Sixto-Clementine Vulgate

The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate is a revision of the Sixtine Vulgate; the latter had been published two years earlier under Sixtus V. Nine days after the death of Sixtus V, who had issued the Sixtine Vulgate, the College of Cardinals suspended the sale of the Sixtine Vulgate and later ordered the destruction of the copies. Thereafter, two commissions under Gregory XIV were in charge of the revision of the Sixtine Vulgate. In 1592, Clement VIII, arguing printing errors in the Sixtine Vulgate, recalled all copies of the Sixtine Vulgate still in circulation; some suspect his decision was in fact due to the influence of the Jesuits. In the same year, a revised edition of the Sixtine Vulgate was published and promulgated by Clement VIII; this edition is known as the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, or Clementine Vulgate.

History

Sixtine Vulgate

The Sixtine Vulgate prepared under Pope Sixtus V was published in 1590; it was "accompanied by a Bull [Aeternus Ille], in which [...] Sixtus V declared it was to be considered the authentic edition recommended by the Council of Trent, that it should be taken as the standard of all future reprints, and that all copies should be corrected by it". The College of Cardinals was dissatisfied with the Sixtine Vulgate; on 5 September 1590, nine days after Pope Sixtus V's death, they ordered the suspension of its sales, withdrew as many copies as possible, and shortly afterwards ordered the destruction of the printed copies.

Gregory XIV's two pontifical commissions

An official version of the Vulgate was still needed. Therefore, Pope Gregory XIV in 1591 created a fourth commission to revise the Sixtine Vulgate, which was subsequently reorganised as the fifth and final commission later the same year. The fourth commission was created by Gregory XIV on 7 February 1591. It was presided over by M. A. Colonna and comprised six other cardinals working on the revision. Ten other people were part of the commission as advisors, including Robert Bellarmine. These last commissions decided to make only the changes which were really necessary: to do so, the commission would consult ancient manuscripts in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. It was also decided to restore the passages unduly removed by Sixtus V, remove the additions, examine the other passages and correct them if needed, and revise the punctuation.

The fourth commission worked slightly more than one month; during this time the revision of the Book of Genesis was completed and on 18 March the revision of Exodus began. However, the commission was progressing slowly, and the revision was expected to take a year. Due to this slowness, the size of the commission was reduced, its mode of operation changed, and its workplace moved to the villa of M. A. Colonna in Zagarolo. Two people were members of this commission: M. A. Colonna, its president, and William Allen. This commission also comprised eight other people as advisors: Bartholomew Miranda, Andrea Salvener, Antonius Agellius, Robert Bellarmine, Bartholomew Valverde, Lelio Landi, Petrus Morinus, and Angelo Rocca.

Supposedly, the work of revision was finished in nineteen days thanks to the guidance of the Codex Carafianus – the codex which contained the propositions made to Sixtus V by the commission presided over by Cardinal Carafa, which is a 1583 edition of the Leuven Vulgate that had been emended by the third commission under Carafa – and the experience of four members of the commission who had previously taken part in the work to produce the Sixtine edition (Landi, Valverde, Agellius, and Rocca). The work was completed either after 19 days on 23 June, or on 5 July or before, or in early October, 1591. Brooke Foss Westcott notes that "even if it can be shown that the work extended over six months, it is obvious that there was no time for the examination of new authorities, but only for making a rapid revision with the help of the materials already collected". The basis of the commission's work was the Codex Carafianus.

Francis J. Thomson considers that the work of revision was rather entrusted to the Congregations for the Index under the leadership of M. A. Colonna. Thomson adds that the Congregation included among others the cardinals Girolamo Della Rovere, Ascanio Colonna, William Allen, Frederico Borromeo as well as Robert Bellarmine and Francisco de Toledo. Thomson states that the "old idea that a special commission was entrusted with the work of revision [of the Sixtine Vulgate] is incorrect".

Gregory XIV died on 15 October 1591; his direct successor, Innocent IX, died on 30 December the same year, less than two months after his election. In January 1592, Clement VIII became pope. Clement VIII resumed work on the revision to produce a final edition; he appointed Francisco de Toledo, Agostino Valier and Federico Borromeo as editors, with Robert Bellarmine, Antonius Agellius, Petrus Morinus and two others to assist them. "Under Clement VIII's leadership, the commission's work was continued and drastically revised, with the Jesuist scholar Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1624) bringing to the task his lifelong research on the Vulgate text".

Clement VIII's recall of the Sixtine Vulgate

In January 1592, Clement VIII became pope and immediately recalled all copies of the Sixtine Vulgate as one of his first acts. The reason stated for the recall was printing errors, although the Sixtine Vulgate was mostly free of those.

