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Anacreontics … by ChatGPT!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Chapter 18 of the Jerusalem Life of John Damascene contains a prayer by John to the Virgin Mary, that his severed hand is re-attached to his arm.  The 1712 Lequien edition signals that the prayer is in Anacreontic verse, a form of light verse, curiously.

Rather than try to translate that myself, I asked ChatGPT.

Can you translate this Latin poem into English anacreontic verse with the same number of lines: ”’Domina castissima mater, Deum meum qua peperisti.
Propter imagines sacras, dextra manus mea praecisa est,
Causam haud ignoras furoris, quo Leo saeviit.
Succurre sis ergo quam citissime, et meam manum sana
Illa Excelsi dextera, quae ex te carnem sumsit.
Multas facit virtutes, intercessione tua.
Hanc quoque manum meam, tuas nunc ad preces sanet,
Quo tuas, ut dederis, filiique ex te incarnati laudes
Modulato concentu, O Deipara, conscribat
Et rectae fidei cultui, opitulator adsit
Potes enim quidquid lubet, ut quae sis Dei mater. ”’

And this is what came out:

O Lady chaste, O mother pure,
Who bore my God, divinely sure.

For sacred icons, lo! my hand
Was struck and severed by command.

The tyrant raged, his wrath was blind,
Yet, Mother, thou dost know the mind.

So haste, O help in sorrow’s night,
Restore my hand in mercy’s might.

The hand of Him, the Lord Most High,
Took flesh from thee and reigns on high.

Thy prayers bring wonders, works of grace,
Let now His touch my wound erase.

That I may write, as thou dost give,
Thy praises and His name who lives.

To truth and faith my hand restore,
That I may serve Him evermore.

For all is thine, O Mother dear,
Since God hath made thee Queen and near.

Which I think you will agree is extraordinary.

Just for reference, here is Google Translate for the same lines:

O most chaste mother, you who gave birth to my God.
Because of the sacred images, my right hand was cut off,
You are not ignorant of the cause of the fury with which Leo raged.
Therefore, come to my aid as quickly as possible, and heal my hand
That right hand of the Most High, which took flesh from you.
Many virtues are performed by your intercession.
This hand of mine, too, is now healed by your prayers,
That it may write down your praises, that you may give, and the praises of your son incarnate from you
In a modulated harmony, O Mother of God,
And be present to the worship of the right faith, a helper
For you can do whatever you please, as you are the Mother of God.

Here’s the Greek from the TLG, which is the Lequien text via the PG:

Δέσποινα, πάναγνε μῆτερ, ἡ τὸν Θεόν μου τεκοῦσα,
Διὰ τὰς θείας εἰκόνας, ἡ δεξιά μου ἐκόπη·
Οὐκ ἀγνοεῖς τὴν αἰτίαν δι’ ἣν ἐμάνη ὁ Λέων.
Πρόφθασον τοίνυν ὡς τάχος, καὶ ἴασαί μου τὴν χεῖρα.
Ἡ δεξιὰ τοῦ Ὑψίστου, ἡ ἀπὸ σοῦ σαρκωθεῖσα,
Πολλὰς ποιεῖ τὰς δυνάμεις, διὰ τῆς σῆς μεσιτείας·
Τὴν δεξιάν μου καὶ ταύτην νῦν ἰασάσθω λιταῖς σου,
Ὡς ἂν σοὺς ὕμνους, οὓς δοίης, καὶ τοῦ ἐκ σοῦ σαρκωθέντος,
Εὐρυθμικαῖς ἁρμονίαις συγγράψηται, Θεοτόκε.
Καὶ συνεργὸς χρηματίσῃ τῆς ὀρθοδόξου λατρείας.
Δύνασαι γὰρ ὅσα θέλεις, ὡς τοῦ Θεοῦ μήτηρ οὖσα.

Which turned into:

O Lady pure, O Virgin bright,
Who bore my God in mercy’s light,

For sacred icons, lo! my hand
Was by the tyrant’s wrathless planned.

Thou know’st, O Queen, the cause he gave,
His madness made him fierce and grave.

Then haste, O swiftly grant me grace,
And heal my hand in love’s embrace.

The hand of Him, the Lord Most High,
Took flesh from thee and reigns on high.

Through thee He works His wonders still,
Thy prayers can move His mighty will.

