The Benedictine Vulgate, also called Vatican Vulgate or Roman Vulgate (full title: ''Biblia Sacra iuxta latinam vulgatam versionem ad codicum fidem'', tr. ''Holy Bible following the Latin vulgate version faithfully to the manuscripts''), is a

critical edition Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may range i ...

of the

Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...

version of the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

, Catholic deuterocanonical books included. The edition was supported by and begun at the instigation of the Catholic Church, and was done by the

Benedictine monks The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, the ...

of the

pontifical Abbey of St Jerome-in-the-City The Pontifical Abbey of St Jerome-in-the-City (; ) was a Benedictine monastery in Rome founded in 1933 for the purpose of creating a critical edition of the Vulgate. The abbey was dissolved in 1984; their critical edition of the Vulgate is only tha ...

. The edition was published progressively from 1926 to 1995, in 18 volumes.

History

In 1907,

Pope Pius X Pope Pius X (; born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto; 2 June 1835 – 20 August 1914) was head of the Catholic Church from 4 August 1903 to his death in August 1914. Pius X is known for vigorously opposing Modernism in the Catholic Church, modern ...

commissioned the

Benedictine Order The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly Christian mysticism, contemplative Christian monasticism, monastic Religious order (Catholic), order of the Catholic Church for men and f ...

to produce as pure a version as possible of Jerome's original text after conducting an extensive search for as-yet-unstudied manuscripts, particularly in

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. This text was originally planned as the basis of a revised complete official Bible for the Catholic church to replace the Clementine edition. The first volume, the

Pentateuch The Torah ( , "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () o ...

, completed in 1926, lists as primary editor

Henri Quentin Dom Henri Quentin (7 October 1872, Saint-Thierry - 4 February 1935, Rome) was a French Benedictine abbot. A philologist specializing in biblical texts and martyrologies, he was the creator of an original method of textual criticism (sometimes ...

, whose editorial methods, described in his book ''Mémoire sur l'établissement du texte de la Vulgate'', proved to be somewhat controversial. The Roman Vulgate reunited the

Book of Ezra The Book of Ezra is a book of the Hebrew Bible which formerly included the Book of Nehemiah in a single book, commonly distinguished in scholarship as Ezra–Nehemiah. The two became separated with the first printed Mikraot Gedolot, rabbinic bib ...

and the

Book of Nehemiah The Book of Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible largely takes the form of a first-person memoir by Nehemiah, a Hebrew prophet and high official at the Persian court, concerning the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and the ...

into a single book, reversing the decisions of the

Sixto-Clementine Vulgate The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate or Clementine Vulgate () is an edition of the Latin Vulgate, the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. It was the second edition of the Vulgate to be formally authorized by the Catholic Church, the first be ...

. In 1933,

Pope Pius XI Pope Pius XI (; born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, ; 31 May 1857 – 10 February 1939) was head of the Catholic Church from 6 February 1922 until his death in February 1939. He was also the first sovereign of the Vatican City State u ...

established the

Pontifical Abbey of St Jerome-in-the-City The Pontifical Abbey of St Jerome-in-the-City (; ) was a Benedictine monastery in Rome founded in 1933 for the purpose of creating a critical edition of the Vulgate. The abbey was dissolved in 1984; their critical edition of the Vulgate is only tha ...

to complete the work. By the 1970s, as a result of liturgical changes that had spurred the Vatican to produce a new translation of the Latin Bible, the ''

Nova Vulgata The ''Nova Vulgata'' (complete title: ''Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio'', ; abr. ''NV''), also called the Neo-Vulgate, is the Catholic Church's official Latin translation of the original-language texts of the Catholic canon of the Bibl ...

'', the Benedictine edition was no longer required for official purposes, and the abbey was suppressed in 1984. Five monks were nonetheless allowed to complete the final two volumes of the Old Testament, which were published under the abbey's name in 1987 and 1995.

References

Editions

* 18 vols.

External links

* {{cite web, title=Bibliorum Sacrorum Vetus Vulgata, url=http://www.libreriaeditricevaticana.com/it/catalogue/catalogo.jsp?cat=B38, url-status=dead, archive-url=https://archive.today/20131219183331/http://www.libreriaeditricevaticana.com/it/catalogue/catalogo.jsp?cat=B38, archive-date=19 December 2013, access-date=19 December 2013, website=Libreria Editrice Vaticana Editions of the Vulgate Old Testament 20th-century books in Latin

History

See also

References

Editions

Further reading

External links