1567 BIBL E The vvhole Psalter translated into English metre, which contayneth an hundreth and fifty Psalmes. (London: John Day, 1567).
Metrical Psalters, which are books of the Psalms recomposed to fit a vernacular meter, became very popular following the Protestant Reformation and the spread of German, English, and French translations of the Bible throughout Europe. A Psalm adapted to an English meter was easier to read (and to memorize), but most importantly it could be sung in church to a number of different tunes. Among the J. Michael Morgan English Bible & Psalmody Collection recently established at Pitts is a 1567 printing of a metrical Psalter, translated by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury (1504-1575). Parker’s name is not found on the book’s title page or elsewhere in the volume, but it is revealed in an acrostic poem that precedes his Psalm 119. The book also contains nine four-part settings by Thomas Tallis (1505-1585), specifically written for this Psalter, that could be used to sing this metered paraphrase of the Psalms. A modern recording of the compositions can found here.
Day’s metrical rendering of the Psalms.
While the work itself is significant, this particular copy is especially remarkable for its provenance. An inscription in a 17th-century hand states, “There was written in this book ere the leafe was by accident torn out. This is Ben Johnsons booke, price worth gould.” Assuming that the inscriber was telling the truth, this would substantiate the claim that this Psalter belonged to the English poet Ben Jonson (1573-1637).
The inscription of Sam Woodforde, noting he does not the author.
A more verifiable inscription is by Samuel Woodford (1636-1700), who published his own paraphrase of the Psalms, reading, “Sam Woodforde, this gift of my brother Mr. John Woodford, Aug 1682.” He also notes on the second flyleaf that he does not know who the author of this version of the Psalms is and speculates that it may have been Thomas Wyatt or John Davys (Davies). A third inscription is a signature, “Henry H. Gibbs, St. Dunstans (1860),” which can be verified as Henry Hucks Gibbs, 1st Baron Aldenham (1819-1907), an English politician and a director of the Bank of England. It was most likely Gibbs who had the book rebound by the 19th-century English bookbinder Robert Riviere (1808-1882) in black morocco leather with gilt edges and marbled endpapers.
Pitts recently added to its growing collection of incunables (books printed before 1501) a 1479 lexical manual for preachers and clergy. The Latin book, titled Mammotrectus super Bibliam (“Nourisher on the Bible”), printed by Nicolas Jensen in Venice, contains etymological and grammatical explanations of words found in the Bible, along with the liturgical hours, arranged in the order of the Bible and the church year. Its author, John Marchesinus, was a Franciscan friar in Italy, likely living in the late 13th or early 14th century, who lamented the lack of education amongst clergy and the poor quality of preaching that resulted from it.
The first word in the title, mammotrectus, denotes “mother’s milk” (i.e. nourishment regarding the Bible), and the term had been used by Augustine in his commentary on the Psalms. Marchesinus himself explains the term to mean “led by a pedagogue.” This work would become one of the most important Franciscan books of the late Middle Ages.
Are you interested in seeing this and other rare books in the Pitts Special Collections? You can make an appointment any time the reading room is open. You can also learn about the Pitts incunable collection by checking out the Spring 2023 exhibition, “This Sacred Art,” curated by Pitts’ Head of Special Collections Brandon Wason.
By Armin Siedlecki, Head of Cataloging and Rare Book Cataloger
The constitution and canons of the African Orthodox Church
Year after year, one of the most frequently requested and most commonly researched collections in the Pitts Special Collections is the archives of the African Orthodox Church (AOC). This collection contains the records of the African Orthodox Church in South African, founded in 1924, as well as the personal papers of Archbishop Daniel William Alexander (1883-1970. The library’s finding aid for this collection can be found online and patrons can contact the Special Collections department to view these materials in person.
The African Orthodox Church originated in the United States, growing out of ideas of black separatism, and it spread to Africa where it played an important role in independence movements in Africa. Alexander was the central figure in the founding and spread of the AOC church in South Africa. Alexander was born in Port Elizabeth, Cape Province, South Africa, in 1883, and he attended Roman Catholic schools as a child. He later served with the British in the Second Anglo-Boer War until 1900. After his time in the military, he joined the Anglican church in Pretoria and began to study for ordination. However, for reasons unknown, around 1920, he left the Anglican Church, moved to Johannesburg, and became associated with the independent religious organization founded by J. M. Kanyane Napo, known as the African Church. In 1924, Alexander, once again dissatisfied with his religious associations, made a formal break from the African Church with a group of likeminded individuals, who elected Alexander as their head.
