•Jerome's former friend Rufilnus was one of his fiercest
°T Aug. iJe Civ. Dei, xviii. 43 : ' Spiritus enim qui in prophetis crat, quando ilia dixerunt. idem ipse erat in L.X.K vins, quaiido ilia inteniretati sunt' ; see also the pass:iges in van Ess, p. HI 1.
1 Kit hi. (Aiigustini ad Uic-onifmum) written in 394 ; this letter, however, never reached Jerome ; Ep. civ. from Augustine, written 403 ; and Ep. cxvi. 35, written 405 : in the last letter Auk explains that he had refused to aUow Jerome s version to be publicly read in Church—' ne . . - maguo scandalo per- turbemus plebes Christi.' .. „,,,,.
6 See Ep. civ. (Aiimuitini ad Hieron.) and c%iu iHHieronifim ad A w,.) ; Thierrv, Saint Jir(nne, livre xi. (4th ed. PP- 447, 448) suggests that the incident never really occurred, but was nvented probably to throw ridicule on Jeromes work; yet inth Jfroine and Augustine speak of it as if it w.re a fact.
obsecro te lector
both Jerome and Augustine speak <
II His apology in the J'roloijus Galeat-us- ne laliorem meum reprehensionem existimes antuiuorum . . . Ouaniquam mihi omnino conscius non sim mutosse me quH plain de hebraica veritate'— is repeated in different words m «lmo»t every preface.
VULGATE
VULGATE
877
as the reading varied in every case ; they must then have been taken direct from the Hebrew, and he was justified in giving this source of our Lord's, or the apostle's, words to the Church in an intelligible translation (Pra'f. in I. Paral. ix. 140S). Indued he maintained against Rullinus that the apostles nsed the LXX in quotation only where it agreed with the Hebrew, and that where the two varied they quoted from the original.* But in spite of this he always professed the highest respect lor the Septua- gint version.
(jradually the conflict calnie<l down ; the general acceptance of the new version could only be a matter of time ; it was a clear case of the littest surviving. Augustine was ultimately seen to praise it ; in the Gospels he apparently used it;t the Spanish Church adopted it for public use ; Sophronius, the friend and lellow-nionk of Jerome, retranslated the Psalms and Prophets from .Jerome's version into Greek ; and when Jerome was ending his stormy life at Bethlehem in 420, tlie attacks or criticisms of his opjwnents were no longer heard, or, if heard, no longer attended to.;
ii. HisTouY OF THE Translation after Jei'.o.me s Death. — The reception of the new trans- lation was, however, vineven ; someCliurclies clung more than others to the old version, and sometimes Jerome's version would be adopted in one part of the Bible, while the Old Latin would be retained in another. Thus the proceedings recorded in the Acta contra Feliccm of .Xiigustine show that at Hippo in the year A.D. 404 tlie Gospels were quoted in Jerome's version, the Acts of the Apostles in the Uld Latin.g
Africa and Britain, both separated by the sea from the main body of the Western Church, clung more steadfastly to the older version, thougli even here the adhesion was a modilied one, and the later African texts, such as m, and h of the Acts and Epistles (see LATIN Vek.sion.s), show the influence or the Vulgate upon them. In Italy and in other parts of the Western Church generations would soon arise to whom the Old Latin could not be bound by especial ties of use or allection, while by converts the best translation would naturally be that which was most welcomed and most vised. The clergy and educated Christians in Rome would be likely to prefer a revision which was begun at 'he instigation of a pope, and the Latin of which would be more congenial than the ruder dialect of the earlier versions. Augustine's recommendation of the versio Itala (by which, Burkitt niaintain.s, he meant Jerome's revision ; see The Olil Latin and the Itala, pp. .54, 60 f., and art. Latin Vek.sions) — 'est verborum ten.acior cum perspicuitate sen- tential'— was quoted, apparently as a well-known formula, of the Vulgate ; Isidore of Seville ((ith cent.) uses almost the exact words ; and Walafrid Strabus (let half of 9th) follows Isidore, and says, ' hac translatione nunc ubique utitur tota Konmna ecclesia, licet non in omnibus libris, et ipsius translatio nierito ceterb anteftrtur, quia e.st ver- borum tenacior, et perspicuitate sententiaj clarior' (see Body, p. 413).
In the 5th cent, the Vulgate was adopted by Vin- cent of Lerins, Faustusof liiez.and Prosper of Aqui- taine ; Eucherius of Lyons and Avitus of Vienne nscd it largely though not exclusively.il In the 6th cent, its use seems becoming almost universal amongst scholars, except in Africa, where Pacundus and Junilius still preserve many Old Latin read-
• Contra Rttf. lib. II. (Vail. 11. 629) ; cf. Ep. lirli. 11.
t «.!7. in the D« conaentu Soangeiitt. ; 8«e Burkitt, The Old Latin and the itala, p. &7 f.
: Kaulcn, p. 188.
S See Burkitt, Tht Old Latin and the Itala, p. 57 f.
■ See Westcott, p. 1702; Kaukii, p. 197 f.; Berucr, pp. 2-4 ; In the 6tti cent, in Uaul mcwt of the boolu of the OT arc quoted from Jerome, while (or the NT the Old Latin holds iu own.
ings; and towards the end of the centurj- pope Gregory the Great (Prmf. in Job ad Lean(/rum = Migne, Pat. Lat. Ixxv. \,. 516) could say, ' Novam vero translatiunem dissero, sed cum probationis causa exigit nunc novam nunc veterem per te.sti- nuiniaa-ssumo ; utquiasedes aposlolica,cui auctore Ueo j)ra;sideo, utraque utitur, mei quocjue labor studii ex utraque fulciatur' ; compare in Job, 1. xx. c. 32, where he declares his personal preference for the new translation. It does not, however, follnw from this that this version now became the official version in Home, but only that, in the judgment of the head of the Roman Church, it was raised to an equal rank with the old (see van Ess, p. 137).