will be necessary to examine the Catholic claim regarding the extensive
dissemination and the intensive study of the Bible among the people in
and before Luther's times. Before the age of printing one cannot speak,
of course, of "editions" of the Bible. The earliest date for the
publication of a printed edition of the Bible is probably 1460--
twenty-three years before Luther's birth. That was an event fully as
momentous as the opening of the transatlantic cable in our time. Before
printing had been invented, the Bible was multiplied by being copied.
That was a slow process. Even when a number of copyists wrote at the
same time to dictation, it was a tedious process, requiring much time,
and not very many would join in such a cooperative effort of Bible
production. Besides, few men in those early ages were qualified for this
work. A certain degree of literary proficiency was required for the
task. The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its
power are notorious for the illiteracy of the masses. It was considered
a remarkable achievement even for a nobleman to be able to scribble his
name. Among those who possessed the ability few had the inclination and
persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The
cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning and centers of
lower education, but even these asylums of piety sheltered many an
ignorant monk and others who were afflicted with the proverbial monks'
malady--laziness. It is to the credit of the pious members of the Roman
Church in that unhappy age that they manifested such a laudable interest
in the Bible. The achievement of copying the entire Bible with one's own
hand in that age is so great that it palliates some of the glaring evils
of the inhuman system of monasticism. But if every monk in every
cloister, every priest in every Catholic parish, every professor in
every Catholic university, could have produced twenty copies of the
Bible during his lifetime, how little would have been accomplished to
make the Bible available for the millions of men then living!