The Blackfriars Bible

"One small but important problem," I derped last month, "is that no recognizable brand exists in Andalusada." I retract that statement; this is a big problem. And it's not just guns that are affected: it's everything that I love - food, liquor, philosophy. Even Bibles.

Obviously there's going to be the Günther Bible, and both Oliver Farrell's Vulgate and his translation from the Opus Transtulit. But those aren't the only ones, and the simple fact is that even if Catholicism keeps Latin as its liturgical language and does its utmost to dissuade the vernacular, the vernacular is established by the time they face competition. It's not going to go away; the most that Rome can do is have a say in its relationship to the vernacular Word.

This is particularly problematic to me because, as far as I can tell, Anglicanism doesn't exist: there's no reason to imagine that the British Isles don't stay devoutly Catholic (albeit undergoing some reforms to purge what its elites consider the worst excesses of Mariolatry and the like.) I'm not sure what the successions of kings, English or Scottish, look like - all I know is that even if there is a King James of England and Scotland (and there will be an England-Scotland, mark my words), he is NOT the same King James that gave us the 1611 Authorized Version.

So today I'm going to introduce the KJV's equivalent: the Blackfriars Bible.

Why Blackfriars?

The IRL Order of Preachers have a complex role in Catholicism: their charism is basically to make sure that people believe correctly. Their missionary work, their scholastic philosophy, their contributions to Catholic devotional practice (most notably their ties to the rosary), their involvement with the Inquisition - as unrelated as they may look, all of those things stem from the same charism. Saint Gonzalo and his successors fill a basically similar niche. (It bears noting that John George never really stopped being a Gonzalan friar; you can view his career as simply a continuation of the charism to its subversive logical conclusion. That subversive end, and the fallout it causes, is probably why the Sodality's founders establish their Fourth Vow at all.)

Above and beyond their Dominican work, though, the Gonzalans seem closely related to another important thing: mediating control of the Bible between the hierarchy and the laity. The Günther Bible comes from the work of a Gonzalan antihero; and, although I haven't actually written about it yet, I was thinking that the first High German Bible is a Gonzalan project too. (It dovetails the most reform-minded wing of the Church and the Inquisition; long story.)

The Inquisition-approved Bible sets a precedent for Gonzalans worldwide to follow suit. And, because it's that nice blend of utterly generic (am I talking about a people, or a place?) and quite distinctive (it's totally unknown in American English), and it flows quite nicely, the first modern English-language Bible has itself a name.

The origins of the Blackfriars Bible

• This was the era of the Ryal Kirk, when Scotland's was "the Church called Holy." Say what you will of the ecclesiological corruption, though, the Ryal Kirk did make some big concessions to popular demand - one of which was the publishing of Bibles in the vernacular.

The impact of the Blackfriars Bible

The impact of the Blackfriars Bible was immediate and profound.

• The Blackfriars Bible, unlike the AV, crossed linguistic lines. For most of the Guise period, printing vernacular Bibles inside of France was illegal - and while England had no love for the Farrellites theologically, they shared a common enemy in the Most Christian King. Blackfriars was immediately translated into French and widely smuggled across the English Channel; Blackfriars was the preaching and teaching Bible of choice for most of France's western Farrellite dynasties until Oliver Farrell's works were decriminalized under the Bourguignons.
• Most of the Montagnards descended from those same western Farrellite dynasties, and they brought Blackfriars with them. For many of them this has a similar old-timey nostalgic feel to them, and even though Montagnard Bible politics breaks down on clearly political lines, the household Bible is still a weathered French Blackfriars with a threadbare cloth cover.

Work to be progressed upon: In the wake of sorting out the aforementioned German Bible, and for that matter the role of the vernacular in Guisard France, I'll be able to talk about the historic political significance of the Blackfriars Bible. That, alas, will be for next week.