Featured Was Bible possesion banned by the Catholic Church?

Now this is one that people tell me couldn't have happen, and yet history clearly shows what happened and who was the power behind it. The Roman Catholic Church once it rose up tried to stop laymen from possessing or reading the Bible on their own and this intensified through the Middle Ages and later, with the addition of a prohibition forbidding translation of the Bible into native languages.
(See Did the Catholic Church forbid Bible reading?, Why Christians Were Denied Access to Their Bible for 1,000 Years | HuffPost)

The Roman Catholic Church burned the Bibles with the scripture holding what was later to be called the Majority true text or Textus Receptus which came from Jerusalem through Pella where the Christians had fled after the fall in 70 AD, and suppress any writings from it. And also the Bibles that came from Antioch where the Christians had formed their center of studies during the early church, and the true text that reach the Waldensians which they spread to the Reformation and used by Luther and others, so now you have an inkling why they had to be destroyed. They also actually forbid it from being read in a attempt to keep people from seeing the corruption they were allowing into the church, to bring in more pagan converts, and the changes they were making in direct contraction to the Bible truths, calling it traditions, including changing the Sabbath. Many claim it was a misunderstanding or try to deny it, or say there is no proof, or that it is just a story concocted by those who were against the Catholic Church, but lets take a look.

History gives of a decision which is found in the records of the First Council of Constantinople of 381-3, convened by Roman Emperor Theodosius. What was decided at that assembly presents an historical fact, and involved Pope Damasus, who was in attendance.

The historical record shows Pope Damasus banned the Bible and the laity was strictly "forbidden to read the word of God, or to exercise their judgment in order to understand it." (The Library of the Fathers, Damasus, Oxford, 1833-45) After he suppressed the Bible, Damasus created an array of formidable penances and additional anathemas "designed to keep the curious at bay", (Early Theological Writings, G. W. F. Hegal).

The primary intent if you look, was to keep the Bible away from people and to substitute Church authority as the rule of life and belief. So we see how it could impose "traditions" and other unscriptural ideas such as Purgatory, Limbo, ect...

Owning a Bible was actually made a criminal offence by the Roman Catholic Church. The pope Nicholas I pronounced against all people who expressed interest in reading the Bible, and reaffirmed its banned public use in 860 (Papal Decree).

In 1073, Pope Gregory supported and confirmed the ban, and in 1198, Pope Innocent III declared that anybody caught reading the Bible would be stoned to death by "soldiers of the Church military." (Diderot's Encyclopedia, 1759).

In 1229, the Council of Toulouse, passed another Decree "that strictly prohibits laics from having in their possession either the Old or New Testaments; or from translating them into the vulgar tongue".

By the 14th Century, the possession of a Bible by the laity was a criminal offence and punishable by whipping, confiscation of real and personal property, and burning at the stake. Now your getting an idea why so many were being burned at the stake, and the hidden purpose of the spread of the various inquisitions.

With the Bible banned from public scrutiny by a series of decrees, popes endorsed the public suppression of the Bible for over a thousand years, right up until after the Reformation and the printing of the King James Bible in 1611.

Here are some of the decrees...

Decree of the Council of Toulouse (1229 C.E.): 'We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.'

Ruling of the Council of Tarragona of 1234 C.E.: 'No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned...'

Proclamations at the Ecumenical Council of Constance in 1415 C.E.: Oxford professor, and theologian John Wycliffe, was the first (1380 C.E.) to translate the New Testament into English to '...helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christs sentence'. For this 'heresy' Wycliffe was posthumously condemned by Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury. By the Council's decree 'Wycliffe's bones were exhumed and publicly burned and the ashes were thrown into the Swift River.'

Here are some of heresy....
'He had come to regard the scriptures as the only reliable guide to the truth about God and maintained that all Christians should rely on the Bible rather than the unreliable and frequently self-serving teachings of popes and clerics. He said that there was no scriptural justification for the papacy’s existence and attacked the riches and power that popes and the Church as a whole had acquired. He disapproved of clerical celibacy, pilgrimages, the selling of indulgences and praying to saints. He thought the monasteries were corrupt and the immorality with which many clerics often behaved invalidated the sacraments they conducted. If clerics were accused of crime, they should be tried in the ordinary lay courts, not in their special ecclesiastical tribunals.

