Appendix
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books in the popular vernacular.” “The Lords of the districts shall
carefully seek out the heretics in dwellings, hovels, and forests, and
even their underground retreats shall be entirely wiped out.”—Concil.
Tolosanum, Pope Gregory IX, Anno. Chr. 1229. Canons 14 and 2. This
Council sat at the time of the crusade against the Albigenses.
“This pest [the Bible] had taken such an extension that some peo-
ple had appointed priests of their own, and even some evangelists who
[688]
distorted and destroyed the truth of the gospel and made new gospels
for their own purpose ... (They know that) the preaching and explana-
tion of the Bible is absolutely forbidden to the lay members.”—Acts of
Inquisition, Philip van Limborch, History of the Inquisition, chapter 8.
The Council of Tarragona, 1234, ruled that: “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 lest, be he a cleric or a layman, he be suspected until
he is cleared of all suspicion.”—D. Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible en
France, 1910, p. 14.
At the Council of Constance, in 1415, Wycliffe was posthumously
condemned by Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury, as “that pestilent
wretch of damnable heresy who invented a new translation of the
Scriptures in his mother tongue.”
The opposition to the Bible by the Roman Catholic Church has
continued through the centuries and was increased particularly at the
time of the founding of Bible societies. On December 8, 1866, Pope
Pius IX, in his encyclical Quanta cura, issued a syllabus of eighty
errors under ten different headings. Under heading IV we find listed:
“Socialism, communism, clandestine societies, Bible societies.... Pests
of this sort must be destroyed by all possible means.”
Page 276. The Reign of Terror.—For a reliable, brief introduction
into the history of the French Revolution see L. Gershoy, The French
Revolution (1932); G. Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution
(Princeton, 1947); and H. von Sybel, History of the French Revolution
(1869), 4 vols.
The Moniteur Officiel was the government paper at the time of the
Revolution and is a primary source, containing a factual account of
actions taken by the assemblies, full texts of the documents, etc. It
has been reprinted. See also A. Aulard, Christianity and the French