An Illuminated Psalter of the 13th Century

Here is another wonderful discovery from the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, an illuminated psalter from the beginning of the 13th century. (Département des manuscrits. NAL 1392) The manuscript begins with 13 pages of images of the life of Christ, each within a circular medallion, two per page, enclosed in a rectangular decorative border; these cover all the major feasts of the Church year, starting with Christmas (the birth of Christ and the annunciation to the shepherds.) Each such image also has two prophets with banderoles in their hands between the circles, but nothing written on them to identify them specifically.

Epiphany: the Magi before Herod, and with the Madonna and Child. St Matthew does not say how long it was between the actual birth of Christ and the arrival of the Magi, and this image is based on a type common in early Christian art, in which Jesus is a toddler, not a newborn.

The Wedding at Cana and the Baptism of the Lord.

The Temptation of Christ and the Transfiguration, the Gospels of the first two Sundays of Lent.

The parable of the Good Samaritan, and Christ with Mary Magdalene in the house of Simon the Pharisee.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A 14th-Century Illuminated Psalter

Here is something I stumbled across recently from the website of the Bibliothèque national de France (Fr. 13091), a psalter made at the end of the 14th century (ca. 1386-1400) for Jean, the Duke of Berry (1340-1416), the third son of the French King Jean II. He is better known as the patron who commissioned one of the most richly and beautifully illuminated manuscripts of all time, the famous Très Riches Heures (very rich Hours).

The most notable thing about this manuscript is the amount of space it gives to a legend which was widely known in the Middle Ages and beyond, concerning the Apostles’ Creed. This legend has it that the Creed was composed by the Apostles as a common rule of Faith before they decided to scatter throughout the world to preach the Gospel, each of the twelve contributing one section. Here, each individual Apostle is preceded by a Prophet of the Old Testament, with a prophecy relevant to the section of the Creed which he composed. Some of these prophecies, such as the first one, are broad paraphrases of the Biblical text; where this is the case, I give no exactly citation. The texts are given below each seated figure in Latin and French. These images are placed in one group at the beginning of the book; the borders of the pages are all pretty much the same, so I have given the first two as an example, and then cropped and joined the rest.

St Peter: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.”

King David: “The Lord said to me, Thou art my son.” (Psalm 2, 7) - St Andrew: “And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.”

Isaiah: “Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son.” (7, 14) - St James the Greater: “Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.”

Zachariah: “They shall look upon me their God whom they have pierced.” (12, 10; the words in italics are not in the Bible) - St John: “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.”

Hosea: “O death, I shall be thy death; I shall be thy sting, o hell, I shall be thy bite.” (13, 10) - St Thomas: “Descended into hell; on the third day He rose from the dead.”

Continue Reading this Article. . .

From the Complete Psalter to the Easier Psalter: An Insight into the Dynamics of Liturgical Reform in the 20th Century (Part 2)

Today we publish the second and concluding part of Dr. Paweł Milcarek’s study of the history of the psalter in the Roman divine office. Part 1 may be found here. —PAK 

A commemorative medallion for the second session of Vatican II (source), at the end of which, the document on the liturgy was promulgated.

The Psalter according to the Second Vatican Council: less is better

On the eve of the Second Vatican Council, the planned reform of the breviary – and hence also the introduction of a new arrangement of the Psalter – was one of the most widely discussed issues. In 1957, Pius XII had appointed a commission that surveyed a number of bishops on this matter. The Roman liturgical congregation had already had some concrete projects in its closets, waiting to make use of them.

The Council’s constitution Sacrosanctum concilium, promulgated on 4th December 1963, in its fourth chapter, devoted to the Roman Breviary, states that the restoration of this liturgical book, “so happily begun by the Apostolic See”, is introduced “in order that the Divine Office may be better and more perfectly prayed in existing circumstances, whether by priests or by other members of the Church”, which – in turn – is meant “to sanctify the day”. The Council Fathers were clearly motivated by the wish formulated by the commission appointed by Pius XII: “the traditional sequence of the hours is to be restored so that once again they may be genuinely related to the time of the day when they are prayed”, taking the pastoral conditions into account.

As far as the above mentioned “traditional sequence of the hours” is concerned, the Council decided to accept a compromise: the emphasis was put on Lauds and Vespers, while Compline and Matins were preserved, the latter losing its nocturnal character, with the exception of cases when celebrated in choir. In the case of daytime prayers, double standards were accepted - one for for celebration in choir, and another for celebration outside choir - and the hour of Prime was suppressed. 

Having defined the Hours, the constitution moves on to the directives meant to enable the faithful to celebrate the Office “better and more perfectly”, though afterwards it happened out that the Council described this celebration also with two other adjectives: “more extensively and easily”.

Here we come to the regulation that is directly related to the issue analyzed in this lecture. Article 91 of Sacrosanctum concilium says:

Ut cursus Horarum, in art. 89 propositus, reapse observari possit, psalmi non amplius per unam hebdomadam, sed per longius temporis spatium distribuantur.
     Opus recognitionis Psalterii, feliciter inchoatum, quamprimum perducatur ad finem, respectu habito latinitatis christianae, usus liturgici etiam in cantu, necnon totius traditionis latinae Ecclesiae.
     [So that it may really be possible in practice to observe the course of the hours proposed in Art. 89, the psalms are no longer to be distributed throughout one week, but through some longer period of time.
     The work of revising the psalter, already happily begun, is to be finished as soon as possible, and is to take into account the style of Christian Latin, the liturgical use of psalms, also when sung, and the entire tradition of the Latin Church.]

