Heavenfield

As part of my research on the ‘Prayer Book of Æthelwald’ in the Book of Cerne, I found this recent article by Michelle Brown:

Michelle P Brown. (2007) “The Lichfield Angel and the Manuscript Context: Lichfield as a Centre of Insular Art” Journal of the British Archaeological Association. 160(1): 8-19.

I thought that I would share some of this since I imagine many people are as eager to hear more about the Lichfield Angel as I am. Here is a picture of it from the Lichfield Cathedral website. Here is a link to the Angel Project Site with all kinds of info on its conservation etc. including a reconstruction of its paint.

The angel is on a limestone slab that was the corner of a structure, probably a house shrine similar to the St Andrew’s shrine in Pictland. It is 2.5 ft high and has traces of pigment left. The Litchfield Cathedral refers to a palate of white, red and black outlines, but Michelle Brown asserts that the colors are white, purple, and black outlines. The reconstruction shows that the angels clothing and the outline of the nimbus were gold leaf. I strongly recommend the reconstruction link above (which looks rather red to me, though red and purple can be a fine distinction). Its quite handsome when the reconstruction is complete. Michelle Brown suggests that the drilled eyes once held glass inserts. It is believed that the angel is one half of an Annunciation scene on the shrine of St. Chad. The Lichfield Cathedral has been devoted to St. Mary since the time of Bede. The Lichfield Angel has been dated to c. 800 (775-825), around the time that Lichfield Cathedral was the seat of a third Archbishop for England. The cathedral was heavily patronized by Offa of Merica (787-802), who created his own archbishop, and by his successor Coenwulf. In Coenwulf’s time, Lichfield was demoted to the status of a regular bishop to please the pope who wanted Canterbury to retain its historic domain, but he offset this demotion with further patronage.

What she is basically arguing is that the styles of the Lichfield Gospel, the Lichfield Angel and the Book of Cerne (Prayer Book of Aethelwald) all belong to the same cultural context. She is basing a lot of this on the color and design of the angels wings.

“The closest parallel to the articulation and colouring of the Lichfield angel is the eagle symbol of St John in the Book of Cerne…The subtle shades of purples and white, with black definition, are similarly handled in both works, as is the treatment of the plumage. The Lichfield angel’s Hellenistic face and hair are also echoed in the busts of the evangelists that accompany their symbols in the Book of Cerne, whilst in the latter symbol of St. Matthew, the Man, is depicted as an angel with similar if debased and simplified treatment of its wings and clinging drapery.” (p. 16)

Well, I just happened to check out Michelle Brown’s book on the Book of Cerne (1996) from the library yesterday and it has full color plates of the four evangelists. From the photos the palate looks like reddish-brown, blue, gold and white. The first thing that struck me about the miniatures in the Book of Cerne is the red-white-blue palate and the eagle has an ‘early Amercian’ style (that I remember from my parents 1960s decor). Stick a couple arrows and olive branches in its talons instead of a book, and it would look like the eagle seal. Quite a patriotic looking bird with its red and white striped wings, but I diverge from medieval programming. So anyway, these wings don’t remind me that much of the Lichfield Angel… for one thing the wings in the book of Cerne have a scalloped upper edge and again the lower part of the wings are stripped in alternating red/purple and white. The tops of the wings that are most like the Lichfield Angel also match the plumage on the body of the eagle. The most striking aspect of the evangelist miniatures is that they are beardless, but they don’t have the massive firm jaw of the angel. One of the more remarkable things about the Lichfield Angel above is the anatomic definition with gold clothing that almost looks more like armor. Brown suggests (p. 15) that the Lichfield Angel is “of the highest order”, perhaps Michael but the paradise plant and intimate gestures are more common in Annunciation scenes.

Like the evangelist symbols from the Book of Kells (shown in plates of her 1996 book), all of the symbols in Cerne are winged (Mark to the left). So I think this makes comparison of the winged man symbol for Matthew important. Here there seems to me to be a very different more fluid style. The wings have the small feathers at the top, as the Lichfield Angel does, but the entire wing is more fluid, less rigid. The upper margin is scalloped and the coloration is red/purple, blue,white and gold, in a rather random mixture. The body of the man/angel symbol is also more fluid and less antomical. The legs are visible lines through the clothing but crudely and the body has the hour-glass shape found in many Irish products. The wings on the lion of Mark to the left are similar to the angel sculpture with softer angles, but differ from the Matthew man/angel and the eagle wings of John in lack the scalloped upper edge. The coloration is more like the Matthew angel in its palate and randomness.

Overall, Brown is trying to create a group of texts and art produced or collected in early 9th century Mercia. So far she has three works linked primarily by their purple palate:

• Lichfield Gospels - mid 8th century, perhaps for the refurbishment of St Chad’s shrine (as the Lindisfarne Gospels were made for St Cuthbert’s shrine). This book she admits may have been commissioned by Lichfield from somewhere else, possibly Northumbria.
  • “My studies have revealed that the book was decorated by an artist who is likely to have been accorded the privilege of studying the decorated incipits of the Lindisfarne Gospels…first hand. He devised his own simplified yet still graphically powerful responses to several of these pages (Col. Pls VI B-D) and is likely to have been working in the generation after the Lindisfarne Gospels were completed, c. 720, in the mid-8th century.This reliance did not extend to the text…more traditional Insular ‘mixed text’ in which Old Latin, Vulgate and local readings were conflated in the sort of text that were favored by the Columban paruchia” (p. 17)
• Lichfield Angel - c 800 during the expansion of the cathedral probably under Offa.
• Book of Cerne - early ninth century, that she believes was made for or in honor of Bishop Aethelwald of Lichfield (818-830)

I would be interested to hear what others who know more about these texts or have least least seen them in person think of her cluster.

The person of the week for this week is Bishop Æthelwald of Lindisfarne, one of the possible owners of the Prayer book of Æthelwald in the Book of Cerne.

Bishop Aethelwald of Lindisfarne first enters the historical record in Bede’s Life of Cuthbert, where is said to have been one of Cuthbert’s retinue and currently Abbot of Melrose. Later when Bede writes the Ecclesiastical History, he refers to Aethelwald, former Abbot of Melrose, as the current Bishop of Lindisfarne. So he appears to have been marked for leadership in the Lindisfarne-Melrose community as early as the 680s. Aethelwald would have been present in the community during the entire period from Cuthbert’s episcopate to the establishment of his veneration, compilation of his lives, the Lindisfarne Gospels to honor St Cuthbert, and last but not least the establishment of Boisil as the saint of Melrose.

In the Life of Cuthbert, Bede cites Aethelwald as a witness to a miracle of St Cuthbert.

“Cuthbert was making his usual preaching mission through the villages and had come to one where there were a few nuns. They had fled their own monastery for fear of the barbarian army shortly before, and hand been lodged in the village by Cuthbert. One of them, a relation of Aethelwald, was seriously ill, seized with pains in her head and all down one side, so that doctors had given her up. Cuthbert’s companions pointed her out to him and begged him to heal her. Full of pity for her wretchedness he anointed her with holy oil. She began to improve from that very moment an din a few days completely recovered.” (Farmer ed, p. 84)

This all suggests that Aethelwald’s family was from northern Bernicia or even Lothian. Northumbrian monasteries in Lothian (near Abercorn) were abandoned for fear of the Picts after Ecgfrith’s death at the battle of Dunnichen in May 685. Bishop Cuthbert must have been very active in relocating the monastics and other English settlers who had moved into Lothian and southern Pictland during Ecgfrith’s reign.

In the Ecclesiastical History, Bede refers to King Aldfrith’s visits to Melrose during Æthelwald’s tenure as abbot. The hermit Dryhelm was active at Melrose during that time and King Aldfrith could come to visit with Dryhelm, who had after all previously been a noble. We don’t know which monasteries King Aldfrith favored, but Lindisfarne and its daughter house Melrose are likely.

