Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/62

Rh the church of Milan and the Basilica of the Vatican. He then in Bethlehem prepared a second more carefully revised edition, according to the Hexaplarian Septuagint-text with daggers (as a sign of additions in the lxx contrary to the original) and asterisks (a sign of additions in the lxx from Theodotion in accordance with the original), and this second edition which was first adopted by the Gallican churches obtained the name of the Psalterium Gallicanum. It is not essentially different from the Psalter of the Vulgate, and appeared, with its critical signs, from a MS of Bruno, bishop of Würzburg (died 1045), for the first time in the year 1494 (then edited by Cochleus, 1533): both Psalters, the Romish and the Gallican, are placed opposite one another in Faber's Quincuplex Psalterium, in t. x. p. 1 of the ''Opp. Hieronymi, ed. Vallarsi'' and elsewhere. The Latin Psalters, springing from the common or from the Hexaplarian Septuagint-text, as also the Hexapla-Syriac and the remaining Oriental versions based upon the lxx and the Peshîto, have only an indirectly exegetico-historical value. On the contrary Jerome's translation of the Psalter, juxta Hebraicam veritatem, is the first scientific work of translation, and, like the whole of his independent translation of the Old Testament from the original text, a bold act by which he has rendered an invaluable service to the church, without allowing himself to be deterred by the cry raised against such innovations. This independent translation of Jerome has become the Vulgate of the church: but in a text in many ways estranged from its original form, with the simple exception of the Psalter. For the new translation of this book was opposed by the inflexible liturgical use it had attained; the texts of the Psalterium Romanum and Gallicanum maintained their ground and became (with the omission of the critical signs) an essential portion of the Vulgate. On this account it is the more to be desired that Jerome's Latin Psalter