The Biography of the Bible

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FIVE
The Great Translations

IT IS NOW recognized that the Reformation and the great translations of the Bible which accompanied it were incidents in a social revolution. The Catholic Church was a part of the dying feudal system; its prelates were noblemen, its estates rivaled those of earls and dukes. Even in England, where the Church was weaker than on the Continent, its monasteries are estimated to have owned one-tenth of the national wealth. Of the "nyne and twenty in a companye" that gathered at the Tabard Inn in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, more than a third were connected, directly or indirectly, with the ecclesiastical hierarchy. To maintain this enormous bureaucracy, the land was burdened with tithes and taxes. The Papacy no longer even pretended to have a spiritual mission: the licentiousness and crimes of Alexander VI, the political intrigues and ruthless wars of Pope Julius II, the rivalry of the double Popes of Rome and Avignon, these were known to all. Idealists were shocked by the corruptions of the Church,

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and materialists envied it its wealth. As a new middle class arose through the extension of trade and commerce in the late Middle Ages its members begrudged both the nobility and clergy their special privileges. Of the two the clergy were the more hated because they took their orders from Rome, offending the spirit of nationalism that had begun to develop, particularly in northern Europe. Thus, moral, political, and economic reasons all lay behind the Reformation.

The reformers were drawn to the Bible by natural affinity. Theirs was the cause of the people against the rich and powerful; the Prophets had fought for the same cause. In the struggle of the Hebrews against idolatry, the reformers saw an analogue to their own struggle against the ritualism and relic worship in the Catholic Church. Their emphasis upon the individual conscience drew inspiration from the Gospels; Paul's teaching of justification by faith brought them courage and consolation. Inevitably, the Bible became the chief weapon of the reformers in their war upon the Catholic Church.

The greater the distance from Rome, the less the power of the Catholic hierarchy. So it was at the outer edge of Christendom, in England, that there

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