The Vulgate

To understand what the Vulgate is, one must first understand what it is not: neither one book among others, nor a mere working translation. It is the Latin form of Holy Scripture as the Catholic Church received, kept and handed it on.

A translation become received Scripture

When the Christians of Rome prayed in Latin, in the second and third centuries, they needed the Scriptures in their own language. Partial translations circulated, made from the Greek: this is what is now called the Old Latin (Vetus Latina). Saint Augustine, at the beginning of the fifth century, notes that these versions are many and uneven^[3]. Jerome's Vulgate was born of this need: to give the Latin Church a stable, faithful and complete text.

The result covers the whole Catholic canon: 73 books, 46 for the Old Testament and 27 for the New Testament. The books Protestants call apocrypha, and Catholics call deuterocanonical (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel), stand there in their place, as in every Catholic Bible^[4]. For the detail of this question, see Why do Catholics have seven more books?.

The Vulgate's place among the great versions

The Church has never known a single version of the Bible, and the Vulgate is no exception. It belongs to a history of transmission in which each stage sheds light on the next.

The Vulgate replaces neither Hebrew nor Greek: it transmits them. Pope Pius XII would recall in 1943 that the study of the original languages remains the royal road of exegesis, without withdrawing the Vulgate's received authority^[5]. Half a century earlier, Leo XIII had set the doctrinal framework in Providentissimus Deus (1893): to restrict inspiration to certain parts of Scripture, or to concede that the sacred author could have erred, is absolutely forbidden^[6]. For the Church's Catholic method of reading, see How to read the Bible as a Catholic and The Catholic interpretation of the Bible.

The Vulgate cannot be understood without knowing the man who made it: a fiery scholar, an ascetic monk, a redoubtable polemicist, and a saint whom the Church numbers among her greatest doctors.

A life given to Scripture

Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, whom we call Saint Jerome, was born at Stridon, in Dalmatia, around 342-347 (the traditional date of 347 remains the most cited)^[7]. Trained in Rome in classical letters, baptized as a young man, he discovered the East, learned Greek, then attacked Hebrew with a tenacity that astonished his contemporaries: a cultivated Roman stammering Hebrew with Jewish masters was something new^[8].

Called to Rome by Pope Saint Damasus I, he became his secretary and adviser on questions of Scripture, from 382 until the pope's death in 384^[9]. After a violent conflict with part of the Roman clergy, he left Rome and settled in Bethlehem in 386, with the noble widow Paula and her daughter Eustochium, who founded with him twin monasteries for men and women^[10].

There, in a cave near that of the Nativity according to tradition, he accomplished the essential part of his work, and there he died on 30 September 420^[11]. The Church keeps his feast on that day and honors him as a Doctor of the Church, one of the four great Latin doctors with Ambrose, Augustine and Gregory the Great^[12].

Why Jerome, and no one else

Three things made Jerome irreplaceable. First, a rare science of languages: Latin by birth, Greek acquired to perfection, Hebrew learned with hardship, with the help of Jewish masters whom he paid and consulted^[13]. Second, an intimate knowledge of Palestine: he lived on the very places of sacred history, checked place names, questioned the geography^[14]. Finally, a theological conviction commanding all the rest: Scripture is the word of God, and deserves the best of the scholar as the best of the monk.

Benedict XV, for the fifteenth centenary of his death, would devote to him in 1920 the encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus, proposing Jerome as the model for all who study the Bible^[15].

The Vulgate was not born of a scholar's whim. It answered a situation grown untenable: the Latin Church prayed on texts that varied from one church to another.

The disorder of the Old Latin

The Vetus Latina was not a single version, but a family of partial translations made from the Greek from the second century onward, copied and recopied, retouched by each scribe, mixed together. The result: for one same passage, several competing readings circulated, and no one knew which one held^[16]. The monks who copied added glosses in the margins, and the next copyist sometimes worked them into the text. Each region had its habits: African texts, European texts, Italian texts.

Saint Augustine describes the situation lucidly: among the Latin translations, the one he calls the Itala should be preferred, closer to the words while remaining clear in meaning^[17].

"Among the translations themselves, the Itala is to be preferred to the others, for it keeps closer to the words while preserving clarity of meaning." (Saint Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, book II, chapter 15^[18])

Augustine himself felt how hard it is to change habits: in a letter to Jerome around 403, he tells how a bishop of Oea caused an uproar among his faithful by reading the gourd of the new translation where all expected the ivy they were used to, in Jonah 4:6^[19]. The anecdote shows two things at once: the very human resistance to change, and the rightness of Jerome's method, which preferred exactness to routine.

