The Douay-Rheims Bible is the historic English translation of the Roman Catholic Church. For more than three centuries it was the English Bible of Catholic homes, parishes, and schools, and it remains in devout use today — especially in households and communities attached to the Latin Mass and the older liturgical tradition.
The English Catholic exiles
Like the Geneva Bible, the Douay-Rheims was the work of religious exiles — but Catholic ones. The Reformation had made England a Protestant country, and under Queen Elizabeth I the practice of the Catholic faith was suppressed. English Catholics who wished to train as priests had to do so abroad, smuggle themselves home in disguise, and minister at risk of execution.
In 1568 William Allen, later a cardinal, founded an English College in the town of Douai (then in Flanders, now in France) to train English-speaking Catholic priests for return to England. For a time political pressure forced the college to move to the city of Rheims (Reims), in France, before it returned to Douai. It was from these two towns that the translation would take its double name.
The Rheims New Testament and the Douai Old Testament
The college’s scholars judged that English Catholics needed a Bible of their own — one accurate to Catholic teaching, to set against the Protestant English versions (chiefly the Geneva Bible) then in circulation. The chief translator was Gregory Martin, a gifted Oxford-trained scholar who worked steadily through the text while colleagues — notably William Allen himself and Richard Bristow — reviewed his drafts. Martin worked through the New Testament from the Latin Vulgate, comparing his translation against the original Greek, the Syriac, and earlier English translations he disagreed with on Catholic doctrinal grounds.
The New Testament was completed first and published at Rheims in 1582 — a slim quarto volume that found its way back into Elizabethan England by means of priests and pilgrims. The Old Testament took far longer, delayed for years by a simple lack of money to print it, and finally appeared at Douai in two volumes, in 1609 and 1610 — just before the King James Version of 1611. The Rheims New Testament was, in fact, one of the Bibles the King James translators were instructed to consult, and a few of its readings entered the King James through that route.
Translated from the Vulgate
What most set the Douay-Rheims apart was its source text. Where the Protestant translators worked from the Hebrew and Greek, the Douay-Rheims scholars translated from the Latin Vulgate — the translation made by Saint Jerome around the year 400, and the Bible the Western Church had used for more than a thousand years. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) had recently affirmed the Vulgate as the authentic text of Scripture for the Catholic Church, and the Douay-Rheims translators followed it closely, often shadowing its Latin word order and producing English that was deliberately Latinate.
Because it follows the Vulgate, the Douay-Rheims also includes the Deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and additional sections of Esther and Daniel) received in the Catholic canon, integrated into the Old Testament rather than set apart as an Apocrypha. It uses traditional Catholic vocabulary throughout: penance rather than repentance, chalice rather than cup at the Last Supper, charity rather than love in 1 Corinthians 13, full of grace at Luke 1:28. These choices reflect Catholic theological readings and have shaped how generations of English-speaking Catholics have known the Bible.
The Challoner revision
The original Douay-Rheims was learned and careful, but its English was heavy, clinging so tightly to the Latin that ordinary readers found it hard going. Words borrowed straight from the Vulgate — azymes, parasceve, supersubstantial — sent even educated readers to a glossary. By the eighteenth century the Douay-Rheims badly needed revision.
Bishop Richard Challoner, the Vicar Apostolic of the London District, undertook the work, producing a thorough revision in a series of editions between 1749 and 1752 (with further refinements through 1772). Challoner smoothed the language, modernised the vocabulary, removed the most Latinate obscurities, and — in one of the quiet ironies of English Bible history — brought the wording markedly closer to that of the King James Version, which by then was familiar to English ears even in Catholic households. It is Challoner’s revision, not the original of 1582 and 1610, that almost everyone means today when they speak of the Douay-Rheims Bible.
A sample passage
The Douay-Rheims’s Latinate roots and Catholic vocabulary are visible in many familiar passages. Here is the “Hail Mary” verse, Luke 1:28, in three versions:
Douay-Rheims (Challoner): And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
King James: And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
NABRE: And coming to her, he said, “Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
“Full of grace” in the Douay-Rheims carries the weight of the Latin gratia plena in the Vulgate — a phrase that became central to Marian devotion in the West, recognised by anyone who has prayed the Hail Mary or sung the Angelus. The King James and NABRE render the Greek kecharitōmenē more literally and lose that resonance; the Douay-Rheims keeps the wording the Catholic tradition has prayed for centuries.
Its legacy
For Catholics in the English-speaking world, the Douay-Rheims in Challoner’s form was simply the Bible, from the eighteenth century well into the twentieth. Catholic family Bibles, parish lecterns, school Bibles, and the Bibles consulted in seminary instruction were all Douay-Rheims editions. Generations of English-speaking Catholics learned Scripture in its English; phrases like “full of grace,” “Our Father, who art in heaven,” and “the daily bread” are Douay-Rheims phrasings carried into prayer.
