Today there is a good article in the news on prayer beads. It can be found here. It shows the diversity of uses of prayer beads.

I also have a post up on Heavenfield about how Epiphany was considered to be one of the three most important Christian feasts of the year, along with Easter and Pentecost, in Anglo-Saxon England. It can be found here.

Derek’s post on the importance of psalm 137 yesterday (here) brought to mind that psalm 136/137 is odd in Bede’s abbreviated psalter. It is the only verse in his abbreviated psalter that he changes to allegory. This is just so peculiar. Why change only one line of scripture? In Ward’s edition she seems not even sure that it is supposed to represent a line from 136/137, putting her translation in brackets with “136?” [Vulgate 136/modern 137]

The only line that Bede apparently chose to include from psalm 136/137 and then alter is verse 9: “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” which is changed to “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord!” (Browne’s translation).

Gerald Browne and Benedicta Ward both address this unique alteration. Ward reported that she searched all of scripture, commentaries, psalters etc and couldn’t find it anywhere. She is at a loss for its source. Browne (p. 12-13) believes that Bede “may have drawn his inspiration from St Hilary, whose exposition of the verse in question reads: ‘Blessed…is he who…will drive out and destroy each desire of his every passion … in accordance with the fear of God’”. If this is true then Hilary of Poiters commentary on the psalms is important for Bede’s understanding of the psalms. Does anyone know of an English translation of Hilary? I’m not sure what I think of Hilary’s commentary either. The text is surely a cry for retribution.

The context of the line may be relevant in why Bede would make such a change.

[125] Change, Lord, our captivity, like a stream in the south. [126] Unless the Lord guards the city, he who guards it watches in vain. [127] Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. [128] The blessing of the Lord be upon us. [129] Lord, hear my voice; let your ears become attentive to the voice of my entreaty. [130] Lord, my heart is not exalted, nor are my eyes lifted up. [131] This is my rest forever, [132] for there the Lord has commanded blessing and life forever. [133] You who stand in the house of the Lord, [134] glorify the Lord, for the Lord is good. [135] Praise the God of heaven, for his mercy is forever. [136] Blessed is the man who fears the Lord. [137] I will praise you, Lord, with my whole heart. Lord, your mercy is forever; do not forsake the works of your hands. [138] If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I lie in hell, you are present. [139] Rescue me, Lord, from the evil man; from unjust men save me. (Browne, p. 80-86)

This section is obviously a string of very short abbreviations. One line or a part of a line from each psalm is it. I’ve included most of this section of one-liners. It actually goes back to psalm 119 but I’m not sure how much more I can quote for copyright reasons. I think its helpful to look at it in this continuous fashion because that is how it appears in medieval texts.

It is true that not much from psalm 136/137 fits the context to Bede’s abbreviations but perhaps ps. 137: 5-6 would have fit –”If I forget you O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.”. This would have fit the context above just fine and verse 5 would have fit a writer like Bede so well. Yet Bede choose to substitute an allegory for perhaps one of the most disturbing verses in the psalter. Suggestions on an explanation are welcome!

Unfortunately the (near) contemporary abbreviated psalter in the Book of Cerne lacks Psalm 136. It is the last psalm missing in a large gap probably due to a missing folio or two in its exemplar.

References:

Gerald M. Browne, trans. The Abbreviated Psalter of the Venerable Bede. Eerdmans, 2002.

Christopher L Webber. A User’s Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: Morning and Evening Prayer. Morehouse, 2005. $8 on Amazon.com.

This is a very handy little book. It is designed for people who know nothing about daily prayer, and so takes nothing for granted. This is a good thing! Webber has reprinted the pages of morning and evening prayer out of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), going so far as leaving the same page numbers, and then provides facing page commentary.

The Introduction overs a wide variety of information. One of the primary concerns here is the difference between Rite I and Rite II. Webber provides a discussion of how Rite I differs from Rite II, but all further discussion uses Rite II. He also discusses the differences between the 1928 and 1979 BCP.

The real value of the book comes when we get to the actual offices. Set up in facing page style, each section has a general description of its purpose, history, and the sources of the actual words. One of the obvious things that comes out of the discussion is changes to the canticles in the 1979 BCP. I have to say I like the additional canticles and I would be happy if there were even more of them. It always surprises me that so much from the apocrypha is included when there are so many canticles in scripture that are omitted (Jonah, Song of Songs, Hannah’s song etc). He goes on to give the sources and authors of the collects included with the offices. The bit about the Phos hilaron was considered a cherished old hymn by St Basil in 379 is interesting. I also thought it was interesting that Webber noted that the Magnificant can be used for morning prayer and that any morning canticle can be used for evening prayer. That is very good to know because always using it for evening prayer is a little too rigid for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but it doesn’t always seem like the best canticle to go with the other selections. The book rounds off short discussions of the prayers and a short glossary.

