You wrote:
“I’m not going to waste my time refuting what no serious person believes.”
Wow. So, no one believes this:
The most interesting gift of an English New Testament, as a precious and pious donation to the Church, is that of the copy now in the possession of Lord Ashburnham,1 which in 1517 was given to the Convent of our Lady of Syon by Lady Danvers. On the last page is the following dedication :—
“Good .... Mr. Confessor of Sion with his brethren. Dame Anne Danvers widowe, sometyme wyffe to Sir William Danvers, knyght (whose soul God assoyle) hatbe gevyn this present Booke unto Mastre Confessor and his Brethren enclosed in Syon, entendyng therby not oonly the honor laude and preyse to Almighty God but also that she the moore tenderly may be committed unto the meroy of God.
1 Aehbornham MS., Appendix xix. (No. 156 in Forsball and Madden). The text of this MS. Iu printed for Mr. Lea Wilson by Pickering, in 1848.
.......
So, what you’re saying is that no one believes the facts that there was a gift of an English New Testament, to the Church, now in the possession of Lord Ashburnham, which was given to the Convent of our Lady of Syon by Lady Danvers? No one believes that?
And, so, no one believes this is on the last page of that NT:
“Good .... Mr. Confessor of Sion with his brethren. Dame Anne Danvers widowe, sometyme wyffe to Sir William Danvers, knyght (whose soul God assoyle) hatbe gevyn this present Booke unto Mastre Confessor and his Brethren enclosed in Syon, entendyng therby not oonly the honor laude and preyse to Almighty God but also that she the moore tenderly may be committed unto the meroy of God.
And no one believes that that is all found written up in the following source?:
1 Aehbornham MS., Appendix xix. (No. 156 in Forsball and Madden). The text of this MS. Iu printed for Mr. Lea Wilson by Pickering, in 1848.
No one believes that? No one?
What you’re posting now is exactly why I think anti-Catholics so often come across as stupid, ignorant, reality-denying twits.
If you want to reject Gasquet’s conclusion, fine. But to suggest that no one believes his evidence is just insane. Again, I am dealing with facts - facts you can’t refute. I am dealing with evidence - evidence you can’t refute. all you can do is dismiss his conclusion. You don’t seem to realize that even if he was wrong on that particular confusion, he most definitely proved BEYOND ANY POSSIBLE DOUBT that vernacular Bibles were more widespread than many people think and that many faithful Catholics possessed them and did so without any problems.
I gave you several opportunities to refyte what Gasquet said - and I don’t even mean his conclusions about a Catholic Church produced and approved vernacular version. I mean simply the facts about what had to be more widespread Bible possession BY FAITHFUL CATHOLICS than any of your posts would allow.
You utterly failed to refute any of those facts. They are facts. There’s no interpretation in those individual facts. People possessed vernacular translations and those people listed were faithful Catholics.
“But to suggest that no one believes his evidence is just insane. Again, I am dealing with facts - facts you can’t refute.”
Come up with a vernacular translation made in the 1400s whose text differs substantially from Wycliffe’s texts.
Can’t? Of course not. None were made. So the bibles you cite were Wycliffe bibles, not Catholic-made vernacular translations.
“Parts of the Bible had, of course, been translated into English before Wycliffe’s time—both in the Old English period and, more recently, in Middle English. But these partial translations had been designed for devotional or liturgical use or for narrative interest. In the Old English period we have the translation of the Psalter by Aldhelm of Sherborne as early as the eighth century, while from the tenth century we have the Wessex Gospels and the Heptateuch (Genesis-Judges) of Aelfric of Eynsham. Alfred the Great’s law-code was introduced by an English version of the Decalogue and other parts of Exodus 20-23. From the early fourteenth century we have Middle English translations of the Psalter, the best known of which is that by Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole (near Doncaster), which was accompanied by a verse-by-verse commentary; it was evidently a popular work, being copied in other dialects than Rolle’s own. Later in the same century comes a version of the New Testament epistles made apparently for members of religious houses.
But before the time of Wycliffe no one seems to have thought of providing ordinary layfolk with a vernacular version of the whole Bible. The provision of such a version, however, was imperative if ordinary layfolk were directly responsible to God as Wycliffe taught, for knowing and obeying his law.
