In 1907,
Pope Pius X commissioned the
Benedictine Order to produce as pure a version as possible of Jerome's original text after conducting an extensive search for as-yet-unstudied manuscripts, particularly in
Spain. This text was originally planned as the basis of a revised complete official Bible for the Catholic church to replace the
Clementine edition. The first volume, the
Pentateuch, completed in 1926, lists as primary editor
Henri Quentin, whose editorial methods, described in his book ''Mémoire sur l'établissement du texte de la Vulgate'', proved to be somewhat controversial. The Roman Vulgate reunited the
Book of Ezra and the
Book of Nehemiah into
a single book, reversing the decisions of the
Sixto-Clementine Vulgate. In 1933,
Pope Pius XI established the
Pontifical Abbey of St Jerome-in-the-City to complete the work. By the 1970s, as a result of liturgical changes that had spurred the Vatican to produce a new translation of the Latin Bible, the
Nova Vulgata, the Benedictine edition was no longer required for official purposes, and the abbey was suppressed in 1984. Five monks were nonetheless allowed to complete the final two volumes of the Old Testament, which were published under the abbey's name in 1987 and 1995. == See also ==