Æthelwald becomes Bishops of Lindisfarne in 724, during the tenure of King Osric son of Aldfrith. He is the only Northumbrian bishop to come through the turbulent 730s without being deposed. During his tenure, King Osric was died on 9 May 729 appointing Ceolwulf as his successor. Bede makes it clear that it was not a smooth succession. The Moore MS of Bede’s History continues the chronology with the note: 731: “King Coelwulf was captured as tonsured and then restored to his kingdom; Bishop Acca was driven from his see” (McClure and Collins 1994: 296). It is unknown where he was tonsured, but it may be related to the expulsion of Bishop Acca of Hexham. King Ceolwulf returned to the throne, but he did not allow Bishop Acca to return, suggesting to me that Acca was probably in league with Ceolwulf’s enemies. When Ceolwulf did voluntarily enter a monastery, it was Lindisfarne during the time of Bishop Æthelwald. Ceolwulf’s death was recorded in Irish sources as under the name Eochaid. It is possible that like King Aldfrith that may imply an Irish mother, or that he took the name after he entered the Irish-influenced monastery, although others at Lindisfarne were not known for taking Irish names. It seems likely that Ceolwulf may have been born during Aldfrith’s reign when relations with Dalriada were the best since before the synod of Whitby. So anyway, it is significant that King Coelwulf chose to take the tonsure from Bishop Æthelwald, rather than Bishop Egbert of York, whose brother he named as his successor. It was Bishop Æthelwulf’s successor Cynwulf who gave King Aldfrith’s son Offa refuge from King Eadbert and paid a heavy price for it. It is worth noting that King Ceolwulf was still a monk at Lindisfarne when Offa took refuge there in 750. Coelwulf did not die until 764-765, so he must have been quite young when he abdicated.

Aside from politics, pious Bishop Æthelwald was involved in the production of several manuscripts. According to a 10th century note in the Lindisfarne Gospels (left), Æthelwald had his predecessors work bound into the gospel book and commissioned its jeweled covers. Symeon of Durham claimed that Æthelwald continued to build up St Cuthbert’s veneration by commissioning a stone cross in memory of St. Cuthbert. A hymnal from Fulda called the Ympnarius Edilwaldi may have belonged to him. It has since been lost but it may have been the source from some hymns from Bede in Germany. It has also been suggested that the ‘Prayer book of Æthelwald’ bound in the Book of Cerne belonged to him. This book contains a number of Irish influnced prayers and an abbreviated psalter using the Old Latin Psalter (unlike Bede’s use of the Hebraicum).

