Latin Vulgate

Growing discontent with the papacy

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The fourteenth century saw renewed discontent against the papacy. William of Occam, an English Schoolman, attacked the papacy as the ultimate authority in religion and demanded that people rely on the Scriptures instead. In England, John Wycliffe called into question leading doctrines of Catholicism. He was a graduate of Oxford University who later became a teacher at the school. Since he held that the Bible rather than the pope was the ultimate authority in all spiritual matters he made an English translation from the Latin Vulgate in the common vernacular. Not many copies were made but a number of them survived, despite the determined efforts of the Catholic Church to destroy them. He sent out companies of russet-gowned priests who accepted his leadership to preach his ideas throughout the cities and the countryside. His followers were known as Lollards. Wycliffe has been called the last of the Schoolmen and the “morning star of the Reformation.”

Impact: Wycliffe’s Bible must be counted among the many causes behind the Reformation in England.

Latin Vulgate

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Jerome (340-420) was a native of Venetia at the head of the Adriatic Sea. He spent the first part of a long life as a wandering student, visiting many academic centers. Later he lived for a few years in Rome, where he became secretary to Bishop Damasus. At his suggestion, Jerome undertook to revise the Latin version of the Gospels. An Old Latin translation had been in use in the provinces of the West since the second century, but all manuscripts had to be copied by hand and errors had crept into them. It was time these were eliminated. Jerome accepted the task and it grew into a new version of the whole Bible. This came to be called the Vulgate, a term that designates it as the people’s version, and it remains in use throughout the Roman Catholic Church.

Impact: It was more than eleven hundred years before the Council of Trent gave it official sanction, but usage had confirmed the Latin Vulgate long before.

Jerome

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Jerome (c. 345-420) was born in Dalmatia, or modern-day Croatia, of Christian parents. He went to Rome at the age of 12 to study Latin and Greek. He became a Christian at 19 and decided to move to Antioch. Here he lived in a cave and spent his time studying the Scriptures and learning Hebrew from a local rabbi. In 382 Pope Damasus called him to Rome to become a papal secretary and to undertake a new translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. He completed the work many years later from a monastery he oversaw in Bethlehem. His translation, known as the Latin Vulgate, became the official and authorized source text for the Roman Catholic Church.