Lawlok — The Cathach of St. Columha. 289 



Furthermore, there is no room for question that C was written by an Irish 

 scribe, and scarcely more room for question that it was written in Ireland. 

 Consequently, we may assume that 7, if not written by an Irishman, was in 

 Ireland when C came into existence. It, or a manuscript desceirded from it; 

 was eventually carried to Northumbria, and was the source from which came 

 the rubrics of the Codex Amiatinus, and the greater number of the additions 

 to the argwmenta of Bede. 



But here an objection may be made. It is beyond doubt that the Codex 

 Amiatinus was based on an Italian manuscript.' How, then, can it be claimed 

 that its psalm-headings were borrowed, not from Italy but from Ireland ? 

 The question is easily answered. Anglo-Saxon scribes, as M. Berger has told 

 us, found it impossible to produce a copy of a foreign text " without giving it, 

 so to speak, the local colour of the texts of their own country."- The Codex 

 Amiatinus is itself an illustration of the truth of this remark. Its biblical 

 text is not Italian but Northumbrian ; and the same may be said of the 

 summaries which it gives of some of the books of both Old and New 

 Testaments. If the text was so altered as to give it a Northumbrian 

 character, why should it be thought unlikely that for the rubrics of its 

 Italian archetype there should be substituted others regarded as of more value 

 by English students of the Psalter ? 



There is, in fact, evidence that these rubrics did not come from the same 

 source as the text which they illustrate. It is well known that the Amiatine 

 text of the Psalms is that of St. Jerome's rendering from the Hebrew. But 

 with that version the tittili of the manuscript have nothing to do. They are 

 not the tituli of the Hebrew, which St. Jerome translated for his third edition 

 of the Latin Psalter. How greatly they differ from them may be shown by 

 printing the two versions of one of the longer tituli side by side. I select, 

 almost at random, that of Ps. lix (Ix). 



Amiatine. Hebrexv 



In finem pro his quae commotabuiitur Victori pro liliis 



testimonium in tituli inscriptione dauid testimonium Lumilis et perfecti dauid 



in dootrina cum suf:cendit ad docendum quando pugnauit aduer- 



mesopotamiam sum syriani mesopotamiae et aduersum 



syriae sabaa et conuertit ioab et syriam sobal et reuersus est ioab et 



percussit in uallem salinarum duo- percussit edom in ualle salinarum 



decim milia. iii. 



1 Berger, p. 37 ff. - Ibid., p. 38. 



E.I.A. PKOC, VOL. iiLSXUI., SECT, C, [421 



