The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition. Vol. 5. The Paris Psalter and the Meters of Boethius

298 Pages·1932·18.917 MB·English

by  George Philip Krapp (ed.)

THE PARIS PSALTER
AND THE
METERS OF BOETHIUS
EDITED BY
GEORGE PHILIP KRAPP
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1932
Copyright 1932
Columbia University Press
Published December, 1932
Printed in the United States of America
Waverly Press, Inc.
Baltimore, Md.
CONTENTS
In troduction..........................................................................vii
TEXTS
The Metrical Psalms of the Paris Psalter . . 1
The Meters of Bo eth iu s.....................................................151
NOTES
On the Paris Psalter..............................................................207
On the Meters of Bo e t h iu s ..........................................226

INTRODUCTION
A. THE PARIS PSALTER
I. The Manuscript
The most extensive collection of Anglo-Saxon metrical transla­
tions of the Psalms is contained in the manuscript commonly
known as the Paris Psalter. This manuscript is preserved in
the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris, its catalogue number being
Fonds Latin 8824. It is a carefully planned and well executed
volume, and is indeed a graceful example of medieval book­
making. The manuscript contains 186 parchment leaves, of
somewhat unusual shape, approximately 53.5 centimeters high
and 18 centimeters wide, that is, 21| inches high and 7‡ inches
wide. The folios of the manuscript are now numbered in
arabic numerals on the upper right corner of the recto of each
folio in a modern hand from 1 to 186. On a number of the
folios an older numbering, also in arabic numerals, is visible,
in an earlier but modern hand, from 1 to 196. The difference
between the two numberings is explained by the fact that at some
time, presumably since the older numbering was written in,
eleven folios have been cut out of the manuscript as follows:
one folio between fol. 20 and fol. 21 (fol. 21 according to the old
numbering),
one folio between fol. 26 and fol. 27 (fol. 28 according to the old
numbering),
one folio between fol. 45 and fol. 46 (not counted in the old
numbering),
two folios between fol. 63 and fol. 64 (fol. 66, 67 according to the
old numbering),
one folio between fol. 79 and fol. 80 (fol. 84 according to the old
numbering),
one folio between fol. 97 and fol. 98 (fol. 103 according to the
old numbering),
vili INTRODUCTION
two folios between fol. 113 and fol. 114 (fol. 120, 121 according
to the old numbering),
one folio between fol. 132 and fol. 133 (fol. 141 according to the
old numbering),
one folio between fol. 175 and fol. 176 (fol. 185 according to the
old numbering).
It will be seen that the folio between fol. 45 and fol. 46 was not
counted in the old numbering, and it may be that this folio was
cut out before the older numbering was written in. From de­
scriptions of the manuscript made in the early part of the
fifteenth century, we learn that at this time the manuscript had
at its beginning a picture of David playing the harp. Bruce
assumes that this illustration was detached from the manuscript
in 1562, on the occasion of the sack of Bourges, when the manu­
script reposed in the Sainte Chapelle at Bourges.1 It is ex­
tremely probable that the frontispiece was detached from the
manuscript at the same time that the folios in the body of the
manuscript were cut out and that these lost folios also contained
illuminations. Exactly at what period these folios were cut out
it is impossible to tell, though it must have been at a time be­
tween the old and the new numbering of the folios, that is, in
comparatively modern times.
The list given above of the folios missing in the manuscript
has been made from the evidence of the two folio numberings,
but is also agrees very closely with the evidence afforded by the
amount of matter lost from the text when the folios were taken
out. For instance, after fol. 20, eight verses have been lost,
after fol. 26, two verses together with the argument of Psalm 26,
after fol. 45, four verses, after fol. 79, five verses, after fol. 97,
eight verses, after fol. 132, five verses, and after fol. 175, three
verses, that is, in none of these instances more than eight verses,
and in most cases considerably less. But after fol. 63, seven­
teen verses have been lost, and after fol. 113, eighteen verses.
These are the two instances where the evidence of the numbering
indicates the loss of two folios from the manuscript. The agree­
ment of the two sets of evidence is therefore complete. It has
been pointed out that these missing pages, and the illustrations
1 Publications of the Modern Language Association IX, 52-53.