Update (1/22): I forgot to mention that Æthelwald is considered the last saint of Lindisfarne. When the community left Lindisfarne they placed some of his bones in the coffin of St Cuthbert for their long migration eventually to Durham. He was also an informant for the Anonymous Life of Cuthbert written in c. 704.

~~~~

Farmer, David. Ed. Age of Bede, Penguin.

Judith McClure and Roger Collins, eds. 1994. Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford UP.

Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes, and Donald Scragg, ed. 1999. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Blackwell.

One of the specific steps in the distilled prayer project on Bede’s Abbreviated Psalter is to reformat Browne’s text in a single paragraph without all the spaces between the abbreviated psalms and remove verse numbers, and make observations. Medieval manuscripts shown in Browne’s book show the text this way, with no separation or marks to indicate individual psalms. The only format that I left was a superscript to indicate which psalm the verse or phrase came from. In Browne’s translation the abbreviated psalter runs 4632 words.

I really didn’t expect that this reformatting would do much for me, but I was wrong. I decided to do this little experiment because I noticed that some of the smaller abbreviations made sense when read with the proceeding or succeeding abbreviation. At most I expected that there would be a few obvious paragraphs composed of several abbreviations. I had barely read through a third of it for the first time reformatted when I realized that I had underestimated how important the format was to at least my perception of the text.

There is a Jewish belief that the Torah is one long breath of God, one long utterance. What Bede has done is to discern, or indeed distill, the breath of the Jewish people in an unending cycle of praise and pleading within the psalter. Isn’t that the basis of human interaction with the divine? Praise/love and pleading. Generally, much heavier on the pleading – hear me, forgive me, help me, defend me, save me.

It is a collective stream of consciousness. As such it does flit about from topic to topic somewhat and becomes repetitive, just as real streams of consciousnesses do. Our praise never lasts for very long without thinking of something we need or want.

At the same time, the Abbreviated Psalter is also the breath of Bede, his own stream of consciousness because he chose these verses. He has systematically removed the Anointed One/Messiah and made this his own song. He chose direct statements between himself and God making his psalter clear and present. Ps 2.10-12 is one of the few verses that he addresses someone other than God – instructing secular kings– and yet, he still retains his voice.

“Now therefore, you kings, understand; be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and exult him with trembling. Worship him in purity, lest perchance he become angry, and you perish from the way.”

In fact this address to secular kings reminds me of the dedication to the Ecclesiastical History. Bede had two very pious kings, Aldfrith and Ceolwulf, during his adulthood. He might expect that a work like the abbreviated psalter might to fall into one of their hands. Yet, this is the only direct statement to or about secular kings.

Bede has carefully edited these psalms so that they do flow into a stream of consciousness, one long breath of the people, a chorus he joins. The psalm and verse numbers have been stripped out of the following extract. Can you tell where each psalm starts or ends, or even which psalms they are from?

“From my secret faults cleanse me; from the presumptuous sins too deliver your servant. Let the words of my mouth be pleasing, Lord my strength and redeemer. But we will remember the name of the Lord our God. Be exulted, Lord, in your strength; we will sing and praise your strengths. But you Lord, do not be far; my strength, hasten to my help. Rescue my soul from the sword; save me from the mouth of the lion. And goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will receive blessing from the Lord. To you, Lord, I will lift up my soul. Show me your ways, Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are God my savior. Do not remember the sins of my youth, and my crimes. In accordance with your mercy remember me. On account of your name, pardon my iniquity, for it is great. Look upon me and have mercy on me; for my distresses bring me forth. Behold my humility and my toil, and bear all my sins. Guard my soul and deliver me.” (Browne trans, p. 28-30)

Did you recognize our beloved psalm 23 [Vulgate 22]? He only took one line from it…”and goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”. This is the entirety of abbreviated psalms 18-24 [modern 19-25].

I am convinced that the abbreviated psalter is intended to be read/prayed straight through. It is not Bede’s intention for it to be used piecemeal, or the individual abbreviations studied or meditated on isolation. We do not have to necessarily follow Bede’s intentions; some chunks of the text can be usefully excised for a variety of purposes. Critically for modern use, we don’t have to confine our snippets to a single psalm.

Browne, Gerald M. trans. (2002) The Abbreviated Psalter of the Venerable Bede. Wm B Eerdmans.

Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit. Second edition. Cascade books, 2007. 97 pages.

One of the specific aims of the distilled prayer project is to review modern scholarship on the psalms. There is quite a diversity of material available, much of it devoted to discussing individual psalms. This little book by Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann is one of the best I have found so far.

In the first chapter he introduces his theory that the psalms can be divided into three categories: secure orientation (status quo), painful disorientation, and surprised reorientation. Most of the psalms are disorientation, where the world is turned upside down for the psalmist. Reorientation occurs when things suddenly reverse course and psalmist is in thanksgiving. Orientation, or psalms of the status quo, are the least common and this state is best reflected in Proverbs. Overall I think these categories work well and are in terms that appeal to our generation.

The second and third chapters deal with the language of the psalms. Brueggemann wants us to appreciate the raw power and candor of the language. The depth of the language and the metaphors allows a catharsis that is necessary to move on beyond the crisis. He warns us that this catharsis is necessary and that we should not sanitize or edit offending verses. Metaphors are meant to have full range of our imagination, not restricted to mere descriptors. Brueggeman gives a rich discussion of some of the metaphors found in the psalms.

His fourth chapter focuses on Christian attitudes toward the Jewishness of the psalms. He believes that Christians must embrace this Jewishness, rather than avoid the most awkward verses. He gives a useful discussion of the meaning of Jerusalem as a place and a metaphor.

Brueggemann’s last chapter is on vengeance in the psalms. Here I think he makes two very important points. First, for all the raw, cathartic vitriol in the psalms, ultimately, vengeance is yielded to God. The psalmist never asks God to help him take vengeance or asks for forgiveness for vengeance he has already taken. Vengeance is God’s to dispense. This leads to the second point on the sovereignty of God. It is God’s decision on whether to dispense vengeance or show compassion. Several of the psalms express confusion on why God has not taken vengeance. Brueggemann stresses that judgment and vengeance are discussed in the New Testament in the same ways as the psalms. He quotes Hebrews 10:30-31: “For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’. And again, ‘the Lord will judge his people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’ This last line should be familiar to those who study the venerable Bede, as Cuthbert’s letter claims that this verse is one that Bede repeated over and over in his last days.

I made a really exciting find today! While skimming through Martin McNamara’s The Psalms in the Early Irish Church I picked up on the trail of another abbreviated psalter contemporary with Bede’s abbreviated psalter!

There is an Abbreviated Psalter in the Book of Cerne, which dates to the 8th century. The psalter is found in one of the three codexes bound in the Book of Cerne, called ‘The Book of Æthelwald the Bishop”. The Prayerbook of Æthelwald has been traced to northern England in the 8th century and linked to Æthelwald, Bishop of Lindisfarne 724-740. So he was the bishop of Lindisfarne for the last decade of Bede’s life.

The contents of the Prayer book of Æthelwald are given as the passion and resurrection of Christ accounts from all four gospels, a collection of 74 prayers, then followed by the abbreviated psalter, and ended (in its current truncated form) with an apocryphal dialogue between Adam, Eve, and Christ in limbo patrum.

McNamara describes the abbreviated psalter as:

“composed of verses from consecutive psalms, strung together so as to form a continuous prayer (e.g. Pss. 1.1, 2; 2.1; 3.4; 5.2 etc). We have another early example of such an abbreviation of the Psalter in the Collectio Psalterii Bedae found in Migne’s edition of Alcuin’s works (PL 101, cols 569-79)…. The abbreviated psalter of the Book of Cerne, like most other times in the Prayer Book of Aedueluald, was most probably intended for private devotion.” (p. 41)

McNamara notes that the text is that of the Romanum, not the Gallican psalter. This, he suggests, indicates that it was originally compiled in England rather than Ireland.

Well, this is all very exciting…my early 8th century texts of the abbreviated psalter just doubled. Two distinctive abbreviated psalters within a single subkingdom, within one generation. Could it be that Bede saw an abbreviated psalter from Lindisfarne and decided to make his own with the Hebraicum? Looks like I will be hunting for more information on the Book of Cerne!

