VULGATE is the name of the Latin translation of the Bible, which is the 'received ver sion in the Roman Catholic church. It must not be confounded with the older Latin translation known as the Itala (see ITALIC VERSION). While Jerome was engaged in correcting the Itala, he conceived the plan of producing a completely new version of the Old Testament, done from the Hebrew text itself. He commenced this labor about 385 A.D., and completed it in 405. He also made an improved version of the Italic New Testament, and the two together received the name vulgate. The discrepancies between the vulgate and the Itala, which had been made from the LXX., were so numerous and important, that the charge of heresy and falsification of Scripture was openly preferred against th6 translator by Rufinus, and even St. Augustine was doubtful for some time whether this charge might not be true. But gradually it made its way into the church, /list in Gaul, then in Rome—chiefly through Gregory the great—and tinally throughout the west. About two hundred years after Jerome's death, it became the universally re ceived version of the church. Not long, however, did it exist in its pure and unadul terated form. Partly through the influence of the emendated Itala, partly through the manifold general causes of neglect, hastiness, and the rest, which have gone so far spoil almost every ancient MS., the text of the vulgate had become so corrupted, that in 802, Charlemagne commissioned Alcuin to revise it by old MSS. and to compare it to with the original texts. This revision, however, to which afterward came other " emen
dations," in the 11th and 12th c. (by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, and cardinal Nicolaus respectively), completely changed the original character of the work. Nor did the " Correctoria Biblica" (i. e., certain collections of commentated and revised texts, issued at the period), do much for the improvement of the corrupted MSS. The confu sion between the different codices was chiefly remarked, when the Tridentine council, in 1546, first declared the vulgate the authorized version of the Roman church, and decreed the preparation of an authenticated edition: In 1564, the papal chair un dertook the task; but not before 1590 did Sixtus V. produce the work. This, how ever, turned out to be so utterly incorrect and faulty throughout, that the copies were speedily suppressed; and another edition, which appeared in 1592, was prepared under Clement VIII., to which in the next year, 1593, that other edition succeeded, which has since remained the normal edition of the church of Rome, and has been reprinted unchanged ever since. We may add, that the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Pen tateuch and Joshua, by Aelfric (10th c.), has been made from the Vulgate, and not, as has been erroneously supposed, from the septuagint; and that the vulgate has also been repeatedly translated into Arabic (the Psalms even into Persian) for the use of the Roman Catholics in the east.