This photograph shows McGuire (seated center left) and Alexander (seated center right) in the US at the time of Alexander’s consecration.
Around this time, Alexander had read about George Alexander McGuire (1866-1934) in the newspaper, The Negro World. McGuire had emigrated from Antigua to the United States and served as a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church until 1918. McGuire’s experience in the Episcopal Church had been tainted with discrimination against him and his fellow Black clergy, so he severed his ties with the church and founded the African Orthodox Church. Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) then used his periodical The Negro World to disseminate the news of the church and its operations across the Atlantic and throughout Africa, where Alexander read of McGuire. So, on September 24, 1924, Alexander asked to be affiliated with the African Orthodox Church. After review, Alexander was invited to America. On September 11, 1927, Alexander was consecrated by McGuire in Boston. Alexander returned to Kimberley, South Africa, and to his parish after his consecration. From this base, Alexander traveled across South Africa and set up parishes wherever he found local interest. All the while, Alexander continued to correspond with McGuire in America until McGuire’s death in 1934.
In this manuscript document, Alexander commits to the African Orthodox Church under McGuire’s leadership.
Alexander continued his ministry and outreach with the African Orthodox Church until 1960, when the affiliation between Alexander’s churches in South Africa and the AOC in America contentiously ended. Alexander had invited members of the US church, including Patriarch James I, to visit South Africa to consecrate two new bishops, Surgeon Lionel Motsepe and Ice Walter Mbina, to provide an established succession. We do not know the reasons, but Alexander and the Americans had a disagreement and James I ordered him to resign his position as archbishop in favor of the two newly consecrated bishops. Alexander refused to relinquish leadership. He maintained that he and McGuire had agreed that the American church only had power over the African church in spiritual but not temporal matters. Before the matter could be resolved, both James I and Motsepe died. Alexander was reconciled by the new patriarch, Peter IV, and he agreed to submit to Mbina. However, in 1963, Alexander broke away from Mbina and the African Orthodox Church in the US. He formalized the autonomy he believed McGuire had intended for the African church by naming his body the African Orthodox Church of the Republic of South Africa
Alexander died in May 1970 at the age of 88. He remained the Patriarch of the African Orthodox Church of the Republic of South Africa until his death. The archives of the African Orthodox Church (records dating from 1880-1974) could be considered the papers of Archbishop Daniel William Alexander. Practically all the correspondence was either sent or received by Alexander, and a large amount of the other manuscript material is in his handwriting. The library has worked to separate items that document the life of Alexander from items that document the history of the church, but researchers will find that there are many “gray area” items that include both. Because of items such as these, the personal papers of Alexander have been treated as a part of the Church’s archives and not as a separate collection.
by Emily Corbin, Special Collections Reference Coordinator
Describing archival materials isn’t often glamorous or exciting. For the most part, it’s just you, an Excel spreadsheet, and the Archival Box Of The Day. Wikipedia quickly becomes your best friend, followed closely by the selection of relevant (but out-of-print) books you’re lucky enough to find on Internet Archive. Every so often, though, you come across something a little bit different, a little bit unexpected, that you just need to research a little more to give full context to the document you’re describing.