Wycliffe was certainly the prime instigator of the work of translation associated with his name, whether he himself took little or great part in the actual work of translating. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries he is repeatedly credited with the work. In 1411 Archbishop Thomas Arundel charged him with ‘devising—to fill up the measure of his malice—the expedient of a new translation of the Scriptures into the mother tongue.’ 6 About the same time, the continuator of Knighton’s Chronicle says that ‘Master John Wyclif translated from Latin into English ... the gospel that Christ gave to the clergy and doctors of the church’, 7 while Jan Hus in Prague writes, ‘By the English it is said that Wycliffe
translated the whole Bible from Latin into English.’ 8 This tradition persisted: in Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529) it is stated that ‘the great arch-heretic Wyclyffe, whereas the whole Bible was long before his days by virtuous and well learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read, took upon him a malicious purpose to translate it of new’. 9 More was mistaken in supposing that ‘the whole Bible’ had been translated into English before Wycliffe’s day, but he had no doubt that Wycliffe did make his own translation.
There was nothing in the translation itself to which objection could reasonably be taken. The objections brought against it arose from its being produced by such a suspect group as Wycliffe and his disciples, and from the purpose for which they produced it: it was designed to be a replacement for canon law and ecclesiastical authority in general. But when detached from its obnoxious context it could be quite acceptable in the highest echelons of society.
This was specially so with an edition of the four gospels in this version, in which the biblical text was accompanied by an English commentary based on the Golden Chain of Thomas Aquinas, with quotations from other authorities (such as Bishop Grosseteste). Who was responsible for compiling these Glossed Gospels, as they were called, is not certain, but it may have been Wycliffe’s secretary, John Purvey, who carried on his master’s biblical work after his death. One copy of the Glossed Gospels was acquired by Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II, with the approval of that hammer of the Lollards, Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury. Arundel reported at her funeral service in 1394 that he approved for Anne’s use ‘all the four gospellers in English with the doctors upon them’. 12...
...There is no reason to doubt More’s personal witness. There was, however, one thing of which he was unaware: those English ‘Bibles fair and old’ were copies of the later Wycliffite version. There was nothing in the translation itself that smacked of Lollardy or any other form of ‘heresy’, and the copies bore no indication of the translators’ identity. Many bishops would feel quite happy to grant permission for the possession and use of such copies to those who could be trusted not to exploit the permission for ‘improper’ purposes.
But many others, who could not obtain official permission, refused to be deprived of the opportunity of reading the Scriptures in their own tongue, and met together in small groups to read and discuss them together. The house-meeting for reading the Bible in this way became a tradition that still lives on in English-speaking lands (as well as elsewhere), but in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries those who attended such groups did so at the risk of liberty and even of life itself.”
http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_098_4_Bruce.pdf
“3 The extent of the circulation gained by this version may be estimated from the fact that in spite of all the chances of time and all the systematic for its destruction made by archbishop Arundel others, not less than 150 copies are known to be extant, some of them obviously made for persons of wealth and rank, others apparently for humbler readers. It is significant as bearing either on the of the two works or on the position of the writers while the quotations from Scripture in Langton’s Virion of Piers Plowman are uniformly given in Latin, those in tbe Persone’s Tale of Chaucer are given in English which for the most part agrees substantially with Wycliffe’s translation.
4 The following characteristics may be noticed as distinguishing this version: (1) The general homeliness of its style. The language of the court or of scholars is as fur as possible avoided and that of the people followed In this respect the principle has been acted by later translators...”
“I mean simply the facts about what had to be more widespread Bible possession BY FAITHFUL CATHOLICS than any of your posts would allow.”
Given that I have written multiple posts saying that the objective of the Catholic Church was to prevent scripture from falling into the hands of commoners, and that they would give permission, at times, to approved people to read in the vernacular, and given that I pointed out that at times this permission had to come from the Pope himself, I can only conclude you haven’t read my posts.
Please do not erect straw men that you can then beat up. I have repeatedly posted that the goal of the Catholics was to prevent commoners from reading scripture in their own tongue. Indeed, you attacked me in a post saying I wasn’t like the commoners of old England - so at one point you understood my argument.