Yet we should be mistaken if we measured the disappearance of the older versions simply by the quotations in ecclesiastical writers; the evidence of M.SS of the Sacred Books, of Lectionaries, quo- tations and lessons in service booka, etc., must also be taken into account ; and these show us that these versions died very hvrd ; (jometimes in entire books of the Bible, sometimes fn marginal notes, conllate readings, and ' mixed ' tc^ts, some- times in short lections, in antiphons and responses, they lasted far on into the Middle Ages. Thus the St. Germain MS (see p. 888) of tlio 'Jtli cent, has an Old Latin text in Tobit, Judith, and St. Matthew ; in the other books of tJie Bible which survive it is Vulgate, though stronglj' mixed with Old Latin readings ; the Codex Colbertinus (c) of the New Testament (I2th or 13th cent, see p. 888) has the Gospels in an Old Latin text, the rest Vulgate; the interesting Perpignan MS (I3th cent., see p. SS8) has Ac I'-13' and 2S" adjin. in an Old Latin text, the rest Vulgate with a very slight amount of mixture from the Old Latin ; the North British and Irish MSS (such as those described p. 887) proserveagood Vulgate text interspersed with OKI Latin interpolations and conflations, which with a little jiractice can be easily eliminated from the main body of the text. Tlie NT sull'ercd from this mixture far more than the OT ; for, being a revision instead of a new translation, it resembled the earlier versions more closely ; and it was more familiar to the members of the Church. ' L'Ancieu Testament au contraire,' says M. Berger (p. 3), ' n'a rd-ellement 6t6 levt-l^ aux peuples latins que par Saint Jerome': yet even the text of the OT would suHer from the very natural con- fusion that would come between his translation from the Hebrew and his earlier version from the LXX. In addition to this conscious preservation of the Old Latin in many Vulgate MSS, the text of Jerome's translation was exposed in after-years to the same dangers as existed in his own daj', and which are inseparable from the transmission and multiplication of books by hand. The careless- ness of copyists, their tendency to introduce matter from parallel p,is.sage8, unconscious remin- iscence of older renderings, occasional alteration for dojjmatic purposes, — all these in the course of centuries ten<led to produce a style of text very far removed from the original purity in which it left its editor's hands.
On this point the writer ventures to quote from the preface (p. viii) of the late M. Berber's UiMoirg de la Vut<intt, etc., a book to which he cannot HUtlicieiitly cxpreHu hid otilii^uliuns — * Lcs (toclrines lea plus chil-reu aux thL^oluL'iens du uio\eufi^e exercenl toules lour intluence sur lo text* (Ic la Bible. Id c'est le do((inc de la Trinit^i, que Ton veut trouver fonnulii en toutes leltrcs dans la Bible, et que Ton alllrine par la (ameuite inter- polation du pajiHu^'u " des trois ttinioins. C'evt la foi en la divinite de Ji-aus-Christ qui s'exprinie en un strand nunibro de (alHiflrations de detail, toujoun* au dt^trinient de son humanity. C'est, dans le troisit-nie chupitre de la Uentse, un chan^a'Uient d'une scule lettre qui ntet "la Feuinie" & la place de "la I*ost*ril6 de la femnie." Dans le second livre des Machabdes, une s6rie de m(xIillcalionfl successives transforment insensible- uietit le passage classique de la doctrine de la pri6re pour lei nmrts ; lou^e siniulcinent dans le t«xte original, la pnure pour les niorta arrive, dans les textes de basse i^po<iue, ft 6tre prCchOe
878
VULGATE
VULGATE
en temies expr^s. Dans le quatri^me livre d'Esdras, un passage qui parait contraire i la pri^re pour les tK'pass^s est, sans plus, arraclii- de la Bible avec la page qui le porte, et cet exenipluire mutilu est, par une singuli6re rencontre, presque le seul qui ait Jamais eti copii5.' Tor the jxissagc in tlie Maccabees see the note top. 23 of M. Bergcr's book ; for the fourth book of Ksdriis see R. L. Bensly, The Mitsing Fragiiwnt of the Uh Book 0/ Ezra^ Oamb. 1875, or Speaker's Commentarv, Apocrypha^ in loc. ; or M. R. James, The Uh Book qf Ezra, Ciimb. 1895.
Cassiodorius, indeed, is a witness that even by the middle of tlie Uth cent, tlie text of Jerome's ver-sion had become corrujjted, and tliat he did his best to revise it ; but as to the extent both of the corruption and of the revision we are in the darli. He speaks at some lengtli on the subject in the De institutione Dii-inaruin litterarum (Migne, Pat. Lat. Ixx. p. U05f.), whicli lie composed for the instruction of bis younger brethren in the mon- astery at Vivarium, apparently about the year A.D. 544 ; he expresses himself anxious that they should study their Bibles in codicibus emendatis, tells thera that liis nine codices, containing all the books of the Old and New Testaments, were revised by him ' sub collatione priscorum codicum,' that Jerome's arrangement of the Prophets into cola and commata had been adopted by him for the rest of the Bible, and tliat he left them a Greek pandect, or whole Bible, by which, accord- ing to Jerome's example, they might correct the errors in their Latin translation. But he gives us no li.st of current errors or of Iiis own correc- tions ; and all trace of his carefully corrected codices has disappeared. AVith, however, perhaps one exception: the magnificent Codex Amiatinus of the Bible, though it is of the 8th cent., resem- bles Cassiodoriu.s' Bible not only in being divided into cola and commata throughout, but also in possessing a quaternion of introductory matter {possibly of earlier date than the rest of the MS) which strongly resembles chs. xii.-xiv. of tlie De inMitutione ; three lists of the books of Holy Scrip- ture occur in each, and the resemblance is of that puzzling nature which stops well short of direct copying and yet suggests very close affinity ; all the closer because Cassiodorius tells us that his third division of the books was written ' inter alias (divisiones) in codice grandiore.' It may be, therefore, that in the first eiglit leaves of the Codex Amiatinus we actually possess part of Cas- siodorius' codex grandior ; though it is more likely that we possess a not very faithful copy of it.*