18 
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
been welcomed by competent critics as conforming to general prob¬ 
ability. 6 I am particularly glad, therefore, to present a version of 
the lectio that provides for Sepet’s conjecture a genuine justifica¬ 
tion. In a service-book from the church of Salerno we find the 
following : 7 
In Nattvitatis Nocte post primam ,Miss am legitur Sermo Sancti Augus- 
tini Episcqpi, more Salernitano. 
Vos (inquam) conuenio, O Iudsei, qui vsqwe in hodiernum diem negatis 
filinm Dei. Nonne vox vestra est ilia, quando eum videbatis miracula 
facientem, atq ue tentantes dicebatis: Quousqae animas nostras suspendis? 
Si tu es Christus, die nobis palam. Ille autem vos ad eonsiderationem 
miraculorum mittebat, dicens: Opera que ego facio, ipsa testimonium 
perhibent de me; vt Christo testimonium dicere^t, non verba, sed facta. 
Vos autem, non cognoscentes Saluatorem, adijeientes in main dixistis: 
Tu de te testimonium dicis; testimonium tuum non est verum. Sed ad 
hsec ille quid vobis respondent, aduertere noluistis. Nonne scriptum est 
(inquit) in lege vestra quod duorum hominum testimonium verum sit? 
Prseuaricatores legis <p. 76> intendite legem. Testimonium quaeritis de 
Christo; in lege vestra scriptum est quod duorum hominum <testi¬ 
monium > verum sit. Procedant de lege non tantum duo sed etiam plures 
testes Christi, & conuincant auditores legis, nec factores. Die & tu, 
Isaias propheta, testimonium Christo? 
teenth century the Passio was sung by three persons, to whom respectively were 
assigned the parts of Christ, the Jews, and the Narrator; and he raises the 
question as to whether some such assignment of parts may not have been prac¬ 
ticed in the delivery of the lesson Vos, inquam, convenio . Such slight force as 
this analogy may be supposed to have virtually disappears before the evidence 
that this practice of distributing the roles of the Passio among three persons 
did not obtain before the fifteenth century. See my Observations on the Origin 
of the Mediaeval Passion-Play, already cited, p. 331. Another analogy cited by 
Sepet (pp. 11-12) is that of the Gradual of the Mass for Palm Sunday as 
rubricated in a certain manuscript of the twelfth century (Bibl. Nat., Ms. lat. 
9486, fol. 9r). The several sentences of the Gradual are here distributed with 
somewhat unusual dramatic appropriateness between Duo cantores and Chorus, 
and this text as a whole, like the pseudo-Augustinian lectio, may be viewed as 
a mingling of monologue and dialogue. Although the analogy between this 
musical piece and the recited lectio is remote, it may be allowed to stand oy 
whatever strength it has. I regard it as negligible. Sepet perceives (p. 13) a 
further hint toward a distribution of the r61es of the lectio in the manuscript 
itself (Bibl. Nat., Ms. lat. 1018) : that is, in the paragraph-signs and in the 
entry of the names of two prophets at appropriate points in the margin (I have 
recorded these rubrications in my foot-notes to the text of the lectio above, 
along with the more thorough-going rubrications from Ms. Vatic. Regin. 125 
and Ms. Canonici Liturg. 391). I cannot accept Sepet’s eager interpretation of 
these rubrications. Although they are undoubtedly significant as indicating 
divisions in the content of the lectio, they in no way prove that the several 
prophecies were assigned to separate speakers, 
6 See Petit de Julleville, Vol. I, p. 35; Chambers, Vol. II, p. 53. 
7 Officia Propria Festorum Salernitance Ecclesice, Naples, 1594, pp. 75—79. I 
print from the copy in the British Museum. 
