De locis theologicis

WHERE THE AUTHORITY OF THE OLD VULGATE EDITION IS DEMONSTRATED AND WHY WE SHOULD NOT NOW RETURN TO THE HEBREW OR GREEK TEXTS

The first conclusion, which contains the main point and substance of the matter, since the others are in a sense corollaries, is that the faithful must retain this old and Vulgate edition, which the Latin Church has used since the time of St. Jerome, in all matters concerning faith and morals. Second: if a question of faith and morals arises among Catholics, it must be decided by this old Latin edition. If one side of the question is confirmed by a testimony from it, Catholics must embrace that side; if it is rejected, they must reject it. Third: in disputations of faith and morals, this is not the time to appeal to Hebrew or Greek copies or to establish certainty in controversies from them. Fourth: in matters of faith and morals, Latin copies must not be corrected by Hebrew or Greek ones. You may call the first a maxim, an assertion, or a proposition, in the scholastic manner. The Council of Trent defined it in its fourth session as follows: “The holy Synod, considering that it would be of no small benefit to the Church of God if it were made known which of the many Latin editions of the sacred books in circulation should be held as authentic, establishes and decrees that this same old and Vulgate edition, approved in the Church by the long use of so many centuries, is to be held as authentic in public readings, disputations, sermons, and expositions, and that no one may dare or presume to reject it on any pretext.” Thus far the Council. Yet lest we overwhelm our opponents with the Council's authority alone, we shall set out the reasons why it defined this; for the Synod could not have lacked reasons for judging in this way. First, either this Latin Scripture contains some falsehood concerning faith and morals, or, on the contrary, what it everywhere teaches is true. If it is true, we seek to confirm it; if false, then the Roman and Latin Church, in which alone Catholic faith now remains, would seriously err in matters of faith, since it would present a false Scripture as revealed by the Holy Spirit under the name of a prophet, apostle, or evangelist. By this single fact it would strip itself of authority in presenting the rest, and nothing more absurd or disastrous could happen. Next, to take an example that has broad implications, if the truth of the story of the adulterous woman were now called into question and someone denied it, either the unanimous agreement of the Latin copies sufficiently refutes this error—and this is precisely what we seek—or it does not. If it does not, then it is permitted with impunity to disregard a story celebrated by the unanimous agreement of all Latins and read every year in the Church under the name of John

the Evangelist; and the faith and authority of the Roman, Latin, and Catholic Church are thereby impaired, violated, and weakened, since by similar reasoning it will be considered capable of error in other matters. Since this was altogether absurd, the same Council of Trent rightly decreed in the same session that anyone who does not receive as sacred the canonical books themselves, whole and with all their parts, as they are customarily read in the Catholic Church and contained in the old Vulgate Latin edition, is to be anathema. It follows, then, that the Latin edition, approved by the Church's use for so many hundreds of years, must be held unwaveringly in matters of faith and morals. Further, for almost four hundred years scholastic authors have used only the Latin edition to confirm theological doctrines and refute heresies. I ask whether or not they accomplished anything in their disputations. If they established nothing certain, what wretched men they were, wasting their effort and labor for three hundred years and more! They had no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew; content with the Latin translator alone, they confirmed the doctrines in the schools and rejected everything opposed to them, while the Roman, and indeed Latin, Church remained silent, watched, and approved. But if the scholastic theologians did accomplish something, then surely they trusted the Latin edition safely in establishing their conclusions. That edition, therefore, is to be retained by the faithful. Finally, I ask the inquisitors of heretical depravity whether, in refuting and punishing heretics, they ought carefully to adhere to this Latin edition, or whether they must instead return to the Greek and Hebrew truth, which they scarcely know. If it is unworthy for the judgment of the most serious tribunal to depend on something wholly unknown; if it is absurd to