Researchers rediscover Latin Bible commentary that has been lost for 1,500 years

Researchers at the Cologne Cathedral Library in Germany have rediscovered the earliest known Latin commentary on the Gospels that has been lost for more than 1,500 years.

The biblical commentary, which dates back to the middle of the fourth century, was written by a bishop in northern Italy named Fortunatianus of Aquileia. Earlier this week, the library published an English translation of the 160-chapter document.

According to Catholic News Agency, the commentary was widely known to have existed, but many scholars have thought that it had either been destroyed or permanently lost. It was originally rediscovered in a form of an unmarked manuscript dating back to about 800 A.D. in 2012 by Lukas Dorfbauer, a researcher from the University of Salzburg.

Scholars have overlooked the majority of the manuscript's biblical content, but Dorfbauer conducted further research on the document and found that it seemed to date back further than the ninth century.

The commentary by Fortunatianus has been mentioned by St. Jerome in his work, "Lives of Famous Men." Dorfbauer took notes on the document and compared some of its contents to St. Jerome's writings on Fortunatianus in the fourth century.

"I was able to compare the biblical quotations in the Cologne manuscript with our extensive databases," said Dr. Hugh Houghton, the Deputy Director at the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) at the University of Birmingham.

"Parallels with texts circulating in northern Italy in the middle of the 4th century offered a perfect fit with the context of Fortunatianus," he added.

Houghton, who is a specialist in the Latin New Testament, began comparing quotes from the rediscovered manuscript with other fourth century texts by using the university's database. In his analysis, he found that the comparison "seemed to preserve the original form of Fortunatianus' groundbreaking work."

"Such a discovery is of considerable significance to our understanding of the development of Latin biblical interpretation, which went on to play such an important part in the development of Western thought and literature," he said.

The manuscript mainly focuses on the Gospel of Matthew, but there are brief references to the gospels of Mark, Luke and John.

The rediscovered document has been found to predate the Vulgate which was once known as the earliest form of written Latin commentary of the Gospels. However, the manuscript remains far less popular than the Vulgate because of its recent discovery.

"It will still be some time before this work becomes as widely known as the famous writings of later Christian teachers such as Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome," said Houghton.