Those two statements – concerning the change of distribution of Psalms and the revision of the text – further defined the frame of reference for the reform of the breviary Psalter.

Ordo ex machina: the Psalter of the Liturgy of the Hours of 1971

Although during the 20th century, the reform of the breviary had been the engine for the reform of other liturgical books, the post-Vatican reform of this very book took rather long, and was completed only after the reform of the Missal and many rites from the Pontifical and Ritual. The decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship, promulgating the typical edition of the Liturgy of the Hours according to the Roman Rite [1], was issued on 11th April 1971. Together with Liturgy of the Hours, which was the new book of the Office, also newly arranged Psalter was introduced.

It is worth noting that already before, in 1969, the Pontifical Commission for the New Vulgate, headed by Card. Augustin Bea S.J., had published a revised Latin translation of the Book of Psalms, destined for the new Office book. Without here going into the comparative analysis of the three Latin versions of Psalms (that of Vulgate, that of the Pian Commission, and that of Neo-Vulgate), we can simply say that the Neo-Vulgate translation turned out to be in a way conciliatory toward the ancient tradition – much more so than the translation issued by the Pian Commission.

Let us now move on to discuss the new order of the Psalter.

Due to changes in the arrangement of the Hours [2], it was a specific wish of the Council to distribute Psalms not “throughout one week, but through some longer period of time” [3]. Behind this statement there was a recurring thought of the Psalter distributed over two weeks, as, for example, in the Ambrosian rite. But in the end the Psalter, was arranged into a four-week cycle, [4] on the model of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer [5], which means that in practice, that the majority of the Psalms is used in prayer once a month – while previously, each of them had recurred once a week.

The Liturgy of the Hours retained the custom of dividing some of the longer Psalms introduced by the Roman Breviary of 1911, and to a similar extent, but in many cases the Psalms have been divided differently.

The New Psalter, however, not complete. A few Psalms were eliminated entirely (57, 82 and 108), along with parts of nineteen other Psalms that due to their “imprecatory nature” could have created a “certain psychological difficulty” [6]. Such a move had had no precedent in the history of the Roman Breviary, though it is known among the reformed communities.

Each Psalm in the Liturgy of the Hours has been given a caption, explaining “its meaning and its import for the personal life of the believer”, accompanied also by a quotation from the New Testament or the Fathers of the Church, “to foster prayer in the light of Christ’s new revelation” [7]. Though the latter addition was some novelty, it had been deeply rooted in Christian tradition of understanding the Psalms [8].

The number of the canticles from the Old Testament has been significantly increased, from 17 to 26. Many of those already used at Lauds have been modified – their texts have been shortened or elaborately cut up. As a novelty, canticles from the New Testament have been introduced to Vespers.

Of course, the fundamentally new arrangement of the Psalter has caused new distribution of Psalms among particular offices.

As in case of the Roman Breviary of 1911, Matins – renamed now to the Office of Readings – underwent the biggest changes. The number of Psalms within each celebration has been reduced from 9 to 3. The arrangement of Psalms has been completely changed. The same may be said of Lauds, that from now have comprised not 5, but 3 Psalms, selected on a completely different basis.

The structure of the Minor Hours has remained the same, consisting of three Psalms. But the selection of Psalms is brand new.

While the reform of 1911 changed an earlier arrangement of the Vespers Psalms only to a very limited extent, in the Liturgy of the Hours of 1971, a true revolution has been made. The number of Psalms in each Vespers has been diminished from 5 to 2 (or to 3, if we count also the canticle from the New Testament). They have been distributed among the days of the week in a way that was unfamiliar both to the earlier tradition, and to the reform of 1911.

In short, the Psalter of the Liturgy of the Hours has little in common with earlier tradition of the prayer of the Church, both in terms of distribution of Psalms over the time, in relation to the number of Psalms within particular offices, and in regards to its completeness.
 

Attempted summary: Modifications of psalmody throughout the centuries

Let us now attempt to summarize briefly the historical evolution of the Psalter used in the Office of the Roman rite[9].

From the earliest times, the Roman rite preserved the principle of reciting the entire Psalter within one week – meaning that each Psalm was to be recited principally once a week, with many exceptiond for those recited more often, even daily (4, 50, 53, 62, 66, 90, 94, 118, 133, 148, 149, 150). A one-week cycle of the Psalter was retained in the RB 1911, though in such a way that actually excluded the possibility of saying some Psalms more often than once a week. Meanwhile, in case of the LH 1971, due to the distribution of the Psalter over the course of four weeks, the majority of the Psalms is recited once a month, with the exception of a few that recur weekly in Compline.

From the earliest times there were 8 Canonical Hours within the Psalter of the Office of the Roman rite: Matin, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. This was changed only in LH 1971, when Prime has been suppressed and the rest of the Minor Hours can be – if recited outside choir – substituted with one prayer, so called Middle Hour. Hence, in practice, the Office may be narrowed down to five Canonical Hours.

From the earliest times each and every Psalm had had its place within the Office, including those texts that had been the most likely to raise some reluctance or evoke questions.

From the earliest times there was no practice of dividing the Psalms in the Roman rite, with the exception of Psalm 118 – in all other cases they were recited in their entirety. Meanwhile, since RB 1911 division of Psalms has become a frequent solution, leading to situations where one Psalm, divided into three parts, may fill out the whole Hour.

