Los Angeles herald., 1910-12-26
EXPERTS ADVANCE
WORK ON VULGATE
President of Commission to
Leave London and Continue
LaborS in Rome

LONDON, Dec. 25.-The Abbot Gas
quet. president of the commission ap-
pointed by the pope to revise the text
| of the Nulgate. is shortly to leave
| England for the commissions head
quarters in st. Anselm's college at
Rome. He will have considerable
progress to report
The present commissions task is TO
restore the version to the exact form
in which il left the hands of St.
Jerome. To determine the correctness
OF st. Jeromes version will doubtless
| be the task of a future commission.
Search for ancient manuscripts of the
Nulgate has been going on for some
time among the public and monastic
libraries of France, Germany, Spain,
Austria. Hungary and other continen-
tai countries, as well as of England.
and several important manuscripts
have already been found.
The work of comparing these manu-
scripts with the commonly received
text-published in 1592-will evidently
be long and laborious, but as any
skilled photographer would expect 1t
is being much facilitated by the large
and systematic use of photography.
SPECIAL CAMERA is USED
Dom Henri Quentin, whose work on
the martyrologies was crowned by the
French Academy, is in charge of this
branch of the work. To begin with,
he superintended the construction in
Paris of a special camera, fitted with
what is believed to be the finest lens
ever made by Goerz. Accompanied
by Dom Cotineau Ohe revision was
ihtrusted to the Benedictine order),
Dom Quentin goes from place to place,
wherever an important manuscript is
known to exist, and sets to work. He
began with about fifteen complete
Bibles in Paris: came to London and
reproduced several important manu-
scripts in the British museum; has
now returned to Paris. and next year
will ioe similarly at work on the treas
ures of Italy.
Tho camera has been made to act
vertically, from above. The manu-
script volume. therefore, does not need
to be fastened in an upright position.
1t simply lies open under the camera,
which takes" two pages at a time.
There is no need to take a negative
first and then print through it to
make what it commonly called pho
tograph. All that is wanted is the
negative, showing white letters on a
dark ground. The sensitized film or
paper is made in rolls, like those famil-
lar to any user of a kodak, but on a
most unfamiliar and gigantic scale.
Some OF these roll negatives are about
100 feet long. They are cut into sec
tions, developed, fixed and mounted on
sheets of stout material coated with
rubber to which they adhere without
the use of any gum or paste.
An illuminated manuscript adds
greatly to the photographers difficult
ties, and many copies are lavishly
colored, gilded and silvered, while the
Psalms are often found written on
purple vellum. Every difficulty OF
this sort, however, has been got over
by using colored glass screens with the
lens; and, as the almost microscopic
lettering of small manuscripts is pho
geographically enlarged, in some cases
the copy is easier to read than the
original. Nevertheless, there are many
places where a word or letter is faint
or blurred by erasure or correction.
The photograph is therefore compared
with the manuscript very closely. line
by line, before being sent away for
final comparison with the authorized
version.
The final comparison demands the
patient exercise of keenness of sight
and quickness of observation, with
some degree of scholarship and some
familiarity with the various scripts.
Such a combination of capacities is
rare, but it appears that persons both
able and willing to undertake this task
are not lacking. The work is now
being done in several countries.