The Bible as we know it today is composed of two collections of books, the 鈥極ld Testament鈥 and the much shorter 鈥楴ew Testament鈥.
The history of the Bible reached a turning point when it was translated into Latin by St Jerome (d. 420). Jerome鈥檚 鈥榁ulgate鈥, so named because Latin was the popular language of the day, slowly became the standard text of the Bible in western Europe, displacing a number of variants. It became the key to the Christian culture that lay at the heart of the kingdoms that grew up following the collapse of Rome鈥檚 empire.
Via the medieval Church, the Vulgate reached into and shaped the lives of everyone from the peasants in the fields, to kings and emperors. In 1453-55 it became the first major beneficiary of Johann Gutenberg鈥檚 newly invented process of printing with moveable type.
