Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance

476

George Buchanan (1506-1582)

Poetic paraphrase of The Psalms of David

(Psalmorum Davidis paraphrasis poetica)

Edited, translated, and provided with introduction and commentary by Roger P.H. Green Emeritus Professor of Humanity, University of Glasgow

LIBRAIRIE DROZ S.A.

11, rue Massot

GENÈVE

2011

Mentions légales

Résumé

De toute l’œuvre de l’humaniste écossais Georges Buchanan, la paraphrase poétique des psaumes de David a reçu la plus grande attention de son auteur, qui en a fait le travail d’une vie. Extraordinaire par l’habileté et la variété métriques, ainsi que par l’intelligente fidélité au texte sacré, ce chef-d’œuvre est à la fois un discours de dévotion chrétienne, bâti sur l’érudition théologique, et une excellente illustration de la poésie néo-latine, démontrant un talent poétique du premier rang et une appréciation sensible des auteurs classiques.

*
**

Abstract

The Scottish Humanist George Buchanan’s poetic paraphrase of the psalms of David took a lifetime and garnered much attention for its author. This work not shows only Christian devotion, but is also an excellent example of neo-Latin poetry, a first-rate work with a sensitive appreciation for classical authors. Roger Green provides here the integral critical edition of Buchanan’s work, along with an English translation and thoroughly concise commentary for each poem. His introduction considers composition, the history of publishing and psalms, Buchanan’s life and the consequences of the Portuguese inquisition, the legacy of classical poetry in the work as well as its reception over the following four centuries.

*
**

Published with the support of The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and of the Modern Humanities Research Association

www.droz.org

*
**

Références papier

ISBN-10 : 2-600-01445-4

EAN : 9782600014458

ISSN : 0082-6081

Copyright (2011) by Librairie Droz S.A., 11, rue Massot, Genève.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission.

*
**

Références numériques

EAN ePUB : 9782600314459

EAN PDF : 9782600114455

ISSN : 0082-6081

Copyright (2021) by Librairie Droz S.A., 11, rue Massot, Genève.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission.

*
**

Où trouver ce livre ?

En librairies numériques ou sur le

site de la Librairie Droz

.

*
**

Comment citer ce livre ?

Afin que les lecteurs des différentes formes de cet ouvrage aient des références communes et puissent citer ce livre de la même façon, les numéros de pages de la version papier ont été conservés dans le flux du texte sous la forme {p. AAA} et les numéros de notes conservés à l'identique. Ce livre numérique peut donc être cité de la même manière que sa version papier.

Dans cette version en ligne un clic sur l'icône de droite « Citer ce livre » vous permet d'enregistrer la référence bibliographique dans vos signets (page « Mes citations »). La sélection d'une portion du texte fait apparaître en rouge, à droite, une icône « Citation » qui vous permet d'enregistrer cette citation et sa référence à la page près.

Les références de ce livre sont également intégralement prises en compte dans l'outil de gestion références bibliographiques Zotero.

CONTENTS

Preface

9

Note on Abbreviations, Numbering and

11

Introduction

1. The Making of the Psalm-poems (1520-1565

13

2. The Printing of the Psalm-poems (1565-1582

26

3. Composing the Psalm-poems

33

4. Biblical and Classical Sources

42

5. Jewish and Roman Elements

60

6. Philosophy and Spirituality

72

7. The reception of the Psalm-poems (1582-2007)

83

Sigla and text

99

Text and translation

101

Commentary

521

Appendix: the metrical varieties (

carminum genera

)

627

Bibliography

629

Index

633

PREFACE

Psalmorum Davidis paraphrasis poetica, Paraphrasis Psalmorum Davidis poetica

: in both versions of the work’s title used over the last 450 years the word

poetica

happens to come last; this is its natural position in such phrases. But less understandably the poetic element in this work has been elided or implicitly subordinated, almost as a matter of course, by the great majority of those who refer to and make use of Buchanan’s masterpiece. There is, for example, in the title page of Waddel’s translation, hitherto the only accurate and useful one, nothing to indicate that his original was in verse, and in some cases even in the late twentieth century, when Buchanan’s poetic qualities did at last come to be valued and analysed, the title of convenience is just ‘paraphrases’ or ‘Psalm paraphrases’. If all this gave the impression that the paraphrasing of the Psalms was all-important, to the exclusion of their clothing in new, Latin, poetic dress, it would be most unfortunate. The work which was perhaps Buchanan’s greatest poetical achievement – the greatest work of the greatest of Scottish Latin poets – should not have been decanted into a category associated with a simple functionality, however sacred the title of ‘Psalm paraphrases’ might sound. The word

