Vulgate

The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to revise the Vetus LatinaGospels used by the Roman Church. Later, of his own initiative, Jerome extended this work of revision and translation to include most of the books of the Bible.

The Vulgate was progressively adopted as the Bible text within the Western Church. Over succeeding centuries, it eventually eclipsed the Vetus Latina texts. By the 13th century it had taken over from the former version the designation versio vulgata (the "version commonly used") or vulgata for short. The Vulgate also contains some Vetus Latina translations that Jerome did not work on.

The Catholic Church affirmed the Vulgate as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), though there was no single authoritative edition of the book in any language at that time. Eventually an official edition of the Vulgate was produced, to be promulgated among the Catholic Church as the Sixtine Vulgate (1590), then as the Clementine Vulgate (1592), and then as the Nova Vulgata (1979). The Vulgate is still used in the Latin Church. The Clementine edition of the Vulgate became the standard Bible text of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, and remained so until 1979 when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated.