n every age it has been the most read book, but in
the sixteenth century it added to an unequaled reputation {572} for
infallibility the zest of a new discovery. Edward VI demanding the
Bible at his coronation, Elizabeth passionately kissing it at hers,
were but types of the time. That joyous princess of the Renaissance,
Isabella d'Este, ordered a new translation of the Psalms for her own
perusal. Margaret of Navarre, in the Introduction to her frivolous
_Heptameron_, expresses the pious hope that all present have read the
Scripture. Hundreds of editions of the German and English translations
were called for. The people, wrote an Englishman in 1539, "have now in
every church and place, almost every man, the Bible and New Testament
in their mother tongue, instead of the old fabulous and fantastical
books of the Table Round . . . and such other whose impure filth and
vain fabulosity the light of God hath abolished there utterly." In
Protestant lands it became almost a matter of good form to own the
Bible, and reading it has been called, not ineptly, "the _opus
operatum_ of the Evangelicals." Even the Catholics bore witness to the
demand, which they tried to check. While they admonished the laity
that it was unnecessary and dangerous to taste of this tree of
knowledge, while they even curtailed the reading of the Scripture by
the clergy, they were forced to supply vernacular versions of their own.

[Sidenote: Bibliolatry]

Along with unbounded popularity the Bible then enjoyed a much higher
reputation for infallibility than it bears today. The one point on
which all Protestant churches were agreed was the supremacy and
sufficiency of Scripture. The Word, said Calvin, flowed from the very
mouth of God himself; it was the sole foundation of faith and the one
fountain of all wisdom. "What Christ says must be true whether I or
any other man can understand it," preached Luther. "Scripture is fully
to be believed," wrote an English theologian, "as a thing necessary to
salvation, though {573} the thing contained in Scripture pertain not
merely to the faith, as that Aaron had a beard." The Swiss and the
Anabaptists added their voices to this chorus of bibliolatry.

[Sidenote: _Abeunt studia in mores_]

Since studies pass into character, it is natural to find a marked
effect from this turning loose of a new source of spiritual authority.
That thousands were made privately better, wiser and happier from the
reading