A PARAPHRASE OF THE "MISERERE" IN ANGLO-NORMAN VERSE (LAMBETH PALACE, MS 431)

Abstract

IntroductionIt is little wonder that the Miserere, of all the Psalms, should have been paraphrased in Anglo-Norman (AN) verse in late twelfth-century England: Psalm 1 played a prominent role in the Roman Church during the Middle Ages as one of the seven penitential Psalms and as part of the Asperges rite. The text edited here has come down to us in a single manuscript of the early thirteenth century, Lambeth Palace, MS 431 (fols 238va-24ira). Comprising 324 lines of octosyllabic verse, it is a loose rendering of the Gallican Latin text of the Miserere: following a 38-line prologue, each verse of the Psalm is cited in Latin before being paraphrased and elucidated in AN. The text as it survives in the Lambeth manuscript, however, is incomplete, since the final four verses of the Psalm and their commentary are wanting.Modern scholars have hitherto shown scant interest in the Lambeth Miserere (EM) and it has received no previous edition. In his thorough description of MS 431, M. R. James noted that the final part of the volume, which he dated to the twelfth century, preserved 'the psalm Miserere mei, Deus paraphrased in French verse'.1 Henning Diiwell refers to the EM as the 'Psalm Miserere mei deus, paraphrasiert in afz. Versen' in his edition of the text preceding it in MS 431, Lucida ire III, a late twelfth-century prose translation of the Elucidarium by Honorius Augustodunensis.2 In her catalogue of AN works, finally, Ruth Dean lists the EM as a homily (no. 611).3In spite of its fragmentary state, however, the LM merits a modern edition on account of its place within the important and precocious AN Psalter tradition. It is a text that claims relevance for all ('a tute gent', 35) and yet gives particular prominence to the priesthood, who are to safeguard their flocks from wolves like swift sheepdogs who bark and lap (295-304). As this example shows, the imagery deployed by the vernacular author can be vivid indeed.The manuscriptLambeth Palace Library, MS 431 is today made up of 241 parchment folios, measuring approximately 213 x 148 mm. It is composed of six volumes, chiefly preserving Latin theological and philosophical works, copied in numerous hands dated by James to between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries and bound together at an unknown later date. The manuscript was owned in the early seventeenth century by William Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, who bequeathed it to his successors on his death in 1610. Barring a period of storage at the Cambridge University Library in the mid-seventeenth century, it has remained in the Lambeth Palace collection ever since.The LMis the final text of the final volume of the manuscript. It is preceded by the following two works:1. fols 183'-2iov: The Latin text of the Elucidarium, a basic handbook of Christian doctrine compiled by Honorius Augustodunensis at the turn of the twelfth century, perhaps in Canterbury. Divided into three books, covering matters divine, ecclesiastical, and eschatological, it takes the form of a dialogue between a teacher and a student, and circulated widely in the medieval West.'12. fols 21 o'-238v; The only extant copy of Eucidaire III, an anonymous AN prose rendering of the Elucidarium, made in the later twelfth century. Intriguingly, its modern editor concludes that its Latin source must have been highly similar to the Latin Elucidarium preceding it in this manuscript, but is nonetheless able to identify several Latin witnesses that are even more closely related.3The Latin and AN copies of the Elucidarium and the EM were made by the same scribe, in a neat early thirteenth-century book hand in black ink. The Elucidarium texts were written in thirty-two long lines, while the IJM was copied as verse in two columns of thirty-two lines (with the first line of text above the uppermost ruling).6 The Latin text of the Elucidarium received decoration in the form of two-line initials, alternating in red and blue ink, with the speaker rubricated. …