The St. Bede Psalmcast: Episode 2

It’s Episode 2 of the St. Bede Psalmcast!

Audio production is getting a little better; my production assistant donated a pair of her old ballet tights to the show and we rigged a pop filter. I’m learning my way around the editing software too, but I imagine it’ll be a few more episodes before things really shake out.

Instead of dealing with one particular psalm, this time we’re doing a quick introduction to the Psalms as a whole. That having been said, I wasn’t able to get through what I wanted to get through in one episode, so this is Introduction to the Psalms, Part 1; part 2 will come out next week.

https://soundcloud.com/user-657912221/ep002-introduction-to-the-psalms

The image for this episode is folio 105a from the Parma Psalter illustrating Psalm 76. This is an important (and beautiful!) Hebrew psalter with marginal commentary produced in Northern Italy sometime around 1280.

6 thoughts on “The St. Bede Psalmcast: Episode 2

  1. Derek Olsen Post author

    Yes, it is. That’s a standard format for medieval biblical commentary. Once I’m home, I’ll link to a Latin Psalm commentary that uses the same basic style: larger central text, commentary in smaller text around it. (Or search for images of the glossa ordinaria.)

  2. Barbara S.

    Thanks – that’s interesting. Apparently the Parma Psalter commentary was an already-existing and rather famous one from Rabbi Ibn Ezra; was that the case for these others as well? I mean, did people use Augustine’s commentary (for instance) for some of the Christian versions?

    And were these personal commissions, do they know? As opposed to being commissioned for a synagogue or something like that? Or for monasteries, in the case of Christian versions?

  3. Derek Olsen Post author

    Actually, one of the more common marginal commentaries up until the Glossa Ordinaria was an excerpting of Cassiodorus—one of the reasons why I’m studying him and giving him more visibility. From the Glossa and beyond, I’m not sure. I still need to investigate that.

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