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We continue, in this article, with the exposition of the arguments that can be used to disprove the thesis that the protestant church had “hijacked” the Word of God and made it inaccessible to the majority of the faithful. For example, it is said that Luther was the first German translator of the Bible, but when he translated it there were in circulation fourteen scholarly language versions and five in everyday language. |
| Luther boasted of having been the first to translate the Bible into German, but already Calvin, the founder of another heresy, reminded him that this honor did not belong to him; in fact, we know that the friar edited the New Testament in 1522, and in 1532 the rest, and that “it has been said of this version, with a great lack of historical truth, which was the first German version in the vernacular, though, by then, only in Germany there were fourteen scholarly language versions and five in everyday language. In addition there were many partial versions, such as the New Testament, of the Psalms… (Cf. Janssen: Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem E.g. For Canmem des Mittelalters, 8 vv., Freiburg, 1883-1893, Volume 1, p. 51)” (Francisco J. Montalbán, S.I., The Origins of the Protestant Reformation, Reason and Faith, Madrid 1942, p. 129).156 editionsThe great historian Ricardo García-Villoslada also informs us of the Germanic versions of the Bible before Luther: “Many are of the opinion that the main work of Martin Luther in his life was the translation of the Sacred Scripture in the language of his people. There is no doubt that the vernacular version of the Bible and the disclosure of the same, offering it as the only rule of faith, played a very important role in the founding and establishment of the Lutheran Church. Exaggerating their merits, on the other hand undeniable, used to repeat that in the Church, before him, no one knew how to nor read the Bible. Today the reader laughs at such unjust claims, dictated by passion. Remember what we said in the reading of the Bible when Fr. Martin was a novice in Erfurt. Francisco Falk has counted no less than 156 editions since the invention of the printing press until 1520. German translations of all of Holy Scripture there were many before Luther, at least fourteen in four High German and Low German, without counting partial versions, and psalters, and the Gospels, etc. In the 14th century a total translation was made in Bavaria, that the Alsatian John Mentelin printed in Strasbourg in 1466, and that with some modifications was reprinted thirteen times before Luther, becoming as a Vulgate German according to Grisar. (You can consult the great edition of W. Kurrelmeyer, Die erste deutsche Bibel [1903-15], 10 Tübingen volumes with the original text and corrections to the 13 editions. See also W. Kurrelmeyer, The Genealogy of the Prelutheran Bibles, in The Journal of Germanic Philology, 238-47 3.2 [1900]; W. Walter, Die Deutsche Bibel: Übersetzung des Mittelalters, Braunschweig 1889-92)” (García-Villoslada, Martin Luther, BAC, Madrid 1976, t. II, p. 399).
It can also be mentioned that the translation of the Bible, during the Middle Ages was in other Indo-European languages, such as Armenian (cf. UNED, op. cit., p. 30 and Molina Madrid, op. cit., p. 4), made in the 5th century, the century in which begins the “Age of darkness”!. What has been said so far is enough to demolish one of the myths of the protestant historiography: the tremendous ignorance in regards to the Bible that the evil Catholic Church maintained against the medieval Christian peoples. Medieval Culture Another one of those protestants myths is the one which affirms that in the Middle Ages “the majority of people did not know how to read or write. So, they were ‘in the dark’ with regard to any kind of knowledge, since they could not be communicated with” (Lesson 1 Section 34, p. 5.8). Let’s see what that science called history tells us about this matter: “In the Middle Ages, as in every age, the child goes to school. Usually, it is the school of your parish or the nearest monastery. In fact, all the churches have a school: this was required by the Lateran Council of 1179, and in England, a country more conservative than ours, the church can still be seen next to the school and the cemetery. Stately foundations are often those that guarantee the education of children; Rosny, a small village on the banks of the Seine, had from the beginning of the 13th century a school that was founded around the year 1200 by lord Gui V Mauvoisin. Other times there may be private schools; the inhabitants of a village are associated to keep a teacher who takes charge of the education of their children. (…)Also the chapters of the cathedrals were subject to the obligation to teach, dictated by the Lateran Council. The child entered in school at seven or eight years of age, and the education that prepared for university studies extended over a decade; the same as today, according to the data provided by the Abbot Gilles The Muisit. Boys and girls were separated; girls had particular facilities, perhaps less numerous, but where the studies were sometimes a very high quality. The Abbey of Argenteuil, where Eloisa was educated, provided the learning of Sacred Scripture, literature, medicine and surgery, apart from the Greek and Hebrew, which Abelardo introduced. In general, the schools gave their students notions of grammar, arithmetic, geometry, music and theology; some included some technical education. The Histoire Littéraire mentions as an example the Vassor school in the diocese of Metz, where at the same time they learned Sacred Scripture and literature; students worked in gold, silver and copper. At this time, the children of different social classes were educated together, as evidenced by the well-known anecdote that presents to Charlemagne irritated against the children of the barons, who were lazy, contrary to the children of the servants and the poor. The only distinction made was that of the remuneration, given that education was free of charge for the poor and payment for the rich. We will see that this provision could be extended for the duration of the studies. Humble Origin This is no doubt the reason why there are so many great people of humble origin: Suger, who governed France during the crusade of Louis VII, was the son of servants; Maurice de Sully, the bishop of Paris who built the church of Nôtre-Dame, was born of a beggar; St Peter Damian was a swineherd in its infancy, and Gerbert d’Audrillac, one of the lights of the medieval science, was also a shepherd; Pope Urban VI was the son of a shoemaker of Troyes, and Gregory VII, the great Pope of the Middle Ages, son of a poor goatherd. All of the above, pure history, presents us with a picture of the Middle Ages, very different from the one drawn by the protestant Mythology: The instruction was vast, everyone had access to the knowledge of the Scriptures, and the culture was free for the poor. |
