Message #160180

[Azrael]

p. 75
FOUR
The Bible under Medievalism

THE MISSIONARIES went forth to Christianize the Northern barbarians with the Bible in their hands. As later with the American Indians, its simple touching stories of piety and suffering won the hearts of the rude tribesmen as could no other appeal. Without the Bible, the medieval Church would have been powerless to accomplish its enormous task of bringing a thousand warring nations and subnations, of divergent stock and traditions, into some kind of spiritual unity. That the whole of Europe came at last to accept, not merely nominally but actually, the same religion, with the same general code of moral obligations for all, was a testimony primarily to the enduring efficacy of the Bible.

In the beginning, vernacular renderings of the Bible were encouraged, and wherever this occurred its fecundating influence was soon apparent. Especially was this the case in England where, aside from Beowulf and a few fragments, Anglo-Saxon

p. 76