An event happened even more important than Martin Luther at the same time. Gutten berg’s invention of the printing press put the Bible in everyone’s hands.
Previously, Bibles were hand copied by monks, a very slow process. Very few hand copied Bibles existed. Many churches and priests did not have a copy of the Bible. So how could they possibly read it? They were lucky to have even more than one complete book of the Bible. Usually they just had selected excerpts of special passages.
The first mass produced printed book was the Bible, a version based on the Latin edition from about 380 AD.. The Bible was printed at Mainz, Germany by Johannes Gutenberg from 1452 -1455..
Yes and Gutenburg was Catholic and the book he printed was from the Roman Catholic Vulgate.
Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam
A little off topic but interesting.. Guttenberg’s printing press which brought the Bible to the people led to the need for more spectacles which in turn led to the microscope.