First of all, though the statement of Jesus that “It is more blessed to give than to receive” is well-known by most people, not many are aware that this “Beatitude” is never mentioned in any of the four gospels, and is only found here in Paul’s quotation (as recorded by his friend, Luke).  The regular beatitudes are found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-11) and the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:20-22).  The Latin Vulgate text “Beatius est magis dare, quam accipere” (front side, line 6) is a good translation of the original Greek found in Acts 20:35.  Notice the "Beatus" in the Latin is the source of our English word "beatitude."

On auction is this single 16th century sheet (with 2 pages of text) in black gothic printing from a Latin Vulgate Bible published in Lugduni (or Lyon in France) in 1558 by Haered Sebastian Gryphii.  The title page is not in the auction, but it is presented in the last image to show the date of 1558.  Size of the sheet is  3 in. x 4 3/4 in. (= 77 mm x 120 mm).   The sheet shows some light browning discoloration due to its age and use over the centuries.  It is, after all, 450 years old!  It also has a large initial capital letter "I" at the beginning of Acts 6.  The words "ACTA" and "APOST." at the top of alternate pages (taken together) mean "The Acts of the Apostles."  Also, notice that there is a summary of the important contents of the entire chapter, which says "Praedixit Agabus Paulum Ierosolymis captum iri" which means "Agabus predicts that Paul will be captured in Jerusalem."  The text on this leaf includes Acts 20:34--21:16.  This leaf is also unique in having twice the name of "IESV" or "Jesus" printed in full CAPITAL letters (it is only the name of "Jesus" or "Christ" that are so printed in full captials). The text includes the famous and dramatic statements: "And when he was come unto us, he [Agabus] took Paul's girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.... Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus"  (Acts 21:11, 13).   In addition to the original leaf, the winner will receive a photocopy of both sides of the leaf, with all the instances circled.  This is an original 16th century printed Bible page, not a reproduction.  It authenticity is 100% guaranteed.

The Vulgate is an early 5th century version of the Bible in Latin which is largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations. Its Old Testament is the first Latin version translated directly from the Hebrew Tanakh rather than from the Greek Septuagint. It became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church and ultimately took the name versio vulgata, which means simply "the published translation". There are 76 books in the Clementine edition of the Vulgate Bible: 46 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, and 3 in the Apocrypha.

The Vulgate is a composite work, only some parts of which are due to Jerome.

• Old Latin, wholly unrevised: Prayer of Manasses, 3 and 4 Esdras, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees.
• Old Latin, more or less revised by a person or persons unknown, perhaps by Jerome: Acts, Epistles, and the Apocalypse.
• Free translation by Jerome from a secondary Aramaic version: Tobias and Judith.
• Translation from the Septuagint by Jerome: the Psalter, the Rest of Esther.
• Translation from the Greek of Theodotion by Jerome: Song of the Three Children, Story of Susanna, and The Idol Bel and the Dragon
• Revision by Jerome of the Old Latin, corrected with reference to the oldest Greek manuscripts available: the Gospels.
• Jerome's independent translation from the Hebrew: the protocanonical books of the Old Testament, with the exception of the Psalter. This was completed in 405.  In Jerome's day, the word Vulgata was applied to the Greek Septuagint. The Latin Biblical texts used before the Vulgate are usually referred to collectively as the Vetus Latina, or "Old Latin Bible", or occasionally the "Old Latin Vulgate". (Here "Old Latin" means that they are old and written in Latin, not that they are written in Old Latin.)

The translations in the Vetus Latina accumulated piecemeal over a century or more; they were not translated by a single person or institution, nor uniformly edited. The individual books varied in quality of translation and style, and different manuscripts witness wide variations in readings. Jerome, in his preface to the Vulgate gospels, commented that there were "as many [translations] as there are manuscripts." The Old Testament books were translated from the Greek Septuagint, not from the Hebrew.

The older Latin version remained in use in some circles even after Jerome's Vulgate became the accepted standard throughout the Western Church. Some in Gaul continued to prefer the Vetus Latina version for centuries.  Jerome did not embark on the work with the intention of creating a new version of the whole Bible, but the changing nature of his program can be tracked in his voluminous correspondence. He had been commissioned by Pope Damasus in 382 to revise the Old Latin text of the four Gospels from the best Greek texts, and by the time of Damasus' death in 384 he had thoroughly completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Greek Septuagint of the Old Latin text of the Psalms. How much the rest of the New Testament he then revised is difficult to judge today, but little of his work survived in the Vulgate text. In 385 Jerome was forced out of Rome, and eventually settled in Bethlehem, where he produced a new version of the Psalms, translated from the Hexaplar Greek text. He also appears to have undertaken further new translations of other Septuagint books into Latin; but again, these are not found in the Vulgate text. But from 390 to 405 Jerome switched to translating directly from the Hebrew, and translated anew all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further, third, version of the Psalms, which survives in a very few Vulgate manuscripts.

Manuscripts and early editions

A number of early manuscripts witnessing to the early Vulgate still survive today. Dating from the 8th century, the Codex Amiatinus is the earliest surviving manuscript of the complete Vulgate Bible. The Codex Fuldensis, dating from around 545, contains most of the New Testament in the Vulgate version, but the four Vulgate gospels are harmonized into a continuous narrative derived from the Diatessaron.

Over the course of the Middle Ages, the Vulgate had succumbed to the inevitable changes wrought by human error in the countless copies made of the text in monasteries across Europe. From its earliest days, readings from the Vetus Latina were introduced. Marginal notes were erroneously interpolated into the text. No one copy was the same as the other as scribes added, removed, misspelled, or miscorrected verses in the Latin Bible.

About 550, Cassiodorus made an attempt at restoring the Vulgate to its original purity. Alcuin of York oversaw efforts to make a corrected Vulgate, which he presented to Charlemagne in 801. Similar attempts were made by Theodulphus, Bishop of Orléans (787?-821); Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (1070-1089); Stephen Harding, Abbot of Cîteaux (1109-1134); and Deacon Nicolaus Maniacoria (about the beginning of the 13th century). The University of Paris assembled lists of "correctoria" - approved readings where variants had been noted. Unfortunately, many of the readings recommended are now known to be interpolations.

Though the advent of printing greatly reduced the potential of human error and increased the consistency and uniformity of the text, the earliest editions of the Vulgate merely reproduced the manuscripts that were readily available to the publishers. Of the hundreds of early editions, the most notable today is Mazarin edition published by Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust in 1455, famous for its beauty and antiquity. In 1504 the first Vulgate with variant readings was published in Paris. One of the texts of the Complutensian Polyglot was an edition of the Vulgate made from ancient manuscripts and corrected to agree with the Greek. Erasmus published an edition corrected to agree better with the Greek and Hebrew in 1516. Other corrected editions were published by Pagninus in 1518, Cardinal Cajetan, Steuchius in 1529, Clarius in 1542, and others. In 1528, Robertus Stephanus published the first critical edition, which formed the basis of the later Sistine and Clementine editions, followed by the edition of 1543.  In 1550, Stephanus fled to Geneva where in 1555 he issued his final critical edition of the Vulgate, which was the first complete Bible with full chapter and verse divisions, and which became the standard Biblical reference text for late 16th century Reformed theology.

Robert Estienne (Paris 1503 – Geneva September 7, 1559), also known as Robert Stephens (Latin: Stephanus), was a 16th century printer in Paris. He was a Catholic and the first to print the Bible divided into standard numbered verses.  Early on he became acquainted with the ancient languages, and entered the printing establishment of Simon de Colines, who married his mother upon his father's death.  In 1524, he became proprietor of the press of his stepfather. In 1539 he adopted as his devices an olive branch around which a serpent was twined, and a man standing under an olive-tree, with grafts from which wild branches were falling to the ground, with the words of Romans 11:20, Noli altum sapere, sed time… ("Be not high-minded, but fear.") The latter was called the olive of the Stephens family.  In 1539, he received the distinguishing title of "Printer in Greek to the king." But the official recognition and the crown's approval to his undertaking could not save him from the censure and ceaseless opposition of the divines, and in 1550, to escape the violence of his persecutors, he emigrated to Geneva.  With his title of "royal typographer" Estienne made the Paris establishment famous by his numerous editions of grammatical works and other school-books (among them many of Melanchthon's), and of old authors, as Dio Cassius, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cicero, Sallust, Julius Caesar, Justin, Socrates Scholasticus, and Sozomen. Many of these, especially the Greek editions (which were printed with typefaces made by Claude Garamond), were famous for their typographical elegance.  In 1532, he published the remarkable Thesaurus linguae latinae, and twice he published the entire Hebrew Bible — "one with the Commentary of Kimchi on the minor prophets, in 13 vols. 4to (quarto) (Paris, 1539-43), another in 10 vols." Both of these editions are rare.  Of more importance are his four editions of the Greek New Testament, 1546, 1549, 1550, and 1551, the last in Geneva. The first two are among the neatest Greek texts known, and are called O mirificam; the third is a splendid masterpiece of typographical skill, and is known as the Editio regia; the edition of 1551 contains the Latin translation of Erasmus and the Vulgate, is not nearly as fine as the other three, and is exceedingly rare. It was in this edition that the division of the New Testament into verses was for the first time introduced.  A number of editions of the Vulgate also appeared from his presses, of which the principal are those of 1528, 1532, 1540, 1543, and 1546. The text of the Vulgate was in a wretched condition, and his editions, especially that of 1546, containing a new translation at the side of the Vulgate, was the subject of sharp and acrimonious criticism from the clergy.  On his arrival at Geneva, he published a defense against the attacks of the Sorbonne. He issued the French Bible in 1553, and many of John Calvin's writings; the finest edition of the Institutio being that of 1553. His fine edition of the Latin Bible with glosses (1556) contained the translation of the Old Testament by Santes Pagninus, and the first edition of Theodore Beza's Latin edition of the New Testament.