This pseudepigraphic Epistle to the Laodiceans, the only known Occitan version, is found in ms. PA 36 immediately after the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. That is a common location in manuscripts inasmuch as the late Latin pseudo-Pauline Epistle was forged to fill in the gap of a letter to the Laodiceans mentioned in Col. 4.16 Et cum lecta fuerit apud vos epistula, facite ut et in Laodicensium ecclesia legatur: et eam quae Laodicensium est, vos legatis. Since most of ms. PA 36 remains to be published as edited text, references to manuscript readings other than those in Laodiceans are given here as page, column, and line numbers in Clédat’s photolithographic reproduction.
When I originally edited the Latin text of ms. BnF, Lat. 343, the microfilm of ms. BnF, Lat. 342 was not available to me. The 1988 edition is kept here with only a very few changes. Having now transcribed Laodiceans from ms. 342, I can say that its text is almost identical to that of 343 except for some trivial spelling differences. I have recently discovered another almost identical text in an unidentified manuscript (my siglum TP) in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, vol. 153, appended to Bruno of the Carthusians’ exposition of Colossians in his Expositio in Epistolas Pauli. The Carthusian Theodor Petraeus, who edited Bruno’s works at Cologne in 1611, attached it to Bruno’s work because he had recently found it and wished to use it to justify it’s exclusion from Bruno’s exposition of the Pauline epistles. He writes: «EPISTOLA B. PAULI AD LAODICENSES, Nuper in antiqua bibliotheca inventa: Sed quia inter catholicas vulgo non legitur, non est a B. Brunone elucidata». None of those three Latin manuscripts served as a model for our Occitan translation despite their close similarities. Adam Clarke, English author of a commentary on the Bible, tells us that he provides a Latin version of the Letter to the Laodiceans and his own English translation of it at the end of his commentary on Colossians to prove to the reader that it is a counterfeit. He does not make clear his source for the Latin version, though he tells us that he has put in parentheses variant readings from a manuscript in the library of St. Alban’s of Anjou (my siglum StA) contained in an edition done by the French Benedictine Dom Augustin Calmet (1672-1757). However, Clarke does not say where among Calmet’s many publications he found the edition of the Letter to the Laodiceans. Moreover, he mentions the Latin text of the letter that appears in the German polyglot Elias Hutter’s 1599 edition of the New Testament in twelve languages, the Latin version being the only text that he judged not to be of Hutter’s own composing. Finally, Clarke mentions a manuscript in his own library that contains the letter, but without describing it. The edition that he gives us (my siglum AC) is of some interest here because it shows many of the variants found in mss. 342, 343, and TP.
The language of ms. PA 36 is essentially the Languedocian dialect. More specifically, I believe that it reflects elements of the Occitan speech of the regions of modern-day Ariège and Aude and adjoining areas in southern Haute-Garonne; see Harris 1987, especially the map in Figure 1 showing the modern area of aibre ‘tree’, the habitual form in PA 36. The manuscript dates in my opinion from the end of the 13th or from very early in the 14th century. The presence of Italianisms in the manuscript, especially in the Cathar Ritual, may point to a Languedocian scribe working in Italy. If so, he would have lived there long enough to be so conversant in the speech of the area that he was able to carry from his model or to introduce himself blatant Italianisms into his copy, such as com/cum ‘with’ and andar ‘to go’; see Harris 1987, pp. 246-247.
Foliation and verse numbering have been added to the text. The added symbol § marks both the large ornamented capital at the beginning of the book and, in the case of the Occitan text, the scribe’s indication of chapter divisions by means of a decorated dropped capital occupying two lines. Scribal expunctuation in the Critical Apparatus is indicated by strikethrough, i.e. a horizontal line through the letters, and insignificant spelling differences between mss. 343 and 342 are ignored.
Rudolf Anger, Über den Laodicenerbrief. Eine biblisch-kritische Untersuchung, Leipzig 1843.
—, Histoire de la Vulgate pendant les premiers siècles du moyen âge, Paris 1893, pp. xiii, 72-82, 99.
Adriano Cappelli, Lexicon abbreviaturarum. Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane …, 6th ed. (reprinted), Milan 1967.
Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments … with commentary and critical notes …, 8 vols., London 1810-1826. Online Commentary on Colossians, chapter 4, has the text of pseudo-Pauline Epistle to the Laodiceans.
(Douay-Rheims Bible) The Holy Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate …, first published by the English College at Rheims A. D. 1582 …; re-edited edition by Rev. James A. Carey, Turnhout 1935.