The commission of Pope Damasus

In 382, Pope Saint Damasus I asked Jerome to revise the Latin text of the Gospels in use in the Roman Church^[20]. Jerome's prefatory letter to the pope, placed at the head of his work, has remained famous: it states both his fear and his method.

"You compel me to make something new out of something old, to sit as arbiter between the copies of the Scriptures scattered throughout the whole world, and, since they differ among themselves, to decide which agree with the Greek truth." (Saint Jerome, preface to the four Gospels, addressed to Pope Damasus^[21])

The program is set: compare the Latin manuscripts, decide on the basis of the Greek, and give a single text. Jerome began with the Gospels, in Rome, in 382-384. The rest would follow in Bethlehem, with a far greater ambition: to go back to Hebrew itself.

Twenty-three years of work, two cities, three source languages, several successive methods: the Vulgate did not come out in a single draft. Following Jerome step by step is understanding what the text really contains, and where each part comes from.

In Rome: the Gospels revised from the Greek (382-384)

First task, the most urgent: the four Gospels read at the Roman Mass. Jerome did not translate from scratch; he revised the Old Latin, confronting it with the Greek manuscripts^[22]. His rule was conservative: to correct only what departs from the meaning, so as not to trouble faithful used to their text. This prudence explains why the Vulgate of the Gospels still keeps Old Latin turns of phrase today.

The rest of the New Testament (Acts, Epistles, Apocalypse) was not retranslated by Jerome from the Greek: the Church kept the received Latin text, lightly retouched over the copies^[23]. This is a point history has solidly established, and it must be said honestly: when we speak of the Vulgate of the New Testament outside the Gospels, we speak of the Church's old Latin stock, not of a new translation by Jerome.

In Bethlehem: the return to the Hebrew truth (390-405)

The great turning point came in Bethlehem. For the Old Testament, Jerome made a decision that scandalized some of his contemporaries: instead of translating the Greek of the Septuagint, as had always been done in Latin, he translated the Hebrew directly. His motto: hebraica veritas, the Hebrew truth^[24]. The argument is simple: between a translation and its source, the source is authoritative.

For the Psalms, sung daily by the monks, he proceeded in stages, which is why we speak of Jerome's three psalters: the Roman Psalter, a first revision made in Rome; the Gallican Psalter, revised in Bethlehem around 387-392 from Origen's Hexapla, which would become the psalter of the whole medieval West; and the Psalter iuxta Hebraeos, translated directly from Hebrew around 390-392^[25]. It is the Gallican Psalter, not the translation from Hebrew, that the liturgy would keep for fifteen centuries.

Then, from 390 or 391 until about 405, Jerome translated from Hebrew and Aramaic, book after book: Samuel and Kings, Job, the Prophets, the Psalms iuxta Hebraeos, Ezra and Nehemiah, Chronicles, the Pentateuch, the sapiential books^[26]. Each book is preceded by a preface in which Jerome explains his method, defends his choices and answers his critics: these prefaces, taken together, form a true treatise on Bible translation.

His rule as translator, set out in his letter 57 to Pammachius around 395, has remained a classic:

"I render not word for word, but sense for sense." (Saint Jerome, letter 57 to Pammachius^[27])

To translate, for Jerome, is not to copy line by line, but to understand and then restate. This controlled freedom, placed at the service of a text held to be the word of God, accounts for part of the Vulgate's lasting beauty.

Tobit and Judith from Aramaic, the rest kept

Two books are exceptions to the principle of translation from Hebrew: Tobit and Judith, which Jerome translated from an Aramaic text. He says so himself in his prefaces, even noting the speed of the work: Tobit dictated in a single day^[28]. These two books belong to the deuterocanonicals, whose Semitic original was lost or inaccessible for the others.

For the other deuterocanonicals, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, as well as the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel, Jerome did not retranslate: the Old Latin text is kept as it stands in the Vulgate^[29]. The book of Daniel received mixed treatment: translated from Hebrew and Aramaic, it keeps its additions transmitted in Greek. The table below sums up the origin of each part, so the reader knows exactly what he is reading when he opens his Bible.

The Vulgate follows the order of books become classic in the West: the one today's Catholic Bibles still keep. The Old Testament opens with the Pentateuch, continues with the historical books, the poetical and sapiential books, then the Prophets; the New Testament goes from the Gospels to Acts, the Epistles and the Apocalypse^[30].

The helmeted prologue and the question of the canon

At the head of his translation of Samuel and Kings, Jerome placed a preface that has remained famous as the Prologus Galeatus, the helmeted prologue: helmeted, because it arms the reader for the whole Bible^[31]. There he lists the books received from the Hebrews, twenty-two in number according to the Jewish count of the letters of the alphabet, and expresses his personal reservations about the books outside that list.