Psalmody of Matins

From the earliest times, the number of Psalms on weekdays was never lower than 12, while on Sundays it was even higher: in the beginning it was twice as much (24), while from the 6th century to 1911 there were 18 Psalms in this office. Only RB 1911 equalized the number of Psalms on Sundays and ferias, , diminishing it to 9. Such an equality has been sustained in LH 1971, however the number of Psalms in Matins was further lowered to 3 Psalms (or to 3 units).

From the earliest times, up to RB 1911, nothing had changed in selection of Psalms assigned to particular days of the week. But in the 20th century this selection was changed practically completely twice (in RB 1911 and LH 1971). (Click on any image to enlarge.)

Psalmody of Lauds

From the earliest times the psalmody of Lauds always comprised 5 Psalms, but in practice there were 7 Psalms and canticles, divided into five groups: 1, 1, 2, C, 3). BR 1911 lowers this number to the actual 5, while LH 1971 to .

From the earliest times the psalmody of Lauds was daily concluded with the three last Psalms from the Book of Psalms – but this custom was abolished in BR 1911. It was also then that the earlier way of distributing the Psalms among particular days of the week was severely changed – though it was not until LH 1971 when it was completely shattered.

One can note that the exceptional significance of Psalm 50 (acquired by it in the 6th century) has been preserved also in the 20th century, though the frequency of its use is constantly changing.
 

Psalmody of Prime

The long tradition standing behind Prime does not change the fact that its psalmody was subjected to numerous modifications throughout the centuries. Nevertheless, some of its characteristic features (concerning the selection of Psalms) had been generally preserved either until BR 1911, or even until the reform of 1971. But elimination of Prime, ordered by the Second Vatican Council, has ended its career within Liturgia Horarum.
 

Psalmody of the Minor Hours

Up until 1911, Terce, Sext and None consisted in daily recitation of subsequent parts of Psalm 118. In BR 1911 this particular Psalm was preserved only in case of Sunday office, while on weekdays other Psalms (previously used in Matins) were introduced. Meanwhile, in LH 1971 both so called “additional psalmody” and the current psalmody for particular hora media are based on such a selection of Psalms that was utterly unfamiliar to the tradition of the Roman rite[10].
 

Psalmody of Vespers

Throughout the centuries – from the oldest sources to BR 1568 – there was some kind of admirable changelessness in the structure and selection of the psalmody of Vespers. Also BR 1911 to a larger extent preserved this tradition. But LH 1971 has introduced a sudden and multidimensional change: number of the elements of the psalmody has been lowered down from 5 to 3; one of Psalms has been substituted with a canticle from the New Testament; selection of Psalms has ceased to show any continuity with previous, outstandingly long tradition – exceptional is the case of Sunday, where – among others – the primacy of Messianic Psalm 109 has been preserved.
 

Psalmody of Compline

The structure and selection of psalmody of Compline remained the same for a good many centuries and was interrupted only in the 20th century; but while in BR 1911 traditional selection of Psalms was preserved at least for Sunday, it has been finally disintegrated in LH 1971, and only traces of it can be traced in the offices after the First and Second Vespers of Sundays and Feasts.
  

NOTES

[1] Officium divinum ex decreto Ss. Oecumenici Concilii Vatricani II instauratum auctoritate Pauli Pp. VI promulgatum: Liturgia horarum iuxta ritum romanum

[2] Cf. SC, 89.

[3] Cf. SC, 91: „psalmi non amplius per unam hebdomadam, sed per longius temporis spatium distribuantur”.

[4] Cf. Institutio generalis de Liturgia Horarum (IGLH), 126.

[5] Cf. Bugnini, 1990, p. 499.

[6] Cf. IGLH, 131: „Tres vero psalmi 57, 82 et 108, in quibus præponderat indoles imprecatoria, omittuntur in Psalterio currente. Item aliqui versus nonnullorum psalmorum prætermissi sunt… Quorum textuum omissio fit ob quandam difficultatem psychologicam, etsi psalmi ipsi imprecatorii in pietate Novi Testamenti occurrunt, exempli gratia Ap 6, 10, nulloque modo intendunt ad maledicendum inducere”.

[7] Cf. IGLH, 111.

[8] Cf. IGLH, 109.

[9] In relation to the Psalmody of the Roman rite of the 5th and the 6th centuries, I refer here to the works by Joseph Pascher, as cited in: Robert F. Taft SJ, Liturgy of the hours in East and West, Collegeville 1993, p. 136.

[10] However, so called additional psalmody is almost completely consistent with so called Gradual Psalms.

From the Complete Psalter to the Easier Psalter: An Insight into the Dynamics of Liturgical Reform in the 20th Century (Part 1)

We are grateful to Polish philosopher Paweł Milcarek, founder and editor-in-chief of the important Polish journal Christianitas, for submitting this article to NLM for publication. It will appear in two parts. – PAK

The Psalms are an indispensable part of the prayer of the Church and the basic substance of everyday non-Eucharistic liturgical prayer, the core of the Hours of the Divine Office. They constitute the oldest layer of the liturgy – also because only in their case we can state with certainty that they were part of Jesus’ personal prayer in His earthly life. Their composition in the Book of Psalms is a reminder of the order of liturgy of the First Covenant – which in precisely this respect was treated as own heritage by the first Christians and the ancient Church.

From very early times, the Church regarded the Psalms as privileged and irreplaceable way of fulfilling the command to “pray ceaselessly”, obeyed either almost literally e.g. by the Desert Fathers, or at least through appointment of fixed, recurring times of day and night prayer. For many centuries the Psalms – ordered in the books of the Divine Service and recited in times that determined the daily rhythm of the whole Christian world – constituted the main point of reference for prayer of all the faithful, both the clergy and the laymen. In the popular piety, however, they were obscured in the course of time by the “equivalents” of saying the Ave Maria and Pater Noster, or substituted with a variety of private devotions and spiritual exercises, remaining – as the breviary – the daily bread only of clergy and monks.

