Latin Psalters

The Latin Church has a diverse selection of more-or-less different full translations of the psalms. Three of these translations, the Romana, Gallicana, and juxta Hebraicum, have been traditionally ascribed to Jerome, the author of the Latin Vulgate. Two other translations, the Pian and Nova Vulgata versions, were made in the 20th century.

Many of these translations are actually quite similar to each other, especially in style: the Roman, Ambrosian, and Mozarabic psalters have relatively few differences between them, such that the same settings can generally be applied to sing all three. Related too is Jerome's Gallican psalter (versio gallicana), made between 386 and 389, which was translated from the Greek text of the Hexaplar Septuagint. Later, Jerome translated the book of psalms from Hebrew, this translation is called the versio juxta Hebraicum. The Nova Vulgata psalter (1979), though stylistically similar to these, diverges rather more from these traditional psalters insofar as it more closely follows the Hebrew Masoretic text. Two of these psalters stand apart as independent translations from the Hebrew: Jerome's juxta Hebraicum and the Pian version (1945).

Also called the Psalterium Vetus, the psalter of the Old Latin Bible. Quotations from the Psalms in Latin authors show that a number of related but distinct Old Latin recensions were circulating in the mid-4th century. These had by then substantially replaced the older Latin 'Cyprianic Psalter', a recension found in the works of Cyprian of Carthage that only survived in the 4th-century writings of the Donatists; and are all thought to be revisions of a lost common early 3rd-century version.[1]

A 12th-century Latin bible from Monte Cassino (Ms. Cas. 557) preserves, alongside the Roman, Gallican and Iuxta Hebraeos psalters, a fourth complete version of the psalms extensively corrected with reference to the columns of the Hexapla Greek, possibly using a columnar transcription of the Hexapla psalter similar to that surviving in Milan. The underlying Latin text for this manuscript is believed to correspond with an early 3rd-century 'Cyprianic Psalter'.[1]

This is the version used in the Ambrosian rite for use in Milan.[2]

This is the version used in the Mozarabic rite for use in Toledo.[2]

The Roman Psalter, called also the Versio Romana or Psalterium Romanum, was traditionally identified with Jerome's first revision of the psalms completed in 384; which was thought to have been made from the Versio Vetus Latina, with cursory corrections to bring it more in line with the psalms in the common Greek text of the Septuagint. More recent scholarship rejects this theory.[3] The Roman Psalter is indeed one of five known revised versions of the mid-4th century Old Latin Psalter; but, compared with the four others the revisions in the Roman Psalter are in clumsy Latin and signally fail to follow Jerome's known translational principles, especially in failing to correct harmonised readings. Nevertheless, it is clear from Jerome's correspondence (especially in the long and detailed Epistle 106) that he was familiar with this psalter text, albeit without ever admitting any responsibility for it; and consequently it is assumed that the surviving Versio Romana represents the minimally revised Roman text as Jerome had found it.[4]

The Roman version is retained in the Roman Missal and is found in the writings of Pope Gregory the Great, but for the Divine Office, it was, from the 9th century onwards, replaced throughout most of the west by Jerome's so-called "Gallican" version. It lived on in England where it continued to be used until the Norman Conquest and in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome and fragments of it were used in the Offices at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice from at least 1609 until 1807.[5]

The Versio Gallicana or Psalterium Gallicanum, also known as the Gallican Psalter (so called because it became spread in Gaul from the 9th century onward[6]) has traditionally been considered Jerome's second Latin translation of the Psalms, which he made from the Greek of the Hexapla between 386 and 389.[7] This became the psalter of the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate bible.[6]

This most influential psalter has a distinctive style which is attributable to its origins as a translation of the Septuagint.[8] Following the Septuagint, it eschews anthropomorphisms. For instance, the term rock is applied to God numerous times in the Hebrew Psalter, but the Latin term petra does not occur as an epithet for God in the gallicana. Instead more abstract words like refugium, "refuge"; locus munitus, "place of strength"; or adiutor, "helper" are used.[9]

The versio juxta Hebraicum or versio iuxta Hebraeos was the last made by Jerome. It is often informally called the "Hebrew Psalter" despite being written in Latin. Rather than just revise the Gallicana, he translated these psalms anew from the Hebrew, using pre-Masoretic manuscripts ca. 392.[10] This psalter was present in the Bibles until Alcuin's reforms linked to the Carolingian liturgical reform: Alcuin replaced the versio juxta Hebraicum by a version of the psalter used in Gaul at the time. The latter became known as the Gallican psalter (see the section above), and it superseded the versio juxta Hebraicum. The versio juxta Hebraicum was kept in Spanish manuscripts of the Vulgate long after the Gallican psalter had supplanted it elsewhere.[11] The versio juxta Hebraicum was never used in the liturgy.[12]

Under Pius XII, a new Latin translation of the psalms,[13] known as Versio Piana, Psalterium Vaticanum or Novum Psalterium,[14] was published by the Pontifical Biblical Institute.[13][15] This translation was made from the Hebrew. Its Latin adopted a classical rather than a biblical style. This version is sometimes called the Bea psalter after its author, Augustin Bea.[lower-alpha 1][16] In 1945, its use was officially permitted by the pope through the motu proprio In cotidianis precibus, but not required.[13][15][16]

In 1969, a new psalter was published which translated the Masoretic text while keeping much of the poetry and style of the Gallican psalter.[17] The 1969 psalter deviates from the previous versions in that it follows the Masoretic numbering of the psalms, rather than the Septuagint enumeration. It is the psalter used in the edition of the Roman Office published in 1986.[18]