Then let my hand be healed anew,
That I may write thy praises true,

And of thy Son, incarnate King,
With tuneful strains in faith to sing.

To truth and faith my hand restore,
That I may serve Him evermore.

For all is thine, O Mother dear,
Since God hath made thee Queen and near.

Doggerel it may certainly be, but it is certainly extraordinary to see!

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Life of John Damascene by John, Patriarch of Jerusalem (BHG 884) – Part 5

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Let us continue with the “Jerusalem Life” of John Damascene.  I had not realised that I had completed – but not posted – three more chapters before my hand injury, so only chapter 17 is new.  A quick recap: John is living in Damascus and working as chief financial officer for the muslim caliph.  Now read on!

    *    *    *    *

14.  The madness of Leo the Isaurian against images.

At that time Leo the Isaurian was ruling the Roman Empire.  He, opposing the sacred icons and the orthodox mainstream of the church, [1] was like a lion, seizing  and roaring, burning them[2] with a fire of bestial madness, and seizing and destroying their[3] worshippers, and cruelly tearing them apart with the teeth of tyrannical impiety.  These things came to John’s ears, and he imitated the zeal of Elijah and the rebukes [of wrong-doing] of his namesake [John the Baptist] as if the spirit had anointed him invisibly, and before his consecration,[4] as an opponent of this impiety; and he wielded words as though they were the sword of the Spirit, a sharp weapon to destroy the doctrine of the beast-minded one, as if he were cutting off its head.  So he sent out letters to defend the veneration of the sacred icons to those of the right faith[5] who knew him, powerfully demonstrating in a philosophical way that the veneration of the divine images was necessary.  He also instructed them to say the same things to others, and to show his letters to everyone.  The new athlete of the truth laboured in every way for his letters to pass from hand to hand among the faithful, as if in a circle,[6] to strengthen the true doctrine,[7] and following the example of Paul, he laboured to cover the whole world, although not on foot but through letters proclaiming the truth.

15.  Leo’s strategem against John.

These things were reported to the emperor Leo, and, summoning some of his like-minded associates, since he could not bear the exposure of his impiety, which John’s letters proclaimed clearly, he commanded them to put on a mask of piety and make haste and fabricate a discourse, and to locate a letter written by John in his own hand.  These accomplices of wickedness did not cease pulling on every rope, concealing their intentions and seeking out what they had been ordered to find, until they did find it, and delivered it to the emperor.  He summoned some of his scribes and set before them examples of John’s letters, to imitate the style of the writing, both in thought and phrasing.  Thus he found sufficient people to carry out this task, and he ordered them to write a letter as if from John to himself, the infamous emperor, with the following content.

“Greetings, O emperor!  I also rejoice in your mightiness, because we share the same faith.  I render both gratitude and the appropriate respect to your imperial majesty, for which reason I send these things for your information.  This city of ours happens to have been completely neglected in terms of its defence, and the military force of the Hagarenes here is weak and few in number.  Wherefore in the name of God take pity on this city, and, contrary to all expectation, send a powerful and numerous force which pretends to march elsewhere, and you will  take the city without a fight; for I myself will assist you considerably in this purpose, because both the entire region and the city itself are under my authority.

16.  Leo’s Letter to the Caliph.

After this letter had been written, the impious man wrote another letter in malice to the leader of the Saracens in Damascus, with this intent:

“As I know nothing more blessed than peace, nor more fortunate than friendship, – and keeping treaties of peace is praiseworthy and pleasing to God, –  for these reasons I prefer above all else to preserve unbroken the peaceful friendships which I established with your eminence, although I have often been urged to secretly break these and treacherously violate the treaties, by one of the Christians serving under you through his many letters, who confidently assures me that he would contribute greatly to subdue the city under your control if I should send a large army against it.

For this very reason I have also sent back to you one of the letters which he sent to me, showing that the things which I have written are true, so that you may know what kind of person I am in regard to friendships – truthful, and not inclined to break treaties – and so that you may recognise the ill-will and deceitfulness of the one who dared to write these things to me.

