Weell, Musket, that's not exactly true. John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English in the late 14th Century. There had been earlier attempts. These WERE put down by Rome, and Wycliffe's body was eventually disinterred and burned for being a bad little boy. Never the less, his work had already been disseminated.

Remember that the originals were written in the vernacular -- Latin was spoken by many, as was Greek and Aramaic. There were also all of those scriptures in the Eastern and Coptic Churches; only now are scholars discovering what the Copts actually have preserved...and we'd be on even ground with the "Orthodox" churches if not for the "filioque" dispute way, way back when.

And you came flat up against the non-canonical books of the Bible, like the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of the Magdalene and all of that stuff in the Nag Hamadi library and the Dead Sea Scrolls and who know what else might be out there?

Illiteracy was not as common in the Dark and Middle Ages as has been presumed. Yes, the peasants and serfs usually were illiterate, but the merchant class HAD to know how to read invoices, letters, and accounts -- to say the least.

Personally, I don't much like the structure imposed on the Western Church because it's based upon the model of the Roman Empire. I much, much prefer that of the Celtic Church, but that was chopped off (as much as it could be) by the Synod of Whitby and St. Augustine (of England, not the other one).