Hence in the modern age, the breviary became “the priests’ prayer” and the picture of a clergyman saying his breviary – in Latin, of course, but more and more often privately, somewhere in the outside, e.g. in the garden – entered the collective imagination of Christian societies as one of the attributes of this specific vocation. Moreover, though the laymen were rather reluctant to make use of the breviary, they were nevertheless aware of the fact that in a way it provided the clergymen with spiritual vigour.  No wonder that the misbehaving priests were mockingly described as those “who deny themselves neither the cognac, nor the breviary”. Hence, the breviary was regarded both as the clergymen’s privilege and as their duty.

If we are to trace out here the modern reforms of the Roman Breviary – or, strictly speaking, of its core, that is the Psalter – let us begin by posing the question: what kind of breviary was used by the Catholic priests of the Roman rite at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries? This question is easy to answer: it must have been the Roman Breviary, codified in 1568 by St. Pius V, compatible with the last typical edition issued in 1631 by Urban VIII and renewed by Leo XIII. [i]

In fact, this “Tridentine” breviary was much older than this general description seems to suggest. For as in the case of the Roman Missal of 1570, the post-Tridentine reform extended on the whole Roman Rite the rules of the prayer that for centuries had been established within the local Church of the papal Rome. The backbone of the breviary of St. Pius V – that is, its psalmody – was hardly any different from the oldest forms of the Roman Office we know from the 5th and the 6th centuries.
 

In accordance with a long tradition, having no alternative within the Roman rite, the Psalter was distributed over one week, though some Psalms recurred daily. St. Pius V wished this basic scheme of the weekly psalmody to constitute the main content of the Divine Service, therefore reduced the number of higher ranked feasts of the saints, which impeded most of the daily Psalter.

The priest reciting the Roman Breviary in the end of the 19th or in the very beginning of the 20th century used precisely such a “Tridentine” liturgical book, based on the Psalter of two saint popes: Gregory the Great and Pius V. However, paradoxically, it is not so easy to determine how his breviary prayer actually looked like. For in the course of the centuries that elapsed from 1568 to the end of the belle époque a number of factors appeared which made the practice of saying the breviary highly complicated.

In the first place, these was the considerable increase in the number of feasts of saints on the liturgical calendar, which impeded most of the Office of the various seasons. For the psalmody, this meant substituting the complete Psalter with much narrower choice of festive Psalms.

By the end of the 19th century, this uncontrolled domination of the Sanctoral cycle – related to the constant accumulation of new feasts – was accompanied by yet another move which deeply changed the very logic of the Office. To avoid overburdening the clergy with the recitation of breviary prayer, in 1883  Leo XIII granted a general indult, according to which throughout the whole liturgical year, it was allowed to substitute the Office of almost any feria or feast of the lowest rank with votive offices appointed to the various ferias (Monday: of the Holy Angels, Tuesday: of the Holy Apostles, Wednesday: of St. Joseph, Thursday: of the Blessed Sacrament, Friday: of the Lord’s Passion, Saturday: of the Immaculate Conception) [ii].

Taking into consideration the complexity of the system of feasts of that time, it is understandable that the possibility of saying throughout the week simply subsequent votive offices, characterized by clear devotional “motives”, was a tempting solution due to its simplicity or rememberable ordering. But in the same time both these factors (i.e. domination of the Sanctorale and substitution of the current office with the votive offices) led to continuous repetition of the Sunday psalmody in Lauds and to very frequent repetition of various Sunday Psalms in Vespers. Hence, only a little portion of the Psalter was actually used and, most of the Psalms appeared very rarely.

And yet the breviary Psalter as such had not been so far narrowed down – in theory it still comprised 150 Psalms, distributed over the course of one week.

Most unusual reorganization: “a new arrangement of the Psalter” of 1911

Such were the challenges faced by St. Pius X, who became pope in 1903. Convinced of the necessity to arouse and shape piety through the liturgy of the Church, he attempted to bring out basic structures of the liturgical heritage, sometimes completely obscured by later additions. Two motives were closely intertwined in this work: a desire to restore the primacy of the liturgical seasons and Sundays within the liturgical year, and and to restore the practice of saying the complete Psalter within a week. Here we will discuss this second issue.

In the apostolic constitution Divino afflatu [iii] of 1st November 1911, St. Pius X remind us of the ancient law that obliges the clergy to recite the whole Psalter within a week. The pope states that it is his intention to restore this practice in such a way that, on the one hand, the change would not cause any diminution of the cultus of saints, and on the other hand, would make the burden of the Office not more oppressive, but actually lighter for the clergy. Having both these issues in mind, the pope had appointed the commission consisting “of learned and active men”, who prepared “a new arrangement of the Psalter”.

As a consequence, the Holy Father decided to “abolish the order of the Psalter as it is at present in the Roman Breviary” and to “absolutely forbid the use of it” after 1st January 1913. Commanding the use the “new arrangement of the Psalter” from now on, the Pope proclaims that those who disobey this order will be punished. He concludes:

all such are to know that they will not be satisfying this grave duty [of reciting the canonical hours everyday] unless they use this our disposition of the psalmody.

In practice the severity of this regulation was eased by the indults, which allowed to use “the old arrangement of the Psalter” in private recitation.

Obviously, this “new arrangement of the Psalter” radically broke off with the ordering of the psalmody as it had been within the Roman Breviary of St. Pius V. Although continuity was preserved, for example, in case of Sunday Vespers, the order of this breviary Psalter was actually new. Moreover, it was a novelty also in comparison to the older, pre-Tridentine offices of the Roman rite. Nowhere in the history of the Roman psalmody – even reaching to its oldest versions we know, coming from the 5th and the 6th centuries – can we find the basis and the antecedents for the Psalter of 1911; in the same time, there exists a clear continuity between those ancient forms and the Breviary of 1568.

Hence we are safe to say that the number of Psalms in Matins of Sundays or ferial days had never been lower than 12; that usually the morning office had comprised 8 Psalms, including three Laudate Psalms [iv] and Psalm 50 (the latter from the 6th century had been recited almost daily); that parts of Psalm 118 had dominated Prime and other Minor Hours throughout the whole week; that from the very beginning Compline had included three defined Psalms (4, 90 and 133), used throughout the whole week. All these points have been truly modified by the Psalter of 1911 – the solutions it proposed more or less radically abandoned own tradition of the Roman office.

This fairly controversial move was made because the clergy of that time felt  somewhat “overburdened” by the Office. The attempt was therefore made to reduce this burden by proposing a well-balanced Psalter, based on the principle that each Psalm should be recited no more than once a week. [v] Hence, the reform of the breviary introduced by St. Pius X can be regarded as an adjustment of the Office to the longing for change, a result of the struggle with the weariness.

It is worth to recall the words by a distinguished expert in history of the Divine Service, Fr. Robert Taft S.J., who summarized these changes in a following way: “For anyone with a sense of the history of the Office, this was a shocking departure from almost universal Christian Tradition.” [vi]

Image courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed

The Psalter of the professors: “a new Latin translation of the Psalms” of 1945

Over thirty years after the introduction of “a new arrangement of the Psalter” by St. Pius X, another pope, Pius XII, introduced a new Latin translation of Psalms into liturgical usage.

In his motu proprio In cotidianis precibus of 25th March 1945 [vii], the pope firstly speaks (rather guardedly) of inaccuracies and deficiencies in the Vulgate translations of the Psalms. Reading between the lines of the document, we may say that the pope considers them increasingly annoying, especially when compared to the new translations which are based on original texts, and take advantage of progress in the knowledge of ancient languages, as well as of modern methods of textual criticism. The pope is aware that the Vulgate Psalter is deeply rooted within Christian tradition and that it had affected the way the Holy Fathers and Doctors had commented the Psalms. Nevertheless, expectations of the priests (“a good many” of them), as well as demands of the learned men, bishops and cardinals convinced the Holy Father to give an order that “a new Latin translation of the Psalms” is prepared. On the one hand, it was to follow the original text precisely and faithfully; on the other, as far as it was possible, it had to take into account “the venerable Vulgate”, as well as other ancient translations, referring to “sound critical norms” whenever there would be differences between them.

The document then states that the new version has already been completed “with the diligence befitting such a task” by the professors of the Pontifical Biblical Institute. Hence the pope offers it “to all who have the obligation to recite the canonical Hours daily” and permits them “to use it, should they wish to do so, in either private or public recitation”.

As it is indicated a few times in the document, the main aim of the whole undertaking was to enable those praying with the new Psalter to grasp more fully what is said in the Holy Book. The pope emphasizes that he is driven by pastoral concerns: he wishes the Psalms to be recited “not only with sincere devotion but with fuller understanding as well”.

Still, in the document itself there is a supposition that “there are times when, even after every help that text criticism and a knowledge of languages can offer has been exhausted, the meaning of the words is still not perfectly clear”. In such cases “their more definite clarification will have to be left to future study.”

This papal regulation led to an unheard-of situation: from now on, the translation recommended by Pius XII was to coexist in the liturgy of the Church together with the Vulgate version – unless everybody “should wish to” accept this new translation.
 

Thus, pursuant to the pope’s decision, the daily prayer of the Church comprised henceforth the monuments of two very much different mentalities: firstly, Psalterium Gallicanum, a witness to the patristic tradition and an object of centuries-old reflection; secondly, a suddenly developed product of academic research, evaluated only on the basis of its fidelity to the Hebrew original and its classicism of style. Regardless of the impracticality of such a dualism, this solution created an impression – for the second time within a few decades – that the true reform is not about revision, but about creation.

For the question arises whether it was really impossible to correct the Vulgate version instead of creating a brand new translation. Since the times of St. Pius X, the Benedictines from the Roman abbey of St. Jerome had been preparing a revision of Vulgate. Despite this, Pius XII decided to promote for liturgical usage a new translation, prepared at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

However, the Jesuits from this Institute did not restrict themselves to capturing correctly “the Hebrew truth”; in preparing this new version, they shaped its language after a distinctly classical style, distancing themselves from the specific qualities of Christian Latin. Their Psalter sounded like the works by Cicero, whose Latin was certainly more classical than that of St. Jerome. Moreover, their translation did not take into account the requirements of singing the Psalms in choir and in accordance with the principles of Gregorian chant. [viii]

Immediately after the release of In cotidianis precibus and in later Church publications ,there appeared, of course, loud voices of gratitude to the pope for his approval of the new version of the Psalter, deemed as “the sovereign gesture” made “when supreme good of Christian life demands it”. However, it is hard to prove that prior to this reform a conviction that the Vulgate posed a major threat to Christian life had really been widespread. [ix]

Regardless of the opinion one may have in the debate whether the version prepared at the Biblical Institute was indeed such a progress in translation, there is also another problematic issue: in the light of the principle of the organic development, the will to improve some aspect of the liturgy is not a sufficient reason to question the existing tradition – what is needed is the moral certainty that such an undertaking is indispensable for the benefit of spiritual life.  

