Tag: Psalms

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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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)↩

Did the New Testament influence the text of the Greek Old Testament?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the course of writing my last post, I came across a curious quotation, which I give as follows, although I have overparagraphed it.  The discussion is about to a “long quotation” in Romans 3:10 f., “made up of a number of passages taken from different parts of the O.T.”:

As a whole this conglomerate of quotations has had a curious history. The quotations in N.T. frequently react upon the text of O.T., and they have done so here: vv. 13-18 got imported bodily into Ps. xiv [xiii LXX] as an appendage to ver. 4 in the ‘common’ text of the LXX (ἠ κοινή, i.e. the unrevised text current in the lime of Origen). They are still found in Codd. ℵa B R U and many cursive MSS. of LXX (om. ℵca A), though the Greek commentators on the Psalms do not recognize them.

From interpolated Mss such as these they found their way into Lat.-Vet, and so into Jerome’s first edition of the Psalter (the ‘Roman’), also into his second edition (the ‘Gallican,’ based upon Origin’s Hexapla, though marked with an obelus after the example of Origen. The obelus dropped out, and they are commonly printed in the Vulgate text of the Psalms, which is practically the Gallican.

From the Vulgate they travelled into Coverdale’s Bible (A.D. 1535); from thence into Matthew’s (Rogers’) Bible, which in the Psalter reproduces Coverdale (A.D. 1537), and also into the ‘Great Bible’ (first issued by Cromwell in 1530, and afterwards with a preface by Cranmer, when it also bears the name of Cranmer’s Bible, in 1540.  The Psalter of the Great Bible was incorporated in the Book of Common Prayer, in which  it was retained as being familiar and smoother to sing, even in the later revision which substituted elsewhere the Authorized Version of 1611.

The editing of the Great Bible was due to Coverdale, who put an * to the passages found in the Vulgate but wanting in the Hebrew. These marks however had the same fate which befell the obeli of Jerome. They were not repeated in the Prayer-Book ; so that English Churchmen still read the interpolated verses in Ps. xiv with nothing to distinguish them from the rest of the text.

Jerome himself was well aware that these verses were no part of the Psalm. In his commentary on Isaiah, lib. XVI, he notes that St. Paul quoted Is. lix. 7, 8 in Ep. to Rom., and he adds, quod multi ignorantes de tertio decimo psalmo sumptum putant, qui versus [στίχοι] in editione Vulgata [i.e. the κοινή of the LXX] additi sunt et in Hebraico non habentur (Hieron. Opp. ed. Migne, iv. 601; comp. the preface to the same book, ibid. col. 568 f.; also the newly discovered Commentarioli in Psalmos, ed. Morin. 1895, p. 24 f.).

I came across this in something called “Romans (International Critical Commentary)” online here.  But it actually comes from W. Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam, A critical and exegetical commentary on the epistle to the Romans (1902), p.77-8, on Rom. 3:9-10. (Online here).

It is not at all improbable that such things should happen.  But this is now very old scholarship.  There must be more recent studies of this phenomenon in the 122 years that have passed since.

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Baffled by a liturgical psalter

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just come back from a few days away, staying in an Anglican nunnery.  My girlfriend wanted to attend a retreat there, and my role was to act as chauffeur, factotum, and otherwise to stay out of the way.  Which I did.

I did attend one service, and found myself reading responses from a modern ring-bound book of psalms.  Here is a picture of psalm 1 in that book.

Modern ring-bound psalter

The asterisk in the middle of the line marks a long silent pause, which kept catching me out; and the two sides of the congregation read alternate lines.

Inevitably I found myself wondering what I was looking at.  Often behind modern prayer books there lurks the ghost of very ancient Latin versions.  I already knew that in the Anglican world, the psalter is not from the King James Bible, but rather from Miles Coverdale’s “Great Bible” of 1540 as suitably amended by Cranmer, and this, in a revised form, appeared with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.  The people were used to it, and it read more smoothly, and so it was retained.  This decision was made in the Savoy Conference of 1661, apparently.

But where does this particular text come from? That’s a modern set of pronouns there.  Nor is this the text in the new “Common Worship” that is being introduced, for that begins with “Blessed”, not “Happy.”  But then this “Common Worship” is trying to get closer to the modern biblical text.

