EXTRACTS FROM A REVISED VERSION OF RICHARD ROLLE'S "ENGLISH PSALTER" IN MS LONGLEAT 3, AN EARLY VERSION WYCLIFFITE BIBLE

Abstract

In the early fifteenth century, individuals sympathetic to Wycliffite views revised more than once and extensively Richard Rolle's English Psalter, a Middle English translation and exposition of the Latin Psalms and Canticles.1 Five substantial extracts from one of these Wycliffi te versions, hitherto unidentified, appear as marginal glosses to Psalms i, iii, xix, xx, and xxi, according to the Vulgate numbering, in Warminster, Marquess of Bath, Longleat House MS 3 (hereafter simply Longleat), a copy of the Wycliffite Bible in the early translation. The glossator is not the main biblical text scribe of Longleat, although he does add matter other than the Rolle selections to the manuscript, as I explain below. His English Psalter extracts derive from the revised text of Rolle's work identified by Anne Hudson in her recent critical edition of the Wycliffite versions as RVi, but not it would seem from any of the copies Hudson used.2 Here, following a brief introduction to the manuscript, I describe the context and content of the extracts, discuss the possible Wycliffite sympathies of the Longleat glossator, and then present the extracts in edited form with variants from Hudson's edition.Among the more than 250 surviving manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible, Longleat, once owned by the Norfolk antiquary Henry Spelman, was copied according to Mary Dove c.1390-1400 and is distinctive in several ways.3 A hefty folio, measuring approximately 395 x 285 mm, it is one of only five complete copies of the early Wycliffite translation to have been identified, although the text lacks some of the Old Testament prologues and all of those for the New Testament and is now defective at the end in the Apocalypse. Longleat is also one of a small number of copies of the Wycliffite Bible that indicate clearly the non-canonical status of the Old Testament canticle called the Prayer of Manasseh, copied here immediately after II Chronicles xxxvii.15 and given the rubric Pis preyere of Manasses is not in Ebreu (fol. 156). The Wycliffites were especially interested in this prayer because, before his penance, King Manasseh of Judah was a notorious idolater and opposition to religious images is a common Wycliffite theme.4 Conrad Lindberg identifies Longleat as 'one of the best' manuscripts of the early Wycliffite translation of the Bible5 and Dove describes its distinction in containing 'lengthy Middle English glosses on some Psalms', the extracts I have identified as deriving from a copy of RVi.61. The context and content of the extractsAccording to Wyclif and his followers, the Bible is the only reliable foundation of doctrine (sola Scriptura) and as such requires careful exegesis.7 Psalm exegesis is especially challenging, since the Psalter circulated during the Middle Ages in multiple discrepant Latin versions and its meaning was regarded as particularly dense. Rolle praises the Psalms in the preface to his English Psalter as 'perfeccioun of dyuyne pagyne', in that the Book of Psalms encompasses the teachings of both the Old and New Testaments - 'lare' (spiritual wisdom) that the rest of the Bible 'draghes langly' (treats at length).8 The anonymous author of the General Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible endorses and elaborates this view:he Sauter comprehendþ al þe elde and newe testament and techiþ pleynli [fully] þe mysteries of þe Trinite and of Cristis incarnacioun, passioun, risyng aeen and stiyng [ascension] into heuene and sendyng doun of þe Hooli Goost and prechyng of þe gospel, and þe coming of antecrist, and þe general doom of Crist, and þe glorie of chosun men to blisse and þe peynes of hem þat shulen be dampned to helle.9Several Wycliffite bibles containing the Psalms and stand-alone Wycliffite psalters have marginal glosses. These are drawn primarily from the fourteenth-century Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra's Postilla super totam Bibliam, secondarily from Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos, and thirdly (in only a few instances) from other commentaries, such as Cassiodorus' Expositio Psalmorum. …