poetica

is due for reemphasis. Fortunately, in English at least, the epithet naturally comes first; this book’s theme is ‘the poetic paraphrase of the Psalms of David’. Of course something must come last, but little if any injustice will be done if that is the name of David, for his role as the author of all the Psalms is already being questioned in Buchanan’s time; and perhaps to some extent within the work Buchanan plays down his identity, whether as prophet or sovereign, in favour of a picture of the human self. There will be no lèse-majesté, but simple economy, when the name of David is omitted from the title in the course of the present book. The poems will be referred to as ‘poetic paraphrases’ and sometimes (to remedy the historical inbalance as outlined above and the probable effects on readers’ perceptions), as ‘psalm-poems’. ‘PP’ will on occasion be a convenient abbreviation.

But if one aim of the present version is to analyse and reinstate the work’s poetic qualities, it is certainly not its aim to subject the element of paraphrase to ignominy or oblivion. In the words of Andrew Melville, we must appreciate both ‘the art of the poet and the mind of the prophet’. Both aspects must be emphasised if we are to assess aright Buchanan’s outstanding achievement. The question of Buchanan’s sources and his methods of paraphrasing the Bible will be very prominent in both introduction and commentary, and it is hoped that a new, clear picture will be given, replacing the guesswork that has hitherto dominated. The

introduction outlines how the poetic paraphrases were written, crafted and presented in print, and give a detailed account of his Biblical and Classical sources and inspirations. It will also assess the blend of Jewish and Roman elements, and the presence of philosophy and spirituality in the Psalm-poems. The reception of the PP, not only in Scotland but world-wide, will be sketched in its final section. Brief explanation for my choice of base-text – for there were a score of editions printed in his lifetime alone – will be found in the introduction, too; and the fully revised text is accompanied by an apparatus criticus to explain choices and even, very occasionally, make tentative emendations. The translation is a literal one, its main aim, naturally, being to help the reader, but not (I hope) one that is dull or lacking in appeal. The brief commentary seeks to provide an ample account of Buchanan’s treatment of the Psalms and the artistry and adornment of the poems, along with some exploration of various other points of interest.

It was a long time ago that as a young lecturer I was invited by Professor James Cameron of the University of St. Andrews, in the context of the forthcoming quatercentenary celebrations of Buchanan’s death, to take on a study of his poetic paraphrases of the Psalms. Soon afterwards, and mainly in the context of the St. Andrews conference of 1982, I developed an acquaintance,

qua

academic colleague (for I had previously played cricket with him), with Ian McFarlane, to whom Buchanan studies owe so much. This first phase of my work on Buchanan produced three papers, one on metre, one on the Horatian intertextuality of the Psalm-poems, and one on their printing history in the sixteenth century. Later there followed more detailed studies of Buchanan’s engagement with Horace and his exploitation of the various ‘voices’ of Vergil and other hexameter poets, much assisted by the hospitality of colleagues in another Celtic university, the University of Swansea, and the encouragement of Professor Ceri Davies in particular. Then, as the quincentenary of Buchanan’s birth came into sight, Philip Ford suggested that I contribute a study of the Psalm paraphrases to his projected complete edition of Buchanan’s poetry. A grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for research leave in the year that followed the labours (and intellectual rewards) of organising a conference in Glasgow on ‘George Buchanan, Poet and Dramatist’ in 2006 made available some relief from teaching and administrative duties which would have made the completion of such a large work impossible. My thanks are also due to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Glasgow for granting me a matching period of leave. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the invaluable help of staff in the Special Collections departments of the universities of Glasgow and St. Andrews. I am also most grateful for help and advice on various points to Robert Crawford, Max Engammare, Ian Hazlett, Gerald Hobbs, Jack MacQueen, Ann Moss, and Stephen Rawles, as well as to Philip Ford, the series editor. This book is dedicated to the memory of John Durkan and Ian McFarlane,

quorum umeris innitimur omnes

.

Roger Green, June 14 2008

NOTE ON ABBREVIATIONS, NUMBERING AND REFERENCES

The following abbreviations are used for reference works:

OLD

Oxford Latin Dictionary

OMLV

The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse

(ed. F. J. E.Raby, 1959)

TLL

Thesaurus Linguae Latinae

In references to the commoner classical authors standard and easily recognisable abbreviations are used: so Hor.

O

., Verg.

A

., Stat.

Theb

.

Some items in the bibliography that are referred to frequently are denoted by author’s name alone where this is unambiguous: so Anderson, Rodd.

The following sigla denote versions of the Bible:

C
Campensis (Jan van Campen),

Psalmorum omnium iuxta hebraicam veritatem paraphrastica interpretatio

(Nuremberg, 1532)

F
Felix Pratensis (Felix de Prato),

Psalterium ex hebreo…ad verbum fere tralatum

(Venice 1515, Haguenau 1522, Basle 1524)

H
Jerome’s translation of the Psalms from the Hebrew

M
Sebastian Münster,

En tibi lector Hebraica Biblia planeque nova

(Basle,

1534-5)

P
Santes Pagnini,

Biblia…

(Lyon, 1528 and later)

Qn

Biblia. Quid in hac editione praestitum sit, vide in ea quam operi praeposuimus, ad lectorem epistola

(Paris, 1545). This denotes the notes in this volume; its second text (the Vulgate is also present) is that of Z.

V
Vulgate: the version used is that of R.Estienne (1545), in Qn above.

Z
Leo Jud and others,

Biblia sacrosancta testamenti veteris et novi e sacra Hebraeorum lingua Graecorumque fontibus…

(Zurich, 1543)

For abbreviations denoting the editions of the PP, see the list of Sigla on pages 99-100.

References to Buchanan’s Psalm-poems in the introduction and commentary are made by number and line, so 23. 17. Where a passage of the Psalm itself is

referred to the reference takes the form Ps. 23 v. (or verse) 7. A whole Psalm will normally be referred to by a simple numeral, so 23; but a single numeral occurring in one of the short introductions to each poem immediately before its commentary normally refers to a line of that poem. When the Vulgate or a work that follows the Vulgate numbering of the Psalms is cited, the form will usually be Ps. 22 (23), since from Psalms 10 to 148 the Vulgate numbers are one less than the Hebrew-based numbers, which Buchanan used.

INTRODUCTION

1. THE MAKING OF THE PSALM-POEMS (1520-1565)

When the complete set of poetic paraphrases of the Psalms was printed for the first time – the date is late 1565 or early 1566 – Buchanan was almost exactly sixty years old.

1

Like many of his works, they came into print in the decade after he returned to Scotland from France, where with a few important and fruitful intermissions he had studied, taught, written, networked and debated for some forty years. On his return, in 1560 or 1561, there was probably still some work to be done on them, but the Psalm-poems are not to be seen as part of what he called the ‘wreck’ of his poetry of which he gradually assembled the

disiecta membra

in Scotland.

2

The secular poems (this is a convenient title for the very miscellaneous other half of his non-dramatic verse) may have required much more attention, being in their nature less easy to keep track of;

3

and while the occasional poems in many cases risked losing their topicality, if not their verve and vigour, with the passage of time, the poetic paraphrases of the Psalms will surely have been kept together and carefully treasured. As Buchanan conceived them, unity was of the essence, although delight and edification would reward the study of individual poems. Nor was the

editio princeps

of 1565/6,

4

although the work of a writer that its printer proudly and perhaps possessively designated as

poetarum sui saeculi facile princeps

, ‘easily the chief of the poets of his time’, the end of his attention to the Psalm paraphrases. Buchanan went on to show an enduring concern, attending both to poetic elegance and theological accuracy. As the narrative of the printing history will show,

5

he continued to revise them, including those in the small selection of Psalm-poems that had come out in 1556,

6

until the end of his life. Although the

poetica paraphrasis

is a long work – it has the length of an epic, and in some ways a greater range than epic – his continuing, indeed lifelong engagement with it over some fifty years is a remarkable phenomenon. It is both an old man’s work and a young man’s work.

Another paradox, one often remarked, is that his Psalm-poems, soon to be so popular in post-Reformation Scotland, and in England, the Low Countries and Germany,

7

were in large part written in a monastery, and in Portugal.

8

In 1550 Buchanan had been in Coimbra for some three years, having accepted the invitation to teach in the Colégio das Artes there, when he found himself arraigned before the Inquisition in Lisbon. The outcome of a lengthy and arduous trial was his confinement in the nearby monastery of San Bento.

9

This state of affairs was to last more than six months, albeit with a period of qualified freedom from December 1551 to late February 1552, at which point he was released. In his

Vita

10

Buchanan links the composition of his Psalm poems with this episode, and the story of their composition will start here. The relevant words are:

hoc maxime tempore Psalmorum Davidicorum complures vario carminum genere in numeros redegit

(‘at this time in particular he rendered many of the Psalms of David into verse in various metres’). It is not stated here that he began them at that time, nor that he completed them then. There is no need to infer, as the strict sense of the words might suggest, that there were other periods of his life when he wrote a large number, though that is quite credible. But in fact we know nothing of other periods when he gave them his concentrated attention; we can, of course, look for gaps, as it were, in his career, which has been carefully unfolded by McFarlane and helpfully narrated by Ford,

11

periods when he might have had time for writing, but we cannot account for every year of his life, by any means, and in any case it is always possible that he found most stimulation to write at times when he was most busy.

