The editors who commissioned this book really could have used bigger pockets.

This is the smaller edition of the Latin Vulgate New Testament compiled by Wordsworth and White, and is designed for portability. Portable it certainly is, being smaller and thinner than most paperbacks. But that somewhat affects its usefulness. The idea of this book is to offer a critical edition (that is, one based on the best texts of the earliest manuscripts), with a partial critical apparatus (information on the readings of those manuscripts). On the first count, it succeeds; most of the text is that of the greater Wordsworth-White edition (although there are a few books which differ, because the larger edition had not been completed when this small edition was published).

Sadly, the book falls short in its apparatus. Only nine manuscripts are cited -- good manuscripts, mostly, but still, that represents only one Vulgate manuscript in a thousand! And they are not fully collated; most of the variants cited show only the readings of the Catholic Church's official Clementine edition and the earlier Sixtine edition. In all of Romans, to take a random example, there are only nineteen places where the apparatus cites the manuscripts. By comparison, the Stuttgart Vulgate -- which itself has far too small an apparatus -- has more than 300. The apparatus is simply too small -- and, given how tiny the book is, it certainly would have been possible to expand it.

This is the only fully portable critical Vulgate New Testament. As such, it has value. But it's really sad that it doesn't have more. ( )

Sister Mary Gabriel, O.P., from Sister Mary Joseph J.O.S.A. (v Iris Mary Ross). Feast of the Purification 1964. Solemn Profession. Library. St. Dominic's Priory, Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory O.P. [accession number] 3555 ( )