Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/72

 60 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE spirit of prayer and meditation. Blessed, Lord, is the man whom they teach. . . . Lord Jesus, teach me to understand what I read, and to put it in practice." The ' Wiirzgartlein ' ('Blessed Garden') of the year 1509 teaches in the same spirit : ' On Sundays and holy days you should read the Holy Scriptures, parti- cularly the Gospels and Epistles, with attention and earnestness. But remember that you cannot do so with profit unless you first pray for the light of the Holy Spirit. You should also excite yourself to contrition, as if you were preparing for confession. If you read the Scriptures in a spirit of pride, it will be harmful to you. What you do not understand refer to the Church ; she expounds all things aright, and alone has the gift of interpretation.' In the Llibeck Bible of 1494 explanatory notes taken from Nicholas of Lyra are added at obscure and difficult passages, ' in order to make the text clearer.' The rapidity with which the different editions fol- lowed each other and the testimony of contemporary writers point to a wide distribution of German Bibles among the people. John Eck tells us that he had read nearly the whole of the Bible by the time he was ten years old. Adam Potken. chaplain of Xanten, was made to learn the four Evangelists by heart when he was a boy, between 1470 and 1480 ; and afterwards he was in the habit of reading passages daily from the Old and New Testaments with his pupils of eleven and twelve years old. With such zeal was the study of the Bible pursued in the fifteenth century that we find a Canon of Cassel in the year 1480 founding an endowment to enable a student from the village of Harmuthsacken, near Eschwege, to devote eight years to this study alone.