We should be so thankful to all of those Catholics who preached and preserved the Bible to all of the people throughout the Dark Ages. Remember too that a great many Catholics translated Biblical text into the common languages of the people, even though for most of the history of Christianity the majority of people were illiterate. After Latin surpassed Greek as the common language of the people, the Latin Vulgate under the direction of Saint Jerome became by far the standard Bible. "Vulgate" comes from "vulgar" or "common," meaning the common language of the people. Eventually Latin morphed into various languages such as Italian, Spanish, and French, and then came more translations by Catholics. There were Catholic translations of Biblical text in French, Bohemian, Danish, Polish, Hungarian, and Norwegian as well. In England long before Wycliffe and Tyndale, there were many translations of Biblical text by Catholics. To mention just a few of them, Venerable Bede, a Catholic monk, is perhaps the best known for his translation in the 700s. King Alfred the Great had not finished his translation of Psalms before he died, that would have been in the 800s. Now a lot of Biblical texts by Catholics have been destroyed, remember Protestants in England seized Catholic monasteries and gave the land to wealthy Protestants and much that was Catholic was sold off or destroyed. But some do exist, you can find some of Alfred’s translations in a manuscript dated as around 1050. These are in the English of the Saxons:
The Illustrated Psalms of Alfred the Great: The Old English Paris Psalter When the Normans took over the English changed, the paraphrase of Orm is dated around 1150 and is an example of a Catholic translation into Middle English. Eventually a Catholic named Gutenberg introduced the printing press, and, of course, the first book he printed was the Bible in 1455. Finally, Catholic teaching is 100 percent compatible with the Bible.
It's just an example.
