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The Review of the Faculty of Theology and the Theology Students' Association Malta

The 'Possible' Role of the Imagination in Philosophy and Theology - Mark Sultana 3 First Christ, then those of Christ . .. so that God may be all in all - Charles Buttigieg 17 "A New Attuning of the Elements Occurred"; A Brief Reflection on the Sacrament of the Eucharist - Sean Edward Kinsella 29 La Filosofia di Pietro Caxaro (+ 1485) - Mark F. Montebello 33 A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity - Edward Xuereb 49 Hannah expresses her strong feelings about her rival and about the Lord in her Hymn of Praise (1 Sam 2,1-2) - Anthony Abela 77

No. 1 2006 Vol. 57 MELITA THEOLOGICA ISSN 1012-9588

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© Copyright: The Faculty of Theology and the Theology Students' Associa­ tion, Malta 2003 The 'Possible' Role of the Imagination in Philosophy and Theology

Mark Sultana

This paper will examine Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)'s idea that philosophy is a matter of the will more than of the intellect. This means that much of what we battle, in philosophy ,is the propensity of so many to deceive themselves. It also entails that what, in effect, is to be offered as a cure is a therapeutic practice that, in its persuasive aspect, facilitates a gestalt-shift in which the imagination plays a central role. For, from the point of view of the person caught in self-deception, there is no reason to change; any reason must come from a partly different world­ picture. Such a person must be persuaded to accept a different way of seeing things in the particular circumstances. Of course, this will appear artificial to the person and he will experience stumbling and hesitation as he lives in what, to him, is a more or less 'foreign' way. However, it will, perhaps, not be long before living in such a manner becomes second nature to him so that he would have brought an appropriate quality of smoothness in his relation to the particular sector of reality. Hence, such a position would mean that a good number of obstacles and problems within philosophy are related to the manner in which we want to see things or, rather, to the manner in which we refuse to countenance otherwise.

This paper will also attempt to show that, even within the arena of natural theology, while arguments, reasons, evidence, and the like, that are brought forward certainly do not lack pertinence, normally, one's belief in the existertce of God is not, in reality, arrived at by deductive inference.

The suggestion is that, whereas one world-picture may be seen to comprehend a widerrange of experience better, and to a fuller degree, than another, one's 'decision' plays a certain role in one's philosophical conversion; a person can refuse tq occupy herself with reality under a given conception and make such a vision her own.

As is well known, for Wittgenstein, achievement in philosophy, lies in striving to renounce to certain temptations to be beguiled by certain pictures in our superficial use of language. In this respect, the image of philosophy Wittgenstein developed was a clinical one. He held that there was a strong analogy between techniques of 4 Mark Sultana

eliminating philosophical confusions and those of treating an illness. To a great extent, his philosophizing is a matter of fighting against certain unhealthy habits of thought that permeate the intellectual culture of a period, certain mythologies that infect a culture. These misleading pictures are merely passed over in silence in most of our practices, for they do not trouble us in practical life, when language is in use. Where they do cause problems is when language is idling and used theoretically by philosophers or by the philosopher within each one of us (and, most notably, by the scientist). Then, somewhat inevitably, one is dragged down by misunderstandings. One could here think of a scientist who is tempted to see 'thinking' as being constituted by the firing of a number of neurones in a given sector of the cerebral cortex and goes on to carry out an investigation where he tells the subject to think more slowly to see what changes ensue in the patterns of neural firing. The problem, of course, is whether such instructions make any sense at all within the context of the investigation; it is whether such a figurative representation of the concept - picturing thinking as similar to a physical process - is misconceived. Thus, treatment would mean changing the ways of thought and of life of the community or the individual. The therapy consists in activities like rearranging what is familiar, re-ordering in order to dissolve particular confusions,! making patterns or aspects visible,2 and gaining acceptance for an alternative picture:3 "[o]ur investigation tried to remove this bias, which forces us to think that the facts must conform to certain pictures embedded in our language".4

Wittgenstein maintains that propositions describing a world-picture can be described as a kind of mythology.5 Such propositions and practices, usages, taboos and rituals, therefore, would manifest the views and convictions that characterize the form of life lived by a cultural community. They might contain traditions about the origins of the community and the genesis of the world; they might contain perspectives on seasonal and biological events, sanctions of political and cultural structures, exhortations to a particular type of religious belief, and all that underlies the life of a community. Such a world-picture guides the behaviour and the decisions

1. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. 2nd ed. Basil B1ackwell, Oxford 1967, § 132. 2. Seelbid.,§129. 3. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wittgellstein 's Lectures 011 Philosophical Psychology 1946-1947. Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead 1988,43,168,285. 4. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books. 2nd ed. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1969,43. 5. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty. Translated by Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1977, §95. The 'Possible' Role of the Imagination in Philosophy and Theology S

of those who hold it; it serves as a basis,6 or a point of departure,? of a way of looking at the world. Hence, the concept of 'world-picture' is used largely to describe the intuitive or practical dimension of the community's customs and institutions, or of one's life, customs, routine, and decisions, rather than the discursive dimension that has been worked out rationally. Once again, one cannot explain everything: at one point there is always that which is taken on trust, since, as Wittgenstein avers, "I really want to say that a language-game is only possible if one trusts something (I did not say 'Can trust something')".8 For the certainties one has cannot be tested for within the practice itself, but can only be shown in one's way of doing things; within the practice, one works with such certainties without doubting them.9

