Addedum: It should be also pointed out in the eight century the Catholic Church mandated Bibles be only in the Latin Vulgate format. Latin was only taught through the Church. Even if the Bible would have found its way into the hands of the masses, many of them wouldn't have been able to read it.
If a vernacular Bible found its way into the hands of the masses, most of them couldn't read that either.
Universal literacy is an outgrowth of the Reformation (e.g. the "Old Deluder Satan" laws in Massachusetts Colony). Before that late date, if you could read, you could read Latin. It was only after the Reformation that vernacular written languages took hold.
Harley,
Again, writing about what you don't know, you wrote: "Addedum: It should be also pointed out in the eight century the Catholic Church mandated Bibles be only in the Latin Vulgate format. Latin was only taught through the Church. Even if the Bible would have found its way into the hands of the masses, many of them wouldn't have been able to read it."
Untrue. There was no such mandate regarding Bibles in the 8th century from the Catholic Church. There may have been such a mandate regarding gospel books, lectionaries used in the liturgy, however. We have plenty of examples of Biblical texts being copied IN THE VERNACULAR throughout this time period. Want some evidence? Look at what you can get by going to this one source (scroll down): http://www.asu.edu/clas/acmrs/publications/mrts/asmmf.html
England was really only converted in the 7th century. You're making a claim about the 8th century. Clearly most surviving Old English (that is, Anglo-Saxon) docs. were produced before the Norman Conquest of 1066 and after monasteries were built up, many with it's own scriptorium, in the 8th century. The decree you claim was never issued and never followed.
Please get a clue.
You're embarrassing yourself.
In the eighth century Harley, this was flatly impossible. The 8th was before the great schism, and thus half of Christendom would been using Greek exclusively in liturgy and in their Scriptures, to say nothing of Coptic or Syriac versions. The eastern half of the Church never used the Vulgate.
Public education hadn't yet been invented, if that's what you mean. Everyone who was educated studied Latin in school; it wasn't some kind of secret code. All of the education in the universities was conducted in Latin.
And even the uneducated knew church Latin. They knew what "Benedicamus Domino" meant, and "Miserere me Deus", and "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa". And they knew what you were saying when you said "Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntus tua, sicut in caelo et in terra ..."