During RCIA we read Sacred Scripture from the NAB and then refer to the use of the footnotes either for complementary citations in other chapters or for explanation.
When were the use of footnotes established in Bibles?
Notes (be it footnotes or marginal notes) became a common thing soon after Gutenberg printed his Bible, though there were a number of precedents. The
Glossa Ordinaria (
here and
here), a compilation of excerpts from the Church Fathers and other authorities usually written or printed in the margins and between the lines of the Biblical text, was a particular favorite during the Middle Ages and in fact continued to be used up until the 18th century. There was a second gloss, also on the whole Bible, known as
Glossa Interlinearis, so called because it was written over the words and between the lines of Scripture. Eventually, after the 12th century copies of the Vulgate were usually supplied with both of these glosses, the
Glossa Ordinaria being inserted in the margin, at the top and at the sides, and the
Glossa Interlinearis being placed between the lines of the text. From the 14th century onward, the
Postilla of Nicholas of Lyra and the
Additiones of
Paul of Burgos were also added at the foot of each page.
Kind of something like this. Eventually the glosses started to crowd the pages that Pope Sixtus V, when publishing his official edition of the Vulgate in 1588, decreed that henceforth copies of it should
not be supplied with such variations recorded in the margin.
If we focus particularly on the English Bible, Myles Coverdale’s
1535 Bible, the first complete printed translation of the Scriptures into Modern English, has a few marginal notes which were mostly limited to explanations, various readings, and alternative renderings.
The 1537
Matthew Bible (which were actually just an amalgam of Tyndale and Coverdale) was really the first English Bible to have notes - and this Bible had a lot. Unfortunately, many of these notes were strongly and bitterly anti-Catholic in bent. Other folks restrained themselves: there were various marginal references, but not many notes, in the various editions of the
Great Bible (1539-40). All the editions of the
Bishops’ Bible (1568) have marginal references and a few short notes. The
Geneva Bible of 1560 had a number of study aids such as verse citations, explanatory tables, and the (in)famous annotations which were mostly Calvinistic and Puritan in character (
sample) - some editions had more and some less - but it seems that it was really with the Geneva Bible that notes began to be a really important.
The
1582 Douai New Testament and the
1609 Rheims Old Testament used marginal notes, as well as annotations at the end of every chapter - which have generally a strong polemic and patristic character, bent on defending Catholic beliefs - to great effect: these actually make up the bulk of the two works. Respecting Pope Sixtus V’s ruling on the Vulgate, the translators never included alternate readings within the notes.
The 1611
King James Version, by contrast, showed some restraint: in fact the translators were ordered to add no glosses, which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible (a translation which King James I disliked, and which was the catalyst for his commissioning the KJV in the first place). Thus the marginal notes in the original 1611 version were mostly limited to verse citations and alternative - often more literal - renderings. It makes up for it with a number of other apparatuses, including a table for the reading of the Psalms at matins and evensong, and a calendar, an almanac, and a table of holy days and observances. Much of this material became obsolete with the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by Britain and its colonies in 1752, and thus modern editions invariably omit it.
The
Revised Version (1885), and its American cousin, the
American Standard Version (1901) is particularly noted for its wide inclusion of marginal notes to alert the reader to variations in wording, alternate renderings, and critical remarks - something that startled many of its readers. In that sense they are two of the forerunners of the modern Bible as we know it today.