The book that I held in my hand contained no information as to its origins, no ISBN, no printer, nothing.  It was possibly from some ecclesiastical supplier, or even printed themselves from somewhere.

Next I went to the library and started looking at their collection of service books, in the hope of enlightenment.  I pulled down the 1980 Alternative Service Book:

1980 ASB Psalm 1

Well, it’s not this.  We’re still “Blessed.”  But there are now seven verses, not six; verse 3 has been split, and “It’s leaves also shall not wither” is a new sentence.

A modern reprint of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was no more helpful:

1662 BCP

Again, we are “Blessed.”  The “Happy” version must be a modernisation from somewhere.  Here “His leaf also shall not wither…”

I then went online and found a copy of the 1540 Great Bible:

1540 Great Bible, Psalm 1

This is of course “Blessed”.  There are no verse numbers.  But “His leaf also shall not wither…” appears as a separate sentence.

Eventually I resorted to Google, and I found this page which contains exactly the text above, minus the antiphon.  It informs us that the version is from the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.  I found this online at Google Books here, on p.585:

1979 Episcopalian BCP

Psalm 1
Beatus vir qui non abiit

1     Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, *
nor lingered in the way of sinners,
nor sat in the seats of the scornful!
2     Their delight is in the law of the LORD, *
and they meditate on his law day and night.
3     They are like trees planted by streams of water,
bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; *
everything they do shall prosper.
4     It is not so with the wicked; *
they are like chaff which the wind blows away.
5     Therefore the wicked shall not stand upright when judgment comes, *
nor the sinner in the council of the righteous.
6     For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, *
but the way of the wicked is doomed.

As far as I can determine, the preceding US Episcopalian prayer book was the 1928, which had the traditional “Blessed” and “His leaf.”

Like most people I know very little about the history of the prayer book, and indeed the history of liturgy.  It was news to me that Cranmer’s prayer books were basically a translation of the medieval “Sarum usage” prayer books, suitably revised for protestant ideas.  These also had a psalter.  Cranmer saved himself effort by using Coverdale’s existing translation.

Coverdale himself knew relatively little Hebrew, and inevitably this made him dependent on the Latin vulgate.  This rather unpleasant site – beware adverts – interleaves the Latin of Jerome’s translation of the Hebrew; the Latin of his translation of the Greek LXX; and the literal Douai translation.  Verse three in Coverdale is illuminated a bit by the comparison:

3.

et erit tamquam lignum transplantatum iuxta rivulos aquarum quod fructum suum dabit in tempore suo et folium eius non defluet et omne quod fecerit prosperabitur

et erit tamquam lignum quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum quod fructum suum dabit in tempore suo et folium eius non defluet et omnia quaecumque faciet prosperabuntur

And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit, in due season. And his leaf shall not fall off: and all whatsoever he shall do shall prosper.

“Folium” is singular, hence “his leaf.”

That was more work than it might have been!

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Notae in the margins of Cassiodorus, “Expositio Psalmorum”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An  interesting volume has appeared this year, which unfortunately I have not seen, but that I learned about from Jesse Keskiaho on twitter.  The book is by Evina Steinová, based on her 2016 dissertation (online here, I now find), and now in a revised book form from Brepols here as Notam superponere studui : The Use of Annotation Symbols in the Early Middle Ages (2019).  I understand that it contains an interesting piece on a work by the 6th century statesman-turned-monk Cassiodorus.

Cassiodorus’ commentary on the Psalms, the Expositio Psalmorum (= Clavis Patrum Latinorum no. 900) is a long allegorical commentary based largely on Augustine.  So long a work was set forth in three manuscript volumes each containing the commentary on 50 psalms.  It was completed at the start of 548 and dedicated to Pope Vigilius; and then reworked between 560-70 with marginal “notae” or symbols, which indicate the type of content.[1]  He provided the key to these signs at the beginning of the work.

