Ten strings and a doctor from Polotsk: reading Skaryna’s first preface (Prague Psalter, 1517)

This is the first post in a slow read through Francysk Skaryna’s printed Bible, one span at a time. Each post has two layers. You are reading L1, a reading written for anyone. The L0 tab above holds what Skaryna actually printed, in its original spelling, with photographs of the 1517 pages.

Why start with the Psalter

Skaryna’s Bible was printed in Prague in instalments between 1517 and 1519, and it did not begin with Genesis. The first book off his press was the Psalter, dated 6 August 1517. It is a small quarto of 142 leaves. The 19th-century scholar P. V. Vladimirov, whose 1888 monograph is still the fullest public-domain study of these books, calls it the first thing Skaryna issued in Prague. We follow the order in which he printed, so we begin here.

By Vladimirov’s description the book has three parts. First comes a short preface. Then come the 150 psalms, followed by Psalm 151, which is marked as standing “outside the number”. Last is a set of ten canticles. This post reads the preface.

What the preface says

The preface is seven paragraphs long in our layout. It opens with Paul’s line that all scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, reproof and correction (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Skaryna then sorts scripture into its kinds: the Law, the prophets, the lives and deeds of the saints, the proverbs of the wise, and the songs. His point follows from that list. Each of the other books “holds one thing”, but the Psalter holds all of them at once.

What comes next is a list of what the psalms do for you, and it reads almost like an advertisement. They heal weakness of body and soul, calm anger, drive off sorrow, and bring people into friendship. They are a shield against night terrors and a rest from the day’s bustle. The list goes through the stages of a life: joy for the old, a prayer for women, and for small children початокъ всѧкое доброе наꙋкы, “the beginning of all good learning”.

The list is not wholly Skaryna’s own. Vladimirov showed that the first part of the preface is a free, shortened reworking of St Basil the Great’s homily on Psalm 1. Slavonic psalters of the time often printed that homily at the front. Skaryna kept Basil’s ideas and many of his phrases, and cut and reshaped them to fit his book. According to Vladimirov, the line about small children is one of the things Skaryna added himself. It fits what he says elsewhere: in his later preface to the whole Bible he tells anyone who wants to learn grammar to start with the Psalter, which was the first reading book in East Slavic schooling.

“I, Francysk, Skaryna’s son, of Polotsk”

In the fifth paragraph the borrowed voice stops and Skaryna speaks in his own person:

He says that seeing so much benefit in so small a book, he повѣлелъ (“ordered”, “had”) the Psalter printed, тиснути, which means pressed. He did not write it or copy it. He printed it in “Ruthenian words” and the Slavonic language. He gives his reasons in order. First, it is for the honour and praise of God, the Virgin and the saints. Then it is for the common good, посполитого доброго, and above all because God brought him into the world from that people.

Three things stand out in these lines. He gives his father’s name and his town, as someone who expects to be known. He gives his profession, and it is medicine, not the church. And he describes the book as a public good for his people, not only as an act of devotion.

Ten strings

The sixth paragraph explains the name псалтырь. It is the name of an instrument, “like the gusli”. The difference, Skaryna says, is that gusli have many strings and the psaltery has only ten. He reads those ten strings as the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Sinai. When we sing, read or recite the psalms, we should keep the commandments “before our eyes”. He also recalls the four chief singers King David appointed to play before the Ark (Asaph, Heman, Ethan and Jeduthun), citing the first book of Chronicles.

It is a neat piece of teaching. The title of the book becomes a reminder of the moral law.

A printer’s method, in his own words

The last paragraph is the one a printer would write, and it is the part I find most modern. Skaryna tells the reader what he has done to the book:

• In the margins he has placed references to chapters of other books of the Bible, “so that it may be known that all the other holy writings agree with the Psalter and one lights up another”. Vladimirov notes that Church Slavonic psalters did not have such references. They appear in all of Skaryna’s books, and later in the Ostrog Bible of 1580–81. He compares them to the Latin concordances.
• Also in the margins, “for simple people”, he glosses hard words in the Ruthenian language. The examples he picks are онагри, игеродеево жилище and хлѧбие.
• He has divided the psalms into verses, “as is done in other languages”. Vladimirov notes that the verses are marked with large points, not numbers.

He also promises that none of this touches the text itself. He has worked нерушаючи самое ѱалътыри нивчемъже, “not disturbing the Psalter itself in anything”. The apparatus sits beside the text and leaves it alone. Readers who want the plain psalm have it, and readers who need help find it in the margin. It is a good principle for an annotated edition, then and now.

(When Skaryna reprinted this preface a few years later in Vilnius, in his Small Travel Book, he dropped this final paragraph entirely, according to Vladimirov.)

The pictures

The copy photographed here, now in the Russian State Library, opens with a woodcut of the Tree of Jesse. After it comes the title, Песни царя Давыда еже словуть Псалтырь (“The songs of King David, which are called the Psalter”), under a woodcut of David. The preface itself begins with a large woodcut initial В.

Where the psalms begin, a headpiece carries a small shield with a sun and a crescent moon. Vladimirov identifies this pairing of sun and moon as Skaryna’s own coat of arms. Below it are a woodcut initial П and, beside Psalm 1, David with his harp. We have not transcribed Psalm 1 yet. No open transcription in the original spelling exists, and we will not type one from memory, so for now it lives in the pictures.

Reading the L0 layer

Switch to L0 to read the preface as printed. Some notes on what you will see:

• The text is Vladimirov’s 1888 transcription, proofread against his page images and spot-checked against the 1517 pages shown under it. Skaryna runs words together (кнашемꙋ, “to our”), and we keep that.
• Abbreviations are left as printed: a titlo (҃) over a shortened sacred word, and small raised letters (е^ст for естъ, “is”).
• Line breaks and the ¶ numbers are ours. Small “V.” markers show where each page of the 1888 edition begins.

Next time we move on to the next book in the order Skaryna printed them.