Complete Works of Saint Jerome, Vol. X

The image shows two pages (17 and 18) of a printed Latin preface. The text is continuous across the spread.

letters, written in almost all capital uncial a style of rounded, capital lettering used in ancient manuscripts characters. You will feel how good a use they have been for us when you approach the reading of the work itself.

But we have also made the so-called Roman Psalter very rich by means of another very ancient revision of the same book, in the places where it differs from the Hieronymian. We received it from a distinguished manuscript which the library of the Verona chapter preserves in what they call square characters, smelling of the sixth century, and of the best quality for codices of this kind. It has on every opposite page the Greek text responding to as many verses of the Latin version, though not written in Greek, but in Latin letters; and so that you do not think this the masterpiece of the book, know that not a few such writings are met with in the manuscript libraries of Italy, and were long ago praised by Lucas of Bruges. But to speak now of the Latin version, which concerns us primarily, if it is not the very revision of Augustine, it seems at least to have been adorned for the most part after his likeness by some scholar, such as Cassiodorus. It is known that the bishop of Hippo gave himself the task of correcting the codex of the Psalms, as he himself narrates in letter 261 CCLXI, to Audax, no. 5, where, when he said he lacked the Hieronymian version from the Hebrew, he adds: We, however, have not translated, but have corrected some faults of the Latin codices from the Greek exemplars. Whence perhaps we have done something more suitable than it was, yet not such as it ought to have been. For even now, those things which perhaps escaped us then, if they move us while reading, we correct by comparing codices. Indeed, this version of the Verona Latin codex almost always agrees with the Augustinian reading, not only in those places where it dissents from other editions of the Psalter, as many as there are and have been, but also where it seems to have less correctly [what they have]. A few—to speak more precisely, ten or so places in which it deviates—cannot entirely be considered those which belonged to the old edition and had been corrected by Augustine; for it is not probable that the zeal of the bishop of Hippo consisted of so few corrections, nor—which is the main point of the matter—that it was placed by him only in the latter part of that book; for our codex differs only from that place onward. It must therefore be concluded on the contrary that the great diligence of the holy bishop, as it had been in the others, did not reach that far; but that those psalms were recognized in those places by the editor of the Verona codex, either according to the examples of others, or—which I would prefer to think—according to the later cares of Augustine, which, after the Enarrations to the people, he had noted in his own exemplar: For even now, he says, those things which perhaps escaped us then, if they move us while reading, we correct by comparing codices. What if our codex seems to have expressed the reading in some place from Augustine's very Enarration, not from the intended text of the psalm? Not rarely, it also reads more correctly than that prior correction of Jerome—the Roman Psalter, I say—and it tastes of the genius of a truly learned critic. Can the great Jerome, if the reading of the Verona codex is more ancient than he is, be thought to have made a not-good version from a good and commonly accepted scripture? It is one thing if, while correcting hastily, he suffered certain things to remain for just causes, which from another side would be less approved by him. If the version contained in the Verona codex is that which prevailed before the correction of the holy Father, then whoever attributes such a memory of antiquity to this book from the treasury of his own bestowals must necessarily say—by a nefarious calumny—that the old reading was corrupted, not corrected, by him, as often as it has something otherwise and more correctly. But that you may have it fully ascertained with what empty eyes—or rather, no mind at all—I know not who foisted that version upon the public as the Itala, consider that example of the verse from Psalm 127 CXXVII, verse 2, You shall eat the labors of your hands. No one who has read how much trouble that passage once caused for ancient interpreters, and especially for Hilary of Poitiers, could ever be brought to believe that the old version before Jerome thus favored it, and that it was the Itala, because the Latin books before Jerome had labors of fruits instead of labors of hands. The matter would have been safe and simple if this interpretation had been known to them: nor indeed was there any reason why that excellent bishop, after having held various opinions, should attempt the place from another side, and, as Jerome testifies in Letter 34 XXXIV in our revision, to Marcella, assert that the opinion holds better if it is written to eat the fruit of labors, and not the labors of fruits. Truly, that could not be perceived at all from a collation of the Latin codices: For the Latins, continues the holy Doctor, deceived by the ambiguity of the Greek word, karpoi fruits, interpreted fruits more than hands, although karpoi hands are also called hands, which in Hebrew is set as CHAPHAC. Therefore, the reading of the Itala edition, as they call it, or the old Vulgate, was fruits; which alone prevailed so much in all the books that it was retained even by Jerome himself in the first correction of the Psalter.