Wycliffe advanced his revolutionary opinions in numerous tracts. He thought that England should be ruled by its monarchs and the lay administration with no interference from the papacy and the Church. In his On Civil Dominion of 1376 he said:

England belongs to no pope. The pope is but a man, subject to sin, but Christ is the Lord of Lords and this kingdom is to be held directly and solely of Christ alone.'...(John Wycliffe condemned as a heretic | History Today)

William Tyndale fate in 1536 .: William Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English. (William Tyndale: Father of the English Bible)

According to Tyndale, the Church forbid owning or reading the Bible to control and restrict the teachings and to enhance their own power and importance. So we see the purpose was not to keep any kind of order over maybe the edition or translation, etc... It was the truth contained within God's Word that they tried to keep from the people...

 

Here is a site which goes through the evidence from the churches own documents through the ages...http://aloha.net/~mikesch/banned.htm

And we can find the excuse they give behind the Bible being banned..."ITEM #13 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH THE ONLY TRUE GUIDE TO SCRIPTURE

14. ... Wherefore it must be recognized that the sacred writings are wrapt in a certain religious obscurity, and that no one can enter into their interior without a guide[32]; God so disposing, as the Holy Fathers commonly teach, in order that men may investigate them with greater ardor and earnestness, and that what is attained with difficulty may sink more deeply into the mind and heart; and, most of all, that they may understand that God has delivered the Holy Scriptures to the Church, and that in reading and making use of His Word, they must follow the Church as their guide and their teacher. ... the Council of the Vatican, which, in renewing the decree of Trent declares its "mind" to be this—that "in things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church, whose place it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; and therefore that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers."[34] ... Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.

15. ... But it is most unbecoming to pass by, in ignorance or contempt, the excellent work which Catholics have left in abundance, and to have recourse to the works of non-Catholics—and to seek in them, to the detriment of sound doctrine and often to the peril of faith, the explanation of passages on which Catholics long ago have successfully employed their talent and their labor. For although the studies of non-Catholics, used with prudence, may sometimes be of use to the Catholic student, he should, nevertheless, bear well in mind—as the Fathers also teach in numerous passages[41]—that the sense of Holy Scripture can nowhere be found incorrupt out side of the Church, and cannot be expected to be found in writers who, being without the true faith, only gnaw the bark of the Sacred Scripture, and never attain its pith.

Source: PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS (On the Study of Holy Scripture), Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII promulgated on 18 November 1893."

 

I could not for years when I was school, as I read all the different history books, understand from a secular standpoint the 'Guy Fawkes Affair", made no sense. Then I came across the religious background...incredible.

 

History shows what they went through and who put them through it, so although it may be a 'bit much' for you, it shows the truth of the matter. Here are some key points which helped turn the tide in this battle over Bible possession, very good...

"The Bible was a banned book. The Church knew they dared not let people read God's Word for themselves.

To those who hungered and thirsted to know the Truth of the Bible, the situation seemed hopeless. Europe had become a dark and dangerous place. But light was starting to shine from the darkness. Glimmers of hope were starting to arise. A new dawn of Truth was starting to emerge from the shadows. Despite the Bible still being a banned book, a sequence of events were starting to emerge which would make the translation of the Bible into English, not just a possibility, but an inevitability. The Bible was coming, and coming in an exciting way, to the people of Great Britain and the English-speaking world. These were events which changed history. And history is still feeling its effects.

First, in 1450, the Printing Press was invented. Whereas John Wycliffe and his followers had to produce hand-written manuscripts of his Bible translation, the printing press allowed Bibles to be (painstakingly and meticulously) typeset, but then hundreds of copies made. This made it possible to vastly increase the supply of Bibles.

Second.. the printing press was starting to be used to good effect. Printed copies of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) were being produced, albeit at great effort and expense. Copies of the New Testament in Greek and Latin were also being produced, as were Polyglot Bibles. Each one had to be personally authorized by the Pope. But these printed Hebrew, Greek and Latin texts allowed scholars in Universities to have access to the Holy Scriptures like never before - even if it was "only" in the Original Languages of the Bible, rather than the language of the common people.

Third, although the Spanish Inquisition was still in full sway and the Pope claimed universal authority over the whole of Christendom, elsewhere in Europe the Church's authority was being questioned and challenged as never before. Like Wycliffe before him, in Germany, Martin Luther and his followers were starting to read and translate the Bible for themselves, armed with the printed copies of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin texts that were now rolling off the printing press. And like Wycliffe, they too could clearly see the gaping chasm between what was written in the Bible, and the beliefs, doctrines, practices and excesses of the Catholic Church."... William Tyndale's 1525 Bible translation