Within this world-picture one can speak of determining the truth, or of coming to know some fact. As it were, the Weltbild functions as a 'logical receptacle' that enables, within its frame of reference, disputes about truth and knowledge. Here, one sees that "[g]iving grounds, however justifying the evidence, comes to an end; - but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game".1O The end is not an ungrounded proposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting.ll At the basis of the world-picture lies not knowledge but praxis: "My life shews that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there ... - I tell a friend e.g. 'take that chair over there', ... etc. etc.",I2

Thus, when giving grounds comes to an end, what remains is the following: "If someone asked us 'but is that true?' we might say 'yes' to him; and if he demanded grounds we might say 'I can't give you grounds, but if you learn more you too will think the same'''.l3 For one must begin to trust somewhere, that is to say: one must begin with not-doubting. And that is not, so to speak, hasty but excusable: it is part of judging.14

6. See Ibid., §167. 7. See Ibid., §20S. 8. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty. Translated by Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1977, §S09. 9. See Ibid., §147. 10. Ibid., §204. 11. See Ibid., § 110. 12. Ibid., §7. 13. Ibid., §205. 14. See Ibid., § 150. 6 Mark Sultana

At this point, "[o]ne wants to say 'All my experiences shew that it is so'. But do they do that? For that proposition to which they point itself belongs to a particular interpretation of them. 'That I regard this proposition as certainly true also characterizes my interpretation of experience'" .15 Or rather, it forms the way I see reality. For, experiences do not teach fundamental certainties. Rather they constitute just the ways in which one sees these experiences. One, as it were, swallows such certainties whilst one is learning various language activities. One can say that a world-picture is a form of imagining and experiencing the world that is assimilated as one's second nature.

In this light, the problem against which philosophy perennially militates is what one is tempted to say and it can arise precisely because of unhealthy habits of thought and of ways of life in which we are enmeshed and that engender prejudices:

Human beings are profoundly enmeshed in philosophical- i.e. grammatical - confusions. They cannot be freed without first being extricated from the extraordinary variety of associations which hold them prisoner. You have as it were to reconstitute their entire language. - But this language grew up as it did because human beings had - and have - the tendency to think in this way. So you can only succeed in extricating people who live in an instinctive rebellion against language; you cannot help those whose entire instinct is to live in the herd which has created this language as its own proper mode of expression.16

In doing conceptual analysis, it is important to note what it could mean to "live in an instinctive rebellion against language". It is not that the philosopher stands outside language, examining it as a workman would examine his tools, as it were; language is not a skill that I may choose to use for such-and-such a purpose. Even if language does not have the kind of unity that belongs to a calculus, and one sees that language-games are different, language is the element within which we have our life and we cannot go outside it to tinker with it. Within language one can, however, stand outside of, say, the regime of mathematics, distancing oneself from that community in order to see what the temptations that mathematical language brings with it are. Of course one would be doing so, not as a mathematician, but as

15. See Ibid., §145. 16. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Big Typescript: Manuscript 213, 423, as quoted in Anthony Kenny, "Wittgenstein on the Nature of Philosophy," in The Legacy ofWittgenstein Basil B1ackwell, Oxford 1984, SI. The 'Possible' Role of the Imagination in Philosophy and Theology 7

a philosopher. To be a philosopher, one must be amazingly sensitive to misleading modes of expression, sincere with oneself and courageous in one's thinking and acting. One must, above all, shun superficiality:

[ ... I]n doing philosophy you have got to be ready constantly to change the direction in which you are moving. At some point you see that there must be something wrong with the whole way you have been tackling the difficulty. You have to be able to give up those central notions which have seemed to be what you must keep if you are to think at all.l7

The way out is to effect a reorientation of one's way of thinking; one must aim at a conversion to a partially new world-picture. The way forward is the persuasion of the individual to replace entrenched yet inadequate habits of thought by the possibility of other conceptions or pictures of the reality in question.

This means that, in doing philosophy, one must overCome resistance of one's will; what makes something difficult to grasp may well be how one wants to see it. IS For, a world-picture must be accepted; it cannot be forced or coerced: "I believe ... am sure, by reason of what has been said to me, of what I have read, and of my experience. To have doubts about it would seem to be madness - of course, this is also in agreement with other people, but! agree with them".19 One may always persist in refusing to see an aspect even if it is drawn to one's attention: the "[d]ifficulty of philosophy [is] not the intellectual difficulty of the sciences, but the difficulty of a change of attitude. Resistances of the will to be overcome":20

What makes the object hard to understand [is] the antithesis between understanding the object and what most people want to see. Because of this precisely what is most obvious may be what is most difficult to

17. Rush Rhees, "Postscript," in Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1984,208. 18. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value. Translated by Peter Winch. Edited by G. H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman. Revised edition of the text by A. Pichler. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1998,29,30. 19. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §281. 20. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Big Typescript: Manuscript 213, 406, as quoted in Gordon P. Baker, "Wittgenstein's Method and Psychoanalysis," in Wittgenstein's Method: Neglected Aspects, ed. Kathcrine J. Morris, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford 2004, 206. 8 Mark Sultana

understand. It is not a difficulty for the intellect but one for the will that has to be overcome.21

This transformation of one's way of seeing things may be extremely difficult even for someone who is highly intelligent. One can, for instance imagine how difficult it would be for someone to convince Gottlob Frege to drop his conviction that the possibility of objective knowledge in mathematics is grounded on number­ concepts standing for abstract entities given directly to our reason. For this seems to form an axis for his thinking, something unshakeable or undoubtable that forms part of his intellectual identity.

