The gothic psalter in Constantinople between Crimea and Bologna in Révue des Études Tardo-antiques 9 (2019-2020) 109-120. (original) (raw)
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2024
Textual and Literary History in Psalm 151 "Editing the Greek Psalter", which is the subject of this conference volume, is a multilingual and interdisciplinary project and, beyond the actual edition of the Greek text, also shows manifold interconnections with other fields of research and perspectives for other, more far-reaching questions. This interconnectedness is already institutionally visible in the fact that the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony hosts three long-term projects that deal with different versions of the Septuagint and its Vorlage, the Hebrew Bible: the Greek Psalter, the Coptic Septuagint and the Qumran Dictionary project, which also offers the biblical manuscripts from Qumran in its database. In this article I would like to address a topic that touches on at least two of the Academy's two long-term projects. I will deal with the significance of the textual history and edition of the Greek Psalter for literary and redactional history, taking Psalm 151 as an example. 1
English Version of: Wer schrieb und wer las den Psalter? Gebrauch und Trägerkreise der Psalmen im Lichte antiker Quellen, Biblische Zeitschrift 67 (2023) 186-211 Abstract: Who wrote and who read the Psalter? Compilation and use of the Psalms in the light of ancient sources. The question of how the Psalter was used in its formative phase and which groups compiled it is under considerable debate. Two different positions are discussed here, in variation. One is represented by Ulrich Berges, Susan Gillingham and Beat Weber (among others) who claim that the compilers of the Psalter are to be found among the Levites respectively Asafites, according to the Psalms headings and Chronicles. The opposite position is represented by N. Füglister, N. Lohfink, C. Levin, E. Zenger, F.-L. Hossfeld, E. Ballhorn B. Janowski and M. Leuenberger amongst others who assume that the Psalms were transmitted in scholarly circles and used in a private lectio continua of Psalter. Leuenberger for example considers Levitical circles to be improbable as tradent groups since "scriptural interpretation and temple chant are two poles that are far apart". This paper deals with ancient sources that can help to better understand the transmission of psalms and the psalter in its formative phases.
Psalterium Scholastocorum: Peter Lombard and the Emergence of Scholastic Psalms Exegesis
Speculum, 1992
The Book of Psalms was unquestionably the book of the Old Testament most beloved by patristic and medieval exegetes. Seen as a guide to the Christian life and as a prophecy of Christ and his church, the Psalms received extended attention from Hilary of Poitiers, Augustine, and Cassiodorus and from their Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon successors. After the ninth century, monastic writers continued to display a sustained interest in the text. As had always been the case, so in the twelfth century the goal of monastic commentators was to inspire unction and compunction in their monastic audience. And, as before, their address to the Psalms reflected the assumption that this audience knew the Psalter by heart. Their exegesis could draw on the meditative and homiletic techniques embedded in monastic lectio divina, and they could present the exegesis of the Psalms as an adjunct to the devout chanting of the Psalter in the monastic liturgy. When they appealed to past authorities, the monastic exegetes simply chose readings they found illuminating and, without identifying the source, wove them seamlessly into their own exposition. These aspects of Psalms exegesis are quite traditional. They are found over and over again in the monastic writers of the twelfth century. What is new in the Psalms exegesis of that century is the emergence, for the first time, of scholastic exegesis. The masters of theology in the cathedral schools of the first half of the century, and their pupils, created a demand for a different approach to the biblical text, one geared to the training of professional theologians. The kind of Psalms exegesis that this new audience wanted was analytical, detached, critical, and applicable to the demands of doctrinal debate and the formulation of systematic theology. For the scholastics of the twelfth century no less than for the monks, the Book of Psalms remained the most frequently studied part of the Old Testament, although for different reasons. The scholastics found in the Psalms not only a rich source of Christian ethics but also a source of dogmatic teachings. Moreover, it was a complex and composite section of the Bible. The understanding of its component parts, the relation of the parts to the whole, the order and authorship of its composition, all called for investigation. The resources on which the scholastic exegetes drew in their work, both the older authorities in the Christian tradition and those in the disciplines of the liberal arts, This presidential address was delivered at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy in Columbus, Ohio, on 21 March 1992. SPECULUM 67 (1992) 531 Psalterium Scholasticorum offered help, on the one hand, and alternative readings or approaches to the text, on the other. Hence, more so than any other book of the Old Testament, the Psalms provided a laboratory, a test case, for the hermeneutic principles which the professionalizing of the artes, no less than the professionalizing of theology itself, brought to the fore in the early-twelfth-century schools.' Among these scholastic exegetes of Psalms in the first half of the twelfth century, Peter Lombard holds pride of place. To be sure, his commentary on the Psalms is his earliest known work, having been completed before 1138. And it is a work which he did not, apparently, compose