appeal from our own people to foreigners, that is, Hebrews and Greeks; if it is impious to refer a deliberation on the Catholic faith to the council of Jews and schismatics, then I do not understand why a theologian would consent to this error and refuse to regard the Latin edition as worthy of firm trust. I understand, however, that clever and shameless men will even mock our dilemmas to applause: they ridicule all the authors of the schools and scoff at the whole business of knowing the faith. Yet by these arguments we do not seek to convict insolent heretics as our opponents, but to persuade modest theologians of the truth. Indeed, those who wish to weaken this edition seem to me to be attempting nothing other than a kind of covert defense of heretics. They will look down on inquisitors who hold the Latin Scripture as a sure rule while lacking knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew truth; they will look down on scholastic authors who bound themselves to the common Latin translator, whose meaning, they say, we are not obliged to follow; and they will look down even on the ancient saints who lacked knowledge of Hebrew. Among the Greeks, we read that Dorotheus, Origen, and Eusebius knew Hebrew letters; among the Latins, apart from Clement and Jerome, scarcely anyone knew Hebrew. Consequently, nearly all the saints must have been mistaken in the Old Testament, and indeed must have handled all the sacraments of that same covenant blindly. If Christian ears rightly recoil from this, let us agree without reservation that the Vulgate Latin edition is to be held by the faithful. Indeed—as brother Franciscus Titelmann, a man eminent in letters and learning and distinguished in conduct and piety, said most eloquently—while

we observe God's wise dispensation, we readily see how the truth of Scripture has always been joined to the uprightness of faith and has usually departed together with it. For as long as the stability of right faith remained among the Jews alone, we also know that the solidity of Scripture remained among them alone. After truth was rejected by the Jews and received by the Gentiles, the Church of the Gentiles was considered worthy to receive the New Testament Scripture in its own language, namely Greek, which was both most widespread among those Gentiles who had believed and widely known, as a foundation of saving faith. Moreover, when the truth of faith began to pass to the Latins, and the Greeks were for the most part separated from the body of the Church either by their innate fickleness or by a spirit of contention, it necessarily followed that by divine gift the Latins received a suitable stability of Scripture. It is in no way plausible that the Latin Church, among whom the truth of the Christian faith had existed for many years, still had no Latin Scripture on which it could safely rely to establish its doctrines and refute its opponents with appropriate authority. Another very serious harm, it seems to me, is brought upon the Church by those who set aside the Latin edition and think that pure and firm truth must be drawn elsewhere: the Latin faithful, ignorant as they are of Greek and Hebrew letters, will always remain uncertain when they read Sacred Scripture in their own Latin language. For they do not know whether what they read in Latin is found in the Greek and Hebrew in this way or another. The faith of readers will therefore waver at every point and will be able to stand firm nowhere. What could be more harmful than this? Let us therefore hold without doubt that the Vulgate Latin edition is a safe anchor for faithful readers; by the same arguments let us also establish the second conclusion, which, as we said earlier, is a corollary of the first we have just confirmed. We first demonstrate the third conclusion from the fact that many passages of Scripture would be taken away from us, namely those not found in current Greek or Hebrew copies, such as the story of the children and Susanna in Daniel and the story of the adulterous woman in John. Indeed, even that remarkable testimony to the Trinity—“There are three who bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit,” and so forth—was removed from us some years ago because of Greek errors, as the recent translators also expunged the ending of Mark and many other passages from the Latin copy. We must not, then, settle controversies of faith by appeal to Greek or Hebrew copies; otherwise we would have to reject passages of Scripture that the Council of Trent, and indeed the Church, receives unanimously and by common consent. Further, the third conclusion is shown by this argument as well: if the truth is to be weighed against Greek copies, then we have