With respect to religious belief, the scenario is rather similar. For, it is important to note that, even here, many of one's beliefs are not, in reality, arrived at by deductive inference or argument, and are not in deed supported by any reasons in one's life. In the case of natural knowledge of God, for example,

it isn't that one beholds the night sky, notes that it is grand, and concludes that ... God exists. It is rather that, upon the perception of the night sky, ... these beliefs just arise within us. They are occasioned by the circumstances; they are not conclusions from them.22

In this sense, once again, one's 'certainties' are manifested in, and shape one's perception, the way one sees things. They form and they manifest one's starting points for thought, the receptacle within which one thinks and acts. They are not accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs, although, of course, one would cite various other propositions in defence of one's beliefs if another were to challenge them. However, if the latter were to continue to push, in the end, one would simply have to reply that 'one has to see it'. Certainly, experiences of a certain sort are often intimately involved in the formation of one's belief in God; also one may see that specific beliefs comprehend a given situation or phenomenon better. However,

21. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value. Translated by Peter Winch. Edited by G. H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman. Revised edition of the text by A. Pichler. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1998,25. 22. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, 175. I am, however, more ready than Plantinga to say that one's belief in God's existence might not, in effect, have the role of a basic belief in one's life and that, in that case, arguments and grounds can be in deed given for such beliefs. The 'Possible' Role of the Imagination in Philosophy and Theology 9

typically such beliefs are not accepted as conclusions by way of some argument from experience, It is rather that the experience normally constitutes the occasion for the acceptance of the beliefs in question. It is interesting, here, that arguments, reasons, evidence, and the like, that are brought forward in natural theology, are created by believers who place themselves in the shoes of those who want to understand; they would not normally speak as though it might, after all, turn out that there is no god, but only investigate God's existence in terms of wanting to offer justifications or grounds for those for whom it is not a certainty in their lives, or even in order to explore better the relevance of God's existence in their own lives .23 However, even if such justifications or grounds could turn out to be actually useful in someone's coming to see that God exists, it is evident that what normally happens is that some situation or event convinces him or her to see things differently.

What is so pertinent here is that such occasions manifest that the case of conversion is not solely a matter of ratiocination, it is also - and in the case of a belief, or an unbelief, in the existence of God this is typically the case, since belief, or unbelief in God is characteristically a commitment that shows itself in many of the agent's doings and sayings - a matter of 'transcending' one's world-picture where one is persuaded and also decides to see things thus, under such-and-such a conception: he or she decides to make these connections between elements of reality. For, as has been seen, our way of looking at, and acting within, reality is not merely a matter of one's passively receiving stimuli and responding automatically. One's practical intellect is shaped in a certain way and this is shown in what one sees as pertinent, the way one speaks, and so on. Thus, certain certainties in one's life are in deed not doubted and remain open to so little serious questioning that they serve as hinges around which one's dealings with reality revolve. One would have assimilated them into one's way oflife. I want to recall here that Wittgenstein gives some telling examples of such assimilation manifested as one's second nature that are pertinent to this matter:

23. It is obvious that I am, here, departing from Wittgenstein' s attitude towards the possibility of natural theology, which he notoriously detested. It is well known that Wittgenstein held that one should not attempt to smoothen all language-games with the same form of rationality; he strongly felt that some such language-games should be left 'jagged' and respected as being such'. However, the extent to which such a position is a personal one or part of his philosophy is not clear at all (see Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, "The Question of Linguistic Idealism," in From Parmenides to Wittgenstein: Collected Philosophical Papers, I, Basil B1ackwell, Oxford 1981, 122-124. 10 Mark Sultana

Isn't this altogether like the way one can instruct a child to believe in a God, or that none exists, and it will accordingly be able to produce apparently telling grounds for the one or the other?24 However, we can ask: May someone have telling grounds for believing that the earth has only existed for a short time, say since his own birth? - Suppose he had always been told that, - would he have any good reason to doubt it? Men have believed that they could make rain; why should not a king be brought up in the belief that the world began with him? And if Moore and this king were to meet and discuss, could Moore really prove his belief to be the right one? I do not say that Moore could not convert the king to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way.25

What is somewhat startling is Wittgenstein's insistence that getting someone else to share one's certainty is closer to inviting her to occupy herself with a particular conception or aspect than presenting demonstrative evidence to justify a hypothesis.