The Latin text is printed in the Patrologia Latina vol. 70.  A more modern edition by Adriaen was printed in the Corpus Christianorum 97-8 (1958), but Walsh states that it is merely a revision of the PL text, and full of mistakes.  There is an English translation by P.G. Walsh in the Ancient Christian Writers series (in three volumes 50, 51 and 52).  A new edition was intended by James W. Halporn, who published a list of the manuscripts in “The manuscripts of Cassiodorus’ ‘Expositio Psalmorum'” in Traditio 37 (1981), p.388-396 (JSTOR).  I’m unclear that any edition ever appeared, and Halporn died in 2011.  Discussion of the tradition of the text is in Richard N. Bailey, “Bede’s text of Cassiodorus’ Commentary on the Psalms”, JTS 34 (1983), 189-193.

The Patrologia Latina text, infuriatingly, omits the notae, and the introductory list.  Here is the page on which the praefatio ends, and the commentary text begins:

Inevitably the translation by Walsh from this text also omits the notae.

The marginal notae may be seen, however, in a 9th century manuscript now in the Bibliothèque Nationale Français in Paris, shelfmark BNF lat. 14491, originally in the abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris.  This is online here in an exceedingly clear microfilm copy (the download, sadly, is low resolution).  On folio 10, following the “praefatio”, there is a list of the symbols used and their meaning:

Isn’t this gorgeous?  RA = ‘rithmetic.  Mc = music… and a little star, an asterisk = astronomy.  This section appears between the “veniamus” at the end of the praefatio and the heading of the first section of the commentary.  Transcribing as best I can:

Diversas notas more maiorum certis locis aestimabimus effigiendas.  Has cum explanationibus suis subter adiuncximus.  Ut quicquid lector voluerit inquirere per similitudines earum, sine aliqua difficultate debeat invenire.  (We will find that various symbols need to be marked in certain places, according to the custom of the ancients.  We’ve added these with their explanations below.  If any reader wishes to search by using their appearance, they ought to find them without difficulty.)

Hoc in idiomatis. Id est propriis locutionibus legis divinae.   (idioms. i.e. the correct way of speaking of the divine law)
Hoc in dogmatibus. valde necessariis.  (doctrines.  Very necessary)
Hoc in diffinitionibus.  (definitions)
Hoc in schematibus.  (figures)
Hoc in ethimologiis.  (etymologies)
Hoc in interpraetatione nominum.  (the interpretation of names)
Hoc in arte rethorica. (the art of rhetoric)
Hoc in topicis.  (topics)
Hoc in syllogismis.  (syllogisms)
Hoc in arithmetica.  (arithmetic)
Hoc in geometrica. (geometry)
Hoc in musica. (music)
Hoc in astronomia. (astronomy)

Examples of the use of these notae/symbols appear in the same manuscript, starting on the page facing the list of symbols.

In the 10th century Bamburg manuscript, Staatsbibliothek Bamberg Msc.Bibl.56 (online here) we have the first page with this:

I would have made this larger, but I could see no way to download the image; only warnings about the (non-existent) copyright claimed by the German state on the image.

The 9th century Karlsruhe manuscript, Aug. perg. 155, sadly has suffered damage:

Also online is British Library Additional 16962, also 9th century, which is indeed a volume of the work, but of the third volumes: psalms 101-150.

It’s very interesting to see such a scholarly help, I must say.

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  1. [1]Halporn, “Mss”, p.388.↩

A note on the authenticity of Eusebius of Caesarea’s “Commentary on the Psalms”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In Rondeau’s account of ancient Christian commentaries on the psalms,[1] there is naturally a section on the commentary by Eusebius of Caesarea.  It contains an interesting footnote on the authenticity of the text.  But first, a few words about this little known item.

Eusebius is a writer whom we do not usually associate with exegesis.  But his extensive Commentary on Isaiah was rediscovered 60 years ago, and an English translation published in the last decade.  His Commentary on the Psalms has been less fortunate.  The portion devoted to Psalms 51-95, 3 has reached us, in a single manuscript, BNF Paris Coislin 44, which was edited by Montfaucon in the 17th century.[2]  The section on Psalm 37 was transmitted among the works of Basil of Caesarea.[3]

The remainder, however, is known only from extracts preserved in the medieval Greek bible commentaries.  These were composed of chains (catenae) of extracts linked together, with the author’s initial against each extract (but this initial was often corrupted).  Eusebius figures largely in the catenas and so there is a lot of material extant, if somewhat dubious.

