Vulgate

Vulgate, the edition of the Latin Bible which, having been sanctioned by the usage of many ages in the Roman Church, was pronounced ‘authentic’ by the Council of Trent. The name was originally given to the ‘common edition’ of the Septuagint used by the Greek Fathers, and thence transferred to the ‘Italian’ or the ‘Old Latin’ version of both Old and New Testaments current during the first centuries in the Western Church. It finally passed to the present composite work, which gradually took the place of the ‘Old Latin.’ The relation of the component parts of this venerable version to the original texts will be best understood by a description of the work of St Jerome, from whose hand it mainly proceeded. In the time of Pope Damasus, towards the end of the 4th century, the text of the ‘Old Latin,’ the origin of which is lost in obscurity, had fallen into considerable confusion. It was a very literal representation of the Greek, rude in style and full of provincialisms. Every one, it seems, who had a smattering of Greek thought fit to make alterations; and so great became the variety of recensions that it is still a matter of dispute whether there was not at their basis a number of independent translations rather than a single version often retouched. To remedy the evil Jerome, at the request of Damasus, 382 A.D., undertook a revision of the New Testament. He corrected the Gospels thoroughly, though with great caution, and the rest more cursorily, with the aid of Greek codices which were then reputed ancient and trustworthy. The critical value of the result as a primary witness to the Greek text in its best state in the 4th century has recently been generally recognised. Jerome next turned his attention to the Psalms. He at first merely corrected the Latin from the ‘common edition’ of the Greek, and this revision, called the ‘Roman Psalter,’ completed in 383, was introduced by the pope into the Roman liturgy, and is to this day used in the Ambrosian or Milan rite and in St Peter’s at Rome. Shortly afterwards Jerome made a more thorough revision by the aid of Origen’s Hexapla; and it is this, the so-called ‘Gallican Psalter,’ which is now read in the Vulgate. The rest of his revision of the ‘Old Latin’ does not concern us here, as it forms no part of the present Vulgate, and indeed has, with the exception of the Book of Job, entirely perished. After the death of Damasus Jerome was induced by the urgency of private friends to undertake a more serious task, a new translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew. This he accomplished in Palestine, where he had perfected himself in Hebrew with the assistance of learned Jews, during the years 390–405 A.D. To this work he added a free translation of the books of Tobit and Judith from the Chaldee version of the original Hebrew, now lost. The other books of the Greek canon, afterwards incorporated with the rest of his work—viz. Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Maccabees—were left by him untouched; and these, with, in a somewhat less degree, the Psalms and the New Testament, are of especial value to the linguist, preserving as they do, quite apart from their Grecisms, many lexical and grammatical forms, relics of the dialect of the people, which are not found in the classical or literary language. The new translation met at first with much opposition. The Fathers had been accustomed to regard the Septuagint as an inspired version, and Jerome’s departure from that version appeared to be a dangerous innovation. It won its way by degrees, and by force of its intrinsic worth. Gregory the Great says that in his time the Roman see made use of both versions. Venerable Bede speaks of St Jerome’s as ‘our edition,’ and soon the ‘Old Latin’ fell into disuse and neglect, so that, notwithstanding the keen researches of scholars, a complete copy of the pre-Hieronymian Old Testament cannot now be made up from the surviving fragments.

In the course of the middle ages the Vulgate necessarily contracted some corruption. Charlemagne, with the aid of Alcuin, took pains to procure and disseminate a pure text; and later on, with the same object, the university of Paris and some of the religious orders compiled Correctoria, or lists of common errors with their corrections. The numerous editions printed in the 15th century were of no critical value, but in the first half of the following century several attempts were made to provide a revised and authoritative text, the most important editions being those of R. Stephens (1528, and later) and of the Louvain theologians (first under the care of Henten of Malines in 1547, and secondly with the co-operation of Lucas of Bruges and the printer Plantin, 1574). Meanwhile the carrying out of the Tridentine decree, that the Vulgate should be printed as correctly as possible, was undertaken by the popes, who appointed commissions of cardinals and learned men for the purpose. Nearly forty years passed, however, before their labours were brought to a close. Sixtus V. in 1590 first issued the long-expected work, together with a bull in which he ordered this edition to be received as 'true, lawful, authentic, and unquestioned'; but he had of his own judgment made many important changes in the readings proposed by the commission, and these met with so little approval that the edition was after Sixtus' death almost immediately recalled, the work again submitted to a papal congregation for revision, and finally issued in 1592 as the authoritative text by Clement VIII. This Clementine Bible differed from the Sixtine in some 3000 readings. A few errors of the press were corrected in a second impression in 1593; and others, again, in the third and last official impression of 1598, to which standard all copies should be conformed.

The precise import of the term 'authentic' applied to the Vulgate has been much discussed by Roman theologians. It is, however, clear that the council intended to make no comparison of the Vulgate with the original texts, but, considering it to be convenient that, among the several Latin versions then current, one should be guaranteed as authentic—i.e. substantially representing the original, and free from all error in faith or morals—declared the Vulgate edition tested by long usage within the church to be such. The Vulgate thus defined to be an authentic version could not be the particular Clementine edition, which was not then in existence, but the Vulgate generically, or in its purest form. Although the official text is capable of improvement, it is agreed by the best judges that the Clementine editors made use of ancient manuscripts with discernment, and proceeded throughout on sound critical principles.

The best general history of the Vulgate is that of Kaulen, Geschichte der Vulgata (Mainz, 1868). The fullest account in English will be found in Westcott's article in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Several codices and fragments of the 'Old Latin' were published in the Benedictine Sabatier's Vetus Italica (3 vols. folio, Paris, 1751) and in the fine work of the Oratorian Bianchini, Evangeliarium Quadruplex (2 vols. folio, Rome, 1748). Many other manuscripts have been published separately by Tischendorf, E. Ranke, and others. See especially Old Latin Biblical Texts, published since 1891, by Bishop John Wordsworth. The character of the Latinity of the pre-Hieronymian texts has been fully investigated by Röscher, Itala und Vulgata (Marburg, 1869), and by Ziegler, Lateinische Bibelübersetzungen vor Hieronymus (1879). The Codex Amiatinus, the principal manuscript of the Hieronymian Vulgate, highly valued by the Clementine editors, has been published, the New Testament by Tischendorf (Leipzig, 1854) and Old Testament by Heyse and Tischendorf (Leip. 1873). The work done by the Roman Congregations has been well brought to light by Ungarelli, Dissert. de N. T. et Historia Vulg. Edit. à Conc. Trident. (Rome, 1847), and by Vercellone, Dissertazioni accademiche (Rome, 1864). The various readings of ancient Vulgate manuscripts have been critically examined by the same Vercellone in his two volumes, Varie Lectiones (Rome, 1860-64), an important work, which unfortunately was carried no further than to the end of the Book of Kings. The variations between the Sixtine and Clementine editions have been treated controversially by Cox in his Bellum Papale, but more thoroughly in the rare work of Bukentorp, Lux de luce (Colonia, 1710). All that can be said of the imperfections of the Vulgate in relation to the original texts will be found in Sixtini Amama, Anti-barbarus Biblicus (1656).