Nova & Vetera Breviary

A free advertisement: very kindly, Nova & Vetera agreed to sell me just Volume II of their new edition of the 1962 Breviarium Romanum, for (oh dear, what a pity I didn't buy when the Aussie dollar was almost on par with the American) €99 (plus €10 for postage and handling), and their extremely smart and well-made product has just arrived - I paid them on the 13th inst., so it's taken but 15 days to get here from Germany.

I now, therefore, have a mismatched but perfectly serviceable set of the 1962 Breviary with the Vulgate Psalter - previously, my Volume II had the nasty Pius XII Psalter (I mean the translation, not the august deceased Supreme Pontiff!), and perforce I juggled both volumes in order to have St Jerome's incomparable version of the Psalms with the correct propers, this being particularly cumbersome and involved when Michaelmas came round with its proper Psalms...

My Volume I is the 1995 F.S.S.P. facsimile edition of the 1961 Dessain printing of the Breviary; both volumes are exactly the same in height and width (approx. 18 by 11 cm, or 7 by 4⅓ inches), but the F.S.S.P. Volume I is 4.5 cm thick, almost double the Nova & Vetera Volume II's thickness of 2.5 cm (c. 1 inch).  The difference appears to be that the N & V edition has thinner but no less sturdy paper.  Other sources I have consulted have remarked on the superior purity and uncorruptness of the liturgical text as reproduced in the N & V edition; certainly there are at least half a dozen very minor misprints in the F.S.S.P. edition (a letter missing at the end of a word or suchlike).

I would certainly recommend anyone wishing to pray the 1962 Breviary to purchase the Nova & Vetera edition!

Obscure Phrases

Now don't get me wrong, I love the Vulgate, and love saying my prayers in Latin - which reminds me, having had a lazy off-colour day, I must soon hie me to the chapel for to read today's Office - but some of its phrases are... unusual. For instance, Psalm 67(68):16-17a, according to the Psalter, and as the Douay hath it -

... * Mons Dei, mons pinguis:
Mons coagulatus, mons pinguis: * ut quid suspicamini montes coagulatos?
...

...The mountain of God is a fat mountain. A curdled mountain, a fat mountain.
Why suspect, ye curdled mountains?
...

Question mark indeed! What does this mean?

I recently picked up an Orthodox translation of the Septuagint Psalter, which rather unhelpfully renders the Greek thus:

ὄρος τοῦ θεοῦ ὄρος πῖον ὄρος τετυρωμένον ὄρος πῖον
ἵνα τί ὑπολαμβάνετε ὄρη τετυρωμένα...

The mountain of God is a butter mountain, a curdled mountain, a butter mountain.
Why suppose ye that there be other curdled mountains?...

This curious text I've been praying all week, as part of the psalms at Matins of the Pentecost Octave.

From what I know of the Byzantine interpretation of a like phrase in the Septuagint of Abbacum/Avvacoum iii, 3a (that's Habacuc or Habakkuk) -

ὁ θεὸς ἐκ Θαιμαν ἥξει καὶ ὁ ἅγιος ἐξ ὄρους κατασκίου δασέος...

God shall come forth out of Thaeman, and the Holy One out of a mountain overshadowed and densely wooded.

(which the Vulgate simply gives as Deus ab austro veniet, et Sanctus de monte Pharan, interpreting not the second but the first Hebrew word)

- this second obscure text is understood as prophesying Christ's birth from the Holy Virgin, who indeed is overshadowed by the Holy Ghost and brings forth the Holy One of God (cf. St Luke i, 35).

To return to the psalm at issue, I know that fatness is a symbol of richness and blessedness, but the text is still left rather hard to comprehend. At least it's fun!