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Posted on 05/01/2011 4:14:07 AM PDT by GonzoII
Of course, if they could read.
Ping?
The key man was an obscure but brilliant scholar named John Bois who gave the KJV its ringing poetic quality.
Having God's word in one’s own language has provided motivation for learning to read as well as having affordable copies available. So the invention of printing and work of Bible translation into the common languages has worked hand in glove to bolster literacy.
Those translators comments are well worth the time to read. thanks!
Good point.
In the Empire, by 425 there was a fully functioning elementary school system and an Imperial university at Constantinople. It is estimated that 50% of the population, including peasants, not merely the city dwellers and soldiers, were literate. The Scriptures were written in the mother tongues of the people, mostly Greek but also Aramaic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Ge’ez, Coptic, etc. Of course, once the Slavs became Christian, it became a matter of both Church and State urgency that Scripture be translated into their vernacular...and a whole written language was created for that (as were the two Coptic dialects, also from Greek).
The idea that reading the bible in the vernacular was the gift of the Protestant Revolution is absolute, Western parochial nonsense.
It would be interesting to know if these schools were staffed by clerics and religious. That would be historical evidence that the Church certainly was not trying to prevent the laity from reading Scripture.
Probably not until much later when the Patriarchal school was established, say in the 9th or 10th century. Before that, the Imperial government made the professorial appointments. Nevertheless, you should remember just how very religious Byzantine society was. There are all sorts of stories of hierarchs complaining that they couldn't go the baker's or cobbler's shops without being forced to discuss some arcane theological point.
If you are interested, here's a link to a short article on the subject of Byzantine higher ed.
http://byzantine-university.co.tv/
Thanks for the link.
Bible Possession Once Banned by the Catholic Church!
ITEM #2 COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE - 1229 A.D.
The Council of Toulouse, which met in November of 1229, about the time of the crusade against the Albigensians, set up a special ecclesiastical tribunal, or court, known as the Inquisition (Lat. inquisitio, an inquiry), to search out and try heretics. Twenty of the forty-five articles decreed by the Council dealt with heretics and heresy. It ruled in part:
Canon 1. We appoint, therefore, that the archbishops and bishops shall swear in one priest, and two or three laymen of good report, or more if they think fit, in every parish, both in and out of cities, who shall diligently, faithfully, and frequently seek out the heretics in those parishes, by searching all houses and subterranean chambers which lie under suspicion. And looking out for appendages or outbuildings, in the roofs themselves, or any other kind of hiding places, all which we direct to be destroyed.
Canon 6. Directs that the house in which any heretic shall be found shall be destroyed.
Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.
Source: Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, Edited with an introduction by Edward Peters, Scolar Press, London, copyright 1980 by Edward Peters, ISBN 0-85967-621-8, pp. 194-195, citing S. R. Maitland, Facts and Documents [illustrative of the history, doctrine and rites, of the ancient Albigenses & Waldenses], London, Rivington, 1832, pp. 192-194.
You posted:
“Bible Possession Once Banned by the Catholic Church!”
That’s FALSE. The Catholic Church never banned the Bible in any way.
Toulouse was a local council ONLY and was battling the Albigensians.
Catholicism and Fundamentalism
by Karl Keating
“...The council held in Toulouse dealt with the Albigensian heresy, a variety of Manichaeanism, which maintained that marriage is evil because the flesh is evil...In order to promulgate their views, the Albigensians used vernacular versions of the Bible to “substantiate” their theories...[and they] were twisting the Bible to support an immoral moral system. So the bishops at Toulouse restricted the use of the Bible until the heresy was ended. (C&F p.45)
As noted by the Protestant Harold Lindsell, former editor of Christianity Today and well-known evangelical writer:
The view expressed by Augustine was the view the Roman Catholic Church believed, taught, and propagated through the centuries . . . It can be said that the Roman church for more than a thousand years accepted the doctrine of infallibility of all Scripture . . . The church has always (via Fathers, theologians, and popes) taught biblical inerrancy . . . The Roman church held to a view of Scripture that was no different from that held by the Reformers.
{The Battle For the Bible, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1976, pp. 54-56}
Of course, since most anti-Catholics are both stupid and dishonest it is all too easy for them to make the boneheaded mistake - or to just lie - and say that the Church banned the Bible when it never actually happened. A regional council is not the Church. Fighting the Albigensians is not banning the Bible Church wide.
***{Here the KJV translators have referred to the Douay-Rheims, a Catholic translation of the Bible into English, which came out in 1609, two years before the KJV.}***
Yet they also say they were forced to do their own translation because the Catholic Church were dragging their feet on producing a good translation and the translators had seen none of the Catholic version yet.
Glad to see someone else reading FROM THE TRANSLATORS TO THE READER.
But of course the English had to wait for the Reformation for a vernacular Gospel!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_Bible_translations
;)
In the west, “Mass Priests”, priests without parochial responsibilities, usually served as tutors or ran schools. Where the reformation swept these out, literacy rates dropped.
This is an example of when a half truth a lie?
The Council of Toulouse did ban the possession of vernacular Bibles for the laity without a license; not because the Church wished to discourage the authentic study of Scripture, but because the Bible was used as a tool for the promotion of the Albigensian heresy. In the Middle Ages, Bibles contained glosses, either in between verses or in the margins. These glosses served to guide the reader's interpretation of the text. A decently translated Bible could contain glosses which might lead the reader to reject the Church. Or the translation of the Bible could be perverted to support a heretical doctrine. For these reasons, some very poor and incorrectly translated bibles were burned.
The uncritical anti-Catholic also assumes that because there were relatively few bibles, knowledge of Scripture was limited. That was hardly the case. Catholics transmitted biblical knowledge in other forms. There were books which paraphrased stories in the Bible as is done today in children's books. The visual arts abounded in Scriptural themes. Stained-glass windows were the poor man's Bible. There were Miracle plays, which were the forerunners of modern Western theatre, as well as poems recounting Bible stories. Even the illiterate had access to the Bible through their families. Only a minority of people were literate during the Middle Ages, but sometimes one person in the family could read (often a woman) and the Bible, being the most widely-owned book in the Middle Ages, was read aloud.
The assumption driving this myth of bible-banning is that the Church, during the Middle Ages, was a big bad oppressor who wanted her flock to be ignorant so that it wouldn't challenge her power and her doctrines.
So the charge that the Church was against knowledge of Scripture is entirely unfounded. It's true that in some periods and some places vernacular versions of the Bible were rare or non-existent, but that's not the same thing as saying that the Church did not want the laity to read the Bible.
- from Catholic Answers Forum.
Yes, poor folk...unless of course they had a copy of the the Wessex Gospels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wessex_Gospels
or the Old English Hexateuch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_Hexateuch, or any of a number of other Anglo Saxon type translations.
Perhaps they confuse the writing with the printing.
Has that been published? I would love to read it.
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