[Conservative til I die]

Luther took the 'lock' off the scriptures and made them available to the world...Without Luther, you wouldn't have a bible to read in a language you could understand...

Total myth. Between the 7th and 14th Centuries, the Bible was available in at least a dozen vernacular languages. The main reason Bibles were not so widespread is because of the cost of making one. In the days before the prining press, Bibles were written by hand and were extremely expensive to produce.

Every Church had one for use in the Liturgy and possibly one more for public use. They were chained down to prevent theft of such an expensive item.

Of course, the invention of the printing press changed all that. The printing press was invented in 1454, before Luther even was born. The printing press not only allowed the Bible to become more accessible and affordable, it also allowed the supply to catch up to the demand for Bibles in the vernacular.

From one website on the topic, I find these statistics for vernacular editions (not copies) of the Bible, all before Luther brought the Bible "to the Masses":

20 in Italian, 26 in French, 19 Flemish, 2 in Spanish, 6 in Bohemian, 1 in Slavish, and 30 in German, for example the German Strasbourg translation published in 1466. To these editions of the whole Bible, must be added 94 printings of single sections, in the dialects of Europe. Besides these editions in the vernacular, there were 62 editions in Hebrew such as the 1477 Bologna Hebrew translation, 22 in Greek, and 343 in Latin, a language known to all the educated classes.

[Uncle Chip]

"20 in Italian, 26 in French, 19 Flemish, 2 in Spanish, 6 in Bohemian, 1 in Slavish, and 30 in German, for example the German Strasbourg translation published in 1466. To these editions of the whole Bible, must be added 94 printings of single sections, in the dialects of Europe. Besides these editions in the vernacular, there were 62 editions in Hebrew such as the 1477 Bologna Hebrew translation, 22 in Greek, and 343 in Latin, a language known to all the educated classes."

------ How many in English? and how many Wycliffe Bibles?
Oh, I forgot, his bones paid the price.

[lastchance]

Gutenberg was Catholic. It was his printing press that allowed those who otherwise would not have access to the Bible because of their finances.

It is also important to remember that literacy rates during the Middle Ages and the Reformation were very low. So most faithful relied on preaching and illustrations ( stained glass windows) to learn the stories of the Bible.