Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England: Experiments in Interpretation

Abstract

Relatively few scholars—the likes of Beryl Smalley, Anne Hudson, Vincent Gillespie, and Ralph Hanna—achieve their scholarly reputations not only by dint of hard work and insights but also by doing something few medievalists have the time and opportunity to do: read manuscripts in quantity. On the trajectory of his scholarship to date, to that cohort we can add Andrew Kraebel, who shows that scholarly opinion concerning fourteenth-century English commentary on and translation of the Bible is superficial and often wrong. Biblical commentaries are arguably the most common—and diverse—medieval genre, but many critics who have never read through even one Biblical commentary assume that they are “tedious or intellectually repressive tools of clerical control” (p. 20). Kraebel carefully exposes the error of this assumption and supplies examples of nuanced sophistication on almost every page.Readers of this meticulous study should give the words “Commentary” and “Translation” in the title their due weight because Kraebel shows how the blended genre of “‘commentary translations’” is the paradigmatic form (p. 7, adopting a phrase from Alastair Minnis). The word “Experiments” in the subtitle is also very important. The monastic lectio and the scholastic practice of accumulating cross-references are not fully separable, and even reformers like John Wyclif produced commentaries that are identifiably scholastic and also “innovative, creative, and experimental” (p. 20). Kraebel's claims are made all the more credible because of numerous transcriptions of material that remain in manuscript. Latin quotations are reliably translated throughout. The book ends with three appendices that should be read sooner rather than later, or at least in tandem with the main chapters: first, a fascinating outline of the symbols Wyclif adopted from Gilbert of Poitiers in his Psalm commentary (Oxford, St. John's College 171) to group psalms programmatically; second, an analysis of the complex manuscript affiliations of Richard Rolle's Latin Psalter; third, an edition of a prologue to a commentary on Matthew, in Latin (from Durham Cathedral Library A.1.10, twelfth-century) that draws upon work attributed to Anselm and Geoffrey Babion and that became a basis for an important non-Wycliffite Gospel commentary in English (and see below for Kraebel's article in Traditio).In addition to the Matthew commentary, Kraebel centers his study on Psalm commentaries, Rolle's English Psalter in particular. Here Kraebel makes the essential point that there are “book specific allegiances” that determine how Biblical books can and should be read (p. 29). To refer to “Biblical commentary” without noting which Biblical book is being commented upon divorces any reading from its generic and exegetical tradition. Psalms yield the most varied interpretations because they can be read historically, as allegories of Christ, and as a collection of lyric poems that may or may not be uniformly authored, ordered, or divinely inspired. The vox and persona of each psalm are subject to debate (p. 97). Kraebel emphatically distances himself from the fourfold mode of exegesis, however, along with any strict differentiation of the modus tractatus (structure) from the modus procedendi (style). In a thorough review of commentaries by Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Lyre, Peter Lombard, and the lesser-known Thomas Waleys and Henry Cossey, who marvels at the poetic ability of a rude shepherd (p. 42), Kraebel exposes the nuance and variety of Psalm commentators and how they blend academic and devotional reading practices. Lyre, whose postils survive in more than 800 manuscripts, is clearly the major, but by no means the only, influence on Wyclif. Kraebel postulates that Wyclif, along with William Woodford, are “belated” supplements to Lyre in the sense that they see themselves as heirs to a lengthy tradition of exegesis (p. 90).In chapter two Kraebel turns to Wyclif's psalm commentary (in a single manuscript, Oxford, St. John's 171) to demonstrate his “hermeneutic eclecticism” (p. 57). Others—notably Smalley, who calls the commentary “arbitrary” and Kantik Ghosh, who calls it “idiosyncratic” (p. 65)—have noted the same feature, a feature that extends to Wyclif's understudied Glossed Gospels which blend historical, tropological, and mystical comments. Kraebel proposes that manuscripts of Wyclif's gospel commentaries show evidence of revision over time, and that they may have been taken with him from Oxford to Lutterworth (pp. 68–72). An excursus on salt (Matthew 5:13) yields the kind of in bono and in malo readings that one would expect (good salty priests sterilize worldly desires; bad salty priests fail to flavor spiritual teaching [p. 76]) but the point is that the commentary entertains an interpretive flexibility and multiplicity that would satisfy any Foucauldian.Chapter three provides rich readings of Rolle's Latin Psalter and of his English Psalter. Again, Kraebel sees evidence of projects composed and revised over a lifetime and of how the Latin and vernacular commentaries share modes of composition even as the English Psalter has a “heightened complexity” (p. 111). Rolle the mystic, Rolle the exegete, and Rolle the translator (in the case of the English Psalter) work together to produce “hermit hermeneutics” (p. 95). The mise en page of text and commentary in manuscript, along with script hierarchies and rubrication, further complicate how the commentaries must be read. To these ends Kraebel provides seventeen manuscript images. A set of remarkable portraits of Rolle himself that appear in three manuscripts of the Middle English Desert of Religion, in two of which Rolle wears a scholar's cap, show how the solitarius becomes a scolarius (p. 132; the Desert of Religion is not in the index, and it would help to identify the text when the image is first discussed on p. 92).Kraebel returns to the Glossed Gospels in chapter four to demonstrate that they were not the only such commentaries being produced in England. Again, we see evidence of work in progress as manuscripts are copied and patched in piecemeal form. Adding to the complexity are the existence of shorter and longer versions of the Glossed Gospels. The longer version is prior, as Anne Hudson has demonstrated, and Kraebel agrees with Hudson that the Early Version of the Wycliffite Bible was not a draft but a more literal version used in tandem with the Later Version in order to respect the authority of the Vulgate. The “pore scribeler” of the Glossed Gospels recalls the “simple creature” in the prologue to the Wycliffite Bible (p. 157). In a charming metaphor the Glossed Gospels are like a “riche mannes shoppe” where one may find exactly the item—the gloss—one is looking for (p. 170). A revealing moment in the Middle English prologue to the Matthew commentary assures readers that the English translation is “euyn proporcyond” to the Latin, and the author apologizes for his “unsafery” (i.e. “unsavory”) style (p. 137). Only the most scrupulous reading of these texts—which Kraebel provides—shows the common goal: that devotion properly practiced leads to salvation. There is one slight bibliographic glitch when Kraebel cites his edition of the Middle English prologues related to the Durham Matthew Prologue: the page numbers given in the main text are correct, but the page numbers in the bibliography are a dittography from the prior entry (recte Kraebel, Traditio 69 [2014], pp. 87–123). My only other critique is the overreliance on endnotes. There are over 600 notes for 187 pages of text. Careful citation is clearly necessary, but too often the notes contain useful observations that could and probably should be integrated in the main text. Flipping back and forth makes for heavy sledding.The perceptive epilogue, “John Bale's Dilemma,” foregrounds the challenge that commentators from all ages face. Whereas Protestant reformers, for example, claim to reject the bankrupt obfuscations of tradition for the true meaning of scripture written on the heart, they still rely upon former interpretations and then inevitably contribute to the “exegetical stockpile” (p. 177). Even a citation of Martin Luther threatens to make him into another in a long line of sterile commentators. Bale privileges Wyclif's work as a translator over his work as a commentator, a bias reinforced by Protestant triumphalism and shared by many modern critics. Kraebel's principal achievement is to show that translation and commentary cannot exist, or be properly understood, without the other. Tradition and innovation always travel together.