THE REVISION OF THE VULGATE

New Zealand Tablet, 9 October 1913, Page 9

THE REVISION OF THE VULGATE

The Right Rev. Abbot Gasquet, 0.5.8., left London on August 23 for New York, where, after a period of rest at the Benedictine Monastery at Newark, N.J., and a sojourn at Hamilton, he will inaugurate a fourmonth course of lectures connected with the monumental enterprise over which he is presiding, namely, the Revision of the Vulgate. The course of lectures will take the distinguished Abbot to every important centre of the United States, west as well as east, and will in all probability include a visit to the province of Quebec. Cardinal Farley, of New York, and Archbishop.. Ireland, of St. Paul, Minnesota, have both promised the Abbot their full support, and invitations have poured in upon him from ecclesiastics and laymen in all quarters of the Union. Not the least remarkable fact connected with Abbot Gasquet’s visit to the States is the number of cordial invitations and promises of practical support which have been extended to him by American gentlemen of social and commercial preeminence who do not belong to the Catholic Faith. There would, seem to bo every certainty, indeed, that both Catholic and non-Catholic America intend to exert their emulous energies in doing honor to the most distinguished and most scholarly Churchman of his age. / - _j . ' /■ , > A representative of the Catholic Times has had the ' privilege of meeting the Abbot-President of the English Benedictines at Harper street, Bloomsbury, ■and found him not unwilling to talk about his approaching visit .to the States the first visit, it is notes' worthy. * The lectures/ said Abbot Gasquet, ‘ have been undertaken for the purpose of defraying the very great expense connected with the critical revision of the Vulgate, to meet which a sum of about £30,000 will be vrequired. My visit to the States is, therefore, one which will call for all my energy, and beyond the pleasure of meeting old friends and accomplishing the task in hand, there will be little of the holiday about it. In the course of my lectures, which will be given in capital centres like New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and St. Paul— the last of which cities I shall meet an old friend in Archbishop Ireland—l am to have the assistance of photographic slides which will indicate the vast variety of manuscripts'explored, as well as illuminate the d faculties which were encountered in the critical revision and study of the very many texts which have been under examination since the work was begun in

1907, in accordance with the commission laid upon us by Pope Pius. You may gather an idea of the extent of this work when you realise that I possess at present something like Five Thousand Metres of Photographic Slides, that the critical work accomplished to date fills between four hundred and five hundred folio volumes, that a small army of students and research-workers are at 'this time examining manuscripts in the principal public and private libraries of the world, and that my expenses for the last year’s work alone have come to nearly £2OOO. As an example of the tentacular reach of the Commission’s task, I cite the fact that the private library of the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan was placed at our disposal, and in it were found several Bible manuscripts of great value and antiquity, the texts of which were duly explored in connection with our work. Workers there are engaged in almost every capital of the world, and it is fully expected that our, labors will be completed by 1915, when the results of the Revision will appear in volume form corresponding in size and general likeness to the actual Catholic Encyclopedia Abbot Gasquet was good enough to give, some more intimate details in connection with his labors. The Pope, he said, had himself guaranteed all the expenses likely to be entailed by the Revision, should the appeal to the faithful fail of producing the sum required. That the burden is unlikely to fall upon his Holiness was the opinion expressed by the Abbot, who is firm in the belief that Irish-American Catholics will show themselves equal to the final effort required. France, he told our correspondent, had subscribed very generously, towards the work, .but, as was to be expected, much could not be looked for at home. The result would be, £© said, that the honor of completing the success of the enterprise would mainly go to IrishAmerica. Apart from the fact that a member of one of the great non-Catholic families of America, the Cadwaladers, had promised him practical support, the famous Catholic body, the Knights of Columbus, had also volunteered their influential assistance to his mission. Personally, he said, he felt no doubt as to the issue, and those who were well acquainted with the Catholic community in America had expressed to him a similar feeling. ' / As regards the work of the Revision of the Vulgate, Dr. Gasquet assured our representative that many extraordinary fallacies were current, even where a total ignorance of the scope of the project did not exist. There is, he said, no question of producing a kind of ‘ standard ’ Latin Bible. All existing texts are based upon that of St. Jerome, who gave his Latin version to the world in the fourth century. ,No copy of the actual text is known to exist, and the corruptions introduced by scribes and others in ‘ the centuries posterior to St. Jerome, and even the well-intentioned work of the various correctors, have rendered the labors of trying to recover the exact text from existing manuscripts both difficult and delicate. This, however, said the Abbot, is the work which must be done as the first step in the Revision of the Vulgate, since the text is admitted on all hands to be an absolute necessity as a basis for any more extended and critical revision. ~ The aim, therefore, of the "Revising Commission is to determine with all possible exactitude the Latin text of St. Jerome, and not at all to produce any new version of the Latin Scriptures. Verbal changes there will be in large numbers, said Dr. Gasquet, but the tale and teaching of Holy Writ will remain as it has remained from the beginning.