True... The Scriptures (at that time) by the RC were locked up in Latin (nobody understood latin but priests or the highly educated) locked up BY LAW in many/most places.. Some people were prosecuted for even having bibles or portions of bibles in latin.. i.e. Fox's Book of Martyrs(googleable)
Translation into the vernacular by reformers spread the Word of God.. Really at that time even most RC priests didn't know or care about the word of God except as dogma.. Some did but not all(Martin Luther)..
Oh, with all due respect, please stop making things up. Latin was the legal language and the language of sciences (medicine, mathematics, you name it) and of literature.
Native languages were good enough for simple poetry,l but not for serious prose. Luther actually created German literary language by translating the Bible. Until then, ordinary every-day German could not express complex, spiritual concepts. English was not a literary language until the Norman invasion and introduction of mostly Latin vocabulary in it.
Even so, the language of the law and science as well as religion remained Latin. The advantage of that is obvious in that some kind of a lingua franca always existed, whether it was Aramaic, Greek, Latin, French, or English, to name onyl some.
Most people don't speak English in Hungary, or Poland, or Bulgaria, but you can be certain that those who are in medicine, or science, politics, etc. do. So, we could then say that America is holding English locked up when the majority of the people in second or third world countries don't speak it or understand it.
***The Scriptures (at that time) by the RC were locked up in Latin (nobody understood latin but priests or the highly educated) locked up BY LAW in many/most places.. Some people were prosecuted for even having bibles or portions of bibles in latin.. i.e. Fox’s Book of Martyrs(googleable)***
The percentage of the population that was literate prior to Gutenberg was less than 10%. There simply was not enough manpower available to copy Bibles out by hand.
Fox’s Book of Martyrs is a propaganda hit piece; besides, the Church is not responsible for secular law.
With the manpower allocated to copying out the Bible, the Church decided that that manpower was best suited to producing the Bibles that they could in as accurate a form as possible in the language of the Church - Latin. Is there any doubt that the secular efforts to translate the Bible turned out highly inaccurate and misleading translations ie Tinsdale?
It is quite funny how what we consider to be educated people think that folks 500 years ago are exactly as educated and have as much wealth and leisure as folks today. We must look at circumstances and the times.