One also notes that, while 'propositions' of one's world-picture cannot be imposed against one's will, it is possible to work - albeit hesitantly - within an alien conception or world-picture and make sense of problems, moves, strategies and solutions within it. This is interesting because it signals the freedom that marks our human ways of imagining, thinking, judging, and living and the requirement, incumbent upon us, of being imaginative, reflective, and critical within the midst of one's way of thinking and living. Such scrutiny is essential because it may well bring up hitherto unnoticed defects such as parochialism, bad prejudice26 and self­ deception.

Wittgenstein's point is that, while 'decision' plays a certain role in one's conversion, one's coming to belief in God, like one's adoption of a change in one's world-picture, is not a decision taken once and for all; one can assimilate a change in the way one looks at, and acts within, a situation only through repeated,

24. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §107. 25. Ibid., §92. 26. Note that a key point of this paper is that prejudice is not necessarily a bad thing; rather, it is also a condition for understanding. See also John McDowell, Mind and World, Harvard University Press, Cambridge/MA 1994,81. The 'Possible' Role of the Imagination in Philosophy and Theology 11

persistent effort, Notwithstanding this, the thrust of his method is that one can, to some extent, determine the aspect under which one sees some situation, or under which one occupies oneself unhesitatingly with a certain piece of reality.

Now, it is not that there is no 'truth' or 'falsity'. It is, rather, that a person can refuse to see something under a given aspect. She would have refused to occupy herself with the situation under a given conception and make such a vision her own. In all this, it is not that the persuasion or sharing of one's world-picture is completely irrational and subjective. One gives reasons; orily, one ends up with such reasons as say themselves; one ends up with the element in which one's arguments have their very life. Also, one is not saying that there is nothing objective about one's world-view. Wittgenstein continues On Certainty §92 by noting:

Remember that one is sometimes convinced of the correctness of a view by its simplicity or symmetry, i.e., these are what induce one to go over to this point of view. One then simply says something like: 'That's how it must be.'

This remark is interesting and important for one may well suspect that what has been said - that when one is dealing with a change in world-picture, one does give reasons even if it may well be that, at one point, one will have to invite or persuade the person to see the situation in this way rather than in another manner - entails some kind of fideism. Now, this is not the case. For, although one might firmly hold that one cannot be making a mistake about such-and-such, one may indeed, sometimes - rightly or wrongly - believe that one was not competent to judge?7 And this legitimate though, at the instance of admission, abstract critique of one's belief is contemplated further for Wittgenstein asserts that "[i]f that always or often were to happen, that would indeed completely change the character of the language-game" .28 Now this shows the way forward in terms that manifest that such persuasion is not fideistic for, indeed even if, on the one hand, our concepts are certainly moulded by our linguistic practices, on the other hand, "it is always by favour of Nature that one knows something".29 I do want to stress that even if

27. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §64S. 28. Ibid., §646. 29. Ibid., §SOS. I am, here, grateful to Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, "The Question of Linguistic Idealism," 133. 12 Mark Sultana

such a sequence of events, when one realizes that one was wrong where one could not contemplate being wrong, may occur albeit rarely, this does not exculpate the entire human business of assertion and denial from being within the space of reasons. For all our judgments and all challenges to such judgments always take place within the sphere of what is thinkable. At the same time, however, that one knows something is not guaranteed by the language-game: what is thought is open to criticism; indeed, a second world-picture may be seen to comprehend a wider range of experience better than the first.3D The relation between what is thought and the provocations of reality will always be tentative but - while it does not break out of the sphere of thinkable content - it rests on features of the world that are independent of what is thought. Hence the standing obligation to be willing to refashion concepts and conceptions if that is what experience recommends. The inherent human vocation is to strive towards the network of rational linkages and justifications that comprehends experience better, and to a fuller degree.

Of course, in the religious arena, there are some certainties whose role is untouchable if one is to remain within the particular religion. Nevertheless, there surely are also bad prejudices. The imagination - and the knowledge of the process of the transmission of tradition - can play a vital role here in the necessary critical reflection. Indeed, it is highly interesting that what has been said above for philosophy, and for natural theism, can also be said for theology.

However, the imagination does not have a merely critical role. Since a world­ picture is a form of imagining and experiencing the world that is assimilated as one's second nature, where our imagination has a role in our coping with, shaping, and ultimately transforming the concrete world, it is highly significant that works of art and verbal expressions, which embody that which they depict or signify, are such an important arena for theology. Indeed, this significance does not only hold for efforts of 'high' creativity - as it obviously does - but also for the daily and the ordinary. For, just as one may note the difference between saying, on the one hand, of someone 'He behaves well' and, on the other hand, 'He made a great impression

30. I feel justified in making this assertion by Anscombe's remarks: "Talking about these matters I once asked Wittgenstein whether, if he had a friend who went in for witch-doctoring, he would want to stop him. He thought about this for a little and said "Yes, but I don't know why" (Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, "The Question of Linguistic Idealism," 125. Later, in the same article, Anscombe exclaims, on Wittgensteinian grounds: "But won't the persuasion be right or wrong, an intellectual disaster or intellectual enlightenment?" (Ibid., 131). The 'Possible' Role of the Imagination in Philosophy and Theology 13

on me'31 - and such an experience, though objective, may not always live for the person,just as the portrait of a dear friend may not always 'smile' for one while one is seeing it32 -, one notes a difference between one who lives life rather aimlessly and superficially and another who, as it were, imagines things with God.33 And here,just as it would be vastly reductive to claim that, for example, the theological significance of a Gothic Cathedral lies only in the correctness of its style,34 it is important and

31. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Edited by Cyril Barrett. Compiled from notes taken by Yorick Smythies, Rush Rhees and lames Taylor. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1978,8. 32. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. 2nd ed. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1967, 205. 33. This phrase is to be found in William F. Lynch, Christ and Prometheus: A New Image ofthe Secular, Notre Dame, Indiana 1970,23. It is highly significant, here, that at the outset of his commentary on The Sentences of Peter Lombard (q. 1, a. 5), no less a theologian than Thomas Aquinas inquires into whether the method of theology should be artificialis; that is, into whether theology needs a poietic or skilful dimension. The rather surprising reply is a resounding 'yes'. For he insists that faith is based on 'a narrative of signs' and that, in this light 'metaphorical, symbolical and parabolical' approaches are not only acceptable, and not merely helpful but, indeed, necessary. As always it is intriguing to go through some of the objections and his replies in order to appreciate the context of the contrary view that he intends to undermine. In the second objection, the objector notes that, whereas the method of a science should be proportioned to the sci~nce itself - and theology is one to the greatest degree, and therefore the method of theology should also be unified to the greatest degree - nevertheless the theological method does not appear at all unified since it proceeds sometimes by making threats, sometimes by giving precepts, anci sometimes by other methods. He pushes this further in the subsequent objection where the point is that, since theology as distinct from, say, poetry - which is said by the objector to contain the least amount of truth -, is a science to the greatest degree, it therefore should avoid the metaphorical dimension of poetry. The argument here is that poetry suffers from a defect of rational truth and, therefore, such a dimension or model is not fit for theology. His counter-arguments are, once again, an eye-opener. In response, he invites the second objector to see that theology addresses different publics. Where it is a matter of overcoming error (which does not constitute the whole of theology, he stresses), there it is clear arguments that are necessary: one must be prepared to give reasons (and, therefore, arguments) in order to satisfy all who ask for the reason of the faith that one has (see 1 Pt 3, IS; Thomas also quotes Titus 1,9 to the same effect). However, he continues, theology is also involved in the contemplation of truth, and it is there that one needs a modus symbolicus that is not merely argumentative (Aquinas stresses this point further, in the body of the article, by noting that there are four levels of meaning in scripture: historical, moral, allegorical and anagogical). In response to the third objector, he notes that theology also seeks to explore that which is beyond our reason, and therefore a symbolic method is common to both theology and poetry ("theologia autem est de his quae sunt supra rationem; et ideo modus symbolicl/s utrique communis est, cum neutra rationi proportionetur"). I am grateful to Michael Paul Gallagher, "Retrieving Imagination in Theology," in The Critical Spirit: Theology at the Crossroads of Faith and Culture, ed. Andrew Pierce and Geraldine Smyth, The Columba Press, Dublin 2003,200-207, for highlighting these passages. 14 Mark Sultana

significant to note that, in this regard, it is not merely the content of the situation that is of importance. What is clearly also central is the aesthetic experience that makes a great impression and invites one into a different way of awareness. This is another way of saying that a religious certainty, and particularly, the way in which it is lived in a crucial moment of the community's history, or expressed by a great saint, embodies its meaning so that it is irreducible and inexhaustible. Hence, on the one hand, it says itself: a great formulation of a religious certainty, or a great expression of faith - just like an artistic object - is unique and the feeling is that the slightest alteration within it or attempt to translate it into another form would rupture its meaning. On the other hand, however, in understanding such a certainty, one must explore the way in which it relates to its context and it is possible to say a great deal about this; indeed, this is an inexhaustible task since one discovers ever richer connections of meaning and significance within the life of those for whom it is a certainty. In a certain sense, the tie-ups with the certainty's surroundings can encompass the whole of life and these tie-ups need to be explored if one is to come to a better understanding of the meaning of the certainty itself and a greater appreciation of its unique irreducibility.

In this somewhat startling light, the final invitation to the writer and the reader hearkens both to critical reflection on one's traditions and prejudices, and to a sense of deep amazement, and readiness to investigate, reverently, elements in our life that say themselves, and that provoke the arising of philosophical and theological questions in the first place.

Bibliography: Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret. "The Question of Linguistic Idealism," in From Parmenides to Wittgenstein: Collected Philosophical Papers, /, 112-133. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1981. Aquinas, Thomas. Thomae Aquinatis: Opera Omnia. Cum hypertextibus in CD­ ROM. Thesauro Addito. Auctore Roberto Busa. 2nd ed. Editoria Elettronica Editel, Milano 1996. Baker, Gordon P. "Wittgenstein's Method and Psychoanalysis." In Wittgenstein's Method: Neglected Aspects, edited by Katherine J. Morris. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford 2004, 205-222.

34. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations Oil Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, 8 The 'Possible' Role of the Imagination in Philosophy and Theology 15

Gallagher, Michael Paul. "Retrieving Imagination in Theology," in The Critical Spirit: Theology at the Crossroads of Faith and Culture, edited by Andrew Pierce and Geraldine Smyth, 200-207. The Columba Press, Dublin 2003. Kenny, Anthony. "Wittgenstein on the Nature of Philosophy." In The Legacy of Wittgenstein, 38-60. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1984. Lynch, William F. Christ and Prometheus: A New Image of the Secular. Notre Dame, Indiana 1970. McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, Cambridge/MA 1994. Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford. University Press, Oxford 2000. Rhees, Rush. "Postscript," in Recollections ofWittgenstein, edited by Rush Rhees. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1984, 172-209. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Blue and Brown Books. 2nd ed. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1969. ---. Culture and Value. Translated by Pete~Winch.Edited by G. H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman. Revised edition of the text by A. Pichler. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1998. -- -. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Edited by Cyril Barrett, Compiled from notes taken by Yorick Smythies, Rush Rhees and lames Taylor. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1978. -- -. Lectures on Philosophical Psychology 1946-1947. Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead 1988. ---. On Certainty. Translated by Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1977. Reprint, with corrections and indices. ---. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. 2nd ed. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1967.

Department of Philosophy Faculty of Theology University of Malta. Msida, Malta.

FIRST CHRIST, THEN THOSE OF CHRIST ... SO THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL

The Text of 1 Cor 15:20-28 and its Context

Charles Buttigieg

1 Introducing the pericope vv.20-28

In the pericope (the unity, or passage) preceding ours, vv.12-19, St. Paul attempted to demonstrate the futility of the argumentation 'if there was no resurrection of the dead'. But since all this is hypothetical, Paul now, in our pericope vv.20-28 speaks of the important reality of Christ's resurrection which he together with the converted Corinthians believed in, as we see in v.II: "Anyway, whether it was they or I, this is what we preach and what you believed." This makes the'resurrection of the dead both necessary and inevitable in the proclamation of the gospel of the Risen Christ. We can say also that our passage, with its chapter, is one of the first literary testimonies of the Resurrection of Christ in the New Testament, being itself before the gospels.

During the course of time, our passage was a great centre of attraction either' positively for the enrichment of theology or, unfortunately, entrapped in certain heresies. Verses from our pericope were linked and served as central for the great Christological controversies during the first centuries of the proclamation of the gospel in the ditJusion of the Church and the development of its doctrine. Tertullian was one of the first to begin actually interpreting the text, but it was Origen who really opened it to speculation. I For example in vv.24-28 the Arians found their

I, Origen was a prominent member of tbe Alexandrian School with its centre in Egypt. It had its roots in Philo and was developed for Christians by Clement of Alexandria, The Alexandrian tradition favoured the allegorical tradition which had removed the Jewish roots although the historical sense was not denied, It emphasized the divinity of Christ with its Logos-Sarx (Word­ tlesh) Christology, The school was opposed by Se Augustine. later by Se Jerome. and above all by the exegetical school of Antioch, They held it responsible for many heresies, The school of Antioch. with its centre in Syria. interpreted Scripture in a strictly historical and literal manner, It was much closer to the original Jewish roots of the apocalyptic writings, At times. however, some typology was accepted in the exegesis of the OT It emphasized the humanity of Jesus with its 18 Charles Buttigieg

argument of the inferiority of the Son to the Father although he is supposed to be the highest of creatures.2 Marcellus of Ancyra and the followers of Origen derived from these verses their argument for the abolition of the incarnation and the separation of the Logos from the flesh, so that in the return of the Logos to the Father, the Father will become all in all.

The passage was often cited as a proof for 'universalism' or the salvation for all of humanity. This is based on the 'all' of v.22 and the 'all in all' of v.28, also with the different interpretations of TO T£AOC; in v.24. For St. Augustine vv.21-22 were important for the development of his doctrine of original sin and grace because of the fact that all have sinned and are liable to death, and it is only through Christ that one can have life.

The passage was studied during the Middle Ages by Peter Lombard, Walafrid Strabo, Haymo of Halberstadt and St. Thomas Aquinas. During the Reformation, John Calvin studied the humanity and the kingship of Christ as they are presented in this passage. But Calvin's ambiguous study led to the differing interpretations that Christ's humanity would cease at the end of history. Biblical scholars are really divided in extracting the real theological message of our passage. For example Kasemann, differing from the non-apocalyptic position of Bultmann and Barth, says that 1 Cor 15,20-28 has an apocalyptic and cosmological orientation. For him the passage is about God's complete victory.3 Fee, on the other hand, denies that this passage has anything to do with apocalypticism.4

The passage is affirmative and positive with regards the resurrection of the dead, but there are many questions still to be answered. This present research starts with a correct translation from the original Greek, viewing above all the different variants in the textual criticism. After this procedure, we shall investigate and study the text's delimination, its literary context and the literary movement of the passage.

