Quote:Oh, and the Catholic church forbade the common Catholics from even reading the Bible for about a thousand years.
Yes they did but it was largely irrelevant. Books had to be painstakingly hand copied and were thus both rare and very expensive. The vast majority of the population couldn't read at all and they certainly couldn't read Latin. Even the nobility was not terribly literate. Women were considered brood mares and the men were regarded as little more than chivalric cannon fodder in an age before cannons. There is a reason why men like Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Richelieu were trusted advisers to their kings. They were a lot better educated than the kings!
The church was right to fear the printed word. Gutenberg's first bible rolled off the press in 1455. 50 years later Martin Luther started getting uppity!