This passage is often quoted, sometimes against the Church. It must be read to the end: Jerome, who distrusts the Greek books, explicitly submits to the judgment of the Churches that read and receive them^[32]. And indeed, his own Vulgate hands on Tobit, Judith, Maccabees and the others in their place. When the Council of Trent solemnly fixed the canon in 1546, it only confirmed what the Vulgate had already carried for eleven centuries^[33]. See How was the Bible formed?.

The appendix of the Clementine edition

Printed editions of the Vulgate bear the trace of this history: after the Apocalypse, the 1592 edition adds an appendix with the Prayer of Manasseh and the third and fourth books of Esdras, handed on by the Latin tradition but outside the defined canon^[34]. This appendix states the Church's prudence: to keep what has been handed on, without confusing it with what is canonical.

A translation, however genial, becomes the Bible of a world only if generations copy it, pray it and teach it. That is the story of the Vulgate for a thousand years.

The great manuscript witnesses

Thousands of Latin manuscripts of the Bible survive, no two alike in every detail, and that is normal: each handwritten copy introduces its variants. But a few witnesses stand out by age and completeness.

The Codex Fuldensis, corrected by Victor of Capua in the mid-sixth century, is the oldest complete witness of the Latin New Testament: its Gospels are presented in continuous harmony, following the order of the Diatessaron^[35]. The Codex Amiatinus, copied by the monks of Wearmouth-Jarrow in England around 700 and offered to the pope, is the oldest surviving copy of the complete Latin Bible in a single volume: a book of more than thirty kilos, which still travels the world's exhibitions today^[36]. For the world of biblical manuscripts, see The Dead Sea Scrolls and the article on the manuscripts of the Bible.

Monks, schools and first corrections

From the early Middle Ages, the great copying centers stabilized the text: Alcuin at Tours, around 800, and Theodulf at Orléans each produced a carefully corrected recension, spread throughout the Carolingian empire^[37]. In the thirteenth century, the Paris Bible, copied in series for students and mendicant preachers, fixed the order of the books and spread the chapters attributed to Stephen Langton around 1207^[38]. Verse numbers would come in the sixteenth century with the Paris printer Robert Estienne^[39].

In 1455 the first great printed book of the West came off the Mainz presses: the Gutenberg Bible, a Latin Vulgate^[40]. Jerome's text entered the age of printing with the prestige of the first incunabulum.

Trent: the Vulgate declared authentic

On 8 April 1546, at its fourth session, the Council of Trent issued a decree on the edition and use of the sacred books. Amid the Reformation controversies over text and canon, the Fathers declared that the old Latin edition received through the use of so many centuries in the Church must be held authentic in public lessons, debates, preaching and expositions^[41].

"The holy council decrees and declares that this same old and vulgate edition, approved in the Church herself by the use of so many centuries, shall be held authentic in public lessons, debates, preaching and expositions." (Council of Trent, session IV, decree on the edition and use of the sacred books, 8 April 1546^[42])

What does authentic mean? Neither that every word would be the best possible critical reading, nor that every other version would be forbidden. The meaning, as the council's tradition specifies, is juridical: this text is authoritative for the Church's public teaching; it may be relied upon in safety for faith and morals^[43]. In the same breath the council ordered the Vulgate to be printed as correctly as possible: authenticity does not exclude correction, it calls for it.

From this order would come the great Roman editions: the Sixtine of 1590, quickly withdrawn, then the Sixto-Clementine of 1592, promulgated by Clement VIII with a preface attributed to Cardinal Bellarmine, which would remain the Church's official Bible until 1979^[44].

The Vulgate is no museum piece: for fifteen centuries it was the language in which the West prayed to God, and it remains so whenever the liturgy resounds in Latin.

The language of prayer and unity

From the psalms of the office to the readings of the Mass, from antiphons to hymns, the Latin liturgy is woven of Vulgate. The monk chanting matins, the preaching priest, the child learning his catechism: all receive the same words, from Lisbon to Krakow. This unity of language carried unity of faith: where the Eastern Churches sometimes divided over competing translations, the West kept a common text^[45].

Saint Jerome himself gave this study its highest motive, in the prologue to his commentary on Isaiah:

"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." (Saint Jerome, prologue to the commentary on Isaiah^[46])

The phrase crossed the centuries: it is found quoted by popes, councils and the Catechism, and alone it sums up the theology of the Vulgate. To translate the Bible, copy it, read it, is not scholars' work; it is an encounter with Christ, who is the center and fulfillment of all the Scriptures^[47]. See The spiritual meaning of Scripture.

