What is the Clementine Vulgate?
After the Council of Trent, which declared in 1546 that the Vulgate alone was to be held as “authentic in public readings, discourses, and disputes, and that nobody might dare or presume to reject it on any pretence” (Sess. IV, De editione et usu sacrorum librorum), the Holy See undertook the task of producing a corrected, standard text of the Vulgate for the use of the universal Church. In 1590, an edition was duly produced in Rome by a commission of scholars, revised further by Sixtus V, and finally approved by him. After his death a further revision was carried out under the Jesuit Franciscus Toletus, and finally the work was printed in 1598 during the pontificate of Clement VIII, whose name has been attached to it since 1641. The Clementine text was the offical version of the Vulgate until 1979.
