Bible Burning and other Allegations

Ever since the Protestant Revolt in the 16th century, the Catholic Church has been accused of ignoring, opposing, hiding and even destroying the Bible in order to keep it from the people. Allegedly, copies of the Bible were chained to the walls of churches during the Middle Ages so that people could not take them home to read. Supposedly the Church during the Middle Ages also refused to translate the Bible into the various tongues of the common people, the vernacular languages, in order to further hinder personal Bible reading. Furthermore it is claimed that the Church even went as far as to burn vernacular Bibles....

Even though impractical, there are examples of the Church promoting the vernacular. One example is the mission of Sts. Cyril and Methodius to the Slavic people in Moravia during the 9th century. They are both famous for introducing the Slavonic liturgy. In their work St. Cyril had to develop an alphabet for the Old Slavonic language. (It became the precursor of the Russian "cyrillic" alphabet.) In 885 St. Methodius translated the entire Bible into this language. Despite strong political opposition from the Germans, Pope Hadrian II after careful investigation confirmed St. Methodius as archbishop of Moravia and endorsed their Slavonic liturgy....

One action that Catholic Christians pursued to stop this propaganda was to burn these books. Does this action make the Church anti-Bible? No. If it did, then the Protestants of this period were also anti-Bible. John Calvin, the main Protestant Reformer, in 1522, had as many copies as could be found of the Servetus Bible burned, since Calvin did not approve of it.

From The Myth of the Catholic Church and Vernacular Scriptures

We know from history that there were popular translations of the bible and Gospels in Spanish, Italian, French, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Bohemian, and Hungarian for the Catholics of those lands before the days of printing, but we shall confine ourselves to England to refute once more the common fallacy that John Wycliff was the first to place to place an English translation of the Scriptures in the hands of the English people in 1382....

The translators of the Authorized Version, in their preface, referring to previous translations of the Scriptures into the language of the people, make the follow9ng important statements. After speaking of the Greek and Latin versions, they proceed, “The godly-learned were not content to have the Scriptures in the language which themselves understood, Greek and Latin…but also for the behoof and the edifying of the unlearned which hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and had souls to be saved as well as they, they provided translations into the Vulgar for their countrymen, insomuch that most nations under heaven did shortly after their conversion hear Christ speaking unto them in their mother tongue, not by the voice of their minister only but also by the written word translated..”

As all these nations were certainly converted by the Catholic Church, for there was then no other to send missionaries to convert anybody, this is really a valuable admission. The translators of 1611, then, after enumerating many converted nations that had the vernacular Scriptures, come to the case of England and include it among the others. “Much about that time” (1360), they say, “even in our King Richard the Second’s days, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age…So that, to have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up, either by the Lord Cromwell in England [or others]…but hath been thought upon, and put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any nation.” This testimony from the preface (too little known) of their own Authorized Bible, ought surely to carry some weight with well disposed Protestants.

Moreover, the “Reformed” Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, says, in his preface of the Bible of 1540, “The Holy Bible was translated and read in the Saxon tongue, which at that time was our mother tongue, whereof there remaineth yet divers copies found in old abbeys, of such antique manner of writing and speaking that few men now be able to read and understand them. When this language waxed old and out of common use, because folks should not lack the fruit of reading, it was again translated into the newer language, whereof yet also many copies remain and be daily found.”

Again, Foxe, a man that Protestants trust, says, “If histories be well examined, we shall find, both before the Conquest and after, as well as before John Wycliff was born as since, the whole body of Scripture by sundry men translated into our country tongue.”

This one is my all time favorite. This is why amateurs should not attempt such things

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible

The Wicked Bible, sometimes called The Adulterous Bible or The Sinners’ Bible, is a term referring to the Bible published in 1631 by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the royal printers in London, which was meant to be a reprint of the King James Bible. The name is derived from a mistake made by the compositors: in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:14), the word not in the sentence “Thou shalt not commit adultery” was omitted, thus changing the sentence into “Thou shalt commit adultery”. This blunder was spread in a number of copies. About a year later, the publishers of the Wicked Bible were called to the Star Chamber and fined £300 (roughly equivalent to £33,800 today) and deprived of their printing license.[1] The fact that this edition of the Bible contained such a flagrant mistake outraged Charles I and George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said then:

I knew the time when great care was had about printing, the Bibles especially, good compositors and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and the letter rare, and faire every way of the best, but now the paper is nought, the composers boys, and the correctors unlearned.[2]

The majority of the Wicked Bible’s copies were immediately cancelled and burned, <—————————————

Allegedly, copies of the Bible were chained to the walls of churches during the Middle Ages so that people could not take them home to read.

What may be more accurate, in some instances bibles were chained to the wall or elsewhere, not so people could not read them, but so they could, but not walk off with a precious, handmade copy.

From BIBLE READING BY THE LAITY, RESTRICTIONS ON.
under

3. Rules and Practice in Different in other Countries

"In England the reading of the Bible was made by Henry VIII (1530) to depend upon the permission of the superiors. Tyndale's version, printed before 1535, was prohibited. In 1534 the Canterbury convocation passed a resolution asking the king to have the Bible translated and to permit its reading. A folio copy of Coverdale's translation was put into every church for the benefit of the faithful, and fastened with a chain.

You asked;

Even if one is a Catholic hater, how dumb does one have to be to believe that, considering the fact that most people could not even read?

Excuse? How ignorant are you, anyway? The information covered by Schaff (almost a century and a half ago) can be found in many places, including within official RCC publication.

As to the state of human ignorance question, PERHAPS --> never mind, that's a question impossible for any to accurately answer, being as to know the extent of what one does not know, makes known knowns out of both known unknowns and unknown unknowns, leaving ignorance then out of the equation (which is impossible, being that from human perspective, it is the 3rd most abundant element in the Universe, only after hydrogen and helium).

Don't don't look now, but one of those which was to yourself, previously an "unk-unks" just curled up 'neath yer' feet. If it was a snake...?

Otherwise, the history of bible prohibition, to the extent it was practiced, and was not, is given some brief outline by Schaff in the link provided above.

The history of this sort of thing is rather complex, but yes, at times the RCC did very much, even from it's own highest levels, either prohibit or allow only conditional possession or study of the bible, even in Latin (at times and places).

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