eight verses in Psalm 13 that the Hebrew text does not have. We would rightly have to expunge them, although we have them on the authority of the Apostle. The Church has shown that neither Origen nor Jerome gave an adequate answer to this argument, since to this day it has believed that those eight verses must be kept in Psalm 13; it would not have kept them if, as they claim, they had been inserted through the ignorance of copyists. Likewise, the teachers of the Hebrews, our enemies, took great pains to corrupt the Hebrew text in order to make the Old Testament contradict our copies, as Eusebius reports in book 4 of Ecclesiastical History, chapter 18. The New Testament too, the Greeks, with the same contentiousness, in many places, to bend Scripture to their own sense

they corrupted it, as Tertullian attests in book 5 Adversus Marcionem; Eusebius in book 5 of Eccl. hist., final chapter; Irenaeus in book 1 Adversus haer., chapter 29; Basil in book 2 Contra Eunom.; St. Ambrose in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans and in the preface to book 1 on Luke; Jerome in the preface to the epist. ad Philemonem; and Origen in his commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans. For in many Greek copies the entire clause “Now to him who is able,” and so forth, is missing; even Theophylact did not have it. They did the same not only in Sacred Scripture but also in the books of the saints. At the Sixth Council of Constantinople, Macarius and his disciples were convicted of having either cut off or corrupted the testimonies of the saints to support their error. At the Seventh Synod, in session 4, it is shown that the Iconoclasts deceived some people with a corrupted testimony of St. Nilus; and in session 5 certain books corrupted by heretics were shown to the Synod. The same Council openly demonstrated that two booklets produced under the name of Pope Vigilius of Rome, and a letter addressed to that same Vigilius under the name of Menas, had forged and false titles. Leo complains in a certain letter to the Palestinians that the Greeks corrupted the letter he had written to Flavian. Nicholas testifies in his letter to Emperor Michael that this was the custom of the Greeks. In his fourteenth letter of book 5, Gregory considers that the Council of Chalcedon, like that of Ephesus, was corrupted by the Greeks; hence he warns Narses not to trust new copies indiscriminately and affirms that Roman copies are more truthful than Greek ones. Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, also says in Eusebius, book 4, chapter 23: “What wonder is it if they tried to falsify the Lord's words in Holy Scripture, when they corrupted these trivial writings of ours?” Dionysius said this while complaining that heretics had adulterated his letters by spurious deletions and additions. There is also a letter from Cyril to Successus, bishop of Diocaesarea, in which he says that he had asked Budus, bishop of Emesa, whether he agreed with the letter of Athanasius to Epictetus, bishop of Corinth. He replied: “If these writings among you have not been adulterated; for many of them have been found corrupted by the enemies of the Church.” When they compared the letter with the old copies, they found it corrupted, and so forth. Here all good people should be warned to guard against the fraud of Calvin, Philip, and others like them whenever they adapt the sayings of the ancient saints to their own cause. This is all the more necessary when they cite neither book nor passage, for then their trustworthiness in quoting the sayings of the ancients is more suspect. I would bring forward many passages of this sort were it not tiresome for the reader and were we not now occupied with other matters. We should not, then, return to the Hebrew and Greek copies on the ground that they are corrupted. Jerome, however, in chapter 6 of Isaiah does not think it likely that the Hebrews corrupted their own Scripture. I do not discuss what was true in Jerome's time, although Justin proved to Trypho that the Jews had cut out many passages of the prophets; among other things, he cites: “Say among the nations that the Lord reigns from a tree.” He argues that the words “from a tree” were removed from this verse. Certainly, after those times, if Jerome were alive, he would not deny that the Jews had corrupted the Scriptures. Further, those who adhere to Hebrew copies must necessarily follow the interpretations of rabbis, not Catholics, since Catholics expounded either the Septuagint or the Latin edition. It is unworthy for oracles of our faith to be sought anew from the Hebrews. For Christian truth is to be sought from men of the Church, not from the rabbis of the synagogue.