~~~

Martin McNamara. (2000) The Psalms in the Early Irish Church. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Supplement Series 165. Sheffield Academic Press.

Sr Benedicta Ward’s booklet Bede and the Psalter is reprint of her 1991 Jarrow Lecture of the same name. It was reprinted by her order, the Sisters of the Love of God, in 2002. Although she does discuss general uses and attitudes toward the psalter, Bede’s Abbreviated Psalter is her main focus.

The Psalter and the Liturgy

She begins with a discussion of the centrality of the psalter in seventh century liturgy, when the daily office was the primary type form of all liturgy. The centrality of the psalms to daily life and how the liturgical year brought new contexts to the psalms is discussed. She briefly mentions the psalter collects used in Bede’s time to direct the psalter toward Christ. She notes that the prayer Bede sang in his last days was one of these collects.

“O King of Glory, Lord of Might, who didst this day ascend in triumph above all the heavens, leave us not comfortless, but send to us the Spirit of the Father, even the Spirit of Truth. Amen.” (p. 4)

Ward asserts that this prayer “combines the liturgical use of psalm 24 with both antiphons and prayers”. A more complete discussion of this prayer and the collects in general would have been helpful to me. I don’t believe the collects have ever been translated into English (a worthwhile project for any liturgically minded folks in search of a project!).

Ward then turns her attention to the use of the psalter at Wearmouth-Jarrow and, in particular, to Abbot Coelfrith’s devotion to the psalms (and antiphons). Here the Anonymous Life of Coelfrith and Bede’s History of the Abbots are critical. Ward notes that Coelfrith’s devotion to the psalms was above and beyond the call of the Benedictine Rule. She also discusses the influence of Rome on Bede’s Wearmouth and Jarrow. Bede was quite proud that they were directed in their manner of singing and praying by John, the Precentor of St. Peter’s in Rome and abbot of St. Martin’s monastery. Abbot John of St. Martin’s was with Wearmouth-Jarrow through Bede’s childhood, a formative period for his use of the psalter.

Bede as a Scholar and the Psalms

This section is one that I have some problems with. First, she makes a common assumption that Bede took part in the creation of the Codex Amiatinus, for which there really is no proof. Surely, Bede was not the only person at Wearmouth-Jarrow with a ’scholarly eye’; Abbot Coelfrith himself is likely to have overseen the creation of the pandects. Indeed it is hard to imagine that it wasn’t Abbot Coelfrith who decided such vital matters as which translations would be used in the pandects.

