Psalms (in Greek in t. iv. of the Venetian edition of the Opp. Theophylacti), written at the desire of the emperor Alexius Comnenus, is nothing but a skilful compilation, in the preparation of which he made good use of the Psalm-catena, likewise a compilation, of the somewhat earlier Νικήτας Σερρῶν,[1] which is to be found on Mount Athos and is still unprinted.
The Western counterpart to Chrysostom's commentary are Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos (in t. iv. of the Benedictine edition). The psalm-singing in the Milaneses church had contributed greatly to Augustine's conversion. But his love to his Lord was fired still more by the reading of the Psalms when he was preparing himself in solitude for his baptism. His commentary consists of sermons which he wrote down in part himself and in part dictated. Only the thirty-two sermones on Ps 118 (119), which he ventured upon last of all, were not actually delivered. He does not adopt the text of Jerome as his basis, but makes use of the older Latin version, the original text of which he sought to establish, and here and there to correct, by the lxx; whereas Arnobius, the Semi-Pelagian, in his paraphrastic Africano-Latin commentary on the Psalms (first edition by Erasmus, Basileae, Forben. 1522, who, as also Trithemnius, erroneously regarded the author as one and the same with the Apologist) no longer uses the so-called Itala, but takes Jerome's translation as his basis. The work of Augustine far surpassing that of Chrysostom in richness and depth of thought, has become, in the Western church, the chief mine of all later exposition of the Psalms. Cassiodorus in his Expositiones in omnes Psalmos (in t. ii. of the Bened. ed.) draws largely from Augustine, though not devoid of independence.
What the Greek church has done for the exposition of the Psalms has been garnered up many times since Photius in so-called Σειραί, Catenae. That of Nicetas archbishop of Serra in Macedonia (about 1070), is still unprinted. One, extending only to Ps 50, appeared at Venice 1569, and a complete one, edited by Corderius, at Antwerp 1643 (3 vols., from
- ↑ This information is found in the modern Greek edition of Euthemius' Commentary on the Ps. by Nicodemos the Agiorite (2 vols. Constantinople 1819-21), which also contains extracts from this catena of Nicetas Serronius.
