SOME HISTORY ON THE DOUAY-RHEIMS (and Vulgate) BIBLE

The Douay-Rheims Bible is an English translation of the Vulgate Bible, a Latin version used universally in the Church for over 1500 years, which was meticulously translated from the original Hebrew and Greek by St. Jerome (340-420 AD).

In 1546, the Council of Trent declared the Vulgate Bible as authentic, and declared that “No one (may) dare or presume under any pretext whatsoever to reject it” (4th Session, April 8, 1546).

In 1943, Pope Pius XII stated that the continuous use of the Vulgate Bible in the Church for many centuries showed that it was “free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals” (Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943), paragraph 21).

During the English Protestant Reformation, Catholic clerics were exiled to the Continent where from 1582-1610, an accurate English version of the Bible was made and printed at the English college in Douai, France, with subsequently being printed again at the college in Rheims. Unfortunately, its readability left much to be desired.

This lack of readability caused many English Catholics to resort to the distorted Protestant bibles ( such as the King James Version).  Finally, between 1749-1752, Bishop Richard Challoner (+1781) revised the Douay-Rheims translation to improve its readability without diminishing its accuracy, thereby giving Catholics a superior version of the English-language bible.

Afterwards, for over 300 years, the Douay Rheims Bible was the only Catholic English translation of Scripture used and continues to be used officially in Catholic churches to this day.

Many anti-Catholics accuse the Church of having hidden Scripture from the faithful by refusing to translate it into the vernacular tongue. The Douay-Rheims was completed in 1609, and is therefore older than the King James Version ( the oldest Protestant translation still in use) which was published in 1611. The Rheims New Testament was published nearly thirty years earlier though, in 1582.