The new latin translation of the Psalter

Abstract

St Robert Bellarmine in a prefatory letter to H.H. Pope Paul V prefixed to his Commentary on the Psalms deplored the fact that, though the daily recitation of the Psalms was an ecclesiastica: obligation, very few understood what they read; " ...... libel' Psalmorum, quem ecclesial3ti.3i omnes quotidie legunt. et pauci admodum intellegunt". Unfortunately these words are as true to-day as 1,;hey were in the 16th century, and many ecclesiastics still complain that, despite their attentive recitation of the Breviary, they are desperately unable to make any sense ·out of many verses of the Psalter. And, one may add, what they understand is very often the opposite of, cor at least very different from, the sense intended by the sacred writer . Therefore it is not at all surprising that many a learned ecclesiastic have in recent times expressed the wish that a more readable and a more intelligible translation should replace the Vulgate Psalter.