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To: vladimir998; hosepipe

No, again, no one was ever burned at the stake for reading the Bible since reading the Bible was not a crime. Reading the Bible aloud was not a crime either.
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English Protestants and French Huguenots were burnt at the stake, etc for reading the Bible...

Reading the Bible, even owning own was a crine...

Only the Catholic Church, and the nobility had Bibles...If the nobility were Protestants, or if anyone else had a Bible they were murdered...

In the 1680s 200,000 Huguenots fled from France...

Plus the thousands who left in the earlier pogroms...

They hid their Bibles by baking them inside loaves of bread...

If they were caught with a Bible they were murdered...

In one episode in 1572, alone, the St Batholomews Day Massacre, 30,000 French Huguenots were murdered ..


75 posted on 05/09/2009 4:27:10 PM PDT by Tennessee Nana
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To: Tennessee Nana

You wrote:

“English Protestants and French Huguenots were burnt at the stake, etc for reading the Bible...”

Nope. Not one. Reading the Bible was not a crime. How could what happened every day in every church and every monastery and in many homes be a crime?

“Reading the Bible, even owning own was a crine...”

Nope. Not even remotely. Show me the law from the Vatican that says so. Show me the national law from any nation-state of the Middle Ages or Early Modern Period that says so.

“Only the Catholic Church, and the nobility had Bibles...If the nobility were Protestants, or if anyone else had a Bible they were murdered...”

Again, nonsense. The truth of the matter is simply this: few people outside of the clergy or nobility had the education necessary to read Latin or even the vernacular. As time went on, and medieval society became more stable, wealthy and educated, even the middle class, and yes, even shepherds read books - including the Bible. Not surprisingly, you are unaware of the following: http://www.geocities.com/militantis/biblechp11.html (Graham was a former Protestant by the way).

And S.R. Maitland was never anything but a Protestant, but he still had the courage to tell the truth unlike so many of his fellows. In his classic work, The Dark Ages, he tells us about the numerous cases of Bible reading in the Middle Ages that he encountered in sources. Of course, those cases time and again, were about priests, monks, nuns, bishops, abbots and nobles. After all, how many other could read until late in the Middle Ages? The fact that few had the money to buy an education does not mean that the Church either killed anyone for reading the Bible, nor that it kept the Bible from anyone. Look at the third world today. Missionaries can hand out all the bibles they want to illiterate people, but they still won’t be able to read them. IS that such a difficult concept to grasp? In America, who is more likely to be literate today? The well off or the poor? Clearly the well off.

“In the 1680s 200,000 Huguenots fled from France...”

So what? In the 1840s, 1,000,000 Catholics fled from Ireland...

So what?

“Plus the thousands who left in the earlier pogroms...”

Again, so what? None of that - NONE OF IT - says anything about the Bible, or literacy, etc.

“They hid their Bibles by baking them inside loaves of bread...”

1) I have no reason to believe a LeFevre-like baking story. 2) If the French were looking for Huguenot bibles then that was French policy - not CATHOLIC policy. The French also granted the Huguenots toleration, and then they rescinded it. Again, the French did what they did.

“If they were caught with a Bible they were murdered...”

1) What the French did to their citizens has nothing to do with the Church. 2) Show me the French law that says having a Huguenot bible meant death. Remember the The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October 22, 1685, was by the king, the grandson of the Protestant king of Navarre who abandoned his heresy in a heartbeat to become king of France and once issued the Edict of Nantes. This was all FRENCH policy. It was not conducted or insisted on by the Church.

“In one episode in 1572, alone, the St Batholomews Day Massacre, 30,000 French Huguenots were murdered ..”

Nope. The number that most scholars agree on is much closer these days to 5,000 than 30,000. And it is irrelevant in any case since that too was a French decision and had nothing to do with the Church. For the death tolls at the low end see: Philip Benedict, “The Saint Bartholomew’s Massacres in the Provinces,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 205-225. For the toll at the high end see: F. Fernández-Armesto and D. Wilson, Reformation: Christianity and the World 1500 - 2000, Bantam Press, London, pp. 236 - 237.

No one really knows.

What we do know is this - the Church had nothing to do with it.


78 posted on 05/09/2009 6:09:45 PM PDT by vladimir998 (Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. St. Jerome)
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To: Tennessee Nana; vladimir998
I know.. Vlad MUST beleive what he does.. to admit wrong doing by a Pope(or his denomination) would rock his earth view..

Its common knowledge the various murderous and carnal pagan Popes.. not to speak of other RCC officials.. (EVEN NOW)

We must humor Vlad for he might hang himself after facing the truth.. nobody wants that.. Some protestants are not too sweet either.. by the way..

82 posted on 05/09/2009 6:23:14 PM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole....)
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To: Tennessee Nana

So the stories go.


98 posted on 05/09/2009 6:56:36 PM PDT by Petronski (In Germany they came first for the Communists, And I didnÂ’t speak up because I wasnÂ’t a Communist.)
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