depending on the dialect. In Bavarian manuscripts what would be spelled Kirche in modern German might be spelled Kirchghe--the writer hears an intense guttural "ch" with his ear and mimics it with Latin letters. The same word in North Germany manuscript will be Kirk or perhaps Kirck" because the "ch" is pronounced in a clipped way there. This shows that people learned letters and thought letters with minds shaped and by Latin literacy.
That's why those poets who began to write in English or Italian or German or French in the 12thc were significant. They were responding to a growing lay demand for literature in the vernacular. Lower nobles in most cases would not have been Latin literate though in the more established Gallo-Roman areas, many probably were. But no one was Frankish-literate without first having been literized via Latin.
I dealt with runes in my previous post. What you describe is true for the later period (as you admit here) but simply was not true in the 8thc. Frankish, Bavarian etc. were not functioning literary languages. On important occasions, like the oath dividing the empire, yes, a copy of the oral oath was made. But it was made by officials trained in Latin who wrote phonetically and it was made as a special aide-de-memoire. That there was a functioning Germanic literary culture simply is false for the 8thc. For the 12th, perhaps 11th in some places, it's a whole different ball game.
I wrote: "It was not the Vulgate that was being mandated but a corrected, standard, clean, precise, accurate text that was being mandated."
To which you replied: "But it wasn't mandated as the only Bible. That's the point. It was mandated for use by the clergy." Yes it sure was mandated as the "only" Bible. Why else do you think it was mandated? So that a standard version would exist, so that errors could be eliminated, so that everyone was on the same page when preaching and writing.
Did Germanic translations of portions of the Bible exist in monasteries? Yes. Did homilies in the vernacular get written down and kept in monasteries, yes. But in the Latin West in the 8thc, I'm sorry, there was no functioning, usable full text of the Bible in Germanic languages. No one wanted one, no one needed one. The average person did not get his information by reading. He got it from listening to those who could read. When those who preached the Bible preached to average people, they preached in the vernacular and translated from the Latin text of the Bible. They did not put into the hands of the people a German bible because it would have been as useless to people as a Latin Bible. They may have made written translations of the Bible or parts of it for their own purposes and may have read from these on occasion to others, but this was all seen as an adjunct. Literacy was Latin; the vernaculars flourished, but orally--until the later period.
Why else did Caedmon seem so unusual? And how do we know the story of Caedmon anyway? Because a learned monk named Bede wrote it down in his Latin history of the church in England, as a miracle, a marvel, a curiosity. Caedmon did not lead to a whole movement of Anglo-Saxon literacy. Aelfric's sermons survived, Alfred translated Boethius, Gregory the Great etc. into Anglo-Saxon, in the late 9thc. Who read them? People who had enough Latin literacy to know how to read but for whom reading Latin was a strain--like noblemen, for instance. Alfred's translations, the Heliand etc. are evidence that people could write in Germanic languages, employing Latin letters and Latin-learned literacy, but they did this as an ad hoc, adjunct to Latin-literacy. Those engaged in this were already members of the elites, at the edge of the highly skilled Latin-literate. These exceptions are interesting, paved the way for the real vernacular movement of the 12thc but they are isolated, forerunners of what was to come. In the 8thc century, none of this was happening. In the late 9thc, the beginnings of a verncular literacy are emerging. By the 11thc century and 12thc it's coming into its own.
But we started with the 8thc, the 700s. What I wrote originally holds for the 8thc, not the 4th or 5th (Ulfilas), not the 10th or 12th, but the 8th. Well, the official version would have been in Latin yes. There were vernacular versions in England and other places