In Front | Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages

From 1959 to 1991, with the exception of 1963, The Wizard of Oz aired on television once a year. In the days before home videos, these telecasts were can’t-miss programs. If you did miss one, you had to wait a full year for your next opportunity to see it again. It was only in 1980, when MGM/CBS Home Video released the film as their first commercially available videocassette, that viewers could choose when and where to watch it.

In the days before printing presses, when biblical manuscripts were expensive to produce and church authorities resisted widespread distribution of the Bible, the relationship of the average layperson to the Bible was not unlike that of the average viewer to The Wizard of Oz in the days before home videos. Most people did not own personal copies, and those who did often owned selections of the Bible rather than the full Canon, with the book of Psalms being a favorite among those wealthy enough to afford private manuscripts. The Book of Hours and Psalter of Elizabeth de Bohun is an example of this trend.

For access to specific biblical passages, most Christians in the Middle Ages were dependent on the church’s official programming, its liturgical calendar and annual reading cycles. The private and devotional access we have to the Bible today would have been experienced by very few. 

Over the course of a year, churches would perform portions of the Bible in readings or chants or hymns, and here too the book of Psalms, the hymns of the Hebrew Bible, were favored for being easily adapted to music and public performance. By the seventh century AD, the Western church’s annual liturgical cycle had largely taken shape, and church members knew ahead of time when their favorite scenes or passages would appear in the calendar. Like many fans of The Wizard of Oz in the days before home videos, if they missed it, many would have to wait a full year to hear it again.      

References: Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity, 2011. http://www.thewizardofozmovie.com/movie. Accessed Nov 18, 2020.