the Dominicans, prepared under the auspices of Hugo de S. Caro, about 1240, the final corrected form of which is now preserved at Paris, B.N. Lat. 16719-16722 (_see_ below, p. 70, no. 23)(74); this, however, was again an attempt, not so much to get at Jerome’s actual text as, to bring the Latin text into accordance with the Greek or Hebrew(75); (3) a better and more critical revision, the “Correctorium Vaticanum,” a good MS. of which is in the Vatican Library (Lat. 3466); the author of this has done his best to restore Jerome’s reading throughout, although well learned in Greek and Hebrew; and he has with some probability been identified by Vercellone with a scholar much praised by Roger Bacon as a “sapientissimus homo,” who had spent nearly forty years in the correction of the text(76) (Denifle suggests Wilh. de Mara). These remedies, partial and temporary as they were, seemed all that was possible before the invention of printing; and, indeed, by an unfortunate chance, the worst of the three correctoria, the “Parisiense,” was made use of by Robert Stephen. Among the earliest productions of the press, Latin Bibles took a prominent position; and during the first half-century of printing at least 124 editions were published(77). Of these perhaps the finest is the earliest, the famous “forty-two line” Bible, issued at Mentz between 1452 and 1456, in two volumes, and usually ascribed to Gutenberg(78). This is usually called the “Mazarin Bible,” from the copy which first attracted the notice of bibliographers having been discovered in the Library of Cardinal Mazarin; in the New Testament, the order of books is Evv., Paul., Act., Cath., Apoc. Mr. Copinger enumerates twenty-five copies on vellum and paper as still known to exist; there are two in the British Museum. The first Bible published at Rome is dated 1471, and was printed by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, two vols., folio; the first octavo edition, or “poor man’s Bible,” was printed at Basle in 1491 by Froben. The early editions, however, reproduced the current mediaeval type of text, or copied from each other, the only exceptions being those printed by Froben, whose copies, says Mr. Copinger, were sought after, for their accuracy, by the best scholars in Europe, and whose edition of 1502 with the “glossa ordinaria” sometimes stands quite alone in possessing the true reading. The first, edition with a collection of various readings appears to be one published at Paris in 1504(79), followed by others at Venice and Lyons in 1511, 1513; and a definite revision of the text was attempted by Cardinal Ximenes, in the famous Complutensian Polyglott (1514, &c.; see Chap. V)(80), in which he made use of the Bible of Alcalá (_see_ below, no. 42); but though an advance was made on previous editions, the text was still far from pure. Erasmus, in his famous edition of the Greek Testament, appended a Latin translation; this he made himself directly from the