You wrote:
“The contention was that Bibles were not available to be read by folks, because of their rarety caused by the limitations imposed by being a large handwritten article.”
And yet the evidence shows that contention to be silly at best. Yes, there were fewer books and they were very expensive because the materials used and time they took to make. Yet, by the late Middle Ages, books were being produced in huge quantities - even by hand.
Ever hear of Uwe Neddermeyer’s Von der Handschrift zum gedruckten Buch, Schriftlichkeit und Leseinteresse im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit,
Quantitative und qualitative Aspekte (Buchwissenschaftliche Beiträge aus dem deutschen Bucharchiv München 61, Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1998)? Ever? No, probably not. I bet no Protestant here ever has. He demonstrates that there were many more mss. Bibles than we realize today.
Ever hear of Andrew Gow’s articles “Challenging the Protestant Paradigm. Bible Reading in Lay and Urban Contexts of the Later Middle Ages.” in: Thomas Heffernan, ed., Scripture and Pluralism. The Study of the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Leiden: Brill, 2005, 161-191 ? or
“The Contested History of a Book: The German Bible of the Later Middle Ages and Reformation in Legend, Ideology, and Scholarship,” in: The Journal of Hebrew Scripture 9,13 (2009), 1-37?
Ever? I bet not.
Maybe those works are too new for you. How about Erich Zimmermann’s 1938 monograph which showed clerical, noble and commoner ownership of Bibles and books of the Bible in the fifteenth century. He shows, for instance, that the scribal workshop of Diebold Lauber in Hagenau, active 1427–1467, produced a large number of Bible manuscripts. Many of the clients were city merchants and artists. The book was called Die deutsche Bibel im religiösen Leben des Spätmittelalters (Potsdam, 1938).
Ever hear of it? Ever? Even once?
The simple fact is I know what I am talking about while the Protestants here seem to never have read even one single serious, reputable work on the subject. Not one.
"And yet the evidence shows that contention to be silly at best. Yes, there were fewer books and they were very expensive because the materials used and time they took to make. Yet, by the late Middle Ages, books were being produced in huge quantities - even by hand.
That was Salvation's contention. Nevertheless, printing presses allow a larger volume of books to be printed with a much lower cost in man hours. The books therefore are cheaper and are more available with printing tech.
vladimir988, this is all very impressive. And you are quite right that I haven’t read any of the four books you cite. On the other hand, I haven’t made any of the arguments to which you have taken such great offense so as to make great show of your erudition.
A few questions for you with your great learning:
1) What percentage of the population could actually read or hear Latin (and here I mean more than just the words comprising the historic liturgy in the Latin mass) with any degree of comprehension?
2) How many of the pre-Luther Bibles were in some form of German - and there were many dialects of German before the time of Luther, some almost unintelligible to speakers of different dialects?
3) Regarding those Bibles available in some form of German, how many were actually widely available to those people who, by virtue of the dialect of the translation, could read them with any facility? Here percentages and numbers would be quite helpful, would they not?
4) How many of these pre-Luther Bibles, either whole, NT only, Gospels only, or just lectionaries, whether “handschriftliche” or “gedruckte”, were translated from something other than the Vulgate, i.e. directly from the OT Hebrew/Aramaic and the NT Greek? In other words, how many were something more than just translations of a translation?
Finally, I recognize that the relative scarcity of comprehensible Bibles in the era before Luther is a complex question, one not rightly or properly answered by jingoistic nostrums from any interest group. However, you must admit that the need for, and desirability of, a Bible comprehensible to the ordinary person and translated directly from the original languages was very great. Luther responded to that very real need. And the effect of his efforts (together with his co-workers) hugely altered the German language and the ability of Germans to communicate with each other, and these things are just secondary benefits to the chief benefit: access to the Word of God afforded to ordinary people.
Answers to such questions as these would enable us to actually evaluate the meaning and effect of those decrees of Trent already posted by Alamo-Girl. Do you want to help such an effort or just trot out book titles?