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Similar Vulgate, Novum Testamentum Graece, Douay–Rheims Bible, Bible in Basic English, Prayer of Manasseh | ||
Vulgata Sixto-Clementina, is the edition of Latin Vulgate from 1592, prepared by Pope Clement VIII. It was the second edition of the Vulgate authorised by this Pope, and it was used until the 20th century.
Contents
Clementine edition
The Sistine Vulgate prepared by Pope Sixtus V was edited in 1590 but it was unsatisfactory from a textual point of view. As a result this edition was short-lived.
Clement VIII (1592–1605) ordered Franciscus Toletus, Augustinus Valerius, Fredericus Borromaeus, Robertus Bellarmino, Antonius Agellius, and Petrus Morinus to make corrections and to prepare a revision. The revision was based on the Hentenian edition. It was printed on 9 November 1592, with a preface written by Cardinal Bellarmine. The misprints of this edition were partly eliminated in a second (1593) and a third (1598) edition.
The Clementine Vulgate contained in the Appendix additional apocryphal books: Prayer of Manasseh, 3 Esdras, and 4 Esdras. It contained also Psalterium Gallicanum, as did the majority of the early editions of Vulgate.
It contains texts of the Acts 15:34 and the Comma Johanneum in 1 John 5:7.
It was issued with the Bull, Cum Sacrorum (9 November 1592), which claimed that every subsequent edition must be assimillated to this one, no word of the text may be changed, nor even variant readings printed in the margin.
It is cited in all critical editions and it is designated by siglum vgc or vgcl.
Reception
The Clementine edition differs from the Sistine edition in about 3,000 places (according to Carlo Vercellone). According to Bruce M. Metzger it differs in some 4,900 variants, according to Kurt Aland in about 5,000 variants.
The opportunity was too good for Protestants to miss, and Thomas James in his "Bellum Papale sive Concordia discors" (London, 1600), upbraids the two Popes on their high pretensions and palpable failure, possibly of both of them. He gave a long list of the differences (about 2,000) between these two editions. Translators of King James Version in the preface to the first edition from 1611 accused the pope of perversion of the Holy Scripture.
The Clementine Vulgate was criticised by such textual critics as Richard Bentley, John Wordsworth, Henry Julian White, Samuel Berger, and Peter Corssen.
The Clementine Vulgate remained the official Latin Bible text of the Roman Catholic Church until the end of the 20th century, when the Nova Vulgata was issued. In 2001 the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in Liturgiam authenticam announced that the Nova Vulgata is an official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.