The vernacular Word
From B.D. Kelly Sir: Your correspondent Dr David Dendy (Letters, 13 September) suggests that Christians in the pre-Reformation Church were not free to read the Bible in their own tongue. One often hears this, but 18 editions of the whole Bible printed in German were published before 1517, when Luther posted his 95 Theses. Two Italian versions were printed in 1471. The first Flemish edition was printed in 1477 and a Catalan Spanish edition appeared in 1478. A Polish translation was published in 1516. The earliest English edition was printed in 1525. These references are to printed editions of the entire Bible. Printed editions of certain books of the Bible appeared somewhat earlier, and manuscript editions of the whole Bible or of individual books appeared in vernacular languages centuries earlier.
B.D. Kelly
Evenley, Northamptonshire
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