[Apple Pan Dowdy]

Seems like many many people did not trouble reading and understanding the Bible after it was translated into a language they understood. In fact that was the end of the “dark ages”.

[Apple Pan Dowdy]

The fact is that it was NOT the Catholic church that translated it into English..... it was done by the Protestant reformers.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

"Seems like many many people did not trouble reading and understanding the Bible after it was translated into a language they understood. In fact that was the end of the “dark ages”."

you've got your timeline seriously skewed. Luther produced his version of the new Testament in the early 1500's, and the entire bible in the 1530's. Tyndale's, a translation to English of Luther's New Testament, came in the 1520's. A slew of different versions were produced up through the late 1500's, including the Douay-Rheims. The King James was compiled in the first decade or so of the 1600s.

And Yet, literacy rates in England (excepting Wales), Scotland and France remained around only 60% into the 1700s.