According to James Hastings, "[t]he real reasons for the recall of the editions must have been partly personal hostility to Sixtus, and partly a conviction that the book was not quite a worthy representative of the Vulgate text". Eberhard Nestle suggests that the revocation was really due to the influence of the Jesuits, whom Sixtus had offended by putting one of Bellarmine's books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of banned books). Frederic G. Kenyon writes that the Sixtine Vulgate was "full of errors" but that Clement VIII was also motivated in his decision to recall the edition by the Jesuits, "whom Sixtus had offended". Metzger believes that the inaccuracies may have been a pretext and that the attack against this edition had been instigated by the Jesuits, "whom Sixtus had offended by putting one of Bellarmine's books on the 'Index', and took this method of revenging themselves". Sixtus regarded the Jesuits with disfavour and suspicion. He considered making radical changes to their constitution, but his death prevented this from being carried out. Sixtus V objected to some of the Jesuits' rules and especially to the title "Society of Jesus", and was on the point of changing them when he died. Sixtus V "had some conflict with the Society of Jesus more generally, especially regarding the Society’s concept of blind obedience to the General, which for Sixtus and other important figures of the Roman Curia jeopardized the preeminence of the role of the pope within the Church".

According to Jaroslav Pelikan, the Sixtine Vulgate "proved to be so defective that it was withdrawn".

Publication

The Clementine Vulgate was printed on 9 November 1592, in folio format, with an anonymous preface written by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. It was issued containing the Papal bull Cum Sacrorum of 9 November 1592, which asserted that every subsequent edition must be assimilated to this one, that no word of the text may be changed and that variant readings may not be printed in the margin. Most of the misprints of this edition were removed in a second (1593) and a third (1598) edition.

The 1593 and 1598 editions were in quarto. The 1592 edition contained a list of quotations, an interpretation of names, and a Biblical concordance; those were not present in the 1593 and 1598 editions. The 1593 and 1598 editions contained references in the margin, and "various prefaces"; the 1592 edition did not.

This new official version of the Vulgate, known as the Clementine Vulgate, or Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, became the official Bible of the Catholic Church.

Textual characteristics

The Appendix to the Clementine Vulgate contained additional apocryphal books: Prayer of Manasseh, 3 Esdras, and 4 Esdras. Its version of the Book of Psalms was the Psalterium Gallicanum and not the versio juxta Hebraicum. The 1592 edition did not contain Jerome's prologues, but those prologues were present at the beginning of the volume of the 1593 and 1598 editions. The Clementine Vulgate contains texts of Acts 15:34 and the Johannine Comma. The new system of verse enumeration introduced by the Sixtine Vulgate was replaced by the system of division of verses enumeration of the 1551 edition of the Bible of Robertus Stephanus.

The text of the Clementine Vulgate was close to the Hentenian edition of the Bible, which is the Leuven Vulgate; this is a difference from the Sixtine edition, which had "a text more nearly resembling that of Robertus Stephanus than that of John Hentenius". The Clementine Vulgate used the verse enumeration system of Stephanus and the Leuven Vulgate. The text of the Sixtine Vulgate left an "eternal mark" in the details of the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate: in the latter's "spelling, especially that of the proper nouns, and in its corrections of details, even the less justified ones". The situation concerning the deeper modification Sixtus had made to the Leuven Vulgate text is totally different. The editors tried to make the Clementine Vulgate as similar as possible to the Sixtine Vulgate: titles and frontispieces were similar, and the page numbering of the Sixtine and Clementine editions was identical.

Title

Scrivener notes that to avoid the appearance of a conflict between the two popes, the Clementine Bible was published under the name of Sixtus, with a preface by Bellarmine. This preface asserted that Sixtus had intended to publish a new edition due to errors that had occurred in the printing of the first, but had been prevented from doing this by his death, and that now, in accordance with his desire, the work was completed by his successor.

The full name of the Clementine Vulgate was Biblia sacra Vulgatae Editionis, Sixti Quinti Pont. Max. iussu recognita atque edita (translation: The Holy Bible of the Common/Vulgate Edition identified and published by the order of Pope Sixtus V). Because the Clementine edition retained the name of Sixtus on its title page, the Clementine Vulgate is sometimes known as the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate.

E. Nestle notes that "the first edition to contain the names of both the Popes [Sixtus V and Clement VIII] upon the title page is that of 1604. The title runs: 'Sixti V. Pont. Max. iussu recognita et Clementis VIII. auctoritate edita.'" An analysis also shared by Scrivener and Hastings. Hastings adds that "[t]he regular form of title in a modern Vulgate Bible – 'Biblia Sacra Vulgatae Editionis Sixti V. Pont. Max. jussu recognita et Clementis VIII. auctoritate edita'" cannot be traced earlier than 1604. Up until that time Sixtus was the only one mentioned on the title page; after this date, "Clement occasionally figures by himself". This addition of Clement VIII on the title page in 1604 is due to the printing press of Guillaume Rouillé.