Ecclesia Militans: Where we got the Bible

Where then are all the Mediaeval Bibles?

But let us return for a moment to the popular objection (hinted at above); ‘Still the Bible was in Latin; you cannot deny that. The Church kept it in Latin so as the people should not read it. She was afraid of putting it into the common language of the people.’ There i some truth in these statements; but there is more untruth. That the Scriptures were for the most part in Latin is true; that it was because of the Church’s dread of her people getting to know the Bible and so abandoning their Catholic faith is, of course, false.

(1) Bible in Latin. Admitting for the moment that the Bible was in Latin during the Middle Ages, what follows? That nobody but priests could read it? Nonsense. There were just two classes of people then: those who could read, and those who could not read. Now, those who did read could read Latin, and, therefore, were perfectly content with the Scriptures in Latin. Those who could not read Latin could not read at all. I ask, therefore, what earthly need was there of a translation of the Bible from Latin into the language of the common multitude? What good would it have done? At this point we may expect to hear our friend indignantly giving vent to some objection as this: ‘The people, then, were horribly illiterate; they could not write their own names; they could not read; they were half barbarian and savage; they were really fearfully ignorant, you know, and degraded. Just compare them for one moment with our present-day School-Board children in the matter of reading and writing and general intelligence.’

Softly now, I answer; one thing at a time. We are not discussing that at present, and do not mean to discuss it, because it is beside the question. The Church was not to blame for the people’s ignorance of letters; but let that pass, or even grant, if you like for the sake of argument, that the Church was blameworthy; the point I am insisting on is only this – granted a man cannot read, what on earth is the use of putting a Bible in his hand in any language under Heaven, whether Greek or Hebrew, or Latin, or English, or Arabic? That man, if he is taught the Bible at all, must be taught it in other ways and by other means, as we have seen he was in the ‘Dark Ages’. So that we arrive at this point, that either the Latin Bible was read, or no Bible at all. The learned Protestant author, Dr. Cutts, in his book, Turning Points of English Church History, refers to this fact when he says: ‘Another common error is that the clergy were unwilling that the laity should read the Bible for themselves, and carefully kept it in an unknown tongue that the people might not be able to read it. The truth is that most people who could read at all could read Latin, and would certainly prefer to read the authorized Vulgate to any vernacular version’ – i.e., preferred the Latin Bible to an English one. Dr. Peter Bayne also deals with this point when he remarked in the Literary World (1894, Oct.), quoted by ‘M.C.L.’ in her booklet, ‘Latin was then the language of all men of culture, and to an extent probably far beyond what we at present realize, the common language of Europe; in those days tens of thousands of lads, many of them poor, studied at the Universities, and learned to talk Latin.’ I may add that I came across the statement lately in the life of St. Peter Martyr, who flourished in the 13^th century, that he gave some retreat or addresses to nuns in that age in Latin, and was understood by them. The whole mistake in peoples’ minds arises, of course, from the supposition they make that Latin was then a dead language, whereas it was really a living one in every sense of the term, being read and spoken and written universally in Europe, and consequently being understood by everyone who could read at all. What motive or purpose, then, could the Church have had in translating it into another tongue? In any case, this much none can help admitting – that at least the Church turned the Scriptures from Hebrew and Greek (which were the original languages) into Latin, which as the living language of the world, for the benefit of her children. She might still have kept the Bible in a dark, unknown, mysterious document by leaving it in Hebrew and Greek. She did the very opposite. Does this seem as if she was anxious to keep her people in ignorance?

(2) However, we are not done with objections yet. ‘How is it,’ ask our Protestant friends, ‘that if, as you say, the Sacred Scriptures were multiplied and reproduced and copied over and over again hundreds and thousands of times, even in Latin, how is it that we have so few of these copies now? Where have they gone? Surely we should expect to have many of the preserved.’ The question, I am afraid, betrays an ignorance (not altogether inexcusable) of the condition of society and civilization and of international relations in these distant centuries. There were many causes at work which perfectly account for the disappearance of the majority of the old copies of the Bible. (a) To begin with, there was frequently ,if not continual, war going on, during which books and manuscripts were ruthlessly destroyed. We need only mention such instances as the invasions of the Danes and Normans, and of the Saracens and Northern Barbarians into Italy, burning monasteries and churches, sacking and laying waste ecclesiastical buildings. During these oft-repeated incursions and the horrible pillage that generally accompanied warfare, many most valuable libraries and thousands of MSS. and copies of the Scriptures of rare, indeed of priceless worth, must have perished. (b) Then there is the common occurrence of fire which accounts for the loss of much valuable literature – by which copies of Scripture were burned, either by accident or by design, either singly or in the general conflagration that consumed the whole monastery or library as well. (c) Another very common cause of loss was negligence, through which, both in the Middle Ages and since, many invaluable books and papers have gone to destruction. Sometimes a book was borrowed from the conventual library and never returned. This became so great an evil that the proprietors of books adopted the plan of inscribing an excommunication or a curse against those who should keep or steal what had been merely lent – much in the style of the anathemas pronounced in the Decrees of the Church’s Councils.

