Two Revisions of Rolle's English Psalter Commentary and the Related Canticles ed. by Anne Hudson (review)

As the pagination makes clear, this volume can only be fully appreciated as part of a three-volume entity. All the introductory material is bound in with Volume 1; of the complete Psalter, this volume covers less than the last third, namely Psalms 116 (117 in modern reckoning) to 150. It does this with remarkable thoroughness: in the course of 125 pages, the Latin text of the Psalms is given in full, verse by verse, with each verse followed by Rolle's English commentary on it.

In the following section, we are given the text plus Rolle's commentary on twelve 'canticles' from the Old and New Testaments and other sources. It is not immediately obvious why editor, Anne Hudson, has chosen to describe this collection as 'Related Canticles'. Several of the items are well known as Gospel canticles and were daily inclusions in the divine office, in Lauds, Vespers, and Compline respectively, another was conventionally used at Lauds on Sundays. A couple are non-scriptural: the Quicunque vult (strictly a creed rather than a canticle) was traditionally recited at Prime on Sundays, while the Te Deum laudamus was used at Matins on days when the Gloria was prescribed at Mass.

Both groups of material, psalms and canticles, are accompanied by a comprehensive apparatus of alternate readings from the eleven principal manuscripts. Hudson's own commentary occupies the central and largest section of the volume. While much of her work has to do with simply identifying quotations from Scripture and allusions to writers such as Peter Lombard, Hudson also seeks to discern departures from Rolle's original text, especially such changes as may reflect the influence of Lollard commentators.

Indeed, this whole work is an edition of revisions of Rolle's commentary. Precise identification of the elements comprising commentaries and glosses is always a difficult task (some would say an impossible one) owing to the very nature of commentaries themselves as being always in flux, and having little independent existence or authority in their own right, but being mere attempts to explain and elucidate works of higher authority: Hudson has performed a generally thankless task with thoroughness and skill.

The volume closes with a selection of helpful material: an extensive glossary of Rolle's English; an index of proper names; and a list of biblical references and allusions.