Vulgate

The Vulgate Bible is an early 5th century translation of the Bible into Latin by St. Jerome, at the instigation of Pope Damasus I. The version takes its name from the word vulgus (common people) (cf. Vulgar Latin, and was written in an everyday Latin which he used in conscious distinction from the elegant Ciceronian Latin of which he was a master. The Vulgate was designed to be both more accessible and more accurate than its predecessors.

There were (at least) 3 slightly different versions of the Vulgate, all translated by Jerome. The Romana Vulgate was the first. It was soon displaced by later versions except in Britian, where it continued to be used until the Norman invasion in 1066. Next was the Gallicana Vulgate, which Jerome produced a few years later. It had some minor improvements, especially in the Old Testament. This became the standard Bible of the Roman Catholic Church a few decades after it was produced. The Hispana Vulgate is identical to the Romana except for the Book of Psalms (and maybe a few other parts?) which Jerome retranslated from the Hebrew for this version. (The other Vulgates were primarily translated from the Greek, but with checking against Hebrew and Aramaic sources.)

The previous Latin version available, usually known as the Vetus Latina or "Old Latin," was neither translated by a single person or institution, nor even uniformly edited. The individual books varied in quality of translation and language usage - modern scholars often refer to the Old Latin as being in "translationese" rather than regular Latin.