17.  John’s Right Hand is Amputated.

He was lion-named, and serpent-like in deceit, so he sent both these letters through one of his men to the barbarian [ruler].  Upon receiving them, the latter summoned John and showed him that deceitful letter.  John, reading through it, admitted that the pattern[8] of the letters resembled his own, but he added that he did not know the things contained in them at all, nor had such thoughts ever even crossed his mind.  But having read it, he did not fail to recognise the deception, and the plot of the Emperor [against him].  But that ruler, who hated Christ, was like a donkey listening to a lyre—so says the proverb[9]—in his response to what was said  by John. He became deaf to good and truthful speech, and did not remain dumb, when it came to issuing an unjust decree.  Instead he immediately ordered that John’s right hand should be cut off.

When he [John] requested a brief delay in order to defend himself, and to explain the rage of the impious one against him, the barbarian refused, and would not hear of it, being completely beside himself with anger.  And so the right hand was cut off, which had performed great deeds for the Orthodox in God through what it had written; the right hand was cut off which had rebuked those who hated the Lord and, instead of being dipped in ink, as it had once been when writing in defence of the veneration of icons, it was now dipped in its own blood.

So, having cut off that right hand of the Lord, so to speak, they suspended it in the marketplace.

    *    *    *    *

Not one of John’s better days at work, I would guess.

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  1. [1]“τῆς Ἐκκλησίας πληρώματος”: this appears to be a standard phrase, lit. “fullness of the church,” the faithful, the assembly.↩
  2. [2]The icons.↩
  3. [3]The icons.↩
  4. [4]“anointing.”↩
  5. [5]“orthodox.”↩
  6. [6]“ὡς διὰ κύκλου τινὸς.”  Not translated by Lequien.↩
  7. [7]“the orthodox faith.”↩
  8. [8]τύπους↩
  9. [9]This is one of Aesop’s fables↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Well that was nice!  I’ve just got back from a short holiday in Iceland, in Akureyri to be specific.  Masses of snow, although no real snowfalls while we were there.  The post-holiday tidy-up is well under way now.

I have ignored a few emails while I was away.  Here’s two.

It looks as if my translation of the Jerusalem “Life” of John Damascene is attracting interest.  I’m keen to get back to that very soon now.  It’s funny how quickly a project fades once you stop working on it.

Also I learn that a college friend of mine has produced a book.  The title is Lost in translation: The Gospels of Mark and John: Fresh insights from the original Greek text, by Tim Hawkins.  It’s available here on Amazon.com and Amazon UK.  He read classics at Oxford, and has been a vicar ever since.  Here’s the blurb:

The New Testament was written not in English but in Ancient Greek, a language far more expressive than our own. This book revisits and comments on a number of short passages in the Gospels of Mark and John, where Greek words reveal an extra force, a double meaning, or a picture linking with other parts of Scripture or the words of Jesus. The Greek is simple and written in simple sentences, because the writers were focused on recording these unique events for posterity rather than with an eye to literary fame. Some words are very unusual, found only in the New Testament, and they give us fascinating insights to enrich our faith.

This book is for anyone interested in studying the Bible; it is not just for academics or preachers. It is not going to overturn traditional Christian theology but to underline it.

I’ve not seen it, but I get the impression that he wanted to bring out some points where the Greek text has a deeper meaning than is possible for any translation to reproduce in English.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Just a brief note to say that my hand injury is gradually improving, and that I hope to be able to do some blogging reasonably soon.  My apologies for the silence.

I’ve not been able to do any translating.  In fact I find that I’m starting to miss working on the Life of John Damascene.  But that involves quite a bit of mouse action – which hurts my hand -, so it may have to wait awhile.

However I have continued reading a psalm on Sunday and then the same psalm in the parallel Vulgate Latin and Douai-Reims English.  I really recommend this as a way to improve your Latin.  For each short psalm, the Latin has one less-than-obvious phrasing, which makes you think, and prepares you for the same stuff in medieval Latin.  So expect more posts about incidental matters of this kind.

Apparently Amazon claims that we don’t own the e-Books that we pay them for.  It’s curious to learn that a vendor can make such decisions, and never mind law or justice.  This year I learn that some countries have started to ban access to various illegal book sites, where one may download the same books without payment.  I wonder whether a collection of books downloaded in this way would actually indeed form part of the estate of the downloader!

I’ve read quite a bit of the Letters of A. E. Housman, as selected by Henry Maas – I nearly put Paul Maas! – but most seemed of no real interest today.  He must have been a terror to deal with, though.  His notes to his publisher are words of command, not of entreaty.  A very unhappy man, I suspect.  But then, good as the poetry is, I didn’t much care for A Shropshire Lad.

