P016 A Short History of the English Bible.

P016 A Short History of the English Bible.

Resembling the "Bible of the Poor" was the Speculum Salvationis, or "Mirror of Salvation." There are manuscript copies which are said to have been written in the twelfth century. Many copies were printed in the fifteenth century. The work consists of engravings of Scripture-scenes and explanatory texts in Latin.

Though printed in Holland, some copies of it found their way to England.

There was, also, the Legenda Aurea, or "Golden Legend," written in 1292 by James de Voragine, a Dominican friar, who afterward became Archbishop of Genoa. Originally written in Latin, it was translated into French in the fourteenth century, and into English in the fifteenth.

Mingled with many legendary absurdities concerning the lives of the saints, there are translations of portions of the Pentateuch and of the Gospels.

Caxton printed the first English edition as early as 1483. The work, whether in manuscript or printed, was very popular for many years.

Stevens says: "It was, no doubt, read in churches, and, though the text is mixed with much priestly gloss and dross, it nevertheless contains, in almost a literal translation, a great portion of the Bible."(1) A number of Saxon and English versions of portions of Scripture were prepared at different times, and circulated in manuscript form.

These will be especially noticed in the next chapter, and the manuscript translation of the Bible by Wycliffe in the chapter following. The art of printing reduced materially the cost of Bibles.

Printed Bibles were sold in England as early as 1480, but they were in Latin, and were of no service to the common people.

It will thus be seen how meager were the opportunities of studying the word of God. For nearly eight hundred years after the preaching of Augustine the people had no complete Bible in their own tongue, and for about a hundred and fifty years more they were dependent on a manuscript Bible, copies of which were necessarily expensive.

------------ (FN1)The Bible, etc., p. 58.

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