Guy De Poerck (in collaboration with Rita Van Deyck), «La Bible et l’activité traductrice dans les pays romans avant 1300; Bibles languedociennes», in GRLMA, vol. VI/1, 1520, 8a. Heidelberg 1968, pp. 25, 38-39 and 1970, vol. VI/2, 1520, pp. 68-69.
GRLMA: Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, hrsg. Hans Robert Jauss und Erich Köhler, Heidelberg 1968-[...].
Elias Hutter, Nouum Testamentum D[omi]ni: N[ost]ri: Iesu Christi. : Syriacè Ebraicè Græcè Latinè Germanicè Bohemicè Italicè Hispanicè Gallicè Anglicè Danicè Polonicè, 2 vols., Nuremberg 1599-1600.
William Kurrelmeyer, Die erste deutsche Bibel, vol. 2, Tübingen 1905.
Emil Levy, Petit dictionnaire provençal-français, Heidelberg 1909.
—, Provenzalisches Supplement-Wörterbuch. Berichtigungen und ergänzungen zu Raynouards Lexique roman, Leipzig 1894-1924.
Carlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, Oxford 1879.
Migne, J.-P., Patrologiae cursus completus... Series Latina, vol. 153, «Opera Omnia Brunonis Carthusiensis; Epistola B. Pauli Ad Laodicenses (Col. 0565D-0568A)», Patrologia Latina database [electronic resource], Magnetic tape ed., Alexandria, VA : Chadwyck-Healey Inc., ©1995.
Hans-Rudolf Nüesch, Altwaldensische Bibelübersetzung: Manuskript Nr. 8 der Bibliothèque municipale, Carpentras, Bern [Romanica Helvetica v. 92 A/B] 1979.
Karl Pink, «Die pseudo-paulinischen Briefe II», Biblica 6 (1925), pp. 179-200.
Robertus Weber (with the help of Bonifatius Fischer [et. al.]), Biblia sacra: iuxta Vulgatam versionem, fourth improved version, Stuttgart 1994.
Peter Wunderli, «Die altprovenzalishe Übersetzung des Laodizäerbriefs», Vox Romanica 30 (1971), pp. 279-286.
Differences with respect to the 1988 edition
I indicate after the verse number the Rialto reading, the 1988 print edition reading being in parentheses with «/» indicating the end of a line. It was probably a well-intentioned, but uninformed, reader who changed my Occitan ara to ar a (v. 6) and Latin quorumdam to quorundam (v. 4) after I had read proof. The end-of-the line reduplications are typesetting blunders.
Occitan Text: 3 orazo (oracio); el/ (el/ el) 5 durabla. (durabla) 6 ara (ar a); e/ (e/ e) 7 orazos (oracios) 15 e/ (e/ e)
Latin Text: 4 quorumdam (quorundam) 7 factum (fac-/ factum); vestris (vestris/ vestris) 15 quae integra (quae sunt integra); sunt, facite (sunt facite) 16 accepistis, in (accepistis in)
Wunderli’s divergent editorial procedures and readings
W.’s italicization of resolved abbreviations constitutes a major difference between our texts. I comment in the notes on our differing resolutions of abbreviations. We both see the value of placing within angle brackets interlinear or marginal scribal additions. However, I have not followed him in writing obra‹s› (v. 5), Tota‹s› (v. 14), enteira‹s› (v. 15) since the scribe regularly writes interlinearly a final long s above a vowel. No added correction is involved, as in prome‹s›sa (v. 3) and disto‹r›bo (v. 4). For the most part, discrepancies in punctuation do not have an effect on meaning and are not recorded here, except for W.’s unintelligible interpretation of v. 19. I indicate chapter divisions whereas he does not.
2 fraires] freres 7 es a mi a salut ... Sant Esperit] es a mia salut ... Sanh Esperit 9 ajatz] aiatz 10 en durable] endurable 13 denant-esquivaz] denant esquivaz 17 fraires] freres 19 esperit sia am.] esperit sia. Am[en].
Selected abbreviations
NTC = ms. Bibl. mun. de Carpentras, Num. 8
NTL = ms. Bibl. mun. de Lyon, PA 36
NTP = ms. BnF, FR. 2425
PD = Emil Levy, Petit dictionnaire provençal-français, Heidelberg 1909.
SW = Emil Levy, Provenzalisches Supplement-Wörterbuch. Berichtigungen und ergänzungen zu Raynouards Lexique roman, Leipzig 1894-1924.
W. = Peter Wunderli