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Orbis terrarum – the world in medieval chant

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Last night I was reading psalm 98.  Inevitably I picked up a parallel Latin-English psalter, and read it again in Latin.  In the Vulgate it’s psalm 97, of course.

One thing that I noticed was that “orbis terrarum” was the phrase used to mean “the world.”  Literally this means “the orb/circle/sphere of the earth.”  It’s a common Latin usage, which appears in Augustus, Res Gestae, Pliny the Elder, and indeed in Augustine.

But, because it was in the psalms, every monk from ancient times onwards must have chanted this regularly and memorised it.

Ps 98/97 in the Vulgate and Douai-Reims translation

It’s an interesting thought.

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New Website: The Original Douay-Rheims Bible

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here’s something splendid – a website named Original Douay Rheims, created by a student devoted to putting online the original Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate bible!  It’s great to see ordinary people doing this on the web.  The link is here:

https://originaldouayrheims.com/home

The site is in progress, but there is already a lot there.

The site owner does not give his name, and asks for people to work with him, who are happy to do so anonymously.  What a wonderful thing to do.

Start of Psalm 97

A few words about the Douai-Reims version (DRV) may be in order.

The DRV is a translation of the Latin Vulgate bible, made around 1600 by exiled Catholics from England at the college in Douai (or Douay, as it was then spelled).  They were all actually based in Reims (Rheims) at the time when they did the New Testament, hence the name.  They used Coverdale’s version as a basis, but revised it to give a very literal translation of the Latin, to the extent of introducing latinate words.

Ownership of the DRV was a criminal offence for a century.  But it still became widely known, thanks to a protestant refutation, that printed the whole thing in a parallel column with the text of the Great Bible, in order to “demonstrate how unreliable it is”!  This was perfectly legal, and inevitably sold very well.  The translators of the King James Bible were certainly aware of it, as they were of other versions, and were influenced by some of its better translation choices.

A century and a half later, between 1749 and 1777, the DRV was revised by a Bishop Challoner, who brought the text more into line with the KJV.  This version is the “Douai Reims” that is most commonly encountered.  This revision is the text that is commonly found online, whereas the Original Douay Rheims site has the pre-Challoner text.

Prior to the internet, few people ever saw any version of the Douai-Reims.  But it is now freely accessible on sites such as Bible Gateway.  Such sites – which, alas, grow more commercial every day – can display the Vulgate and the Douai in parallel columns.

Bible Gateway parallel text

Many people also suppose that the DRV is the only translation of the Vulgate.  But this is not so.  Apparently the Ronald Knox translation is also from the Vulgate?  This Catholic Bible site allows you to have a three column view.

It is curious to notice how the same word is translated differently.  Why is “psallite” not rendered the same in vv4-5?

Anyway, it’s all useful to know about, and one of the blessings of the internet.

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An interesting problem – AI and Marius Mercator? … or not?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here’s a pretty question, sent in by email.  I imagine that more such letters are in my future, but I am really not sure what to do with them.

I thought I would drop you a little note to let you know about a project that I have recently uploaded. This is my first attempt at using ChatGPT to translate a Latin text that I have been wanting to read for many years. It is Marius Mercator’s “Commonitorium de Coelestio”/”Commonitorium super nomine Cælestii”. I, of course, do not know Latin but I am familiar enough with Pelagianism (having studied it intensely for several years) to know what to expect and from that perspective the output text was pretty much what I expected. To my knowledge this has never been available in English before. I have put it up on the Patristics In English website here:

https://www.seanmultimedia.com/Pie_Marius_Mercator_Memo_On_Coelestius_With_Latin_Text.html

I am not sure of the value of AI translations. On one hand I feel like I was able to get a good understanding of a text that I had wanted to read for many years. On the other, one is left to wonder how accurate they are. At any rate, unless people come after me with pitchforks and torches like Frankenstein’s monster after reading it, I would like to do more translations like this on Pelagianism. Maybe Pope Zosimus will be next.

A translation of Marius Mercator would be very valuable to have.

But … this is an AI output.  Is it valuable?

Well, in some ways, yes.  The Latin text has been put online, and the author has run it through ChatGPT which saves us all from having to do the same in order to get an idea of what it says.  He’s given it a read to check that the ideas of Pelagianism are actually there, which is a bonus.  Surely this is better, far better, than nothing?

