Richard Landes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>>http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/banned.htm

>the link you offer is good.  note that  canon 14 of toulouse (repeated 
in spain) forbids even latin bibles from being in the hands of the laity.  
more interesting to me perhaps is the deceptively simple reason given by 
Innocent III (in 1199) for the prohibition:

"... to be reproved are those who translate into French the Gospels... etc.
They are moved by a certain love of Scripture in order to explain them
*clandestinely* [latin?]...*The mysteries of the faith are not to explained
rashly to anyone.* Usually in fact, they cannot be understood 
by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with
informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not
only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but
also the educated and the gifted" (Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion
Symbolorum 770-771)


>the "help" of authorized and trained interpretors often came up with
interpretations that were either heretical (radical apostolic, dualist) 
or revolutionary (peasant's revolts.... 

this reason immediately appeals to all us contemporary hard-core marxists (St.
Harpo, prey for us), but *may* not be the whole story. 

what if we were to take this most ruthless and authoritarian of popes
*literally*, and posit that he actually meant what he said that the mysteries
*are* simply too complex for proper interpretation by those who lack the
[intense, "scientific"] training --the "informed 
intelligence"[Latin??]-- and patience to probe them suffiently and
diligently.

anyone who has tried to unravel the layers of iconographic meaning in any
given medieval work of art --or, for that matter, simply followed along with
the text of, say, the exegetical sermons of Guerric of Igny (my favorite)--
realises that things were simply not what they may seem at first glance to be
for these people.

they were 1.5 cameral minded; though by Inno. III's time they were certainly
starting to "wake up."

the proof of this particular pudding might be in that, indeed, much, if not
all, of the "mystery" of early and high medieval christianity has 
been stripped away --and, literally, forgotten-- by the christian masses
(protestant and catholic alike), even as the availability of the printed text
(the literal Word) has increased apace.

Innocent III is not one of my favorite people, but i believe that he was on to
something there.

comprehension of something as absurdly (on its face) ambiguous as Scripture is
a task not to be take on lightly.

i seem to recall something about the study of the Sacred Page being
discouraged (forbidden???) in the 12th c. to students before the age of 
30 --not *just* the laiety, then, whose access was restricted.

and, of course, manuscript books were expensive --*damned* expensive-- 
and you are certianly correct to emphasise the significance of the 
arrival of the Guttenburg Revolution in these matters.

>...to this day catholicism is marked by the predilection of the clergy 
to digest the scriptural food for its flock.

not just catholicism, but certainly true for protestant sects, too --esp.
perhaps the more evangelical ones.  

what is tent revivialism --and it's contemporary spawn, televangelism-- 
if not the spoonfeeding, in a "Mass" hysterical context (complete with
"liturgical" "chanting" --the cadenced speech of the "pastor"), of the 
most Pablumatic claptrap?

>i was in La Procure, a [*the*] parisian catholic bookshop, getting a french
copy of the bible....and joking with the salesman about how in their day no
one had a bible.  i asked them why not, and they laughed and said that in
their day the bible was practically on the papal index.  

>now i know this is anecdotal... 

anecdotes are good.

here's the distilled essence of others, from 25 years in the used book
bidness, at home and abroad:

full catholic bibles are *scarce*, in any language, in the used book network.

even the Douay-Rheims over here --i've always kept a look out for them, and
yet i don't believe that i've dealt more than a dozen or so in my brilliant
career.

several years spent in France: perhaps three or four french eds. (all on
unbelievably crappy paper); *three* vulgates (one early 16th c.); three latin
concordances (all 17th c., very finely printed).

annecdotal details upon request.

even my much more sucessful collegue, Thomas Loome, who sets up at Kalamazoo
with thousands of books --most of which he has purchased from defunct catholic
seminaries and college libraries-- only has a handful of "catholic" bibles in
any language in any one year.

>there is, of course, a profound irony here.  

several.

>xnty started out not only by using a biblical translation as its scriptural
basis (septuagint), but the NT, at least insofar as it records the words of
jesus and tales told by his disciples, is a translation from aramaic into
greek.  no religion in the world is so committed to translation of sacred
words and to publication of them for all, than xnty.


i don't discount yours, but i like mine best.

>so what happened to the medieval catholic church?


well, richard, that might take a while to explain, in any detail at all.

gotta minute?

best to all from here,

christopher








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