
Contents
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The Bible in the Middle Ages The Bible in the Middle Ages
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The English Bible in the Middle Ages The English Bible in the Middle Ages
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How the Plowman and Margery Kempe Learned Their Bible How the Plowman and Margery Kempe Learned Their Bible
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Conclusion Conclusion
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Further Reading Further Reading
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Works Cited Works Cited
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7 The English Bible before the Reformation
Get accessBeth Allison Barr (PhD, Medieval History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is the James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University. She is the author of The Pastoral Care of Women in Late Medieval England (2008 and 2022) and The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (2021).
Elizabeth Marvel (PhD, Baylor University) is the Academic Director for Global Action, a nonprofit working in global theological education. Her research interests include women and pastoral care in the medieval and majority worlds. She explores these questions in her recent dissertation, “Precarity and Pastoral Care: Nuns and Bishops of the Fifteenth Century Diocese of Lincoln.” She also earned an MA in Church History from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a BA in History.
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Published:19 November 2024
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Abstract
The Bible revolution wrought by the Reformation among ordinary Christians began with the medieval world. From the development of physical Bibles throughout Europe (available to clergy and laity) which created many features still found in modern print Bibles, to the long history of the English Bible, to the rise of a thriving medieval book market for vernacular Scripture, and even to the clerical emphasis on teaching Scripture (especially through sermons), this essay shows how medieval Christianity laid a solid foundation for the Reformation emphasis on sola Scriptura. The medieval Catholic Church, in other words, never banned vernacular Bibles in a comprehensive nor consistent manner—as evidenced by the extraordinary popularity of the so-called Wycliffite Bible. Thus, contrary to modern stereotypes, medieval vernacular translations of the Bible were accepted by ecclesiastical authorities and familiar to laity during the pre-Reformation era.
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