But in other ways, no.  AI is not a translator.  It’s a search engine with a chatbot on the front, turning the search results into something plausible.  It can often produce excellent readable translations of a passage.  It can also generate material which isn’t in the source at all.  AI is a good tool, to reduce the amount of effort needed to produce a first draft of a translation.  But every word and every sentence needs to be checked, compared against the original, in order to produce a reliable translation.  The unwary reader will suppose that the AI output is a translation, when it is not.

What on earth do we make of this?

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Peter Chrysologus on the Kalends of January

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Until this evening I had never read a word about St. Peter Chrysologus.  He was bishop of Ravenna between 433 and 450, when the western imperial court was based there, and died young.  His fame rests on a collection of short, effective sermons that he preached, of which something less than 200 survive.  The sermons have been translated in the Fathers of the Church series; the first volume (FOC 17) was titled “selected sermons”, but two more volumes (FOC 109, 110) appeared which translated all the other genuine sermons.  In the editions there are sermons like 155, 155bis, and 155ter; the FOC editors sensibly went with 155, 155a and 155b.

Sermon 155a (bis) was published under the name of Severian of Gabala, Homilia de Pythonibus et Maleficis, printed in the Patrologia Graeca 65, col.27, and its true author only established in modern times.  It was under the name of Severian that I today encountered a portion of the text, and was led to investigate further.

So what is the sermon about?  Much the same as sermon 155, on the same subject: the public celebrations of the new year in Ravenna by the half-pagan populace.

In Ravenna on January 1 and January 3, there was a parade of people dressed up as pagan deities and animals, in what was called the pompa circensis, marking both public games (ludi compitales) and the inauguration of civic magistrates (nuncupatio votorum).  Some members of the congregation took part, and protested that such activity was just harmless amusement, a “ludus” or a “jocus”.  But Chrysologus rightly saw this as a pagan survival.[1]

Here is part of what he says about this, in sermon 155a (bis):

The days are now coming, the days that mark the new year [kalendis ianuariis] are coming, and the demons arrive with all their pomp, a full-fledged workshop of idols is set up, and the new year is consecrated with age-old sacrilege.

They fashion Saturn, they make Jupiter, they form Hercules, they exhibit Diana with her young servants, they lead Vulcan around roaring out tales of his obscenities, and there are even more, whose names must be left unmentioned, since they are hideous monsters; since nature does not produce such deformities, nor does creation have any knowledge of them, art takes great pains to mold them.

Moreover, human beings are dressed as beasts, they turn men into women, violate honor, mock good judgment, deride public criticism, ridicule the world with the world as their witness, and say that they are doing these things for amusement.

These are no amusements [ioca], no, they are not; they are sins [crimina]. A human being is changed into an idol; and if it is a sin to go to idols, what do you think it is to be an idol? …

Clearly you may not have altogether intended it this way, but on the whole this is how God judges the matter: namely, that you are the reason for the continuation and present-day survival of the obscenity that characterized the centuries that were under the sway of those whose cult is perishing day by day.

Indeed, there is not enough charcoal that can blacken the faces of such gods; and so that their appearance may reach the level of utter and complete terror, straw, skins, rags, and dung are procured from all over the world, and anything connected with human shame is put on their face. Among gods like these the one who is thought to be more magnificent is the one found to be more obscene among the obscene; and the one who is considered the most magnificent of all is the one who can make monsters themselves marvel at his being so uniquely deformed. …

In short, I beseech you, in the midst of evils cease doing evil. Believe me, believe me, I tell you, they would fade away to nothing if fake Christians were not going over to them.

Have a happy (and innocent) new year!

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  1. [1]See R. Arbesmann, “The ‘Cervuli’ and ‘Anniculae’ in Caesarius of Arles,” Traditio 35 (1979): 111–13.  JSTOR.↩

Augustine’s “Enarrationes in Psalmos”, on Ps. 97/96:5 in the Vulgate – “terrae” or “terra” once more?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Augustine frequently preached sermons on the psalms until his later years, after 415, when he preferred to dictate treatises.  Indeed he mentions doing so in his letter to Evodius (lett. 169).  The result was a ramshackle mass of psalm-related material.  None of this has reached us independently, but instead it was organised into “decades”, probably by his own secretaries and scriptorium in Hippo, and transmitted in large chunks.  The title “Enarrationes in Psalmos” is not ancient either, but was coined by Erasmus.  This information I draw from the fascinating and illuminating English-language introduction to CSEL 94, part 2 – Enarrationes in Psalmos 61-70, by Hildegund Müller.