Part 2 will continue with “The Psalter according to the Second Vatican Council.”

The author

NOTES 

[i] Breviarium Romanum ex decreti S.sancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, s. Pii V P.M. iussu editum, Clementis VIII, Urbani VIII et Leonis XIII auctoritate recognitum.

[ii] See ASS 16 (1883-1884), pp. 47-48 (for the decree) and pp. 145-180 (for the texts of the offices).

[iii] Hereinafter cited as in: AAS 3 (1911), pp. 633-650.

[iv] Anton Baumstark remarked: “Down to the year 1911 there was nothing in the Christian Liturgy of such absolute universality as this practice in the morning office [i.e. daily recitation of Laudate Psalms], and no doubt its universality was inherited from the worship of the Synagogue... Hence to the reformers of the Psalterium Romanum belongs the distinction of having brought to an end the universal observance of a liturgical practice which was followed, one can say, by the Divine Redeemer Himself during His life on earth” (as cited in: Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, San Francisco 2005, pp. 75n; hereinafter referred to as: Reid, 2005).

[v] In practice it was often considered necessary to divide particular Psalms – hence, instead of a few Psalms, subsequent “parts” of even one and the same Psalm were to be recited within one office.

[vi] As cited in Reid, 2005, p. 76

[vii] AAS 37 (1945), pp. 65-67.

[viii] Cf. Carlo Braga, La Liturgia delle Ore al Vaticano II, Rome 2008, p. 38; hereinafter referred to as: Braga, 2008.

[ix] Cf. Reid, 2005, p. 157.

Two Royal Psalters

One of the things that always impresses me in the study of the liturgy is the continuity which one can see over enormous distances in time, and here is a small but interesting example. The first set of pictures is taken from a Psalter made in the palace of Charles the Bald, a grandson of Charlemagne who ruled as King of the Western Franks from 840-77, and Holy Roman Emperor for the last 2 years of his life. An invocation is added to the Litany of the Saints, “that Thou may deign to preserve our spouse Ermentrude,” which dates the manuscript between her marriage to Charles in 842, and her death in 869. The name of the copyist and illuminator, Liuthard, is known from his signature at the end of the manuscript: “Hic calamus facto Liuthardi fine quievit. – Here the pen of Liuthard rested when the end was reached.”

The wooden covers are mounted with cabochons in metal frames, surrounding carved ivory plaques; the plaque on the front represents God protecting the soul of King David from various adversities. (Bibliothèque National de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 1152)

King David, with four of the other persons named by the titles of the Psalms as their authors, Asaph, Heman, Ethan and Idithun.

A portrait of Charles the Bald, with the hand of God reaching down to bless him. The inscription at top reads, “Since Charles sits crowned in great honor, he is like Josiah, and the equal of Theodosius.”

“The noble translator and priest Jerome, being nobly able, transcribed the laws of David.” The tradition of showing St Jerome as a cardinal has of course not yet arisen in the 9th century, and he is here shown as a Benedictine monk.

“The Book of Psalms begins.”

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Notes from the Dutch Spiritual Underground

How the Cursing Psalms Helped Schoolchildren During the Occupation of World War Two

Recently I had an enjoyable conversation with a director of music at a protestant seminary about the singing of the psalms. His parents had immigrated from the Netherlands after the Second World War, settling in Washington State, and he grew up in a Dutch Reformed Church in the US.

He told me a short story about his parents and how the psalms were used during the Nazi occupation of Holland. When his parents were young, in the Netherlands in the 1930s, schoolchildren prayed the psalms at school regularly. The school of his parents had a curriculum that required them to learn off-by-heart the opening stanza of all 150 psalms, and then be able to recite a select few in full from memory. When they learned the opening stanza of certain “cursing” psalms that express anger and the desire of suffering for enemies (for example, Psalms 58, 83, and 109), the teacher announced that they would not be praying the psalms in full or be praying even the first stanza again.

Then, in 1940, the Nazis invaded and occupied the Netherlands. The children were allowed by their occupiers to sing the psalms at school. Without explanation, the teacher told them to sing those cursing psalms. Thereafter they included them in their prayers.

Was the introduction of the imprecatory psalms good for the children and their teachers, or bad for them?

As it was told to me, it was good for his parents. They understood even as children that they were expressing anger towards their oppressors, but doing so in prayer (albeit through gritted teeth), allowed them simultaneously to bear that anger and process it by seeing that it didn’t diminish God’s love for them.

The Paul VI Psalter, published in 1970, which is used by most priests today, omitted the text from 23 imprecatory psalms. Imprecation means curse, not in the sense of foul language, but rather wishing extreme ill upon others. 

The General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours contains the following explanation for these omissions:

Three psalms (58, 83, and 109) have been omitted from the psalter cycle because of their curses; in the same way, some verses have been omitted from certain psalms, as noted at the head of each. The reason for the omission is a certain psychological difficulty, even though the psalms of imprecation are in fact used as prayer in the New Testament, for example, Rv 6:10, and in no sense to encourage the use of curses.

The story I relate above suggests to me that perhaps the risk of ‘psychological difficulty’ that will occur by including these psalms is exaggerated. In fact, I would suggest that there is a greater risk of psychological difficulty incurred by omitting them. Here’s why…

Dangerous imprecations? Psalm 109 from the Coverdale Psalter, the Book of Common Prayer.

