James Baikie and Bible Reading in the Middle Ages

James Baikie's work is entitled The English Bible and Its Story (London: Seeley, 1928). I tried to find out about his personal details and simply could not take the time to do a major search, but I trust he was not a friend of the RCC. However, he himself does write in the Preface of his monograph: "While the point of view from which the book is written is frankly Protestant, I have endeavored throughout to avoid a merely partisan presentation of the facts, and to give credit where it is due to men who, like Erasmus, found themselves unable to go all the way with the Reformers, as well as to the merits of such champions of the Roman Church as the translators of the Rheims and the Douai version."

He indicates that it's difficult to take the "There was no demand for a vernacular copy of Holy Writ during the middle ages" argument seriously. Baikie appears to think the claim does not hold water, and rightly so it seems, for history suggests that several men and women were clamoring to read God's Holy Word in the 1500s. But they were forbidden to read the Scriptures under pain of heresy. Owning a Bible resulted in the torture or death of not a few lay members--both men and women. Simply possessing a Bible likely was viewed as a crime by the Church. Catholic historian Paul Johnson relates the following account:

"Access to the Bible, whether in the original or in any other tongue, had never been an issue in the East. In the West, the clergy had begun to assert an exclusive interpretive, indeed custodial, right to the Bible as early as the ninth century; and from about 1080 there had been frequent instances of the Pope, councils and bishops forbidding not only vernacular translations but any reading at all, by laymen, of the Bible taken as a whole. In some ways this was the most scandalous aspect of the Medieval Latin Church. From the Waldensians onwards, attempts to scrutinize the Bible became proof presumptive of heresy--a man or a woman might burn for it alone--and, conversely, the heterodox were increasingly convinced that the Bible was incompatible with papal and clerical claims" (A History of Christianity 273).

Baikie also recounts the story of eight persons who were arrested in Leicester for reading the Bible (page 140). Three of them recanted of their "heresy" and were ordered to do penance; their names were Roger Dexter, William Smith and Alice (ibid.). They were charged with the "heinous crime of reading the Gospel in their own tongue" but were absolved after doing penance (ibid). Dexter, Smith and Alice desired to read the Bible in their own language but religious authorities thought otherwise.

The English Bible and Its Story provides evidence of other men and women who fervently desired to read the Bible, but they could not afford a copy or were not allowed to possess one. Hence, these individuals memorized Scripture despite the threat of death. Baikie lists Thomas Chase, who was charged with merely reciting the Epistle of James and Luke as well as Agnes Ashford, who taught Chase part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Subsequently, the Church not only refused to let Ashford teach any man; she also was not permitted to teach her own children portions of Holy Writ (Baikie 144).