Why was possession of a bible prior to 1611 punishable by death?

Answer 1

The church didn't want you to know what the bible said so that they could control you. If they tell you that you will get to heaven by paying an indulgence, then you pay. If you read the bible and discover that it does not say that then you don't pay. They lost a lot of income after people started reading the bible.

Answer 2

to keep the people ignorant and under your control to extort money and anything else you want out of them to have total obedience because people didnt know better the church has a long blood thirsty history of bloodshed violence oppression, brutality savagery un matched in history of people claiming to be christian look at the crusades with the rapeing and looting murdering then there are the infamous inquisitions where they hired some of the most ruthless and sadistic people to torture people for possessing a copy of the Bible like Tomas de Torquemada and the count Marquis de Sade from where we get the term sadistic theese people killed maimed mutilated people by the thousands whose only crime was having a copy of the Bible for which some were burned at the stake with the Bible chained to them even in more recent history people were done like that for asking questions or disagreeing with official church belief which was later proven wrong like galelio was killed because he taught the earth was round or another who taught that the earth was not the center of the universe and the list can go on and on I could be typing for decades this behavior by those proffessing to be christian is not what Jesus Taught his followers who are TRUE CHRISTIANS and today we have the Bible available in most languages thanks to men who dearly loved the Bible as the inspired word of God and risked their lives to translate it like Wm Tyndale John Wycliffe and others so our creator would not let his word be destroyed by those false christians it is available in most every country on earth if you need more you can contact me Best wishes Gorbalizer

Answer 3

Basically the bible describes the working of the Beast organization in prophetic detail and the Catholic church had all the biblical identifiers of being the Beast. So they tried to outlaw the bible and murder off anyone who had a bible. Basically the church leaders didn't resemble any of the principles of Holy living. First on the list THOU SHALT NOT KILL.



Bible Possession Once Banned by the Catholic Church!


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ITEM #1 POPE INNOCENT III

Pope Innocent III stated in 1199:

... to be reproved are those who translate into French the Gospels, the letters of Paul, the psalter, etc. They are moved by a certain love of Scripture in order to explain them clandestinely and to preach them to one another. The mysteries of the faith are not to explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted (Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum 770-771)

Source: Bridging the Gap - Lectio Divina, Religious Education, and the Have-not's by Father John Belmonte, S.J.

ITEM #2 COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE - 1229 A.D.

The Council of Toulouse, which met in November of 1229, about the time of the crusade against the Albigensians, set up a special ecclesiastical tribunal, or court, known as the Inquisition (Lat. inquisitio, an inquiry), to search out and try heretics. Twenty of the forty-five articles decreed by the Council dealt with heretics and heresy. It ruled in part:

Canon 1. We appoint, therefore, that the archbishops and bishops shall swear in one priest, and two or three laymen of good report, or more if they think fit, in every parish, both in and out of cities, who shall diligently, faithfully, and frequently seek out the heretics in those parishes, by searching all houses and subterranean chambers which lie under suspicion. And looking out for appendages or outbuildings, in the roofs themselves, or any other kind of hiding places, all which we direct to be destroyed.

Canon 6. Directs that the house in which any heretic shall be found shall be destroyed.

Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.

Source: Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, Edited with an introduction by Edward Peters, Scolar Press, London, copyright 1980 by Edward Peters, ISBN 0-85967-621-8, pp. 194-195, citing S. R. Maitland, Facts and Documents [illustrative of the history, doctrine and rites, of the ancient Albigenses & Waldenses], London, Rivington, 1832, pp. 192-194.

Additional Sources:

Ecclesiastical History of Ancient Churches of the Albigenses, Pierre Allix, published in Oxford at the Clarendon Press in 1821, reprinted in USA in 1989 by Church History Research & Archives, P.O. Box 38, Dayton Ohio, 45449, p. 213 [Canon 14].

Answer 4

I suppose the Catholic Church wanted to keep the masses ignorant. If they can't read the bible truths for themselves, one could have great power over them.

Also, mass production was probably antiquated at best.

Answer 5

Do you think the church wanted people to figure things out for themselves? No, they wanted to have power and authority and control -- oh yeah, and money.

Answer 6

Because normal people would.could misinterpret the bible and take it in the wrong way. thus only trained people the church should posses the bible and teach from it.

Answer 7

Because King James got in office and cracked down on this bogus law.He then gave us the King James Version.May Jesus bless.