From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Sat Sep 20 2003 - 16:19:59 EDT
Glenn Morton wrote:
>
> This royalty thread seems amazing to me. If the medieval clerics would
> bar-b-que you for claiming that the earth went round the sun or for
> suggesting that one could read the Bible apart from the clerics, it seems to
> me that any claim to be descended from a sinful affair between Jesus and
> Mary Magdalene, would gain one quick entry into the afterlife.
It wasn't generally held in the Middle Ages that it was wrong for the laity to
read the Bible. Of course most laypeople couldn't read anything &, while there were
vernacular versions available, most Bibles were in Latin. & it's true that laypeople
generally weren't encouraged to read the Bible. But the chains sometimes seen on
medieval Bibles were to keep them from being stolen, not to keep people from reading
them.
Shalom,
George
-- George L. Murphy gmurphy@raex.com http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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