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passages omitted or transposed, and the meanings of very many sentences altered beyond all recognition, they believed that violence was being done to the sacred text; nor were they prepared to admit as axiomatic the superiority ol the Hebrew text to the Greek, the OT of the Jews to the OT of the Christians. Even Augustine, who commended and used Jerome's revision of the Gospels, questioned the expediency of the far- reaching changes made in the OT.

4. Nor was Jerome's translation assisted by authority to oust its predecessor. Never until 1546 was it officially adopted by the Roman Church to the exclusion of all rivals. It is true that the revision of the Gospels was undertaken at the instance of Pope Damasus, and was published under the sanction of his name; and the Gallican version of the Psalms was quickly and generally adopted. But the new translation of the OT from the Hebrew had no such shadow of official authority. It was an independent venture of Jerome's, encouraged by his personal friends (among whom were some bishops) , and deriving weight from his reputation as a scholar and from the success of his previous work, but in no sense officially commissioned or officially adopted. It was thrown on the world to win its way by its own merits, with the strong weight of popular prejudice against it, and dependent for its success on the admission of its fundamental critical assumption of the superiority of the Massoretic Hebrew to the LXX. It is not to be wondered at if its progress in general favour was slow, and if its text was greatly modified before it reached the stage of universal acceptance.

5. The extant evidence (consisting of occasional statements by ecclesiastical writers, and their ascertain-able practice in Biblical quotations) is not sufficient to enable us to trace in detail the acceptance of Jerome's version In the various Latin-speaking countries. Gaul, as it was the first country to adopt his second Psalter, was also the first to accept the Vulgate as a whole, and in the 5th cent, the use of it appears to have been general there; but Gaul, it must be remembered, from the point of view of Christian literature, was at this time confined mainly to the provinces of the extreme south. Isidore of Seville, however, testifies to the general use of the Vulg. by all churches, as being alike more faithful and more lucid than its predecessors. In the 6th cent, it is probable that its use was general among scholars. Victor of Capua, about 541, finding a Latin version of the Diatessaron according to the OL text, and being desirous of making it generally known, had it transcribed, with the substitution of the Vulg. for the OL. Gregory the Great (d. 604) used the Vulg. as the basis of his commentary on Job, but speaks of both versions as existing and recognized by the Church ('Novam translationem dissero, sed, ut comprobationis causa exigit, nunc novam nunc veterem per testimonia assumo; ut, quia sedes Apostolica utraque utitur, mei quoque labor studii ex utraque fulciatur'). On the other band, Primasius is evidence of the continued use of the OL in Africa; and a considerable number of the extant fragments of OL MSS are of the 6th cent, or later date [see Text of MT, 20]. In general it is probable that the old version was retained by the common people, and by such of the clergy as took little interest in questions of textual scholarship, long after it had been abandoned by scholars. In any case, it is certain that the Vulg. was never officially adopted in early times by the Roman Church, but made its way gradually by its own merits. The continuance of the OL in secluded districts is illustrated by the tact that Cod. Colbertinus (c) was written as late as the 12th cent, in Languedoc, and Cod. Gigas (ff of the Acts) in the 13th cent, in Bohemia.

6. Although this method of official non-interference was probably necessary, in view of the fact that Jerome's version of the OT was a private venture, and one which provoked much hostile criticism, and although in the

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end the new translation gained the credit of a complete victory on its merits as the superior version for general use, nevertheless the price of these advantages was heavy. If the Vulgate had enjoyed from the first the protection of an official sanction, which Sixtus and Clement ultimately gave to the printed text, it would have come down to us in a much purer form than is actually the case. Under the actual conditions, it was peculiarly exposed to corruption, both by the ordinary mistakes of scribes and by contamination with the familiar OL. In some cases whole books or chapters in a Vulg. MS con-tain an OL text; for some reason which is quite obscure, Mt. especially tended to remain in the earlier form. Thus Codd. ji, h, r^ all have Mt. in OL, and the remain-ing Evv. in Vulgate. Cod. Gigas is OL in Acts and Apoc, Vulg. in the rest of the Bible. Cod. p of the Acts is OL in Ac 1>-139 28i«-'», while the rest of the book is Vulg. Codd. f;i, g' of the Gospels and ft of Cath. Epp. have texts in which OL and Vulg. are mixed in various proportions. Even where OL elements do not enter to a sufficient extent to be noteworthy, MSS of the Vulg. tend to differ very considerably. In the absence of any central authority to exercise control, scribes treated the text with freedom or with carelessness, and different types of text grew up in the different countries of Western Europe. It is with these different national texts that the history of the Vulg. in the Middle Ages is principally concerned.

7. During the 5th and 6th centuries, when Jerome's version was winning its way outwards from the centre of the Latin-speaking Church, the conditions over a large part of Western Europe were ill fitted for its reception. Gaul, in the 5th cent., was fully occupied with the effort first to oppose and then to assimilate the heathen Frankish invaders; and even in the 6th it was a scene of almost perpetual war and internal struggles. Germany was almost wholly pagan. Britain was in the throes of the English conquest, and the ancient British Church was submerged, except in Wales and Ireland. Outside Italy, only Visigothic Spain (Arian, but still Christian, until about 596) and Celtic Ireland were freely open at first to the access of the Scriptures; and in these two countries (cut off, as they subsequently were, from central Christendom by the Moorish invasion of Spain and the English con-quest of Britain) the two principal types of text came into being, which, in various combinations with purer texts from Italy, are found in the different MSS which have come down to the present day. From the Visigothic kingdom the Spanish influences made their way north-ward into the heart of France. Irish missionaries carried the Bible first into southern Scotland, then into North-umbria, then into northern France and up the Rhine into Germany, penetrating even into Switzerland and Italy, and leaving traces of their handiwork in MSS produced in all these countries. Meanwhile Rome was a constant centre of attraction and influence; and to and from Italy there was an unceasing stream of travellers, and not least between Italy and distant Britain. These historical facts find their illustration in the Vulg. MSS still extant, which can, be connected with the various churches.

8. In the 6th and 7th cent, the primacy of missionary zeal and Christian enterprise rested with the Irish Church ; but in the latter part of the 7th and the first half of the 8th cent, the Church of North umbria sprang into prom-inence, and added to the gifts which it had received from lona a spirit of Christian scholarship which gave it for a time the first place in Christendom in this respect. In the production of this scholarship the arrival of Theodore of Tarsus as archbishop of Canterbury in 669 happily co-operated, if it was not a chief stimulus; for Theodore and his companions brought with them from Italy copies of the Latin Bible in a purer text than Ireland had been able to provide. There is clear evidence to show that the celebrated Lindisfarne Gospels (Y In