Several years ago, I wrote an article, entitled Where Have All the *!*?-ing Psalms Gone? suggesting that this was not a wise omission, and would have a detrimental impact on the psychology of those in the Church. At that time I wrote, in this regard: 

“In my opinion, this is short-changing the faithful. I wonder also how this has affected the psychology of members of the Church and therefore how it has affected the institutional Church as a whole? There are so many aspects to the psalms that make them the vehicle, par excellence, for praising and worshipping God in the liturgy. One way in which they speak to me very strongly is by engaging emotions and directing them towards God. I find they engage me by articulating exactly how I feel in response to everyday situation. They do this by describing very human and unsaintly thoughts and emotions. This is the Christian way. We do not detach or deny the reality of evil and suffering, we engage with it and through God's grace can move forward from it, or perhaps even through it, to something better. Once engaged, they are resolved healthily by working them out with the psalmist. Sometimes this is within a single psalm, sometimes it is when we place it in the context of all 150 psalms as a whole.

A 14th century French depiction of Apocalypse 6, 9-10, martyrs receiving the white robes at the breaking of the 5th seal.

The liturgy is the powerhouse of the Church. When individuals pray the liturgy, they are praying for and with the Church as part of the mystical body of Christ. This has a profound effect not only on the whole Church, including those who never, for example, pray the liturgy of the hours, but also on the whole world, for it makes Christ present here in a special way.

What effect, I wonder, does the denial of feels and anger towards enemies, which every person feels at some point in their lives - and which some will experience very strongly - have on the person, on the Church, on the world? It cannot be good, it seems to me. All of us must have a healthy outlet that resolves such feelings. This is more complex than simply expressing anger or resentment - which can be done either constructively or destructively. In the Church we are facing increasing hostility from secular forces and from those of other religions. We need people of virtue (virtue means strength in following what is good) and courage to face these challenges directly and the guidance to do so constructively. We need people whose passion for the good is strong, but know how to direct that passion with reason.”

If I am correct then removing this possibility of healthy outlet of resentment and anger will result in greater anger in more people. The opposite of the intended effect.

Apocalypse 6, 9-10, referred to above, reads in the Knox translation: “And when he broke the fifth seal, I saw there, beneath the altar, the souls of all who had been slain for love of God’s word and of the truth they held, crying out with a loud voice, Sovereign Lord, the holy, the true, how long now before thou wilt sit in judgement, and exact vengeance for our blood from all those who dwell on earth?”

El Greco, 16th century, martyrs receiving the white robes at the breaking of the 5th seal

The Distinctions Between Liturgical Art, Didactic Sacred Art, and Illustration: Is There Really Any Difference?

When discussing the merits and qualities of sacred art, a distinction is often made between art that has a didactic function - primarily for teaching purposes - and liturgical art which is intended to deepen engagement with God directly during the liturgy itself. It is commonly said that in the Roman Church, the focus for the production of art has been didactic, at least since the time of Gregory the Great (who is often quoted in this regard), whereas in the churches of the Byzantine Rite, the focus, it is maintained, is on deepening engagement with the liturgy, and thus is more authentically liturgical. This distinction is made by some to explain what is perceived as the inferiority of Western art in relation to Eastern iconographic art.

Didactic art, it is assumed, engages the person primarily through the intellect, deepening the understanding of salvation history or of a feast. Liturgical art, on the other hand, it is said, engages the heart of the person, and engages both the intellect and will in an ordered and balanced way, so that the whole person is directed to the contemplation of God through worship of Him. 

In practice, however, I would say that this distinction is exaggerated. Good examples of Western “didactic” sacred art engage both the intellect and the will if it is effective in its function. After all, art that is intended to be didactic must be beautiful enough to engage the will as well as the intellect, so that we want to understand and be open to accepting its message - taking it to heart, so to speak. Further, if what it teaches us directs us to the liturgy simultaneously, which is quite possible, then it will enrich our worship, and so can be considered liturgical.

Similarly, good liturgical art is inevitably didactic also. The content of Eastern icons can be described and explained to us so that we understand its Scriptural roots, for example, and the feasts more thoroughly, strongly engaging the intellect. There are excellent books that do just this, and they draw heavily on Scripture and the teachings of the Church Fathers in doing so. I have recently featured a wonderful example written by the Orthodox iconographer Aidan Hart.

If the result is in each case that the person is drawn into a deeper participation in the liturgy, then for all the differences in artist’s intended purpose, or of those who commission artworks, the dynamic between art and viewer is likely very similar. Good didactic art is simultaneously liturgical, and good liturgical art is simultaneously didactic. The assumption made by critics of Roman Catholic art, that it was created to exclude a liturgical function, is not necessarily true.

So, for example, Gothic windows are often described by art historians as Scripture in images that teach the illiterate. But the truth is that they cannot be an alternative to Scripture; no one looking at this picture of Seth and Adam, e.g., would know the story without either hearing it or reading first. The primary form of teaching even with such a window is either the written word, or word of mouth. Once we know the story, however, looking at such an image is likely to bring to mind, in a single moment, not only the narrative from Genesis associated with it, but all the theological implications that this narrative has. And just as these truths have relevance every time we worship, this window has a clear liturgical function.