That changed after the Second Vatican Council. New Catholic Bibles translated from the original languages — the Jerusalem Bible (1966) in Britain, the New American Bible (1970) in the United States — gradually displaced the Douay-Rheims in parishes, schools, and lectionaries. The traditional Bible did not disappear, but it ceased to be the everyday Catholic Bible.
Who reads the Douay-Rheims today
The Douay-Rheims has several distinct modern readerships:
- Traditional Catholics attached to the Latin Mass. Catholics who attend the older Tridentine Latin liturgy — under Summorum Pontificum or its successor permissions, or in communities like the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter — typically read the Douay-Rheims at home, because its English mirrors the Latin they hear at Mass.
- Readers who value the Vulgate tradition. Catholics and others who believe the Latin Vulgate, with its centuries of liturgical and theological use, carries an authority the modern critical Hebrew and Greek texts cannot match often prefer the Douay-Rheims for personal reading.
- Readers of Catholic spiritual classics. Many older Catholic spiritual books, devotionals, and theological works quote Scripture in Douay-Rheims form. Reading the Bible in that translation makes the references in those classics light up.
- Scholars and students of English-language Catholicism. Anyone studying the history of English Catholicism, English Catholic literature, or the development of Catholic devotion in English needs familiarity with the Douay-Rheims.
How the Douay-Rheims compares
Among English Bibles:
- The King James Version (1611) is the Douay-Rheims’s Protestant counterpart from the same era. The King James worked from Hebrew and Greek; the Douay-Rheims from the Latin Vulgate. Both belong to a now-archaic register of English; both have shaped how their respective communities pray. Read in parallel, they reveal how much the King James also owes to the older Catholic tradition — particularly through Tyndale, whose work the King James inherited.
- The New American Bible Revised Edition (2011) is the modern Catholic Bible the Douay-Rheims gave way to in the United States. Where the Douay-Rheims renders from Latin and prefers traditional Catholic vocabulary, the NABRE renders from Hebrew and Greek and uses more contemporary English.
- The Geneva Bible (1560) is the Protestant English Bible against which the Douay-Rheims was originally framed. The two were rivals in Elizabethan England; both have now passed into history while remaining read by traditionalists in their respective communions.
- The Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSV-CE) is the most common middle-ground option — a modern Catholic Bible in the Tyndale–King James English tradition, translated from the originals but preserving the dignity of older English. Many Catholics who love the Douay-Rheims but find its language too distant move to the RSV-CE.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Douay-Rheims still approved by the Catholic Church?
Yes. The Douay-Rheims (in the Challoner revision) was the standard English Catholic Bible for centuries and was never withdrawn. Catholics may freely read, study, and pray with the Douay-Rheims today. In the United States and most other English-speaking countries, the Bible used at Mass is now a different translation (the NABRE in the US, the Jerusalem Bible in Britain), but the Douay-Rheims remains an approved Catholic text for personal use.
Why was the Douay-Rheims translated from the Latin Vulgate and not from Hebrew and Greek?
For two reasons. First, the Council of Trent had affirmed the Vulgate as the authentic text of Scripture for the Catholic Church — a definition aimed in part against Protestant claims that the Vulgate had been corrupted. Second, the Vulgate had been the Bible of the Western Church for more than a thousand years; its readings had shaped the Catholic theological vocabulary, the Latin liturgy, and centuries of preaching. Translating from the Vulgate kept the English Bible in continuity with that long tradition. Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu later opened the door to Catholic Bibles translated directly from Hebrew and Greek, and the New American Bible and others followed.
What is the difference between the original 1582/1610 Douay-Rheims and the Challoner revision?
Substantial. The original Douay-Rheims used a stiff, Latinate English that even contemporaries found difficult; many sentences read as a near-transliteration of the Vulgate. Challoner’s revision (1749–1752) smoothed the language, replaced obscure Latinate words with normal English, and brought the wording closer to the King James Version’s familiar phrasings. Almost every modern Douay-Rheims edition is a Challoner-revision text; the 1582/1610 original is found mainly in scholarly facsimile editions.
Does the Douay-Rheims include the Deuterocanonical books?
Yes. The Douay-Rheims includes Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the additional sections of Esther and Daniel — integrated into the Old Testament in the order received by the Catholic Church. These are the books the Protestant Reformers moved to a separate Apocrypha section or omitted altogether; the Douay-Rheims, following the Vulgate and the Catholic canon, keeps them as Scripture.
Is the Douay-Rheims in the public domain?
Yes. The original Douay-Rheims (1582/1610) and the Challoner revision (1749–1752) are long out of copyright and freely reproducible. Many modern Douay-Rheims editions add notes, cross-references, or typographical refinements that may carry their own copyright, but the underlying Bible text is public domain.