Large numbers of Italian texts must have been brought to Britain in and after the mission of Augustine, if not earlier ; and in the late 7th and 8th cents, the monasteries of Weaimouth and Jarrow were, we know, enriched with copies of the Bible (Pandectes or BibliotJmcB as they were called) and other MSS obtained from Italy by the exer- tions of Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid ; from them Buch MSS as the Codex Amiatinus and the Lindis- farne Gospels were copied. The type of text thus obtained would soon penetrate to Ireland, though as it was perpetuated in the local scriptoria it would gradually become tinged with some of the peculiarities of the traditional Old Latin versions.
But the Bible the Irish thus received from Rome their missionaries carried back in the following centuries to continental Europe, to Gaul, Switzer- land, and Germany. The Codex Amiatinus was itself sent to Rome by Ceolfrid as an offering to the shrine of St. Peter. Irish and British monks again settled in foreiOTi monasteries and copied the Scriptures there (cf. Bede, Hist. Eccl. iii. 8) ; and thus the text which had been first modified by British characteristics, was further modified by
* See P. Corssen, ' Die Bibeln des Oassiodorius und der Codex Amiatinus,' in the Jahrhiicher /. prot. Theologie, Leipz. 1883 ; and H. J. White, "The Codex Amiatinus and ita Birthplace," in Studia Biblica et Eccletiastica, vol. ii. p. 287 1.
the texts of the countries into which it was now brought. We owe to this cause the large number of MSS, mainly of the 9th cent., which were copied in Gaul and Switzerland by Irisli scribes, and present a strange mixture of Irish and Con- tinental types, both in text and handwriting.
Meanwhile in Spain a different family of MSS wns growing up. Separated off from the rest of Europe, Spain, like Ireland, clung to old traditions and habits ; and the Old Latin text preserved in the (juotations in Priscillian * lives on in the Spanish Vulgate Bibles. But the Spanish scribes were fonder of interpolations, and of enriching their MSS with marginal notes, and even legendary additions, than the Irish ; with the consequence, that while the Irish scribes preserved on the whole a pure type of text — yet mainly in the Gospels, for they rarely copied whole Bibles — the Spanish perpetuated one which was corrupt, and of slight critical value. And as from the north and west the Irish texts moved into France with the mis- sionaries, so from the south the Spanisli texts gradually crept in over the Pyrenees, and thus France became the meeting ground of the two opposed types.
The close of the 8th cent, witnessed two recen- sions of the Vulgate, which, so far as we can see, were founded on these British and Spanish MSS respectively; and. as may be expected, France was the country in which these recensions were made.
Charles the Great took a keen interest in the sacred text and its purity ; he was anxious to obtain a uniform standard Bible for Church use, in simple and intelligible Latin, without sole- cisms.t He accordinglj% in the year 797, commis- sioned our own countryman Alcuin, who was then abbot of St. Martin at Tours, to prepare an emended edition of the Scriptures. Alcuin was familiar with Northumbrian >ISS from his youth ; he himself was of Northumbrian parentage, and had been educated at York, and it was to that city that he sent for MSS to help him in tlie per- formance of his task.J As this task was simply to correct the Biblical text by the aid of the best Latin MSS available, without regard to the Greek, we may regard it as fortunate indeed that Alcuin's birth and education should have made him natur- ally consult just the libraries where the purest texts were preserved. By Christmas A.D. 801 the task was completed, and Alcuin was enabled to present Charles with a cojiy of the emended Bible. Of existing Vulgate MSS, the famous Codex Vallicellianus is supposed to most nearly repre- sent Alcuin's text (see p. SS9).
Simultaneously with this, Theodulf, bishop of Orleans (787-821), was imdertaking a revision, though on difierent lines. Theodulf was a Visi- goth, and was born near Narbonne, and the Sjianish traditions would therefore be familiar and dear to him ; yet he did not simply collect and register Spanish readings. He apparently knew and studied the MSS current in Languedoc and the south of France ; § and, collecting together all the texts he knew of, he worked with a consider- able amount of prudence, marking the passages he considered suspicious, and honestly endeavouring to arrive at a pure text. Yet his work was un- even ; and his habit of inscribing in the margin of his Bible the variant readings he had collected, had the unfortunate result of introducing into
* Ed. Schepps, Corput Script, ecel. Lot. xvlU., Vienna, 1889 ; Bee also Berger, p. 8.
t See the Capitulariea in Pertz, Hon. Germ., torn. iii. Leget, torn i. pp. 44, 65.
J See Kp. Ixxviii. in Jaffd, Bibliotheca rer. Germ., tom. vi. (t.e. ilonum. AtctUniana) p. 346 ; also Ep. Ixxil. p. 831 ; cf. Scrivener-Miller, Introduction (4th ed.), ii. p. 59.
§ Berger, pp. xiv and 145 f., to whom the present writel owes the greater part of this section.