Preces Quotidianae
The First Light
The day opens in the half-light of a damaged manuscript and a psalmist's vigil, rising to the blessing 'Blessed are you, Lord.'
[Unreadable source text] My God, my God, from the first light I keep watch for you.✦ Ps.1 42.2 1.3 Blessed are you, Lord,
The Forming of Earth and Sea
God is blessed as the one who gathered the sea, brought forth dry land, caused vegetation to spring up, and held the deeps as in a wineskin.
Who gathered the water into the sea: You who brought the land out into the open: Gen.4 1:9. You who brought forth the shoots of grass and of the fruit-bearing tree. The deeps: as in a wineskin, Ps.✦5 32. 7.
A Litany of the Created World
The blessing expands into an incantatory list of the forms and gifts of the earth, from seas and mountains to fields, bread, wine, and spices.
Sea, lakes, rivers, springs, land, mainland, islands, mountains, hills, valleys,6 Fields, pastures, woodlands, Green growing things, bread, hay, fodder, herbs and flowers for delight, medicine,7 Fruit-bearing trees, wine, fruits, oil, spices—8
The Matter of All Things
The chapter turns its attention to 'matter' itself, naming the created substance that underlies the catalogue of blessings.
Concerning matter,9
Read the original Latin
DIBEIPBERTIJZ.
DEUS meus, Deus meus, Ad te de luce vigilo. Psa/. xlii. 1. Benedictus es, Domine,
Qui congregasti aquam in mare:
Qui terram in apricum protulisti : Gen. 1, 9.
Qui eduxisti germina Herbe et Ligni pomiferi. Abyssi : d - ) sicut in utre, Psal. xxxii. 7. Mare Lacus, Fluvii, Fontes, Terra, Continens, Insulz, Montes, Colles, Valles,
Arva, Pascua, Saltus,
Virentia, Panis, Fonum, Pabulum, Herbz et Flores ad 4 Delicias, Medicinam,
Ligna fructifera, Vinum, Fruectus,4 Oleum, Aromata,
In materiam,
Scripture echoes
- ↩Ps.63.2;Ps.63.1 — God, you are you are my God; I will seek you earnestly. My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Ps.63.1 — A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
- ↩Ps.33.7 — He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deeps in storehouses.
Notes
- 1 ↩Source 'Psa/.' is a liturgical abbreviation for Psalmus/Psalm, not continuous prose.
- 2 ↩Roman numeral xlii marks a psalm number. The preceding verse is usually Vulgate Ps 62 (Hebrew 63); the printed number 42 may reflect a different psalm-numbering system or a source-text anomaly.
- 3 ↩Bare '1.' is almost certainly a verse number or section marker in the prayer apparatus, not a sentence to translate.
- 4 ↩in apricum: literally 'into the sunny/open place'; rendered as bringing land out into the open, matching Gen. 1:9 (dry land appearing).
- 5 ↩Source reading 'Abyssi : d - ) sicut in utre, Psal.' is garbled between the colon and 'sicut'; the recoverable sense is the Ps 32:7 image of the deeps/waters kept as in a wineskin (utre).
- 6 ↩Source 'Insulz' treated as intended 'Insulae' (islands).
- 7 ↩Source looks OCR-damaged: Fonum read as Faenum (hay); Herbz as Herbae (herbs); the numeral 4 before Delicias treated as a non-textual mark (page/note), not as part of the Latin.
- 8 ↩Reading Fruectus as Fructus (fruits); the trailing 4 is treated as a printer’s mark or page cue, not part of the sense, on the model of the previous section’s ad 4 Delicias.
- 9 ↩Brief heading fragment (In materiam,). In context it appears to introduce the next catalog of material goods (stones, metals, minerals), not a full clause.
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