... on English Reformation against Melvyn Bragg

1) ... on English Reformation against Melvyn Bragg , 2)... against Melvyn Bragg's calumnies of the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages

Video commented on:

TheUKMonarchy : HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE - 3 The Battle for the Language of the Bible (doc series)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybei2yRXmiY

Comments by number

I

"Only the clergy were allowed to read the word of God and even they did that silently. A bell was rung etc." 07:22 - the Canon Missae is indeed read silently, and a Bell is rung when the priest reads the words that turns bread into Christ's precious Body and wine into his precious Blood.

However, the Gospel reading before that was certainly itself in Latin, but it was either translated or paraphrased to the profit of those ignorant of Latin. Indeed, sometimes all of the Sermon could be a verse translation of the Gospel into the vernacular. True, I am talking or rather writing of the rule of the Council of Tours, 813, but I have a hard time thinking it was very different after the Normans conquered England, since in Normandy they were obeying the council of Tours.

II

A little later: "For the authority of the Catholic Church it was vital that a priest and a language stood between the believer and the Bible" ...

No. For the Catholic Church it was vital to preserve the word of God in fixed languages with fixed grammar and fixed meaning of words that do not vary from dialact to dialect. If you recall Chaucer's prayer as envoie of his book Troilus and Cressida, you know very well that English in the Middle Ages was not meeting that description.

It was also vital that the priest provided the Sacraments, above all Holy Mass. Not something laymen could or can or will ever be able to provide for themselves. And Sacraments also had to be said in a perfect and articulated language, like, in the West, Latin.

An Englishman was taken to what later became France to restore the pronunciation of Latin, since their own one was fluactuating towards the language that was to become French. His name was Alcuin. He was from York. By providing a phonetic equivalence between Latin text and the clergy's pronunciation, he made it possible to make a text phonetically equivalent to what was being pronounced. I e the notation of Romance language in the oaths of Strasburg. That was a few decades before the council of Tours. A few decades before him, a Saint had heard the words of Baptism pronounced so he reflected "are they saying 'in the name of the Daughter' and is the Baptism valid?" That was why CORRECT Latin was vital. An Englishman provided it, since Latin in England had kept its pronunciation rather than following the popular one on the Continent.

III

09:53 "The Church in Wycliffe's time was lazy and corrupt and Bible reading even among clergy surprisingly rare ..."

Says who? Wycliffe? Some other Lollard? Or perhaps some anticlerical Catholic like Boccaccio (one story he wrote was nearly quoted to Napoleon when he threatened to destroy the Church: "if we have not succeeded ourselves you won't succeed either")?

I very much doubt this claim would be based on any kind of real statistic research founded on the sources.* Though what they supported in the Conquest of Wales and the later burning of St Joan of Arc seems to make a specially good case for clerical corruption in England as opposed to other Catholic countries.

Spain had cardinals like Torquemada (John T., his nephew the Inquisitor was called Thomas) and Nebrija** who brought the Bible to the people in GOOD and ACCURATE translations.

* After I wrote this, he gave an example of a complaint, Gloucester, I think perhaps after the plague when the first generation replacing the dead ones were not well formed.

** It was beside John Torquemada not Nebrija but Ximenes who was a Cardinal.

IV

The story of Boccaccio was given a Calvinist with doubts about Catholicism perhaps being right after all ... it helped make him a Catholic:

mobilevclips: Dr. Peter Kreeft's conversion to Catholicism from Protestantism (Full)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO2NGGmWBQo

(Conversion story of Dr Peter Kreeft)

V

170 copies of these Bibles survived ... 11:42 ... sure those are the one's of Wycliffe translation and not of a rival Catholic translation?

[I checked later and found the collaborator of Wycliffe had repented his errors, so his part of the translation work might have been thought of as orthodox - Belloc was very doubtful about any heretical Bible actually surviving, he thought the Lollards were very unpopular.]

VI

Thank's very much for stating that Protestant martyrs from early Lollards up to Tyndale (whom Philip II of Spain would not have wanted Queen Mary I to burn) were posterior to Wycliffe's translation. The English Inquisition was instituted in 1401, by decision of the parliament, but not for hatred of Bible, rather for hatred of the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards (or were they Thirteen?)*. One of them being a blasphemy against the Holy Eucharist.

*Twelve, I checked.

VII

1414 Wyclef's errors are condemned as heresy ... might have been decent here to put in a word or two about Holy Eucharist, and what later English upholders of Catholicism died for on Tyburn scaffolds ... Wycliffe and Lollards denied Real Presence of Our Lord's Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

VIII

As the Reims Bible was mentioned. It was a Catholic translation (I use it in Challoner's revision) and had Catholic comments under the text.

If this surprised England, other countries had had Roman Catholic Bibles in vernacular before the Reformation. 14 in various High German and 4 in Low German dialects before Luther, for instance. And in Spain we have scholars like Nebrija and Cardinal Ximenes putting the Bible at the hands of, not every plowman, but the pious ones. The ones who would not be acting like swine with pearls. This was by no means only the rich and probably not all the rich even, while Spanish Inquisition was powerful. It was not rich versus poor, but pious versus profane in the ideal eyes of Inquisitors dealing with permissions for laymen to read God's words (but not to say the Holy Mass of course!).

IX

"While the Medieval Church" ... 47:49 ... "withheld the Bible from the people" ...

Well, you mean during the Lollard threat?

This is Medieval too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_Bible_translations

And even for Middle English Wyclef was not first:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_Bible_translations

... "the Church of Henry VIII set out to give the Bible to as many as possible."

The text of the Gospel, yes. The example of the people living the Gospel, no. Monks and friars and Catholic clergy in general were soon as persecuted as Lollards had been.

X

And the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us ... among English too, until the Reformation expelled the Holy Mass.