Western Medieval Manuscripts : Commentarius magnus (in Psalmos)

Hesychius, of Jerusalem, d. approximately 450

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This manuscript, probably produced between 1628 and 1634, contains part of a commentary on the Psalms, whose authorship is not definitely established, but is generally attributed to the 5th-century priest Hesychios of Jerusalem. This work is the longest of three commentaries on the Psalms attributed to Hesychios, and has also commonly been erroneously attributed to John Chrysostom, an identification reflected in a note in this manuscript (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(3);return false;'>f. i recto</a>). Its content is most frequently attested in excerpts appearing in <i>catenae</i> and attributed to an undifferentiated "Hesychios". Manuscripts in which it appears as continuous text each contain only a portion of the work.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The portion found here, comprising the commentaries to Psalms 77-107 and 118, survives in only one medieval copy, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Roe 13, dating to 1284/5, from which this was copied. In the Bodleian manuscript, the individual Psalm commentaries of Hesychios are interspersed with those of John Chrysostom on Psalms 108-117 and 119-150 to create a continuous sequence, but here those of Hesychios have been singled out.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The manuscript was owned by the clergyman and scholar of Greek Augustine Lindsell, and subsequently by the classical scholar Meric Casaubon, son of Isaac Casaubon, and was bought for the University Library in the sale of his effects after his death in 1671. It is thus connected with a second manuscript of this text in the Library, MS Ff.3.6, which was also copied from the same exemplar, also owned by Casaubon and acquired by the Library at the same time, and in which Casaubon recorded comments on the text by Lindsell.</p>