It is often said that the Catholic Church made it illegal to read the bible in the vernacular. The council of Oxford is cited as proof that reading the bible in English was against the law in England. Actually in 1408 the third synod of Oxford, England, after the many errors found in Wycliffe’s English bible, BANNED UNAUTHORIZED English translations of the Bible and decreed that possession of English translation's had to be approved by diocesan authorities first before being used in Church or personnel devotion. This shows that the Catholic Church took seriously its role in protecting and preserving scripture.
The Oxford council declared: "It is dangerous, as St. Jerome declares, to translate the text of Holy Scriptures out of one idiom into another, since it is not easy in translations to preserve exactly the same meaning in all things. We therefore command and ordain that henceforth no one translate the text of Holy Scripture into English or any other language as a book, booklet, or tract, of this kind lately made in the time of the said John Wyclif or since, or that hereafter may be made, either in part or wholly, either publicly or privately, under pain of excommunication, until such translation shall have been approved and allowed by the Provincial Council. He who shall act otherwise let him be punished as an abettor of heresy and error."
The Oxford council declared: "It is dangerous, as St. Jerome declares, to translate the text of Holy Scriptures out of one idiom into another, since it is not easy in translations to preserve exactly the same meaning in all things. We therefore command and ordain that henceforth no one translate the text of Holy Scripture into English or any other language as a book, booklet, or tract, of this kind lately made in the time of the said John Wyclif or since, or that hereafter may be made, either in part or wholly, either publicly or privately, under pain of excommunication, until such translation shall have been approved and allowed by the Provincial Council. He who shall act otherwise let him be punished as an abettor of heresy and error."
Was the Catholic Church against people hearing God's word in the vernacular? No, because the Catholic Church had already translated the bible into French, Dutch, Polish, Italian and Spanish in the 12th and 13th century. The approved English bible (Douay Rheims) started with the NT in 1578 and was finished by 1582 with the completion of the OT in 1609.
Pre-Wyclif English Translation:
Besides these versions of particular books of Holy Scripture, there existed numerous renderings of the Our Father, the Ten Commandments, the Life, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, and of the parts read on... Sundays and Feastdays in the Mass. In general, if we may believe the testimony of Archbishop Cranmer, Sir Thomas More, Foxe the martyrologist, and the authors of the Preface to the Reims Testament, the whole Bible was to be found in the mother tongue long before John Wyclif was born (cf. "American Ecclesiastical Review", XXXII, Philadelphia, June, 1905, 594).
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