Vulgate

 

The Vulgate is a late–fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible, produced largely through the work of Saint Jerome. In 382, Pope Damasus I commissioned Jerome to revise the Latin Gospels then used by the Roman Church, which belonged to the older Vetus Latina tradition. Jerome later expanded the project on his own, revising and translating most of the rest of Scripture.

Over time, the Vulgate became the standard biblical text of the Western Church, gradually displacing the diverse Vetus Latina versions. By the thirteenth century it was commonly called the versio vulgata—the “version in common use”—or simply the Vulgate. It also incorporated several books that Jerome did not revise, preserving earlier Vetus Latina translations alongside his own work.

The Catholic Church formally affirmed the Vulgate’s authority at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), declaring it the authentic Latin Bible for public use. At that point, however, no single definitive edition existed. Official versions later followed: the Sixtine Vulgate (1590), the Clementine Vulgate (1592), and the Nova Vulgata (1979). The Clementine edition served for centuries as the standard Bible of the Roman Rite until it was replaced by the Nova Vulgata, which remains the official Latin Bible of the Latin Church today.

Terminology

The earliest known use of the label Vulgata for Jerome’s “new” translation appears in the thirteenth century, notably in the writings of Roger Bacon. The term also gained prominence in early printed Latin Bibles, where it distinguished the widely used Vulgate text from more recent humanist revisions and alternative Latin translations.

Authorship and Textual Character

Although the Vulgate is traditionally associated with Jerome, it is not a single-author work. Jerome revised the four Gospels using Greek manuscripts as his reference, but much of the remaining New Testament appears to reflect later revisions of Vetus Latina texts by other hands. Likewise, several deuterocanonical and additional books entered the Vulgate through unrevised or separately transmitted Latin traditions.

Jerome translated most of the Hebrew Bible directly from Hebrew—a major departure from earlier Latin versions, which typically relied on Greek sources. He also produced multiple Latin versions of the Psalms for different contexts, translated Tobit and Judith from Aramaic sources, and translated additions to Esther and Daniel from Greek. As a result, the Vulgate is best understood as a composite biblical collection that gathered Jerome’s work together with inherited and parallel Latin materials.

Contents in Broad Outline

In many historical Vulgate manuscripts, the collection typically included:

• New Testament: Jerome’s revised Gospels, plus the rest of the New Testament in revised Vetus Latina form.

• Old Testament: Jerome’s translations from Hebrew for most books, alongside his Greek-based Psalter and Greek-derived additions to Esther and Daniel.

• Deuterocanonical and additional books: a mixture of Jerome’s translations and older Latin versions that were never revised by him, with the exact contents varying by manuscript tradition and later editorial practice.

Jerome’s Approach

Jerome did not begin with the intent of producing an entirely new Latin Bible, and his correspondence shows that his project expanded over time. A major theme in his prefaces is his preference for the Hebraica veritas—the “Hebrew truth”—which he often defended against critics who preferred the Septuagint. He also wrote numerous prologues introducing individual books, shaping later medieval assumptions about biblical canon and translation authority.

Relationship to the Vetus Latina

The Vetus Latina refers to the earlier Latin biblical translations that circulated before Jerome. These texts developed gradually, varied widely in quality, and often existed in multiple competing forms for the same book. The Vulgate did not immediately replace them; early medieval Bibles sometimes retained Vetus Latina readings, especially in certain books. Over the High Middle Ages, however, the Vulgate increasingly became dominant.

Status in the Catholic Tradition

The Council of Trent affirmed the Vulgate’s authority chiefly because of its long-standing liturgical and ecclesial use, rather than because it was judged the best text for reconstructing the original Hebrew and Greek. Later Catholic teaching clarified that its “authenticity” functions as a reliable standard for faith and morals in Church use, rather than as a guarantee that every wording choice is philologically identical to the earliest manuscripts.