As discussed on ANSAX-L, her assignment of various versions of the psalter to the use of Bishop Wilfrid and Bede is not well supported. She believes that Bede used the Gallican psalter in his works and in church, but the Versio Romana is more likely. She also believes that Wilfrid learned the iuxta hebracos in Kent before going to Rome. This is the version that Bede used for his Abbreviated Psalter and is used in the Codex Amiatinus, but was not used in his other works including On Ezra and is not believed to have ever been widely used in the liturgy. We know that Abbot John of St. Martin’s in Rome taught the monks of Wearmouth-Jarrow to sing in the Roman manner, so they would have been using what was in use in Rome. This is unlikely to be either the Gallican or the iuxta Hebracos. This leaves the Versio Romanum as the most likely choice for Bede’s working psalter.

Ward does helpfully point the reader toward Cassiodorus Exposition on the Psalms as a major influence on Bede and to Bede’s own De Metris et Tropis as a work where he quotes the psalms frequently.

Bede and the Tradition of compunctio cordis in the Psalms

Compunctio cordis is a heartfelt sorrow. It was a practice of early monks to meditate on psalms that they memorized and recited daily. For the earliest monks, particularly living in isolation, they recited all of the psalms daily; they didn’t follow a office scheme. The desert fathers believed a true monk would always have the psalms in their heart, not just at set times of the day.

Ward notes that Bede believed that the entire bible was authored by God, the entire psalter is conveyed by David, and through the psalter, God spoke to people. This is hard viewpoint for me to grapple with because it seem so opposite to me.

Ward notes that Cassian and Cassiodorus saw the perfect monk as a spiritual hedgehog, in the words of Cassian:

“This hedgehog of prayer will take into himself all the thoughts of the psalms and will begin to sing them in such a way that he will utter them with the deepest emotion of his heart…as if they were his own prayer…and will take them as aimed at himself and will recognize that their words were not only fulfilled by or in the person of the prophet but they were fulfilled and carried out daily in his own case.” (Ward, p. 13)

Ward believes that Bede saw himself as such a spiritual hedgehog. (Note hedgehogs are on the cover of her book.) Previous theologians had seen all types of allegory in the psalms, but for Bede when writing of his contemporaries (V. Cuthbert and History of the Abbots), the psalms were always compunctio cordis, a cry of the heart. Ward finds and quotes a very useful commentary by Bede on the epistle of James where he discusses the great value of the psalms particularly in times of great sorrow.

Finally, we get to the Abbreviated Psalter. Here she notes that: “The verses were selected so that a sense of the meaning of the psalm as a whole was retained; it would be possible to recall the whole psalm from these clues.” Actually, I don’t agree. Most of the time it does reflect the meaning of the whole psalm, but not always. How does “help me, O Lord” only specifically call to mind psalm 11/12? Context with previous abbreviations also, I believe, matter. Further, they often can not be a memory device to recall the whole psalm. For example, two of the abbreviated psalms are identical (Ps 13/14 and 52/53). Others are simply not memorable enough to call to mind a specific psalm.

Ward asserts that the Abbreviated Psalter began a new form of prayer that continued for the next four centuries. She notes that Alcuin was one of the most active promotors of the Abbreviated Psalter. Ward asserts that Alcuin had more of an “interior interest in the person praying and his needs” than Bede. How does she know that Bede didn’t focus on the interior meaning of the prayers? He left no instructions or commentary on its use. How do we know that Bede didn’t mean this only for his own personal use? It is not part of his publications list in the Ecclesiastical History. She also notes that Alcuin saw them as a perfect revelation of Christ, foretelling his coming, his incarnation, passion, resurrection and ascension. I don’t see this in Bede’s Abbreviated Psalter; indeed, Bede specifically avoids verses in the psalms that are usually interpreted as referring to the Messiah. From her quote of Alcuin’s letter to Bishop Arno it is clear that Alcuin recognized what it is and that it included verses from all 150 psalms. Ward then usefully reviews the use and evolution of the abbreviated psalter after the time of Alcuin. Eventually, the Durham copy contained a note advocating its use not only by monks and hermits but also by those who “have worldy business, who lie in sickness, who undertake long journeys, sail in ships or go to war; they sing this psalter assiduously and they gain thereby the heavenly kingdom” (Ward, p. 22).