For example, we find one case like this: ‘This book belongs to St. Mary of Robert’s Bridge; whosoever shall steal it or sell it, or alienate it from this house, or mutilate it, let him be anathema maranatha, Amen.’ The librarian was not often so careful as he should have been over his treasures; so his books and MSS. were sometimes allowed to go amissing, or to be taken away, or to perish through damp, or corruption, or rats or mice, or water, or by being stolen, or even by being sold by those who had no right to sell, and to those who had no right to buy. Lastly, we know that great quantities of the most important parchments and manuscripts have been used by bookbinders for such ignoble purposes as to form backs and bands and fly-leaves and covers of other books. (d) But over and above these simple and natural causes, there was another which we must not forget, and which was perhaps more far-reaching and powerful than the rest – I mean the deliberate destruction of the books and manuscripts so as to get the gold and silver and precious stones in which they were set and bound. I have spoken before of the costliness of the cases and ornaments that surrounded the copies of the Scriptures. Sometimes twenty pounds of pure gold were used in their binding, not to speak of the jewels that adorned their covers. Now, the rapacious and unscrupulous men, whether Catholic or Protestant, should in their lust for money seize upon these treasures, which were in the keeping of harmless and defenseless monks and priests, we can well understand; and that they did so is unfortunately only too true. Thousands of monasteries and libraries were rifled, an incalculable amount of ancient and precious books and parchments burned or otherwise destroyed, and their gold and silver settings turned into hard cash. For the Word of God they cared nothing; what they wanted was money. And if this were true, as it is to a limited extent, of Catholic days, what shall we say of the robberies and plunders committed by sectaries in England, in their first fury, at the Reformation? We can scarcely conceive the extent to which the Reformers went in their rage and hatred against everything that had the least semblance of Rome about it, especially if it seemed likely to afford them some ‘filthy lucre’. The Protestant historian, Collier, tells how Henry VIII, determined to ‘purge his library’ of all Popish and superstitious books, and consequently gave orders for the destruction of such things as ‘missals, legends, and suchlike’; but notice the next point of command – ‘to deliver the garniture of the books, being either silver or gold, to his officers’. That was the real motive; avarice, cupidity, greed of gold. The books thus plundered and stripped of their precious stones were largely Bibles and copies of the Gospels. Fuller says: ‘The Holy Scriptures themselves, much as the Gospellers pretended to regard them, underwent the fate of the rest. If a book had a cross on it, it was condemned for Popery, and those with lines and figures were interpreted the black art, and destroyed for conjuring.’ ‘Whole libraries,’ exclaims another, ‘were destroyed or made waste paper of, or consumed for the vilest uses... broken windows were patched with remnants of the most valuable MSS. on vellum, and the bakers consumed vast quantities in heating their ovens.’

Collier, who is quoted above (he was an Anglican Bishop), writes: ‘One among the misfortunes consequent upon the suppression of monasteries was an ignorant destruction of a great many books. The books, instead of being removed to royal libraries, to those of Cathedrals, or the universities, were frequently thrown into grantees as things of small consideration. Now, these men oftentimes proved a very ill protection for learning and for antiquity; their avarice was oftentimes so mean and their ignorance so undistinguishing that, when the covers were somewhat rich and would yield a little, they pulled them off, and threw away the books or turned them to waste-paper; and thus many noble libraries were destroyed, to a great public scandal and an irreparable loss to learning.’ That Henry VIII caused the monasteries and convents to be dissolved, and their books and treasures plundered and pillaged wholesale, in order to replenish his coffers that were sorely depleted, is a matter of history, though the ostensible reason was, of course, zeal for the true religion and the purifying of the morals of people and priests. How far a sixteenth century Nero like Henry VIII was fitted to undertake such a work is a matter of opinion. But certain it is that, in the diabolical fury which the authorities of that day waged against all Catholic institutions and monuments, loads of priceless copies of the Sacred Scriptures perished as utterly as though they had been destroyed by the Pagan persecutors of the first four centuries after Christ. Listen (if you are not tired of hearing of such atrocities) to the account given by Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B., in his charming Life of Cardinal Allen,of the outrageous vandalism and hideous barbarities perpetrated at Oxford in those fearful days. After telling how the Chapel of All Souls was wrecked, its images and altars defaced and desecrated, the organs burnt at the quadrangle, and even the sacred pyx in which the Body of the Lord had lain so long cut down and broken into pieces, he goes on, (page 11): – ‘Terrible, too, to all who loved learning was the wanton destruction of priceless manuscripts. Cartloads of books were carried off to the fire or sold to merchants to wrap their wares in. Anything which these miserable men did not understand was condemned as savoring of superstition. All MSS. that were guilty of the superstition of displaying red letters on their fronts or tiles were doomed. Ribald young men carried great spoils of books on biers up and down the city, singing as at a mock funeral, and their priceless burdens were finally burned in the common market-place. The story of it all as told by contemporaries, is all but incredible. The University library was stripped so bare that even the very shelves were sold for firewood, and the quadrangles of New College were for days littered with torn manuscripts.’ I do not think I need say more on the point. It must be tolerably clear now where we should look for an answer to the question, ‘Where are all the old copies of the Bible that Catholics say the monks so lovingly and laboriously made in the Middle Ages?’ The answer must be plainly found in the insensate greed and fanatical destructiveness on the part of the sixteenth century Revolutionaries. Which side showed the more veneration and regard for God’s written Word may be safely left tot he judgment of all reflecting minds.

Chapter Ten