1592 CLEMENTINE'S LATIN BIBLE FIRST EDITION 4 LEAVES STUDY COLLECTION
Offered for consideration, to the discerning and serious Bible leaf collector, is a unique SAME TEXT comparative study collection of FOUR original Bible leaves relating directly to the counter-reformation’s Council of Trent [1545-1563] and the affirmation of Saint Jerome’s Latin Vulgate as the sole, authorized text of the Bible for the Roman Catholic Church. Something that remained unchanged for more than 400 years.
OFFER CONTENTS
1) An original same text study leaf from the Clementine Latin Vulgate Bible, 1592 accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. The offer also includes a fine art reproduction of the Clementine Bible title page. This first edition Clementine Bible is the Roman’s Catholic Church’s original authorized text of the Bible upon which all subsequent printed Latin Bibles were based for the next 400 years. During this time, up until 1979, Roman Catholics were not permitted to print or use for ecclesiastical matters any other Latin Bibles other than the standard text of the Clementine Latin Vulgate Bible.
The Council of Trent that authorized the Clementine Bible was a reaction to the Reformers’ criticism of the Church of Rome’s flawed theology and carelessly printed Latin Bibles that were based on corrupted medieval manuscripts. Rome charged, in reply, that it was the Protestants who were in fact guilty of undermining scripture and the authority of the Church by issuing revised critical editions of the Latin Vulgate, such as were printed by Robert Stephanus of Paris in the 1520’s-1550’s.
2) An original same text study leaf from a Parisian Latin Vulgate manuscript, circa AD 1250 accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. There is no title page. This manuscript is what was at issue. There were so many manuscript copies all differing one from another in an untold and unknown number of variants that no two printed editions were ever remotely the same because the printers were all using different corrupted manuscripts to print their Bibles from.
3) An original same text study leaf from a Venetian Latin Vulgate Bible, 1501, printed by Paganino Paganini accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. The offer also includes a fine art reproduction of the Venetian Latin Vulgate Bible colophon. These small easily concealed tomes were often called a “poor mans Bible". So called because they were cheaper to print than the large folio pulpit Bibles and subsequently less expensive to purchase. It was an affordable Bible that the average ordinary person could own and read for themselves. Its size and format was based on the popular 13th century Parisian Latin Bible manuscript above [see number 2)]. They almost look the same.
4) An original same text study leaf from a Robert Stephanus’ Latin Vulgate Bible, 1532 accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. The offer also includes a fine art reproduction of the Stephanus’ Latin Vulgate Bible title page. This original second edition of Stephanus’ Bible, like all four of his other folio Latin Bibles, is a critical edition attempting to correct and recover the fidelity of the original Vulgate text. For this he was condemned by the clergy of Paris and in 1550 had to flee to Geneva for his life. Ironically though, when the RC Church went to print what became known as the Clementine Vulgate Bible in 1592 [see above] the only printed edition that came close to being a pure Jerome Vulgate text was, you guessed it, Robert Stephanus’ Latin Bibles of fifty years earlier. So the Protestant’s revised Latin Vulgate in fact became the official Catholic Bible for more than 400 years. Isn’t the Lord great!!!