Vulgate Clementine (1598)
This module contains the text of the Vulgate Clementine, that is, the Latin version of the Holy Scriptures made originally by Saint Jerome, according the major revision and standardization made under Pope Sixtus V and printed in 1598 under Pope Clement VIII.
This text contains punctuation marks, such as periods, commas, question marks, parenthesis and so on - which are not a part both of the original texts of Scriptures as well of Saint Jerome's translation. They are also part of the Clementine revision. However, for most readers, the understanding is much easier with them, as we have in every Bible version in modern languages.
This revision is until nowadays - for Roman-Catholics - the officially recognized version of the Latin Rite and contains the only authorized text of the Vulgate.
Therefore, this version includes the so-called "Gallican Psalter", that is, Saint Jerome's second version of the Book of Psalms made directly from the Greek Septuaginta. Although the general principle followed by Saint Jerome - regarding the Old Testament - was the primacy of the Hebrew text, his Hebrew version of the Psalter never enjoyed practical or liturgical use anywhere.
We will not approach the issue about how much Saint Jerome relied more upon Greek or Hebrew on the Old Testament, since there are fervent proponents of both hypothesis. However, we give here for reference some historical background on the three Jerome's Latin versions of the Psalter.
REGARDING THE "GALLICAN PSALTER"
St. Jerome was responsible for three versions of the Psalms, at all. His first recension was made upon the old Latin version in use at that time, a very defficient one - the "Vetus Itala". He compared it with the Greek of the Septuagint, and issued his corrections, which were accepted and passed into use, especially in Italy, becoming know as the "Romana version". After a brief time, however, St. Jerome found that the corrections he had made were not adequate, and he made a second recension with further corrections from the Greek, which subsquently was taken up in France, and was the version most in use in Gaul, etc., and became known as the "Gallicana". Gradually this recension superseded the "Romana version", which, however, remained in use in Rome for a considerable time, and at the present day is still used in the Divine Office chanted at St. Peter's. The "Romana version" was that which St. Augustine of Canterbury, coming as he did from Rome, brought with him to England, and it apparently remained the common version in that country until the Norman conquest.
The two versions thus made by St. Jerome by corrections of the old Latin in view of the Greek naturally contain much that is the same.
The third version made by St. Jerome at a later period of his life was translated directly from the Hebrew. Although St. Jerome considered that this version really represented the true sense of the Psalmist, it was never accepted by the Roman-Catholic Church for practical use. It is to be found in some Bibles, especially of Spanish origin, either as an addition to the usual "Gallicana version", or in place of it. It seems that this is due mostly to the extensive liturgical use of the Psalter - the Psalms were the most significant part of hymnology in that times - sung or recited both in communitary as well in private prayer - and so, any radical change in meaning as well in meters would be difficult to be received anywhere.
REGARDING THE TEXT
This electronic module for theWord has been compiled from the modules for VulSearch 4.2 (site: http://vulsearch.sf.net; email: little.mouth@soon.com) a software focused on the Latin Vulgate with many interesting features, such as a Latin dictionary add-on adapted from William Whitaker Words and also an accentuation routine by Bertrand Michelet - it may display Latin text with accents. Their original tags for line breaks or paragraphs have been maintained as far as possible - with the exception of the indenting tags, which were beyond our capability to properly convert. We added on our own the red and bold formatting on Psalm titles, as well on the Hebrew alphabetic heads of some verses.
The text itself of the Clementine Vulgate - used by VulSearch - has been edited by the Clementine Text Project, with the following contributors:
Mila Bozovic, Marjorie Burghart, Ron Conte, Michael Dubiaga, Seán Finnegan, Alundis Insensate, Edward Kotski, Bertrand Michelet, Michael Morbach, Richard Urquhart, Andreja Vasiljevic and Edgard Vreuls.
The electronic version of VulSearch has been created by little.mouth@soon.com, based on Colunga-Turrado 1947 and Vercellone 1861 (full information on the text from http://vulsearch.sf.net/gettext.html)
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