as a teaching text. He lectured on the Psalms only once during his teaching career, at the behest of his students, during the academic year just prior to his election to the bishopric of Paris in 1159. Yet the Lombard's commentary on the Psalms ranks as the most frequently cited, copied, studied, and glossed exegetical work on the Old Testament in use in the twelfth-century theological schools. Its Nachleben is as extensive as that of his commentary on the Pauline Epistles, the Collectanea. Together with the Collectanea, it was swiftly dubbed the Magna glossatura, outpacing the earlier Glossa ordinaria and the Glossatura media of Gilbert of Poitiers. It became the scholastic commentary of choice.2 In order to see why this was the case, and in order to discover what the Lombard owed to his immediate scholastic predecessors and what he contributed that was new, this paper will consider his Psalms commentary in comparison with those written by scholastics in the period just before his ' The best introduction to this subject is Jean Chatillon, "La Bible dans les 6coles du XIIe siecle," in Le moyen dge et la Bible, ed. Pierre Riche and Guy Lobrichon (Paris, 1984), pp. 163-97. See also Heinrich Denifle, "Quel livre servait de base a l'enseignement des maitres en theologie dans l'Universit6 de Paris?" Revue thomiste 2 (1898), 149-61; Artur Michael Landgraf, "Zur Methode der biblischen Textkritik im 12. Jahrhundert," Biblica 10 (1929), 445-74; Introduction a l'histoire de la litterature theologique de la scolastique naissante, ed. Albert-M. Landry, trans. Louis-B. Geiger (Montreal, 1973), p. 47; Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (New York, 1952), chaps. 1-4; "L'exe6gse biblique du 12e siecle," in Entretiens sur la renaissance du 12e siecle, ed. Maurice de Gandillac and Edouard Jeauneau (Paris, 1968), pp. 273-83; "The Bible in the Medieval Schools," in Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. G. W. H. Lampe (Cambridge, Eng., 1969), 2:197-220; Gillian R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages (Cambridge, Eng., 1984). On Psalms exegesis in this period, see Wilfried Hartmann, "Psalmenkommentare aus der Zeit der Reform und der Friihscholastik," Studi gregoriani 9 (1972), 313-66; Damien Van den Eynde, "Complementary Note on the Early Scholastic Commentarii in Psalmos," Franciscan Studies 17 (1957), 149-72; and Valerie I. J. Flint, "Some Notes on the Early Twelfth-Century Commentaries of the Psalms," Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 38 (1971), 80-88. Flint contests Van den Eynde's dating of certain works. A good introduction to monastic exegesis is provided by Jean Leclercq, "Ecrits monastiques sur la Bible aux IXe-XIIe siecle," Mediaeval Studies 15 (1953), 95-106. 2 H. H. Glunz, History of the Vulgate in England from Alcuin to Roger Bacon, Being an Inquiry into the Text of Some English Manuscripts of the Vulgate Gospels
The present volume, which is the result of a panel at the 2019 SBL International Meeting in Rome, maps current discourses in Psalms research. The past decades have been marked by the paradigm shift from form and genre criticism to different designs of an exegesis that incorporates the environment of the individual psalms. More recently, it has been pointed out that the complex findings of the manuscripts from antiquity to the Middle Ages do not fit the notion of a fixed canonical text that some designs presuppose. The contributions in the present volume combine such basic considerations with individual investigations of groups of psalms. With different methodological and hermeneutical approaches, they open up perspectives on the connections between the origin, composition and reception of the Psalms.
Psalms and Psalters in the Manuscript Fragments Preserved in the Abbey Library of Sankt Gallen
Fragmentology 1, 2018
This study focuses on three series of manuscript fragments dating from the seventh to the tenth century where passages of the Psalter were copied. Most of the fragments are currently preserved at the Library Abbey of Sankt Gallen, and their digital reproductions are available on Fragmentarium: Cod. Sang. 1395 II, pp. 336-361 [F-4b1o]; Cod. Sang. 1395 III, pp. 368-391 [F-jo7w]; and Cod. Sang. 1397 V, pp. 1-12, 37-42 [F-i8qo]. These fragments provide the basis for identification of the primary characteristics of their original codices as well as information on the texts they transmit: their content, the version of the Psalter used, marginal notes, and the use of the manuscripts after they were copied. Likewise, the subsequent reuse of these manuscripts, once transformed into fragmentary material, is reconstructed, specifically concerning their dispersal in several libraries, being bound in host volumes, evidence from offsets, and traces of missing fragments. This study leads to some basic methodological conclusions on how to deal with collections of fragments, emphasizing the vast and fruitful research opportunity presented by such collections, especially the collection of manuscript fragments at the Library Abbey of Sankt Gallen.
* Special thanks are due to the archivist of the Fabbriceria of San Petronio in Bologna, Mario Fanti, for his valuable support; to Patrizia Busi (Biblioteca dell'Archiginnasio, Bologna) and Maddalena Modesti (Bologna University) for their very kind assistance; and to Heinz Miklas (CIMA-Centre of Image and Material Analysis in Cultural Heritage (http://www.cima.or.at/), Vienna University, accessed 01.07.2023) for his enormous generosity in supporting this digitalisation project. 1 The Gothic corpus, which includes long sections of the 4 th-century Bible translation by Wulfila, has been edited several times. The latest edition of 2000 (Streitberg with Scardigli, Gotische Bibel) is a reprint of the edition by Streitberg (1919), with some additions. The Bologna fragment, discovered in 2009, is-of course-not included. 2 Details in Falluomini, Gothic Version, passim.