From the Clementine to the Nova Vulgata

In the twentieth century, the Church undertook a far-reaching revision. Saint Pius X entrusted the Benedictines of the Abbey of Saint Jerome in Rome with the critical revision of the text; after the Second Vatican Council, Saint Paul VI had a renewed edition set in motion, prepared by a commission chaired by Cardinal Bea, to give the reformed liturgy a sure Latin text^[48]. The work resulted in the Nova Vulgata: the Psalter appeared in 1969, the New Testament in 1971, the whole in 1979^[49].

On 25 April 1979, Saint John Paul II promulgated it by the constitution Scripturarum thesaurus as the typical edition, to be used in particular in the liturgy^[50]. A second edition appeared in 1986. In 2001, the instruction Liturgiam authenticam confirmed the rule of the game: liturgical translations into living languages must be checked against the Nova Vulgata, which serves as the common reference point for all languages^[51]. Jerome's Vulgate, revised in the light of the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts better known today, thus remains the mother of the Bibles Catholics hear every Sunday.

Like every great ancient text, the Vulgate is examined by modern criticism. This section loyally sets out the main objections and hypotheses, then shows why the Church's traditional position remains defensible. No difficulty is left unanswered.

Objection 1: Trent allegedly imposed a faulty text

Part of contemporary exegesis proposes that Trent's decree froze an imperfect text and held back biblical science for centuries^[52]. The answer holds in three points. First, Trent never claimed to settle questions of textual criticism: the word authentic there has a juridical meaning, that of a text authoritative for public teaching, not that of a perfect critical edition. Second, the council itself ordered the most correct possible printing, and the popes had the text revised several times: Sixtine, Clementine, then Nova Vulgata. Finally, Pius XII explicitly encouraged the study of the original Hebrew and Greek texts in 1943, proof that the authority recognized in the Vulgate never closed the scientific worksite^[53].

Objection 2: Jerome did not translate the whole Vulgate

That is true, and this article said it before its critics: outside the Gospels, the Vulgate's New Testament comes from the old Latin stock; several deuterocanonicals come from the Old Latin; the liturgical Psalter comes from the Hexapla^[54]. Part of contemporary exegesis proposes seeing in this proof that the Vulgate would be a compilation without unity^[55]. But the objection confuses one man's work with the Church's work. The Vulgate is not Jerome's book in the sense of a personal work: it is the text the Latin Church received, tested and kept, of which Jerome is the principal craftsman. Its unity is not that of one pen, but that of one reception.

Objection 3: Jerome's alleged mistakes

Sometimes famous translation choices are cited: Lucifer for the morning star in Isaiah 14:12, gratia plena (full of grace) in Luke 1:28, or poenitentiam agite (do penance) in Matthew 3:2^[56]. Part of contemporary exegesis proposes seeing in them misunderstandings that modern criticism has corrected. Each case deserves examination, and each has received serious defenses: Lucifer, bearer of light, renders exactly the Latin image of the morning star; gratia plena expresses the fullness of grace tradition has always read in the angel's greeting; poenitentiam agite carries the dimension of concrete conversion the Greek itself implies^[57]. Above all, these formulas nourished fifteen centuries of prayer and theology: a translation bearing such fruits is not judged on a dictionary alone.

Objection 4: textual criticism allegedly surpassed the Vulgate

Since the nineteenth century, critical editions of the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Bible have advanced, and the Stuttgart edition (Weber, 1969, revised by Gryson) gives scholars a scientifically established Latin text^[58]. Should we conclude the received Vulgate is outdated? No, for two reasons. First, past science works on incomplete evidence: each critical edition is a hypothetical reconstruction, revised with each generation of discovered manuscripts, as the contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls showed for the Old Testament^[59]. Second, the Church does not ask her liturgical Bible to be a laboratory hypothesis: she asks it faithfully to hand on the received word. That is why the Nova Vulgata took in criticism's solid gains without breaking with the received text: continuity, not rupture.

Why the traditional position remains defensible

At the end of the journey, three reasons carry the Church's confidence. The first is historical: no other Latin text can claim so long, so wide and so fruitful a reception. The second is theological: the Holy Spirit assists the Church in handing on the Scriptures, and fifteen centuries of unanimous use are no accident. The third is practical: it is on the Vulgate that the saints, doctors and missionaries of the West were formed, from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, from Benedict to Thérèse^[60]. A Bible that made so many saints has proved itself.

• The Bible: the central article on Scripture received by the Church
• How was the Bible formed?: the formation of the canon, Old and New Testament
• The Septuagint: the Greek Bible of the apostles, source and elder of the Vulgate
• Why do Catholics have seven more books?: the deuterocanonicals in the Vulgate
• How to read the Bible as a Catholic: the Church's method of reading
• The Catholic interpretation of the Bible: the principles of Catholic exegesis
• The spiritual meaning of Scripture: beyond the letter, the announced Christ
• Which Bible to buy?: choosing a Catholic Bible for prayer and study