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 1U21 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 121 a learned book and worthy of a Mary Bateson Fellow. In effect it js an answer to the ' startling ' theory put forward by Cardinal Gasquet " that the versions now known as the Wyclifhte Scriptures are, in reality, only authorized catholic translations of the Bible '. As a refutation of this theory the book must be regarded as conclusive and final. Miss Deanesly begins with examining the attitude of the official church to vernacular translations and vernacular Bible reading by the laity in other countries — in France, Italy, Spain, the Empire, and the Netherlands — and finds it from the time of Gregory VII to the end of the middle ages uniformly hostile. Papal pronouncements were sometimes equivocal and more moderate than those of local bishops and synods. Thus Innocent III, in a letter in reply to the bishop of Metz (whom Miss Deanesly persists in calling archbishop), admits that ' the desire of understanding holy scriptures, and zeal for exhorting in accordance with them, is not to be' reprehended but rather commended ', but he goes on that it was ' written in the divine law that the beast which touched the mount should be stoned ; lest, apparently, any simple and unlearned person should presume to attain to the sublimity of Holy Scripture ', and his commissioners burnt all the Waldensian Bibles they could find. Gregory IX inserted Innocent's letter in his decretal in such a modified form that it was even quoted at the end of the fourteenth century as implying approval of the translation of works of edification, but Gregory was responsible for the decree of the synod of Toulouse in 1229 (over which his legate presided), which enacted that ' lay people shall not have books of scripture, except the psalter of the divine office ; and they shall not have these books in the vulgar tongue '. The decrees of Toulouse had more than a local authority, and similar prohibitions were issued in other countries. The possession of the Bible or parts of it in the vulgar tongue, or ability to repeat passages from vernacular versions, was regarded by the inquisitors as strong prima facie evidence of heresy. It is not surprising therefore to learn that no manual of religious instruction has been found which recommends Bible-reading to the faithful laity before the end of the fourteenth century. The earliest example which Miss Deanesly has discovered is contained in a work of the Franciscan Otto of Passau in 1386, and this is addressed not to the laity in general but to the ' friends of God ', a devout section of the community, who about this time were falling under suspicion of heresy. Miss Deanesly does justice, on the one hand, to the church's efforts to educate the clergy and to instruct the laity in the articles of the faith, and, on the other, to the ecclesiastical point of view in forbidding all attempts at the popularization of biblical translations : the church acted ' from quite worthy motives and deliberate judgement as to the inexpe- diency of such a course '. The arguments are much the same at all periods —the difficulty of accurate translation, the impossibility of giving the spiritual meanings in another language, the inferiority of the literal to the spiritual meanings, the inability of the human intellect without adequate preparation to understand the Bible, and the consequent cer- tainty of the growth of heresy and schism. It is remarkable to find a Franciscan before 1272 denouncing the followers of Peter Waldo because