Further, to bring one or two examples out of many: in Genesis 8 our Latin edition says that the raven sent out by Noah went forth and did not return. Jerome has it this way in his Dialogue against the Luciferians and in his letter to Oceanus; Cyprian has it in his letter to the heretic Novatian, where he says that hope of pardon must not be denied to those who have fallen; so too Ambrose in De Noe et Arca, chapter 17; Augustine in Tractate 6 on John; Isidore and Chrysostom in their commentaries on Genesis; Eusebius in his Chronicle; and, in short, all Catholic teachers, Greek and Latin, ancient and recent, have it from the Septuagint. By contrast, the Jews now read that the raven went out and returned; the recent Lutheran translators Pelicanus and Münster follow them. Whom, then, do you think we ought to trust more? The Jews, enemies of Christ? Heretics, enemies of the Church? Should we not rather trust the Septuagint translators? Jerome? The holy men of old in the Church? All of them agree in asserting the same thing, which they could not do unless they were upheld by one divine Spirit. Jerome repeatedly testifies that the translations of Symmachus, Theodotion, and Aquila have little authority, since they were tainted with Judaism or notorious for heresy. Irenaeus too, in Eusebius, book 5 of Eccles. hist., chapter 8, weakens the translations of Theodotion and Aquila on the grounds that they were both Jews and proselytes and that the Ebionites followed them. Shall we admit Jews and heretics as interpreters of the Jews and allies in their error? Are all our copies, Greek and Latin, old and new, corrupted by scribes and have they remained so for a thousand years? Certainly not. If recent Jews think differently from the ancient ones, who would not prefer to agree with the judgment of the ancients rather than adhere more closely to that of the recent ones? Especially since they have been driven about so much and struck with such blindness that, having lost knowledge of their own language and all the liberal arts, they have no faith in God and scarcely retain ordinary human understanding. At this point I cannot sufficiently wonder that Augustine of Eugubio, otherwise an eminently learned and pious man, preferred to agree with Jews and heretics rather than Catholics. Cajetan, always following the same footsteps, likewise embraces the Hebrew copies in every respect in the Old Testament and the Greek in the New, scarcely taking account of the Latin translator. Yet he was not even warned by himself: when writing on Luke 3, he said it was reasonable to think that the recent Hebrew texts were rather defective and corrupted than that the Septuagint translators, good and distinguished men, had applied themselves to invention and falsehood. This is surely a strong and suitable argument among learned men. It is not now the time or place to refute the small arguments they add to cleanse this incredible innovation. For now it is enough to refute our opponents using their own arguments, since once these have been dislodged, the truth of our view is amply confirmed. To return, then, to the point from which the argument digressed: if it is called into question whether the raven returned to the ark, I ask whether a Catholic may deny it freely and with impunity, even if, as they claim, the opposite is found in all Hebrew copies. If it may be denied, we have certainly proved that Hebrew copies are neither sure nor suitable for settling Catholic controversies. If it may not, then say, if you please, that Jerome, Ambrose, Cyprian, Augustine, Chrysostom, and the other Catholic men of this order are not Catholics, and call us heretics too: for we deny that the raven returned to the ark. Since saying this is the height of insolent madness, let us rather say,

that these new Hebrew copies have no force for establishing certainty in theological questions. Further, there is often great disagreement among the Greek copies now in circulation. Hence those in our time who say they weigh the Latin text against the Greek often disagree among themselves not only about words but also about meanings. What is more, the recent translators do not even interpret the same copies in the same sense. For they translated the fourth verse of Psalm 109 in different ways: Luther, Pomeranus, Pelicanus, Bucer, Münster, Zwingli, Felix, and Pagninus each differently. I now think the translations of Theodotion, Symmachus, Aquila, the fifth, sixth, and seventh editions, and even the Septuagint, are very few in number compared with their countless versions. What is more, Erasmus does not agree even with himself: a fifth edition exists, and a sixth would exist too had he not feared the mark of inconsistency or been overtaken by death. Certainly, this variety of translations has always been like a badge peculiar to heretics. The ecclesiastical writers of old objected to the Artemonites that even their own copies did not agree with themselves when earlier ones were