Bible Translation And Dissemination Of The Christianity In Europe In Later Middle Ages

In the later Middle Ages(about the 14^th-16^th century),Europe was entering into a time of great shock and regulation.Because of the long-term wars and chaos,spread of diseases and frequent disasters,European manor and serf system were destroyed and collapsed,so the feudalist economy was declining gradually;however,the liberation and freeing of the serf created a favorable condition of labor force for the sprouting of the capitalist economy.That the capitalist economy was beginning to sprout and developing preliminarily not only laid a solid foundation of economy and material on the strengthening of kingship,but also cultivated a citizen class that was a new political power and more suitable to the social development.With the support of citizen class,kingship was more powerful than ever before,which was arousing the race consciousness in Europe;by the end of 15^th century,the united and centralized state power was set up respectively in England,French and Spanish,where the Church was under the control of the King;Germany and Italy were not united yet,but they went further against the Vatican because of the two factors---the continuous growth of citizen class and the increasing corruption of the Church.Meanwhile, Roman Catholic Church,the largest feudal lord in Medieval Europe,was increasingly degenerating and more severely exploiting the European people;the Church,greedy, corrupted hypocritical,cheating and reactionary,was meeting with the strong opposition of the Christianity man of insight and Europe people;and therefore,the reforming voice was increasingly rising and the Vatican was losing its power gradually.Renaissance,especially the rising and spread of the Humanism,diverted the people's close attention from the God and next life down to the humankind and reality, and freed the people from the shackles of Theology and Feudalism.Meanwhile, Reformation,based on the Christian Humanism,directed its attack at the greedy and corrupted Vatican and Roman Catholic Church,broke the long-term united situation of the Christendom and destroyed the Vatican for ever as an international court over the western states.Besides,natural science,rising and developing initially,challenged the theological system of the Catholicism and Scholasticism almost in all aspects and continuously uncovered the false and fraudulent preaching of the Church;at the same time,the development of productive skills,such as paper-making and printing,sped up the spread of scientific knowledge and Protestant and brought about an advance in the process of European reforming and combating the Catholicism.What's more,the new routes to other continents were discovered,which not only opened European eyesight and made Europe out of the isolation ever since,but also promoted the development of the capitalist economy and inspired the European to shift their concentration from Theology to the active exploration of the unknown scientific fields.Along with the rise of Humanism,spread of Reformation,growing of citizen class and strengthening of the race consciousness,New thoughts on the Christianity, such as "the Bible has supreme authority over anyone including the Pope","everyone can read the Bible and communicate with the God directly" and so on,increasingly struck root in the hearts of the people.In order to make more civilians have chances to read the Bible by themselves and realize its truth based on their own understanding to receive directly the save and grace from the God,the biblical translation in secular languages was very active in European states.However,the vernacular biblical translation was not the plain sailing and experienced a complex and burdensome process.In order to enlarge the believer's group,the priest at all levels publicized and explained the doctrine,belief and moral principles in the Bible which is the tenet sutra of Christianity.During the Middle Ages,the Church monopolized the education. Therefore,clergymen were the only intelligentsia and the Latin was the only legal language for the Bible;So the laity could not understand the bible in Latin,were not allowed to read it in vernacular by themselves and had to obey the priest's preaching. In the Middle Ages,the Roman Catholic Church controlled the explanation of the Scripture,which was its marked feature at that time,and often made improper explanation for the sake of its own politics,economy and religion.The Vatican argued that secular languages could not be used in the biblical translation because there were not enough words and phrases in them to interpret the Scripture fully and that the laity were not allowed to read and disseminate the Bible because they did not receive much education and were not able to understand it fully,which,therefore,easily led to the Heresy.For the unlicensed biblical translation in vernacular,the Roman Catholic Church fought violently against it and some translators were persecuted bitterly,even burnt at the stake.However,the opposition and suppressing of the Church could not inhibit the laity's strong desire for being eager to read the Scripture in vernacular.As a result,the Bible in secular languages came out continuously in the later Middle Ages, such as in English,German,French,Italian,Bohemia,Spanish and so on.These main vernacular Bibles were easy to understand because of their simple words and phrases so that they were spread widely and as a result,more laity had chances to read the Bible by themselves.The laity regarded the original sentences of the Bible as the supreme creed and comprehended by heard the true meaning of the God's Words by careful reading through each part of it.At the same time,they succeeded in finding the ideological weapon against the Church's false preaching and the state governors' unreasonable requests.In the second half of 14th century,Wycliffe,the famous England theologian, translated the Bible from Latin into English in order to let more England people know of it,called "Wycliffe Bible",which marks the beginning of the history of the whole bible translation.At the beginning of the 16^th century,inspired by the reforming of Wycliffe and Hus and influenced by Erasmus's Christian Humanism,Luther,the great leader of reformation,launched Europe Reformation in a real sense.In order to let the laity know the true features of the Bible to uncover the Church's fraudulence,Luther threw away the practice of previous biblical translations all based on the Vulgate, traced back to New Testament in Greek and Old Testament in Hebrew and translated them into German,called "Luther Bible"."Wycliffe Bible" and "Luther Bible" were the two most representative versions among the vernacular bibles in Europe in the later Middle Ages.The two versions not only promoted the development of the respective national literature and language and the wide biblical reading,but also pushed forward the other widespread vernacular biblical translations in Europe and sped up the dissemination of new thoughts on Christianity,and therefore had profound historical significance.By recalling the above-mentioned background knowledge of European society and history in the later Middle Ages,deeply exploring the historical facts of secular bible translation and,especially,analyzing and researching thoroughly the bible translation of Wycliffe and Luther,this thesis shows that there is the internal relation between the bible translation and dissemination of the Christianity.The Bible is the carrier and the tenet sutra of Christianity and spreads among the various regions of the world with the dissemination of the Christianity;in the process of the dissemination,it is translated into different languages;meanwhile,in order to let more people know of or believe in the Christianity,the Bible is translated into various kinds of languages all over the world.This not only steadies the believer's group,but also pushes forcefully forward the process of the Christianity dissemination and expands the disseminating area.So it proves that the biblical translation is very important and the basically important work for the Christianity dissemination.The main vernacular Bibles in the later Middle Ages were all finished with the instruction of the new ideas of the Christianity and they spread widely the basic tenet,belief and ethic of the Christianity by copying and printing over European states,which promoted greatly the spread of the Christianity in these countries and nations.So a history of the Bible translation is the history of the dissemination of the Christianity.