Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Septuagint with Latin Translation

and because he applied a singular diligence to comparing this book with the writings of the ancients, was the first to see how this evil should be remedied. He did not merely see it, but by his own authority he caused the Supreme Pontiff Gregory XIII to see to it that the Greek Bible of the Seventy translators, having applied diligent correction, be restored to its original splendor. When he had demanded that this matter be executed by Cardinal Antonio Carafa, a man of ancient holiness and a cultivator of all honest arts, he delayed not at all and made a selection of most learned men who, on fixed days at his own home, would compare the manuscript copies he had gathered from everywhere in great numbers, and extract the best readings from them. When these were subsequently compared often and diligently with the codex of the Vatican Library, it was understood that that codex is by far the best of all that exist, and that it would be worth the effort if this new edition were prepared according to its authority.

But with the plan of emendation now explained, the method itself that was used in the correcting must now be revealed, and first of all, the Vatican book must be described, to whose prescription this edition has been polished. That codex (as far as can be conjectured from the form of the characters), since it is written in larger letters which they truly call ancient, seems to have been written before the one thousand two hundredth year, that is, before the times of Blessed Jerome, and not later. Of all the books that were in our hands, this one alone, above the others, helped the instituted emendation in a wonderful way because it was seen to consist of the edition of the Seventy, if not in the whole book, at least for the greater part. After it, there were two others which approach its antiquity, though by a long interval: one a Venetian copy from the library of Cardinal Bessarion, and this too written in larger letters; the other, brought from Magna Graecia, is now owned by Cardinal Carafa. This book agrees so much with the Vatican codex in all things that it can be believed to have been copied from the same archetype. Besides these, books from the Medicean library of Florence, which either confirmed or illustrated the Vatican readings in many places, were also of great use.