compared with later ones: “They are always correcting,” he says, “those who are always displeased with what they correct, and they seek out every new thing as contrary to those in current use.” Luther first changed the old edition of the New Testament with his German version, supposedly to persuade the people that up to that time our ancestors had not possessed the true text of the Gospel. Yet not many years later he corrected his own edition so much that learned men noted thirty or more passages changed in Matthew's Gospel alone. Thus fickle men do not so much translate the Sacred Scriptures from the sources as whirl about the sources themselves; led by various and foreign doctrines, they are like little children tossed about and carried by every wind of doctrine. In truth, whenever some novelty bubbles up like a new wind, the weight of the grain and the lightness of the chaff are immediately apparent; with little effort, what was held on the threshing floor by no weight at all is then driven out. Why, you ask, have we repeated such a long introduction? It is so that we may understand that these novice translators, through disagreement in their copies or interpretations, bring into the Church a diversity that is deeply suspect and altogether fearful to devout minds. Novelty itself must first be feared, for it cannot exist without disturbing the commonwealth. For this reason, if we believe Gregory, the Lord was angered at the Hebrews when they asked for a king, because he abhors every novelty in the commonwealth. A change in things must also be feared. Small causes can so greatly disturb the common condition of citizens that, as Plato says, when musical modes are changed, a change in the commonwealth and its morals must follow. Therefore those who persist in replacing the weightiest modes of divine law with new ones—perhaps sharper, but still trivial—should take care lest, under the pretext of translations, they also overturn religious ceremonies, sacraments, and priesthood. These things are so closely joined and bound together that none can be separated or torn away from the others. Whoever changes any one of them must therefore change the rest as well; we have learned this from the example of the Lutherans, who changed all of them together with their new inventions.

Moreover, as I said earlier, we ought to reject and fear variety all the more, since it is the enemy of constancy and unity. The Church cannot possess these virtues if Scripture does not have unity and agreement. In this respect our times are more fortunate than the ancient ones: formerly almost as many copies circulated as there were books. But now, doubtless through the special providence of the Holy Spirit, the care of Damasus, and the immense labors of Jerome, the holy Church has received a harmonious unity of Scripture, and all variety has been removed, since the one Latin edition has been received by universal agreement. Those who call us back to Greek copies therefore wish to bring in the same variety from which Jerome once rescued our books, indeed the same falsehood from which he purged our copies. For variety among copies is often an easy opportunity for corruption. And even if there is no corruption, variety itself is harmful. For what differs can never be asserted as true, as Jerome wrote to Domnion and Rogatianus and to Damasus: “That what varies is not true is confirmed even by the testimony of slanderers. For if,” he says, “Latin copies are to be trusted, let those answer who have almost as many copies as they have books.” The variety of Latin copies that existed then therefore detracted from the reliability of such copies. This argument was so powerful and effective that it even broke the stubborn insolence of Luther. For, as Cochlaeus reports in his book On the Authority of Canonical Scripture, Luther said: “If the world lasts longer, it will again become necessary, on account of the various interpretations of Scripture that now exist, to receive the decrees of Councils in order to preserve the unity of faith.” The sacred Synod of Trent therefore most wisely decreed that among the many Latin editions of the sacred books, one old and Vulgate edition, received through the use of so many centuries, is to be held as authentic in public disputations. It is not now the time to appeal to Hebrew or Greek copies in disputes about faith and morals, since the doctrines of faith can be badly confirmed by the divergent copies of the Hebrews or Greeks, and the unity of the Church cannot be preserved. The fourth and final conclusion can be persuaded by almost the same arguments. For the Hebrew and Greek copies are not now more correct than the Latin ones; rather, they often read differently from what reason and truth themselves require, as brother Franciscus Titelmann has argued most learnedly and at length both in his Collations on the Epistle to the Romans and in his Apology for the Old Translator. Hence I have chosen to draw only