Free Republic

For roughly one thousand years, it was the Bible of Western Christendom. It was the version to which European Christians turned to compose their prayers and liturgies, that great saints consulted in their meditations, and that the greatest scholars quoted in their treatises.ItÂ’s harder to think of a translation of the Bible that has had more staying power than St. JeromeÂ’s Latin version, known as the Vulgate, which was completed late in the fourth century and held sway over the Church through the Council of Trent, in the mid-1500s. Of course, the Vulgate is not the work of Jerome...

St. Francis of Assisi today is often thought of in revolutionary, avant-garde images: the merchant’s son who stripped naked in public to renounce his worldly possessions and attachments, the mystic who preached to the birds, the friar who embraced lepers, and the erstwhile evangelist who crossed enemy lines during a crusade to preach to a sultan. St. Francis indeed was all these things. But as for the St. Francis who lamented abuses of the liturgy, submitted to Church authority, displayed the utmost respect for the clergy, and also debated the meaning of the gospels with the same sultan—we don’t hear...