A Glossed Wycliffite Psalter, Volume 1: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 554

This is a two-volume critical edition of a Middle English commentary on the Psalms based on a Late Version text of the Wycliffite Bible translation. The commentary takes the form of 1,363 shorter and longer glosses, variously interrelated, prepared by scholars sympathetic with the Wycliffite movement, and coordinated carefully with the Psalms text. Its early fifteenth-century base manuscript, MS Bodley 554, was prepared to allow reading and use of the Psalms alongside the best recent and more ancient Latin commentaries, primarily those of Nicholas of Lyra, OFM, and St. Augustine. The glosses are both philological and homiletic, testifying to an avidity at the heart of Wycliffism for the close relationship between textual accuracy in the understanding of Scripture and moral rigor in its application to the concerns of medieval Christian individuals and communities. They display a special interest in understanding the Christian Psalms by way of their Hebrew originals.

The edition provides textual notes and variants to parts of the commentary that survive in other Wycliffite Bible manuscripts, the complete Latin sources from Lyra’s fourteenth-century Latin text, bibliographic references to the Augustinian sources, and a glossary to the Psalms and commentary texts. There are also extensive explanatory notes concerning the importance of Lyra’s exegesis to two other unedited manuscripts related to Wycliffite biblical scholarship: Wyclif’s Latin commentary on the entire Bible, the Psalms portion of which is preserved in Oxford, St. John’s College MS 171; and a Middle English summary of the Bible in Oxford, Trinity College MS 93.

Michael P. Kuczynski, Professor of English, Tulane University

Michael P. Kuczynski is Professor of English at Tulane University. He specializes in Middle English literary history and late medieval manuscripts, especially of the Psalms. His most recent research has been on the Middle English glosses to the Wycliffite Bible. He has published widely on Middle English poetry and prose, especially of a religious nature, and in such related areas as Old English poetry, medieval astronomy, the contemplative (mystical) life during the Middle Ages, and antiquarianism or the history of the scholarly recovery of the medieval past.