Since Luther's study of the Bible has been referred to several times in
these pages, it is time that the righteousness of a certain indignation
be examined which Catholic writers display. They pretend to be
scandalized by the tale that in Luther's time the Bible was such a rare
book that it was practically unknown. With the air of outraged innocence
some of them rise to protest against the stupid myth that Luther
"discovered" the Bible. They claim that their Church had been so eager
to spread the Bible, and had published editions of the Bible in such
rapid succession, that in Luther's age Christian Europe was full of
Bibles. Moreover, that age, they tell us, was an age of intense
Bible-study. Not only the theologians, but also the laymen, not only the
wealthy and highly educated, but also the common people, had unhindered
access to the Bible. The historical data for Rome's alleged zeal in
behalf of the Bible these Catholic writers gather largely from
Protestant authors. For greater effect they propose to buttress, with
the fruits of the laborious research of Protestants, their charge that
Luther's ignorance of the Bible was self-inflicted and really
inexcusable.
What are the facts in the case? The whole account which we possess of
Luther's "discovery" of the Bible is contained in Luther's Table Talk.
(22, 897.) This is a book which Luther did not personally compose nor
edit. It is a collection of sayings which his guests noted down while at
meat with Luther, or afterwards from memory. From a casual remark during
a meal Mathesius obtained the information which he published in his
biography of Luther, _viz.,_ that, when twenty-two years old, Luther one
day had found the Bible in a library at Erfurt.
Now, we do not wish to question the general credibility of the Table
Talk, nor the authenticity of this particular remark of Luther about his
stumbling upon the Bible by accident. But it is certainly germane to our
subject to strip the incident of the dramatic features with which
Catholic writers claim that most Protestants still surround the event.
Did Luther say, and did Mathesius report, that up to the year 1505 he
had not known of the Bible? Not at all. He merely stated that up to that
time he had not seen _a complete copy of the Bible_. Luther himself has
told scores of times that when a schoolboy at Mansfeld, and later at
Magdeburg and Eisenach where he studied, he had heard portions of the
Gospels and Epistles read during the regular service at church. Some
passages he had learned by heart. Luther's guests would have laughed at
him if he had claimed such a "discovery" of the Bible as Catholic
writers--and some of their Protestant authorities--think that Mathesius
has claimed for him and modern Protestants still credit him with.
What Luther did relate we are prepared to show was not, and could not
be, an unusual occurrence in those days. "Even in the University of
Paris, which was considered the mother and queen of all the rest, not a
man could be found, when Luther arose, competent to dispute with him out
of the Scriptures. This was not strange. Many of the doctors of theology
in those times had never read the Bible. Carolostadt expressly tells us
this was the case with himself. Whenever one freely read the Bible, he
was cried out against, as one making innovations, as a heretic, and
exposing Christianity to great danger by making the New Testament known.
Many of the monks regarded the Bible as a book which abounded in
numerous error." (Mosheim, III, 15.) The spiritual atmosphere in which
Luther and all Christians of his time were brought up was unfavorable to
real Bible-study.
But before we exhibit the true attitude of Rome toward the Bible, it
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!
Reading is the correlate of writing. The person who cannot write, as a
rule, cannot read. For this reason the Bible must have remained a sealed
book to many who had ample opportunity to become acquainted with it. The
wide diffusion of Bible knowledge which Catholic writers would lead us
to believe always existed in the Roman Church is subject to question. It
is true that in the first centuries of the Christian era there was a
great hunger and thirst for the Word of God. But that was before the
Roman Church came into existence. For it is a reckless assumption that
the papacy is an original institution in the Church of Christ, and that
Roman Catholicism and Christianity are identical. It is also true that
in the early days of the Reformation the people manifested a great
desire for the Word of God. It was as new to them as it had been to
Luther. They would crowd around a person who was able to read, and would
listen for hours. At St. Paul's in London public reading of the Bible
became a regular custom. But between the early days of Christianity and
the beginning of the Reformation lies a period which. is known as the
Dark Ages. No amount of oratory will turn that age into a Bright Age.
"From the seventh to the eleventh century books were so scarce that
often not one could be found in an entire city, and even rich
monasteries possessed only a single text-book." (_Universal Encycl.,_
2, 96.) These conditions were not greatly improved until printing was
invented. Luther had to do with people who were emerging from the sad
conditions of that age, the effects of which were still visible
centuries after. He writes: "The deplorable destitution which I recently
observed, during a visitation of the churches, has impelled and
constrained me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian Doctrine, in such
a small and simple form. Alas, what manifold misery I beheld! The common
people, especially in the villages, know nothing at all of Christian
doctrine; and many pastors are quite unfit and incompetent to teach. Yet
all are called Christians, have been baptized, and enjoy the use of the
Sacraments, although they know neither the Lord's Prayer, nor the Creed,
nor the Ten Commandments, and live like the poor brutes and irrational
swine." (Preface to the Small Catechism.) Remember, these people lived
in that age when Luther was born and grew up, which Catholic writers
picture to us as a Bible-knowing and Bible-loving age.
The invention of printing wrought a mighty change in this respect. This
glorious art became hallowed from the beginning by being harnessed for
service to the Bible. But even this invention did not at once remove the
prevailing ignorance. We must not transfer modern conditions to the
fifteenth century. In 1906, one of the many Protestant Bible Societies
reported that it had disposed in one year of nearly 80,000,000 Bibles
and parts of the Bible in many languages. The Bible is perhaps the
cheapest book of modern times. It was not so in the days of Gutenberg,
Froschauer, Luft, and the Claxtons. Even after printing had been
invented, Bibles sold at prices that would be considered prohibitive in
our day. When the Duke of Anhalt ordered three copies of the Bible
printed on parchment, he was told that for each copy he must furnish 340
calf-skins, and the expense would be sixty gulden. (Luther's Works, 21b,
2378.) But even the low-priced editions of the Bible, printed on common
paper (which was not introduced into Europe until the thirteenth
century), cost a sum of money which a poor man would consider a fortune,
and which even the well-to-do would hesitate to spend in days when money
was scarce and its purchasing power was considerably different from what
it is to-day. At a period not so very remote from the present a Bible
was considered a valuable chattel of which a person would dispose by a
special codicil in his will. For generations Bibles would thus be handed
down from father to son, not only because of the sacred memories that
attached to them as heirlooms, but also because of their actual value in
money.
Everything considered, then, we hold the argument that the Bible was a
widely diffused book in the days before Luther to be historically
untrue, because it implies physical impossibilities. With the
magnificent printing and publishing facilities of our times, how many
persons are still without the Bible? How many parishioners in all the
Catholic churches of this country to-day own a Bible? The modern Bible
societies are putting forth an energy in spreading the Bible that is
unparalleled in history. Still their annual reports leave the impression
that all they accomplish is as a drop in the bucket over and against the
enormous Bible-need still unsupplied. Catholic writers paint the
Bible-knowledge of the age before Luther in such exceedingly bright
colors that one is led to believe that age surpassed ours. They
overshoot their aim. Nobody finds fault with the Roman Church for not
having invented the printing-press. All would rather be inclined to
excuse her little achievement in spreading the Bible during the Middle
Ages on the ground of the poor facilities at her command. Every
intelligent and fair person will accord the Roman Church every moiety of
credit for the amount of Bible-knowledge which she did convey to the
people. We heartily join Luther in his belief that even in the darkest
days of the papacy men were still saved in the Roman Church, because
they clung in their dying hour to simple texts of the Scriptures which
they had learned from their priests. (22, 577.) But no one must try and
make us believe that the Roman Church before Luther performed marvels in
spreading the Bible. She never exhausted even the poor facilities at her
command.
Far from wondering, then, that Luther had not seen the complete Bible
until his twenty-second year, we regard this as quite natural in view of
his lowly extraction, and we consider the censure which superficial
Protestant writers have applied to Luther because of his early ignorance
of the Bible as uncommonly meretricious. When we bear in mind the known
character of the Popes in Luther's days, we doubt whether even they had
read the entire Bible. Luther's "discovery" of the Bible, however is not
regarded by Protestants as a discovery such as Columbus made when he
found the American continent. Luther knew of the existence of the Bible
and could cite sayings of the Bible at the time when he found the bulky
volume in the library that made such a profound impression upon him.
And yet his find was a true discovery. Luther discovered that his Church
had not told him many important and beautiful things that are in the
Bible. He became so absorbed with the novel contents of this wonderful
book that the desire was wrung from his: heart: Oh, that I could possess
this book! But this enthusiastic wish at once became clouded by another
discovery which he made while poring over the precious revelation of the
very heart of Jesus: his Church had told him things differently from
what he found them stated in the Bible. He was shocked when he
discovered that in his heart a new faith was springing up which had come
to him out of the Bible,--a faith which contradicted the avowed faith of
the Roman Church. Poor Luther! He had for the first time come under the
influence of that Word which is quick and powerful, and sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and
spirit, and of the joints and marrow (Hebr. 4, 12), and he did not know
it. Some of the noblest minds in the ages before him have had to pass
through the same experience. With the implicit trust which at that time
lie reposed in the Roman Church, Luther suppressed his "heretical"
thoughts. He said: "Perhaps I am in error. Dare I believe myself so
smart as to know better than the Church?" (Hausrath, 1, 18.) Yes, Luther
had really discovered the Bible, namely, the Bible which the Roman
Church never has been, and never will be, willing to let the people see
while she remains what she is to-day. This "discovery"-tale which so
offends Catholic writers could be verified in our day. Let Catholic
writers put into the hands of every Catholic of America the true,
genuine, unadulterated Word of God, without any glosses and comment, and
let them watch what is going to happen. There will be astonishing
"discoveries" made by the readers, and those discoveries will be no
fabrications.