Part of the reason for the Black Legend that the Catholic church opposed people reading the bible for themselves was that the Catholic church opposed the agenda-driven Tyndale translation. Prior to a Catholic inventing the printing press, anyone who could read could read Latin. The use of Latin, however, helped people to recognize that the prayers in mass were biblical, which undermined the objective’s of Tyndale’s employers.
Early, Catholic, German translations included Wulfila, Charlemagne, and Augsburger-Wentzel.
Bede and Aelfric published English bibles, but without the printing press, and with few people who could read English but not Latin, the demand was vastly insufficient for the incredible expense, and these translations were rarely used; Wycliffe’s was promulgated by the British parliament.
The Geneva Bible (1557) demonstrated the demand for an English bible, once Gutenberg’s invention brought the price down. In England, the Catholic Church’s initial response to Gutenberg was to promote Latin literacy, but after the Geneva bible, the demand for an English bible was plain. But the brutal repression of the Catholic Church in England, and the seizure of all the monasteries and abbots made the process of publishing one difficult.
Finally, in 1582 and 1609, the Douay-Rheims bible was published by British exiles living in France. This was long after the Geneva Bible (1557), but before the King James Bible (1611). The Douay-Rheims was noted for having retained the Latin-derived words used in the Catholic mass and in Catholic theology, whereas the King James and the Geneva bible even used different translations in different places for the same words, to obscure the conceptual relations.
“Part of the reason for the Black Legend that the Catholic church opposed people reading the bible for themselves was that the Catholic church opposed the agenda-driven Tyndale translation. Prior to a Catholic inventing the printing press, anyone who could read could read Latin.”
What fantasy world are you living in? Most people only got to about the 3rd grade in those days, being able to read English, but certainly not much Latin. Anything they learned beyond that, they had to learn on their own. That was one of Ben Johnson’s, actually, insults against Shakespeare, who actually never went to any higher education. “He knows ‘little’ Latin and Greek,” he said, compared to people who went to university who, represented at best, 1 percent of the population of England, probably less, as an example.
So what you’re basically saying is that it was okay for the Catholics to restrict the possession of scripture since 1 percent of the population could read it just fine.
LOL
“Bede and Aelfric published English bibles, but without the printing press, and with few people who could read English but not Latin, the demand was vastly insufficient for the incredible expense, and these translations were rarely used; Wycliffe’s was promulgated by the British parliament.”
Of course, it also helps that you could not even own or read a Bible on your own unless you had permission to do so by a Bishop. The cost of putting together a Bible, whether in Latin or English, is the same, so it does not follow that this is a real excuse for the RCC forbidding translations in the common language for people to actually understand. A Latin Bible belched out by a Priest is meaningless to 99 percent of the congregation, and they have to rely on the Priest’s interpretation and translation on the spot, instead of reading an English or other scripture in the common language.
Of course, thanks be to God, we no longer have to get permission from the Bishop or the RCC to even use a Bible!
Okay, so Catholics burning Protestants equals legend, and Protestant burning Catholics equals brutal repression. Also, differences in Bibles boils down to Catholics making things clear, and Protestants making things obscure.
I mean, it’s not like any FReepers are actually adults. All you really need are black and white, and about three tons of condescension, and you’re done.
Except the part, of course, about who burned who first. Because some people might feel that matters, since the first burners could be seen as the repressionists, and the second burners could be seen as retaliating, or even fighting back, in a political war for their very lives.
I know, I know, that’s an additional color past black and white.
Sorry.