Naturally this included a discussion of Psalm 97 (in the Hebrew and KJV) / 96 (LXX and Latin). In the Latin, verse 5 reads:

Montes sicut cera fluxerunt a facie Domini; a facie Domini omnis terrae.

The mountains melted like wax, at the presence of the Lord: at the presence of the Lord of all the earth.

but quite a few versions of the text read:

a facie Domini omnis terra.

and all the earth at his presence.

I talked about this in my last post, which provoked many interesting comments.  It seems that “omnis terrae” reflects the LXX Greek correctly, and indeed the Hebrew original, although the Latin is a translation of the LXX.

Here is the relevant section of Augustine.  The repetition of the verse tells us at once that this is expository preaching.

Montes fluxerunt sicut cera a facie Domini.

Qui sunt montes? Superbi. Omnis altitudo extollens se adversus Deum, factis Christi et Christianorum contremuit, succubuit, et quando dico quod dictum est, Fluxit, melius verbum inveniri non potest. Montes fluxerunt velut cera a facie Domini.

Ubi est altitudo potestatum? ubi duritia infidelium? Montes fluxerunt sicut cera a facie Domini. Ignis eis fuit Dominus, illi ante faciem eius sicut cera fluxerunt; tamdiu duri, donec ignis ille admoveretur. Complanata est omnis altitudo; modo blasphemare Christum non audet: et paganus non in eum credit, non eum tamen blasphemat; etsi nondum factus est vivus lapis, tamen victus est durus mons.

Montes fluxerunt sicut cera a facie Domini, a facie Domini omnis terrae: non Judaeorum tantum, sed et Gentium, sicut dicit Apostolus [Rom. III, 29]; non enim est Judaeorum tantum Deus, sed et Gentium. Dominus ergo universae terrae, Dominus Jesus Christus in Judaea natus, sed non Iudaeae tantum natus: quia et antequam natus omnes fecit; et qui omnes fecit, omnes refecit. A facie Domini omnis terrae.[1]

9. The mountains melted away like wax from the presence of the Lord.

Who are the mountains? The proud. Every high thing that exalts itself against God [16] shuddered at the deeds wrought by Christ and by Christians, and sank down. If I say this in the same words that the psalm used, it is because no better expression could be found: the mountains melted away like wax from the presence of the Lord.

What has become of those towering authorities? Where now is the rock like obstinacy of the unbelievers? The mountains melted away like wax from the presence of the Lord. The Lord came to them as fire, and they melted in his presence like wax; they were hard only until the fire was applied to them. Every hill has been levelled, and dare not blaspheme Christ nowadays. A pagan may not believe in him, but dare not blaspheme him. Even if such a person has not yet become a living stone, at least the stony mountain he or she once was has been brought low.

The mountains melted away like wax from the presence of the Lord, from the presence of the Lord of all the earth.[17] He is Lord not of the Jews alone, but of the Gentiles too; for God is God not only of Jews but also of Gentiles, as the apostle teaches.[18] As Lord of the whole earth the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Judea, but born not for Judea alone, because even before his birth he made us all, and he who made all has remade all. From the presence of the Lord of all the earth.[2]

The Latin here is the Migne edition, Patrologia Latina 37, col. 1243.  This reprints the 18th century Maurist edition.  The English is from the New City Press translation, which actually (and correctly) signals the alternative reading and translates it.

The Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 39, pp.1360-1, also has “terrae”.  But this is not a critical edition, but also a descendant of the Maurist edition.

In fact, at this moment, there does not seem to be a critical edition of this portion of the Enarrationes.  Over the last decade,the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) series have been producing volumes of a critical edition – the first ever -, as CSEL 93, 94 and 95.  But I could not see that the relevant volume has appeared.  (Why are publishers’ websites so universally dreadful at listing series?)

The biblical text of the Psalms used by Augustine differs significantly from the Vulgate “Gallican” Psalter, or so Müller states (p.32 f.).  This is the Latin translation of the LXX by Jerome, who also made a translation direct from the Hebrew.  The fact is that Augustine was using the Vetus Latina, the Old Latin version of the psalms, familiar to his audience.

