5 - The Textual Tradition of the Core-Repertory Second-Mode Tracts and Eripe me

Summary

The tables include all the sources in my sample of early manuscripts; a blank box indicates that there are no variants from the tract in that portion of text. Spelling variants are not noted here. While it is important broadly to establish the textual origins of the chant texts, the minutiae of textual transmission (‘abitat’/ ‘habitat’; ‘celi’/ ‘caeli’ etc.) are no more my concern in this study than the minutiae of melodic transmission. In listing variants from the Roman and Old Latin Psalter, differences from the tract text in an isolated manuscript are not signalled here.

I have used Robert Weber's edition of the Roman Psalter in identifying the Roman Psalter tradition together with its variants. The minutiae of Gallican Psalter transmission are less crucial here; I have simply used the apparatus of the modern Biblia sacra vulgata (Stuttgart, 1994), noting common variants. Arnobius the Younger's later-fifth-century psalm commentaries include paraphrases of the psalm texts discussed here. Arnobius is potentially crucial for establishing Roman psalm texts at the time when many chant texts came into being. Arnobius's citations correspond sometimes to the Roman Psalter, sometimes to the Gallican Psalter, and are sometimes inconsistent with any known psalter tradition. Since Arnobius is generally both paraphrasing the psalms and commenting on them at the same time, there are often textual differences from the psalter texts. Arnobius's commentary on Qui habitat follows the text closely; that on Deus deus meus hardly quotes any of the text at all, instead describing the Crucifixion at length. Despite this, his citations are worth noting here because they further illustrate the certainly Roman milieu of the tract texts under consideration.

The manuscript sigla used here are taken from Robert Weber, Le psautier romain et les autres anciens psautiers latins; éd. critique par Dom Robert Weber (Rome, 1953), as follows: