Medieval Bible translations

[Deleted]

Is it true the medieval Church was against translation of the Bible to the vernacular, and if so, why?

[joel]

My understanding of the issue is that they allowed translations, but were quite strict on which ones could be distributed. I'm certainly no expert on it though.

[joe]

No it wasn't against translation but many of the languages had no written equivelent. For example, St Cyrril had to develop the cyrilic alphabet before he and Methodius could do a translation. The English had vernacular translations, Venerable Bede did some for example. Also, many people were illiterate, those that could read could read Latin, which the Bible was translated to.

[himself]

Also free-lance translations were often tendentious, with some local political axe to grind. By keeping everything in Latin, they could more easily verify that the various copies were the same. Augustine discussed the difficulties of translating from Greek to Latin in "On Christian doctrine," pointing out how powerful figures of speech in one language might not mean the same thing in another. The Latin bible served therefore as a gage block or reference standard for calibration.

Keep in mind, too, that the Roman Church was not as bibliocentric as some modern sects. Like the Orthodox Church, Rome taught from the Sacred Traditions. The Bible was perhaps the single most important of these; but it was "the faith handed down from the apostles" that mattered, and that included the Church Fathers and other documents.