Nobody has undertaken a critical edition of any of this material, and the portions derived from catenas are unreliable.  There is no translation of any of it, to the best of my knowledge, other than a translation of the section on psalm 51 made for this site by Andrew Eastbourne.

Now I’ve always had a soft spot for this huge but neglected work, and so I’ve started looking at Rondeau’s description, from which the above is mainly taken.  One of his footnotes caught my eye at once.

Dans la notice Eusèbe de Césarée de certaines encyclopédies, il est insinué que le texte du Coislin. 44 est non de l’Eusèbe authentique et pur, mais de l’Eusèbe caténal, interpolé ou remanié (E. Preuschen, dans Realencyclopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche 5, 1898, p. 615; E. Schwartz, dans PW 6, 1907, col 1435; J. Moreau, dans DHGE 15, 1963, col. 1446, et dans RAC 6, 1965, col. 1064). Notre expérience de l’ensemble de l’exégèse antique du Psautier ne confirme pas cette méfiance.

In the article Eusebius of Caesarea in some encyclopedias, it is insinuated that the text of Coislin. 44 is not direct from Eusebius himself, but rather the “Eusebius” of the catenas, i.e. interpolated or reworked. (E. Preuschen, in Realencyclopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche 5, 1898, p. 615; E. Schwartz, in PW 6, 1907, col 1435; J. Moreau, in DHGE 15, 1963, col. 1446, and in RAC 6, 1965, col. 1064). Our experience of the entire collection of ancient exegesis of the psalter does not confirm this suspicion.[4]

It is good to hear this.  To cast suspicion on the authenticity of a text is easy; to remove it hard.  The need for an edition and translation of this text is not helped by such suspicions.

UPDATE (17/8/16): There is a critical edition in progress of this work, at the BBAW, headed by Christoph Markschies.  This has been in progress for a while, but I enquired and he kindly wrote back and told me: “The project is still active and the three colleagues mentioned at the website (Bandt, Risch and Villani) are still working hard to produce the first volume (that will be a multi-volume edition …) the next year.”

Which is excellent news, of course.  Now all we need is a team of translators.

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  1. [1]Marie-Josephe Rondeau, Les commentaires patristiques du psautier, vol. 1, 1982.↩
  2. [2]Reprinted as the whole of Patrologia Graeca 23; material on psalms 119-150, edited by Mai, appears in PG 24, cols. 9-76.↩
  3. [3]Edition in PG 29, columns 194-6 and 202.↩
  4. [4]Rondeau, l.c., p.64, n.137.↩

Catenas on the Psalms – two important French works now online!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Great news!  A correspondent writes to say that two important French works on commentaries and catenae on the Psalms are now available online in full:

1) M.-J. Rondeau, Les Commentaires patristiques du Psautier (IIIe-Ve siècles), 2 vols, OCA 219-220, Roma 1982, 1985.

2) G. Dorival, Les chaînes exégétiques grecques sur les Psaumes: contribution à l’étude d’une forme littéraire, 4 vols, Leuven 1986, 1989, 1992, 1995.

These are tremendously useful, and one can only congratulate the publishers, Peeters, and the Pontifical Institute in Rome, respectively.  These highly specialist tomes now stand a chance of being read!

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Euthymius Zigabenus, Commentary on the Psalms – draft translation online!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

John Raffan has written a comment on another post, which deserves to be much more widely known:

On the topic of translations of Greek patristic texts, I would like to announce that I have made a new edition of the Commentary on the Psalter by Euthymius Zigabenus and have started to make an English translation of the work.

I have posted a draft translation of the Introduction and first 75 Psalms on my academia.edu page.

This, needless to say, is being done without payment or prospect of payment, since commercial demand for such work is essentially non-existent. If, however, anyone would like to sponsor the translation of a patristic work, I would very happily consider the proposition!

Dr Raffan is not kidding: available for download is a complete and rather splendid edition of the Greek, and also the translation in draft.  And, curiously, nobody seems to be aware of it, for it has had only 3 downloads!  Grab yours NOW!

Would somebody like to assist this very worthwhile project?  Surely this should attract a publisher?

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