Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Septuagint with Latin Translation

"...lation of all translations, whether Latin or barbarian, and was like a touchstone to which they were examined and corrected." If, therefore, you wish to apply yourself to the study of the Holy Fathers and to rightly understand their testimonies and the style of the New Testament, this translation is like a key by which the door will be opened to you. For who could understand them as they discourse on divine matters without having previously known and understood the norm they always had in mind while writing? But I do not know by what negligence of men such a useful work, for the learning and memorizing of which our ancestors kept watch day and night, and which Sixtus V and so many other men devoted to the Holy Scriptures commended with all their might, has been neglected by us. For it has lain in the dust for many centuries, as if completely unknown. No other cause presents itself to me, upon inquiry, than the ignorance of the times. Now, however, having attained happier times in which, with the applause of all good men, the study of letters is reviving and is being promoted everywhere in seminaries, we believed that we could not spend our labor on a more useful cause than to write out the translation of the seventy interpreters anew and to render it in a more accommodating form, so that all clerics and all students of seminaries may be able, in accordance with the proposal of Sixtus V, to draw from this divine source and thus train themselves for the understanding of the Holy Fathers. But before we proceed further, it is worth noting that there exists a fourfold edition of this translation, in addition to some particular ones, such as those of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus.

The first is the Complutensian, prepared from many manuscript copies by learned men and published in the Complutensian Polyglot, by the work of Cardinal Francisco Ximénez, in the year 1515. From this arose the Royal Bible of Antwerp (1571), the Santandreana of Geneva (1596), the Commeliniana (1599), and the Parisian (Vitré, 1645).

The second is the Aldine, published in Venice in the year 1518 by Aldus Manutius from ancient copies collected from everywhere, under the care of Andrea Asolano. Derived from this are the Argentinensis (1526), two Basle editions (1545 and 1550), the Hamburgensis (1596), and the Francofurtensis (1597).

The third is the Roman, which is also called the Sixtine, which Sixtus V...