HKB
less correctly in its sister volume at Puy (no. 24), the Paris MS. (no. 22 below), and partly also in the correction of the Bible of St. Hubert (no. 6).
Two centuries later the text had again degenerated, and our Primate Lanfranc (1069-89) attempted a similar task, perhaps rather with a view to theology than textual criticism (“secundum orthodoxam fidem studuit corrigere”)(70). In 1109 Stephen Harding, third abbot of Citeaux, made a further revision, partly from good Latin MSS., partly from the Greek, partly, in the Old Testament, from the Hebrew, as he obtained help from some learned Jewish scholars(71). In 1150 his example was followed by Cardinal Nicolaus Maniacoria(72). As these individual efforts seemed to have but slight success, the task was taken up in the thirteenth century more fully and systematically by bodies of scholars, in the so-called “Correctoria Bibliorum;” here the variant readings with their authorities, Greek, Latin, ancient, modern, and citations from the Fathers, were carefully registered. The most noticeable examples of these correctoria are (1) the “Correctorium Parisiense” prepared by the Paris theologians. Roger Bacon had a poor opinion of the work done by these students; for some time the MSS. of the Bible that were copied and bought and sold in Paris, he says, were corrupt; they were bad to begin with, and copied carelessly by the booksellers and their scribes, while the theologians were not learned enough to discover and amend the mistakes(73). This correctorium is also frequently, but according to Denifle (p. 284) wrongly, called Senonense, as if it was undertaken at the instance of the Bishop of Sens; there is, however, no correctorium Senonense, only the correctiones Senonenses, i.e. corrections made in the Paris Correctorium by the Dominicans residing at Sens; (2) the “Correctorium” of 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.