The closest parallel text, to that used by Augustine, is found in the Verona Psalter, a bi-lingual Greek and Latin manuscript of the 6th century, in uncials, apparently written in northern Italy.  This has the shelfmark: “Verona, Chapter Library I (1), but sadly it is offline.  More details of this Psalterium Veronensis can be found in R. Weber, Le Psautier romain et les auttres anciens psautiers latins, Rome (1953) p.x-xi.  From this I learn that a transcription was published by J. Bianchini in 1740 in Rome under the title of Vindiciae canonicarum Scripturarum Vulgatae Latinae editionis.  This is online here at the Internet Archive, but – caveat lector – the reader is warned that page 1 is preceded by 456 pages of “introduction”.

Our portion is on p.170 (p.626 of the PDF).  The Greek text, on the left, is given in Roman letters.

And here we see… “terra”.

In the Stuttgart Vulgate (5th ed., p.892), we find “terrae”, but a footnote “terra” in MSS “SKΦc”.  In vol. 2 of Sabatier’s edition of the Old Latin, p.192, he gives a “versio antiqua”, i.e. before Jerome, from a ms., with “terra” and a “Vulgata hodierna”, as Jerome’s translation of the LXX, also “terra”.  Only the version from the Hebrew is “terrae”.

So, is “terra” a Vetus Latina reading, straightened out by St Jerome, but persisting through liturgical usage?  In my state of ignorance, it seems like it might be.

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  1. [1]Taken from this site, which professes to offer the Migne text: PL 36, 67-1026; PL 37, 1033-1966; this portion PL 37, col. 1243.↩
  2. [2]St Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, volume 4, p.446. Series: The Works of St Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century, Part III – Books; volume 18: Expositions of the Psalms 73-98. New City Press (2002)↩

Ps. 97/96:5 in the Vulgate – “terrae” or “terra”?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On Sunday night I settled down with my bible to read psalm 97 in an English version.  But having done so, I remembered that I had given myself a parallel Latin-English book of psalms, as a Christmas present.  Other versions are around, but this is the Philip Magnus White, Psalms and Canticles: Latin and English Psalms and Canticles for Recitation (2019) (Amazon).  This gives the Vulgate Latin text and the Douai-Rheims English translation of it.

Anyway I got the volume out.  Pleasingly it’s about the length and width of a normal bible, although much slimmer, and the text is a reasonable size.

Of course in the Latin, this is psalm 96.  So I read the Latin, and tried to understand each phrase, and then checked against the parallel English.  But then I came to verse 5:

Montes sicut cera fluxerunt a facie Domini; a facie Domini omnis terra.

The mountains melted like wax, at the presence of the Lord: at the presence of the Lord of all the earth.

How interesting to see “facie Domini”, the face of the Lord, rendered as “presence of the Lord.”  It’s all useful stuff, when dealing with medieval Latin, much of which is Vulgate fan-fiction.  Reading the Vulgate Psalms is a great way to improve your medieval Latin, and fun to do.

But then I looked at the last words, “omnis terra”.  This… looks wrong.  “Omnis” is the genitive adjective, but “terra” is nominative.  It ought to be “omnis terrae.”

I googled “omnis terra” and “omnis terrae”, and quickly found hits for both.  Some online Vulgates have the one, some the other.  Which is right?  Is there some funny usage unknown to me?

I went to Weber’s Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, the Stuttgart critical edition.  Interestingly this prints the psalms in facing pages, one with the Latin translation of the LXX, the other with the Latin translation of the Hebrew.  And…. “terrae” is the reading printed.

The apparatus indicates that some of the medieval codices have “terra”.  It’s easy to see why, once you’ve worked with medieval Latin copies of texts.  These invariably engage in the evil practice of abbreviation, which means that “ae” would be written as an “a” with a curly stroke springing from the top right.  Of course such strokes are easily omitted.  Thus does “terrae” become “terra”.

The previous verse may explain the mistake.

Illuxerunt fulgura ejus orbi terrae; vidit, et commota est terra.

His lightnings have shone forth to the world: the earth saw and trembled.

The line does actually end with “terra”.  The copyist’s eye could easily mistake the last word on the line above for the word on the current line.  The same might be true when somebody today is transcribing a Latin text.

So… it’s a simple error.  Which has made its way online.  Bible Gateway have the error; others have the correct reading.

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