It is not unreasonable to ask how many is ‘many’, how many he worked on and completed in these months in or near Lisbon. The word

complures

could also be translated ‘several’, ‘quite a number’, or (McFarlane) ‘a great number’, but there is nothing to be gained by playing around with English equivalents, since the word takes such meaning as it has from its context. But an intelligent estimate can be made on the basis of the data. To the period of six months’ confinement or restriction, we might add at least six months more, to include the duration of his trial, but the combination of ill-health in an Inquisition prison, and the mental stress of a prolonged examination, as he sought to counter the accusations with no knowledge of the evidence available to his accusers,

12

will not have been conducive to poetic composition. The Psalms may well have provided comfort during the long trial, but sustained literary activity would have been difficult in such a vexing situation. However, conditions both mental and physical may have later improved. There is no evidence that he was tortured, though modern writers sometimes imagine this to enhance the martyrological perspective. In San Bento he may have been a respected, if not welcome, guest. Its abbot initially expressed reservations about the degree of comfort he could offer;

13

even if he was being disingenuous and seeking to avoid such a task (such a ploy would in itself be testimony to Buchanan’s status) this shows some respect towards Buchanan, even deference. The Scot may have been largely left to his own devices, and to his scholarly and not unspiritual pursuits, and will presumably have had few things to divert him. Visitors will not have been allowed if there was a danger of his spiritual reform being compromised; and his efforts to relate to the monks, who were supposed to be giving him ‘more accurate instruction’,

14

were frustrated when he found them ‘ignorant of all religion’, though ‘not inhumane, nor wicked’.

15

Buchanan was evidently a sociable man and given to friendship,

16

and the situation will have irked him, and we must not underestimate the pain of having his freedom withdrawn for an unspecified period and feeling that he had been misunderstood by his enemies or even friends

17

– but he will have had time on his hands.

In this atmosphere, and assuming that his study of the Psalms had the general approval of the authorities and that he had at least a few relevant books, how quickly might he have written? A poetic paraphrase of a shorter Psalm might easily be finished in one day, or even in the early morning; to be sure, many of the slightest poems show great sophistication of detail, but such ornamentation might with practice become easier, almost routine. At the other extreme, one of the longer poems (there are in fact eleven of more than 100 lines, and others of almost that length) might well occupy a week or more. In an almost unique piece of comparative information, Buchanan’s contemporary Musius tells us that he completed his own poetic paraphrase of the long – and dreary – Psalm 119 in fourteen days, but he was a free man, and so probably much busier.

18

Buchanan could, it may be speculated, have completed on average two or three in a good week; and so, given a determined routine, between fifty and seventy-five (half the total) within six months. A total of fifty seems not unreasonable, with a few others – though the statement from the

Vita

does not imply any unfinished poems – in various degrees of incompletion. This very provisional conclusion does not conflict with the evidence of the 1556 edition, which included nineteen of his poems in all; they were a selection. Estienne’s gentle rebuke, in his foreword, that Buchanan had ‘lain hidden’ (

latuisti

) for a long time – in other words, had been reluctant to publish – rather suggests that there were other poems, as does the fact that the poem (104) which Estienne placed at the end of the collection seems to have been taken from a larger number. The fact that Buchanan would make various changes in his Psalm-poems, as is clear from a comparison of the various editions, does not mean that the earlier versions were unfinished or provisional: these corrections were applied to poems already well crafted and metrically sound. There is no knowing which poems besides the abovementioned nineteen were completed by the time he left the monastery; if the 1556 edition is any guide, he did start at the beginning, but picked out several later psalms too. Nor is it known how many he had written or begun before his confinement. It may well be that this period of enforced leisure supplied the impetus to undertake the whole set of Psalms, but it is very likely that he had already begun them. The poem mentioned in the account of the trial, which was evidently in limited circulation in Portugal, need not have been the only one.

19

We must now turn to the task of reconstructing the earlier development of Buchanan as poet in general and as paraphraser of the Psalms in particular. We are told in the

Vita

that Latin verse composition was something he studied on his first visit to Paris, in 1520. A high valuation had been placed on Latin verse composition ever since this was promoted as one of Cardinal d’Estouteville’s reforms to the University of Paris promulgated in...