Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/312

 302 Journal of Philology. has been generally conceded both by ancient and modern archaeo- logists : and I may add, that an able paper contributed by Mr James Goodwin of that college to the publications of the Cam- bridge Antiquarian Society in 1847, discusses the whole question, and arrives at the result before obtained by Wanley and Mr Westwood. The MS. contains a copy of the Gospels in a Latin version agreeing almost literatim with the Vulgate of St Jerome. Here perhaps is the appropriate place for noticing the character of the sacred text, as it was studied in this country after the arrival of the Roman missionaries. The Irish Church we have already seen was very independent, circulating, there is reason to believe, a Latin version of its own. And traces of a similar independence are discerned in the Northumbrian Church, where Irish influences continued to be felt long after the age of Wilfrith and Theodore. The characteristics of the sacred art of Ireland, so very striking as to render it almost unique, are repro- duced in several illustrations of religious books belonging to the northern monasteries: while the same affinity is even more observable on turning to the books themselves. Examples will be found in the Lindisfarne Psalter, printed for the Surtees Society in 1843. Postponing all consideration of its Anglian, or Northumbrian-Saxon, gloss, we notice that the Latin of it varies " very considerably from the received text of the Vulgate," and that after its transcription in the eighth century, attempts wore made to force it into closer harmony with the Vulgate by "numerous erasures and alterations" (Mr Stevenson's Preface). The Lindisfarne Gospels (Cotton MSS. Nero, d, iv.) throw further light upon this ancient independence. They exhibit the Vulgate version, it is true, with great fidelity, but what is most remark- able, the author of the Anglian gloss, who wrote at Lindisfarne towards the end of the seventh or in the beginning of the eighth century, has not followed the text he had before him, but a different Latin version. We shall, however, be more able to esti- mate the true amount of these divergencies when the Lindisfarne Gospels, now in preparation, have been given to the public. On the other hand, the Roman missionaries invariably made use of the Vulgate as corrected by St Jerome. Gregory the Great bestowed his imprimatur on it, and accordingly from the time of his pontificate, it grew in reputation, and ere long sup- planted all its predecessors. There is in fact a passage of