The letter from Bishop Early to Bishop Paine (May 25, 1860)
The Robert Paine letters (MSS 404), held at Pitts, include nineteen letters (and one lonely envelope) from Bishop John Early (1786-1873) of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, written to his colleague, Bishop Robert Paine (1799-1882). Most of these letters discuss the management of the various regional conferences for which Paine and Early were responsible, including disciplinary matters, preacher appointments, and annual meeting reports. One letter, however, dated May 25, 1860, includes something a little different: a glimpse at an important event in United States diplomatic history. In his letter, Bishop Early writes, “I came home two days ago and found that the commissioners from Japan had gotten [their] Treaty ratified, & Exchanged, & well nigh spent the time [allowed] them to stay [in Washington, D.C.] and would in less than a week leave here for New York…” These commissioners (read: diplomats) from Japan are Muragaki Norimasa (1813-1880), Oguri Tadamasa (1827-1868), and Masaoki Shinmi (1822-1869), who arrived in Washington, D.C., on May 14, 1860, with a retinue of samurai and retainers in order to formally ratify the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and the United States.[2,4,5] The treaty formalized the forced opening of Japanese borders to American trade following the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry (1794-1858) in Tokyo Harbor on July 8, 1853, and marked the official start of U.S./Japan political and economic relations.[1] The Japanese delegation’s visit to Washington, D.C., reveals the American public’s burning interest in foreign visitors, despite the looming threat of Civil War. In fact, their arrival was marked by “…5,000 cheering spectators; [and] an additional 20,000 [who] climbed trees and hung out of windows for a look…”[5] Throughout their stay, the Japanese delegation attended numerous banquets and received many visitors, one of whom was Bishop John Early. In his letter, Early shares that John B. Floyd (1806-1863), the U.S. Secretary of War, arranged for Early and several other Christian leaders to meet with the Japanese delegation. His description of the visit, and of the delegates, reflects Early’s, and likely many Americans’, prejudiced perceptions, “They are small & evidently an inferior race – The Chiefs are [unobtrusive] & dignified – very little parade and no [great] extravagance in [dressing]- They are evidently [greatly] impressed with the magnificence of this Country & with the [great] attention showed them by great men…” The remainder of Early’s letter reveals that the Bishop was far more interested in Japan as a new ground for missionary work than in the Japanese people or their culture. Indeed, Early’s letter, particularly when contrasted with the various accounts of the Japanese diplomats themselves, demonstrates what Yasuhide Kawashima calls “a fundamental problem of intercultural relations: how people from one country look at another country.”[3] Where Early states with confidence that the delegates were “[greatly] impressed with the magnificence” of the U.S., detailed accounts by Muragaki indicate a resigned attitude towards Western foods (specifically the abundance of steak and butter) and noisy social events, which he describes as “a drinking bout of day laborers in Edo [Tokyo].”[3]
The 1860 Japanese Mission to the United States and host escorts. From the United States National Archives and Records Administration
Early’s letter is one part of a multifaceted collection of personal accounts of the Japanese delegation’s visits to the U.S. and Europe in 1860, offering a glimpse of a 19th Century, Southern Methodist view of foreign peoples and countries during a tumultuous period for international relations around the world.
Written by Brinna Michael, Cataloging & Metadata Librarian
2 Consulate General of Japan in New York. “Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the First Japanese Delegation to New York City.” Japan-NYC 1860-2010: A Heritage of Friendship (2010): https://www.ny.us.emb-japan.go.jp/150JapanNY/en/about.html
3 Kawashima, Yasuhide. “America through Foreign Eyes: Reactions of the Delegates from Tokugawa Japan, 1860.” Journal of Social History 5, no. 4 (1972): 491–511.
This past week Pitts added to its rare book collection a very significant New Testament (1551 BIBL B). After many years of searching, Pitts has acquired the 1551 Greek/Latin New Testament published in Geneva by Robert Estienne (1503-1559), who is often referred to by his Latin name Stephanus. This New Testament is the first to include Estienne’s numbering of individual verses, a system he developed on his own and which became the standard versification system still used today. The New Testament text is printed in three columns, with Estienne’s Greek in the center and the Latin Vulgate on one side and Erasmus’ Latin translation on the other. The verse numbers are placed between the columns of text. Estienne would subsequently print a Latin Vulgate in 1555 (1555 BIBL A) in which the verse numbers were integrated into the text, which is how most subsequent Bibles have printed them.
Matthew 1
This 1551 New Testament is also one of Estienne’s first publications in Geneva, the city to which he had fled (from Paris) when he came under attack from the theologians at the Sorbonne University in Paris, who were critical of his 1550 edition of the Greek New Testament, his famous “Royal Edition” (1550 BIBL), which was the first New Testament to include a system of text critical notes indicating alternative readings in Greek manuscripts. A later report of this episode, written by Estienne’s son, indicates that he created the verse number system on the move from Paris to Geneva, while “on horseback” (inter equitandum), which has led some to joke that the at-times odd placement of breaks between verses could be the result of his placing his pen in various spots of the text as the horse went up and down along the road!
We encourage you to come see this amazing publication, which is just one of the thousands of historic Bibles held in Pitts’ Special Collections.