two passages from among countless others, so that theologians may learn how little trust should be placed in these recent translators. One passage is Romans 12. Where our edition reads “serving the Lord,” nearly all recent translators render “serving the time”; yet our reading is to be preferred, and the corrected Greek copies of old also had it. For Chrysostom and Theophylact do not read τώ καιρώ δουλεύοντες, “serving the time,” but τώ Κυρίω, “serving the Lord.” Origen had this reading too. Indeed, Jerome, in his letter to Marcella beginning “After the previous letter,” after criticizing another reading, asserted that one should read according to the Greek truth: “serving the Lord.” The other passage is in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 7. Where we read, “The one who is with a wife is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and is divided,” these translators render from the Greek source, as they say: “The one who is with a wife thinks about the things of the world, how he may please his wife; the wife and the virgin are divided.” St. Jerome, in his first

book Adversus Iovinianum says this later reading is not of apostolic truth, although he admits that he once explained that passage in that sense, and so forth. Thus some Hebrew and Greek copies that Jerome once obtained were much more correct than those to which more recent translators and commentators have bound their trust. When they confront us with certain copies written six hundred years ago in letters of gold—which they call the sources—Jerome answers on our behalf, saying: “Let those who wish have ancient books written on purple parchment in gold and silver, or in uncial letters, as they are commonly called—more burdensome to write than books—provided that they allow me and mine to have poor little sheets, not so beautiful as corrected.” For those who pursue innovations often do nothing but correct what is already correct from copies that are not corrected, while following examples of Hebrew or Greek copies in their possession. In this respect Isidore Clarius is not to be tolerated: his correction is nothing other than a criticism of the old translator. At the front of his work he promises a corrected old edition; then, having used this promise to ward off the charge of novelty, he inserts many things, adds some, and changes others, so that in the changed passages the reader can understand nothing except that either the old translator erred or the old copies were corrupted. How much better it would have been to admit that he had made a new edition rather than a corrected old one, so that simple readers would not be deceived by ambiguous words! There are many such passages in Isidore Clarius in both the Old and New Testaments; I would present them if my speech were not hastening to other matters. I will only point out that such changes, deletions, and additions, which often delight curious people, would have been most displeasing to our fathers if they were alive now. We can gather this from the first book of what is called the Tripartite History. As it says there, many bishops had assembled, and one of them, a man gifted in eloquence and wisdom, was asked to preach to the people. He quoted the passage, “Take up your bed and walk,” but said “couch” instead of “bed.” Then Spiridion, bishop of Cyprus, a most holy man, became indignant, leapt from his priestly seat, and said to him: “Are you better than the one who said ‘bed,’ since you are ashamed to use his words?” He did this in the sight of the people, teaching modesty to a man who had boasted in his eloquence. Spiridion was well suited to inspire shame, being venerable and renowned for his deeds, as well as a priest advanced in years and in his priestly office. What would he have done if he had heard the many and varied translations and reversals of Isidore Clarius, Erasmus, Cajetan, and the others? How do you think he would have borne Cajetan's reading and text, especially in the Psalms of David, so different from ours that you could scarcely tell whether it was the same sacred book or another? What of Jerome? Would he have allowed the Psalms to be translated word for word? In his book De ratione interpretandi he strongly commends, even for translating Sacred Scripture, that precept of Horace: “A faithful interpreter will not take care to render word for word.” In his letter to Augustine, Jerome says that he preserved the truth of the meaning rather than the order of words; and in his letter to Sunia and Fretella he lays down this rule for a good translator: words should not answer to words as though they were equal and measured out, but sense to sense. What is more, Cicero says in book 3 of De finibus that unskilled translators are accustomed to render word for word. Cajetan, then, is mistaken above all others, since he was forgetful of this precept

while he wished to make his rendering of the Psalms faithful, he made it entirely useless for the Church’s use.