As I said from the beginning, its a handy book. Its not groundbreaking scholarship or comprehensive analysis, but it suits its purpose: to introduce new people to morning and evening prayer. I think it does that quite well.

Derek has an interesting post here on early medieval liturgical materials. As Derek points out, to do the daily office in the early medieval period required juggling five different books — breviary, collectar (with collects, I presume?), psalter, antiphoner, and hymnal. How many clergy would want to juggle this many books, much less laity? Besides, this requires a mini-library and is not very useful for travel. Books of hours then provided primarily the laity with one book that contained everything they needed to pray the hours.

Now to be sure, some of the above books may have had a combination of materials in one book, say psalter and antiphoner or hymnal. Indeed, psalters were the most multifunctional early books, usually containing additional matierals like liturgical calendars, antiphons (sometimes in place before and after the psalms), and a collection of other prayers. Likewise, breviaries contained a wide variety of material and are the clerical version of a book of hours. As the liturgy became more complex, breviaries got not so brief, and became difficult to handle.

I think its a shame that antiphons have been largely forgotten and collects have become rather cookie cutter. I hope to post some new collects here in time.

In the introductory matter of the 11th century Irish Liber Hymnorum’s abbreviated psalter, there is an instruction that “the number of prayers given from the Psalter is 365″ (McNamara, p. 77). Exactly what this means is unclear to me.

Scholars have taken this to mean that abbreviated psalters are to have 365 verses. However, neither of the two surviving copies of the abbreviated psalter included in the Liber Hymnorum has 365 verses, but rather 240 verses. Both surviving copies are incomplete. Likewise the abbreviated psalter in the Book of Cerne (Bishop Æthelwald’s psalter, 8-9th century) only has 272 verses. It also has an obvious lacuna. The only early abbreviated psalter that I know of to be reconstructed completely is Bede’s because it can be reconstructed from three surviving copies of the same age, about 100 years after his death. The editor Browne notes that no individual copy of Bede’s psalter is complete. Interestingly, Bede’s reconstructed breviate psalter has 383 verse abbreviations by my count of Browne’s text.

Bede’s text provides an interesting question on the how to interpret 365 verses/prayers. As I have discussed before, Bede often took only partial verses and then spliced them together with partial verses from other psalms. So how do we count 365 verses? Are they abbreviations of psalm verses or are they constructed verses in the new psalter? The 383 verses represented in Browne’s text refer to abbreviations of psalm verses. I haven’t counted the spliced verses (assuming I know where he intended verses to begin and end, which I do not presume to know). For that matter in Bede’s time — he died in 735 — biblical verses had not yet been numbered. So how he counted verses may have been different that how we would count verses. Given all these caveats it may be that Bede’s 383 verses is close enough to 365 to say that is what he was aiming for. This may also explain why his abbreviations get shorter as he goes along. With a few exceptions, the abbreviations of psalms are much shorter in the last half to third of the psalter than in the first half, although by then he would have been reaching many more repeated themes.

However one of Bede’s surviving copies, apparently coming through the influence of Alcuin, does possibly give us another clue. The Cologne copy of Bede’s psalter says that the abbreviations are handy verses to be used in the creation of new prayers. In other words, they were handy phrases that could be mined while trying to compose a new prayer for a particular need or occasion. If this is the meaning of 365 prayers, it may mean that one could write 365 prayers using phrases from the abbreviated psalter — in effect write a prayer for every day of the year.

This also brings us to the overall purpose of the abbreviated psalter. Was it intended to be a shorter version of the psalter used for prayer or was it used as a reference for writing prayers (and maybe sermons)? There seems to be some evidence that it was used for both.

References:

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

Brown, Michelle P. (1996) The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage, and Power in the Ninth-Century England. British Library and University of Toronto Press.

McNamara, Martin. (2000) The Psalms in the Early Irish Church. Journal of the Study of the Old Testament.

Leslie Webber Jones. (1929) “Cologne MS.106: A Book of Hildebald” Speculum 4(1): 27-61.

Bede’s Book of Hymns II