Ward’s Edition of the Abbreviated Psalter

Ward provides a edition of the Abbreviated Psalter as an appendix to her Jarrow lecture. This really isn’t a translation but a selection of the corresponding verses from the current Church of England psalter. Verses where Jerome’s Hebrew Psalter differs from modern psalters are not reflected in this edition. The purpose of her edition is only to be used with her talk and for that purpose it is adequate (and a lot of work for an appendix!).

In summary then, although I disagree with Sr. Ward on a few points discussed here, she was a trailblazer in writing on the Abbreviated Psalter. Had she not chosen it as the topic of her Jarrow lecture most of us would not know of the existence of the Abbreviated Psalter. Overall, her lecture will serve as the basis for all scholarship on the Bede’s psalter and his use of the psalms for at least the next generation.

In Bede’s Vulgate Psalter this was psalm 41:2, in modern psalters it is psalm 42:1.

Modern Roman Catholic Latin-English Bibles use:

{41:2} Quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum: ita desiderat anima mea ad te Deus.
{41:2} As the deer longs for fountains of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.

As a hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after thee, O God. [King James]

This is the basically the same translation given for Cassiodorus’ Explanation of the Psalms and we know this is the correct translation because Cassiodorus goes into a long discussion of the symbolism surrounding deer (as previously discussed).

Bede’s text:

Sicut areola praeparata ad inrigationes aquarum, sic anima mea praeparata est ad te, Deus. [1]

Translated as:

Like a garden prepared for the irrigation of waters, so my soul is prepared for you, God. [2]

I have discovered that this Latin text matches Jerome’s translation from Greek and Hebrew Versio juxta Hebraicum of 405.

So, in my previous post, I detected a difference between Jerome’s Hebrew Psalter and apparently his other psalters and modern psalters. Browne didn’t point this out because he had already said that Bede used the Hebrew psalter and this line is true to Bede’s source. Modern psalters are new translations from Hebrew, but it is likely that the translators were influenced by Jerome’s first two psalters. For Ps 41:2/42.1, the modern psalter matches Jerome’s first two from the Old Latin and Greek text, but not his Hebrew translation. Cassiodorus used an older translation for his Exposition on the Psalms, just as Bede used did for his commentaries. The ‘Codex Grandior’ compiled at Cassiodorus’ Viviarium, acquired by Wearmouth-Jarrow in Bede’s time, used Jerome’s translation from the Greek for the Old Testament. Looking at Bede’s On Ezra-Nehemiah, he uses Jerome’s (Roman?) psalter 41:2 (with the deer) three times in commentary on the Water Gate in Jerusalem. This is particularly significant since the ‘Codex Amiatinus’ with its Ezra minature was created with Jerome’s Hebrew psalter. If Scott DeGregorio is correct, Ezra could be Bede’s last commentary. If so, then Bede did not change to the Hebrew Psalter for any of his commentaries, early or late.

So why does he use the Hebrew Psalter for his own Abbreviated Psalter? This version wasn’t used for liturgy in church or in his own commentaries, and it wasn’t used by any of the church fathers in his library that I know of. The use of this psalter though probably does strengthen the attribution to Bede (or at least Wearmouth-Jarrow) because this psalter was virtually unknown in Anglo-Saxon England outside of Wearmouth-Jarrow. Most of England apparently used Jerome’s first psalter, a revision of the Old Latin text. Both Bede and Stephan of Ripon take great pride that Northumbria’s monasteries sang the office in the same manner as Rome.

Works cited and further reading:

[1] Gerald M Browne, ed. (2001) Collectio Psalterii Bedae Venerabili Adscripta. Bibliotheca Scripotorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana. Munich and Leipzig.

[2] Gerald M Browne, trans. (2002) The Abbreviated Psalter of the Venerable Bede. Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans.

P G Walsh, trans. (1990) Cassiodorus: Explanation of the Psalms. Volume 1 Psalms 1-50. Paulist Press.

Scott DeGregorio, ed and trans (2006) Bede: On Ezra and Nehemiah. Liverpool UP.

Latin Psalters at Wikipedia.