Yet we have in the later Middle Ages, ever since Wiclif produced his English version, the gradual publication of the Scriptures in the vernaculars of Europe. This was specially so in Germany; and when the invention of printing had made the diffusion of literature easy, it is noteworthy that the earliest presses in Germany printed many more books for family and private devotion, many more _Plenaria_, and many more editions of the Bible than of the classics. Twenty-two editions of the Psalter in German appeared before 1509, and twenty-five of the Gospels and Epistles before 1518. No less than fourteen (some say seventeen) versions of the whole Bible were printed in High-German and three in Low-German during the last decades of the fifteenth and the earlier decades of the sixteenth century—all translations from the Vulgate. The first was issued by John Metzel in Strassburg in 1466. Then followed another Strassburg edition in 1470, two Augsburg editions in 1473, one in the Swiss dialect in 1474, two in Augsburg in 1477, one in Augsburg in 1480, one in Nürnberg in 1483, one in Strassburg in 1485, and editions in Augsburg in 1487, 1490, 1507, and 1518. A careful comparison of these printed vernacular Bibles proves that the earlier editions were independent productions; but as edition succeeded edition the text became gradually assimilated until there came into existence a German Vulgate, which was used indiscriminately by those who adhered to the mediæval Church and those who were dissenters from it. These German versions were largely, but by no means completely, displaced by Luther’s translation. The Anabaptists, for example, retained this German Vulgate long after the publication of Luther’s version, and these pre-Reformation German Bibles were to be found in use almost two hundred years after the Reformation.(100)