Logos-Anthropos (Word-man) Christology. The Alexandrian School was accused of fostering Arianism while the Anthiochene gave birth as they say to Nestorianism. Cf. R.P. McBRIEN, Catholicism, New YorraaavaPX~VEXePOuC:;U1hourk 1994, 1233-1254. 2. The heresy was condemned by the Council of Nicea (325). 3. E. KASEMANN, "On the subject of Primitive Christian Apocalyptic", in IBID., New Testament Questions of Today, Philadelphia 1969, 133. 4. G.D. FEE, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Grand Rapids (MI) 1987,752. First Christ, Then Those of Christ 19

2. Translation and Textual Criticism 2,1.' Translation

Our point of departure in studying 1 Cor 15:20-28 is the original Greek text as found in the most recent edition of Nestle-Aland (the 27th) of the Novum Testamentum Graece.5 v. 20. But now (on the contrary) Christ has been raised from (out from) the dead, first-portion (first fruits) ofthose who have fallen asleep (died). v. 21. Because since death came through (by means of) man, (an4) also the resurrection of the dead came through man. v. 22. Just as then with (in) Adam all die, in the same way also with (in) Christ all will be given life . . v. 23. But each in its own proper order (turn), the first fruits Christ then those of Christ in his coming. v. 24. Then the conclusion (end), when he hands over the kingdom to God, that is,. to the Father when he renders ineffective every rule (dominion) and every authority and power. v. 25. For he must rule until (while, when, as long as) he has put all the enemies under his feet. v. 26. The last enemy, death is made ineffeCtive (is put out). v. 27. For he had put all under the authority (subjected all) under his feet. Then (but, now, so) when he said that all is subjected, it is evident that except the One who subjected all to him. . v. 28. When then all is subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to the One who subjected all to him, in order (so that) God may be all (everything) in all (everyone).

2.2. Textual Criticism Textual Criticism helps us to arrive and to know better the original text (our starting-point), studying the many variants and their reliability in the different manuscripts. . v. 20 The verb egeneto (bec.ame) is inserted after KEKoq. .Lllf-lEv(J.)v (have falien asleep) in (beginning with the uncials [manuscripts written in capital letters]): the Greek codex D (06) of the 6th century made by the second group of correc~ors; in the Greek codex 'If of the 9/lOth cent.; in the Majority text, including the Byzantine text (that is the majority manuscripts of the Koine type) and all the Syriac manuscripts.

5. Cf. Biblia Sacra utriusque Testamenti editio Hebraica et Graeca, Nest1e-A1and, Stuttgart 271993. 20 Charles Buttigieg

This as an effect made therefore two clauses; 'and became the first fruits'. The King lames Version followed these witnesses; "and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep".

The text of our edition is supported by Papyrus 46 (Chester Beatty) which is of the year ca. 200;6 by the Greek codex Sinai tic us (') of the 4th cent., which was discovered by C. Tischendorf in 1814 in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai; Greek codex A (Alexandrinus) of the 5th cent., and belonged to the Patriarch of Alexandria; Greek codex Vaticanus (B) of the 4th cent., which was composed in Egypt; Greek codex D, identifying the original reading when the correction was made; Greek codex F of the 9th cent.; Greek codex G of the 9th cent.; Greek codex P; Greek codex 0243 of the 10th cent. and in minuscules (written in small letters): 6 of the 13 th cent.; 33 of the 9th cent.; 81 of the year 1044; 365 of the 12th cent.; 630 of the 14th cent.; 1175 of the 11 th cent.; in a supplement made to minuscule 1241 of the 12th cent.; 1739 of the 10th cent.; 1881 of the 14th cent.; 2464 of the 9th cent.; few manuscripts which differ from the majority text; the entire Latin tradition and all the Coptic versions. The reading is also found in the Latin translation of patristic writer Irenaeus of the year 395. v. 24 We have rrapabw (subj. aor. act. 3ru p. sing.) instead of rrapabu)(tJ (the present) in the Greek minuscule 1881; in the majority text and in the entire Latin tradition.

The text of our edition is supported by pl6; Greek codex Sinaticus; codex A; codex Vaticanus with minor differences; codex D; by codices F and G with minor differences; codex Y; 0243; 0270 of the 4/5 th cent.; by the minuscules: 1505 of the 12th cent.; 1739 and few manuscripts which differ from the majority text. It is interesting to add here that Marcellus of Ancyra (d. 374) knew of a text that contains lOU OWBOAOU (of the devil) after rrCt.oav apxilv in v.24b. 7 v. 25 We have autou after £X8POl't; (his enemies) in the Greek codices A; F; G and in the minuscules: 33; 104 of the year 1087; 629 of the 14th cent.; a few manuscripts which differ from the majority text; and the Latin codex a of the 4th cent.; Latin codex r of the 6/7th cent.; in the Vulgate manuscripts; in the Syriac version Peschitta; in Mm'cion according to Tertullian of the 2nd cent., and in Epiphanius of Constantia

6. P'" cousidered as the oldest witness of the Alexandrian family and contains the whole epistle, Being one of the oldest witnesses, its value is really great for textual criticism, 7, J,T. LIENHARD. "The exegesis of I Cor 15:24-28 from Marcellus of Ancyra to Theodoret ofCynis", in Veilr 37 (1983) 341. First Christ, Then Those of Christ 21

(d. 403). Also here Marcellus of Ancyra quotes v.25b without mXVTat;. This is however apparently without significance. 46 v. 27 The particle on (declarative) is omitted in p ; in the Greek codex Vaticanus and in the minuscules: 33; 630; 1505; in few manuscripts which differ from the majority text; in the entire Latin tradition with a few exceptions due to intraversional differences; in the Latin translation of Irenaeus and in Ambrosiaster (between 366 and 384).

