‘Smugglers of the Faith’

With the advent of the printing press, people began devouring religious books, brochures, and tracts. The Bible was printed first in Latin and then in the common tongues. Millions of copies were printed in Germany, and colporteurs had a share in quickly distributing copies to folk living in the countryside. However, this distribution was not to everyone’s liking.

In 1525 the French Parliament banned translation of the Bible into French and, in the following year, forbade possession of the Bible in the vernacular. In spite of this, Bibles came off the presses by the thousands, and many were smuggled throughout France, thanks to determined colporteurs. One was a young man named Pierre Chapot. He was arrested in 1546 and put to death.

Finally, in 1551, Catholic France took a hard line by banning colporteurs from selling books, since they “secretly” carried books “coming from Geneva,” that is, from Protestants. However, this did not stem the tide. Bibles flowed into France by all possible means. Often small in size, they were hidden in wine casks with false bottoms, in barrels of chestnuts, or in the holds of boats. A courageous man named Denis Le Vair was arrested while transporting a whole barrelful of Bibles. He too was executed. One contemporary Catholic, hostile to colporteurs, acknowledged that because of them, “in a short time, France was filled with French New Testaments.”

Throughout the 16th century, these ‘smugglers of the faith,’ as one writer calls them, lived in constant danger. Many colporteurs were arrested, sent to prison or the galleys, banished, or martyred. Some colporteurs were burned along with their books. While history reveals only a handful of their names, it was thanks to a whole host of such courageous individuals that most Protestant households were able to acquire copies of the Bible.

In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution dealt a deathblow to family colporteur businesses that had operated for generations. However, the creation of Bible societies rekindled distribution of the Bible as never before. The Catholic Church, however, was still opposed to the distribution of the Bible. Up until the late 1800’s, Bible colporteurs continued to be harassed and prosecuted. Nonetheless, from 1804 to 1909, they distributed six million copies of the Bible in whole or in part in France alone.