Geddes

Geddes, Alexander, was born at Ruthven, Banffshire, Scotland, in 1737. He entered a Scottish Roman Catholic seminary in 1753, and thence was sent to the Scottish College in Paris, where he acquired a sound knowledge of theology and of European languages. Returning to Scotland, he held several cures, and became domestic chaplain to Lord Traquair, with whom he went to London in 1780, the University of Aberdeen having previously made him an honorary LL.D. He found a generous patron in Lord Petre, and after several preliminary publications he brought out, in 1792, the first volume of a new translation of the Vulgate. It exposed him to the attacks both of his own coreligionists and of Protestants, for it was undertaken in a liberal and scholarly spirit, with the assistance of philologists of various schools. The use of his book was vetoed, and he himself was inhibited. Nevertheless he persevered and in 1797 carried his task in a second volume to the end of the historical books, which he followed up in 1800 with Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures. He died in 1802.