1,600 years, and there is no question of changing it. St. Jerome, an expert Hebraist, offered an excellent translation in his classical Latin, but the monks knew the old Psalter by heart and would not change; hence the first translation of the psalms, into bad Latin by very imperfect Hebrew scholars, endures to this day. Some of the psalms—notably the 58th—contain unmitigated absurdities; the verse ‘Kings of armies have fled, have fled’ is rendered, ‘King of virtues, beloved, beloved’; verse 13 runs, ‘If you sleep in the middle of the lots, the wings of the dove are silvered,’ &c. There are many similar verses. Yet the good old monks, who doubtless found many deep symbolical meanings in the above, clung to the version, and their modern successors may be excused for wool-gathering during their chanting.
For about forty psalms enter into the daily ‘Office’ which the priest has to recite. One often sees a secular priest mumbling over his Breviary in train or omnibus; he is bound to form the words with his lips, at least. The monks, however, recite their Office in their choir, or private chapel, which is fitted like the stalls of a cathedral. The two sides take up the alternate verses of the psalms, chanting the words in a loud monotone; it is only sung on solemn occasions. The whole of it is set to music, and in such inactive monasteries as the Carthusians, where it is a question what to do with one’s time, the whole is sung daily.
