To simplify: in 1400 owning an accurately copied full text of the Bible was about as expensive as owning a new Lamborghini today. This was not because of some conspiracy: it is because copying the Bible by hand required a team of experienced scribes working for thousands of man hours and using many hides of expensive calfskin and gallons of expensive metallic inks to complete.
The technology quite simply didn't exist to quickly and cheaply print up made to order copies at an affordable price. The preservation of the Bible and of all the classic texts of ancient Greece and Rome represent massive commitments of time, money and brainpower that we simply take for granted.
Another factor is that 90% of the population lived by subsistence farming and traveled very little. As a result the vernacular language was highly dialectical - it was not worth translating texts from Latin to other languages because there were no agreed upon spellings or rules of grammar and a translated text would be unintelligible to someone living 50 miles away.
The fact is that even in 1611 the English of the KJV was a foreign tongue to more than 60% of the people of England. The KJV was written in the language of educated Londoners - the KJV was not written in a standardized English - it was used as a tool to create a standardized English.
The same thing happened in the Germanic states. The introduction of German language Bibles precipitated the solidification of standardized German, which in turn eventually precipitated the very concept of a German nation.
It's sad how ignorant people are of history.
Let’s not exaggerate. The Paris Bible, an edition of the Vulgate (in Latin, of course) was widely available. About the size of a modern Bible, it fit into the pocket of a Friars’s Robe and was used by Friars as they preached from town to town. I have seen a copy.Looks like a printed text. Exenswive, but not out of sight.