The Church DID chain Bibles in the Middle Ages; and for the same reason that the Telephone Company chains its directories to the booth -- to prevent people from STEALING them.

We must remember that each Bible had to be copied by hand and that it took the lifetime of a monk to do this. According to standards today, each one of these Bibles would probably be worth $10,000. Records have been compiled which show that there were 5,000 chained books in 11 Protestant and 2 Catholic libraries. The Reformers, likewise, chained their Bibles in their churches for at least 300 years. Therefore, Catholics were not alone in chaining Bibles.