In order to know how well art performs its function, we would need to know if, generally, its effect is to distract from the liturgy, or to direct people to it, and this will be as much a consequence of its style as its content. We can never say definitely what goes on in people’s hearts, but generally, the Gothic style, as much as the iconographic, is cited as having a positive effect in this regard in the context of the rite it was created to illumine, that is, the Roman Rite. As a rule, liturgical art styles must have a balance of naturalism and abstraction, so as to create a recognizable image that has inbuilt into it a degree of dissatisfaction (due to the symbolic quality imparted by controlled abstraction) that leads us to move beyond the image in our imaginations, and to God.

There is another category of religious art, which has a purpose that is distinct from traditional church art and that is book art - i.e. illustration or illumination. One might say that the purpose of the illustration of sacred texts is primarily to direct us to the words in the book, so enhancing the power of the words lead us to God. This is a noble function certainly but is secondary in importance to the function of the art I have described above. The style of art that we might see in a children's bible or a Latin Mass Missal would, in my opinion, fall into this category. The examples I show below are not presented as bad art, but as good art which fulfills its function of illustrating a text very well. In my opinion, the style is too naturalistic to be considered authentically liturgical.

However, there can be a blurring of distinctions here too. For texts that have been read many times, and so become familiar to the reader, the sense that the words contain can be brought to mind in an instant, as described above with Seth and Adam in the context of the liturgy. When this happens, the art won't lead us back to the words, rather it leads us from the words, via meditation on the passage, to the contemplation of God. I suggest that images that are more likely to do this, will be illustrations painted in liturgical styles, as one might see in an ancient psalter.

Scenes from the life of Christ from the gothic Psalter of St Louis

An XI century Spanish Romanesque bible illumination

Such art, if viewed often in conjunction with the text, by being impressed upon our memories can be drawn upon by the imagination when we hear the words of the psalm, say, in the context of the liturgy, and so in this way can have a clear and even more direct liturgical function, albeit in a less direct way than the art hanging on the walls of the church. I suggest the best ‘illumination’ work in sacred art will fulfill both an illustrative and liturgical function (and hence is didactic as well!).

An Illuminated Psalter of the 13th Century

Here is another wonderful discovery from the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, an illuminated psalter from the beginning of the 13th century. (Département des manuscrits. NAL 1392) The manuscript begins with 13 pages of images of the life of Christ, each within a circular medallion, two per page, enclosed in a rectangular decorative border; these cover all the major feasts of the Church year, starting with Christmas (the birth of Christ and the annunciation to the shepherds.) Each such image also has two prophets with banderoles in their hands between the circles, but nothing written on them to identify them specifically.

Epiphany: the Magi before Herod, and with the Madonna and Child. St Matthew does not say how long it was between the actual birth of Christ and the arrival of the Magi, and this image is based on a type common in early Christian art, in which Jesus is a toddler, not a newborn.

The Wedding at Cana and the Baptism of the Lord.

The Temptation of Christ and the Transfiguration, the Gospels of the first two Sundays of Lent.

The parable of the Good Samaritan, and Christ with Mary Magdalene in the house of Simon the Pharisee.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Two Royal Psalters

One of the things that always impresses me in the study of the liturgy is the continuity which one can see over enormous distances in time, and here is a small but interesting example. The first set of pictures is taken from a Psalter made in the palace of Charles the Bald, a grandson of Charlemagne who ruled as King of the Western Franks from 840-77, and Holy Roman Emperor for the last 2 years of his life. An invocation is added to the Litany of the Saints, “that Thou may deign to preserve our spouse Ermentrude,” which dates the manuscript between her marriage to Charles in 842, and her death in 869. The name of the copyist and illuminator, Liuthard, is known from his signature at the end of the manuscript: “Hic calamus facto Liuthardi fine quievit. – Here the pen of Liuthard rested when the end was reached.”

The wooden covers are mounted with cabochons in metal frames, surrounding carved ivory plaques; the plaque on the front represents God protecting the soul of King David from various adversities. (Bibliothèque National de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 1152)

King David, with four of the other persons named by the titles of the Psalms as their authors, Asaph, Heman, Ethan and Idithun.

A portrait of Charles the Bald, with the hand of God reaching down to bless him. The inscription at top reads, “Since Charles sits crowned in great honor, he is like Josiah, and the equal of Theodosius.”

“The noble translator and priest Jerome, being nobly able, transcribed the laws of David.” The tradition of showing St Jerome as a cardinal has of course not yet arisen in the 9th century, and he is here shown as a Benedictine monk.

“The Book of Psalms begins.”

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Leaves of a 13th-Century Psalter

Yesterday, Joel illustrated his post about Hophni and Phineas, the wicked sons of the priest Eli, with an image from a 13th century manuscript which is now kept at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The illuminator of this manuscript, William de Brailes, was an Englishman, active from about 1230-1260; his surviving works include various Bibles and Psalters, and the oldest known English Book of Hours. The manuscript at the Walters is a gathering of 24 illuminated pages from a now-dismembered Psalter, but a great many other similar pages are now lost; seven others are in the Wildenstein Manuscript Collection at the Musée Marmottan in Paris, while the Psalter text is in the National Museum in Stockholm. Here is a selection of the illustrated pages; the whole manuscript can be seen, and a pdf downloaded for free, from the Museum’s website. (All images from Wikipedia; released into the public domain by the Walters Art Museum.)

The first two days of creation, Genesis 1, 1-8

The animals enter the ark, Genesis 7, 7 sqq.

The flood, Genesis 7, 11 sqq.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, Genesis 19, 15-26

Potiphar’s wife accuses Joseph, Genesis 39, 7-20. (Note the ugliness of her face, and the grimace on the face of the fellow in blue to the left of Joseph.)

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