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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
THE BIBLE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
(Continued from Page Five)
found amongst us without a correct version of the
Holy Scriptures.”
Can any honest and unprejudiced person reading
these words from all the Bishops to Catholics doubt
what is the teaching of the Catholic Church on this
subject?
The next statement of our good friends is that
Protestants practically discovered the Bible or recov
ered it from oblivion and neglect. I am quite sure
that the average Protestant today believes that the
Reformation was absolutely necessary in order that
the Bible might be placed in the hands of the people.
They are persuaded that the Reformation was mainly
due to the dissemination of the Bible, for they are
firmly cohvinced that the people had been kept in
profound ignorance of the Holy Scriptures—in fact,
knew nothing of them—but that as soon as the Bible
was given them, they promptly embraced the teach
ings of the reformed churches.
The facts do not sustain these views. I shall quote
a few Protestant writers to show.
The Church Times, a Protestant Episcopal publi
cation of England, in its issue of July, 1878, said:
‘‘This Catalogue (The Caxton) will be very useful for
one thing at any rate; as disproving the popular lie
about Luther finding the Bible for the first time in
Erfurt about 1507. Not only are there many edi
tions of the Latin Vulgate long anterior to that time,
but there were actually nine German editions of the
Bible in this exhibition earlier than 1483, the year
of Luther’s birth, and at least three more before the
end of the century.”
In The Athenaeum, of October 6, 1883, Mr. H.
Stevens, a Protestant, writes: ‘‘By 1507, more than
one hundred Latin Bibles had been printed, some of
them small and cheap pocket editions. There had
been besides thirteen editions of a translation of the
Vulgate into German and other modern languages.”
In the Grenville Library in the British Museum, there
is nearly a complete set of fourteen grand old Ger
man Bibles, 1460-1518—the first twenty-odd years
before the birth of Luther.
On December 22, 1883, The Athenaeum, in an
article on ‘‘The German Bible before Luther,” says:
“That the Bible was in common use among the people
long before Luther’s time; and that Luther evidently
had the old Catholic German Bible of 1483 before
him while making his translation;” and it adds: “It
is time we should hear no more of Luther as the first
German Bible translator, and of his translation as an
independent work from the original Greek.”
In a review of Dr. Edgar’s “The Bibles of Eng
land,” this Protestant reviewer says: “Dr. Edgar still
repeats the oft-exploded notion that the Catholic
Church had a widespread horror of Scripture trans
lations, whether accompanied with notes or not, and
however faultlessly executed.” He does not seem to
know that long before the Reformation every Cath
olic nation all over Europe had versions of the Bible
in the vernacular of the country. Between 1477,
when the first edition of the first French New Testa
ment was published at Lyons and 1533”, when the first
French Protestant Bible was published, upward of
twenty editions of the Bible in the French vernacular
issued from the Catholic press. In Germany, prior to
the first publication of the first edition of Luther s
Bible, 1534, no fewer than thirty Catholic editions
of the entire Scriptures and parts of the Bible ap
peared in the German vernacular. In Italy, the very
seat of the Papacy, two editions of an Italian transla
tion appeared in 1471, and several other editions
appeared prior to the Reformation. These facts any
student can verify by a visit to the British Museum,
where most of the Bibles are to be seen.
Not to multiply evidence of the fact that the Bible
was well known in Germany long before Luther’s
time, it will suffice to state these facts.
German Bibles.
The first German printed Bible issued from the
Mentz press about 1462. Another version came out
in 1466. There were twenty-seven different editions
of the Bible in German pritned before that of Luther
independent of the two at Leipsic. A German ver
sion, under the auspices of the Archbishop, appeared
at Mentz in 1534, and it passed through more than
twenty editions.
Italian Bibles.
Three editions were printed in 1471, one a trans
lation by a Camaldodese Monk in 1 42 1. More than
eleven editions of this, published with the expressed
permission of the Pope, appeared before 1567. At
Venice, the Gospels were translated and published by
a Monk named Guido in 1486; in 1532, Brussioli pub
lished a new and complete edition in Venice. In
the space of twenty-seven years it passed through ten
editions. Another edition was published at Venice in
1 538, and again in 1 546 and 1 547. There were more
than forty editions of the Bible in Italy before ‘the
Protestant one.
Spanish Bibles.
In 1405, the whole Bible was published in the
vernacular, and again in 1478 and 1515, with the
approbation of the Church. In 1512, the New Testa
ment appeared, and it was reprinted in 1544, 1601,
1603, 1608 and 1615.
French Bibles.
A French edition by two priests of the Order of
St. Augustine was published at Lyons in 1478. The
Bible first published in 1290 was printed in 1487, and
before 1547 it passed through sixteen editions. In
1512, Le Ferre commenced a new edition, which ap
peared in 1523 and again in 1530, 1534 and 1541.
This version passed through more than forty editions
before 1700. The first Protestant version appeared
in 1535.
Other Versions.
A number of Dutch and Flemish versions appeared
before the Reformation. Low German versions ap
peared in 1470 and 1480; at Delft in 1477; at Geneva
in 1479; at Lubeck in 1491; at Halberstadt in 1522;
at Antwerp in 1515, 1525, 1526 and 1528.
Ten editions of the Testament published in Ant
werp appeared within thirty years. A Bohemian ver-