The text of our edition is supported by the Greek codices: Sinaiticus; D; F; G; Y; the Majority text including the Byzantine Koine text and in the Latin codex r. v. 28"The conjunction Kat after TOTE is omitted in the Greek codices: Vaticanus; in D identifying the original reading when the correction was made; in F; in G; in 0243 and in minuscules: 33; 1175; 1739; in few manuscripts which differ from the majority text; in the Latin codex b of the 8/9th cent.; in the Vulgata Stuttgartiensis of 1983; in the Syriac Peschitta; in the Sahidic versions of the 4th cent.; in two to four Bohairic witnesses from the Delta and also in the Latin translation of Irenaeus.

The text is supported by the Greek codices: Sinaiticus; A; D (identifying a correction made by the second corrector); \.If; in the majority text and in the Latin codices: a; f of the 6th cent.; in r; in Vulgata Clementina of the year 1592; in the Syriac version of Harklensis of the year 616; in the Bohairic versions; in Tertullian; Ambrosiaster and Epiphanus ofConstantia. Although this could be accepted either way, it is more likely that the shorter text is original. The addition may be explained as being made to intensify the point of the text. 28b The expression 6 uLoS; is omitted in the individual Vulgate manuscripts and in Ambrosiaster. This variant is also known and accepted by Marcellus. For him this is important, since he reserves the title 'Son' for the incarnate Christ and here it is the Logos that will be subjected. The Logos is reunited with God the Father so that God may be all in all.s 28c TCx (the article) is omitted before navTCX. This was a change in the text from the 25 th edition and is supported by Greek codices: A; Vaticanus; in D identifying the original reading when the correction was made; in 0243 and in minuscules: 6; 33; 81; in a supplement made to minuscule 1241; 1739 and few manl)scripts which differ from the Majority text. Since navTa here is in the plural, it remains with the meaning of 'all', since the singular without the article means 'each' or 'every'.

8. J.T. LIENHARD, "The exegesis of 1 Cor 15:24-28", 341. 22 Charles Buttigieg

With regards these last two variants, our text is supported by the Greek codices: Sinaiticus; F; G; W; 075 of the lO'h cent; 1881 and the Majority text.

3. Delimitation of the Text

First of all, we have to see if our text of study is really a unity in itself, by identifying and justifying its limits, its beginning as well as its end that is v.20 and v.28. The procedure involves a search for indicative words within the pericope and the studying of its content, and also the content of its preceding and following pericopes.

Studying the rhetorical composition of 1 Cor 15, we see that the pericope in vv.20-28 is one of the three micro-unities (vv.13-19; 20-28 and 29-32) of a larger unity (vv.13-33), of the first argumentatio (the exhortation) of vv.12-34 in chapter 15, which speaks of the resurrection of the dead. Verses 33-34 form the peroratio, that is, the conclusion of the exhortation. The other argumentatio runs from vv.35 to 58, where we see that the resurrection means the transformation of the body.

It is interesting to note that our micro-unity vv.20-28, which is the probatio (contains the body of the argumentatio) which for convenience will be called here (B), is at the centre of the other two micro-unities, the refutatio (the refusal of the other opinion) vv.13-19 (to be called A) and the refutatio vv.29-32 (to be calledA') which are parallel to each other. This confirms the unity of our text of study vv.20- 28 as a micro-unity within the concentric argumentatio of vv.12-34. It constitutes the material and the semantic centre of 12-34.9

In vv.13-19, we have a negative tone for an unreal hypothesis: no resurrection, no salvation. We have 1 interrogative,S times the conj. El and 1 time Elm:p. Again in vv.29-32 we have a negative tone for another unreal hypothesis. We have 4 times the interrogative and 3 times El. However in these two micro-unities we see that no one can conclude that there is no resurrection from the dead. As a matter of fact they are called the refutatio since their content is meant to prove the falsity of the opposite position. On the other hand, our micro-unity, called the probatio, seeing that it demonstrates the truth of Christ's resurrection and the resurrection of the dead, it has a positive tone; its object is that of faith in the reality of the resurrection of Christ and ours; it deals with the 'first fruits' and above all the 'harvest'.

9. G. BARBAGLIO, La Prima Lettera ai Corinzi, Bologna 1995,788. First Christ, Then Those of Christ 23

So v.19: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable" is then the conclusion (peroratio) ofvv.13-19. Verse 20 with NuvL 6£ (But now) really then marks a turning point in the discussion, as we can see also in Rom 3,21: "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets". From the Christological negation we arrive to the certainty of Christ's resurrection; from the 'if' clauses to the 'true' clauses, from the illusion to certainty, from the hypothesis to the reality, where v.20 is completed by v.28. What begins in Christ ends with God being all in all. The terms cmapx~ and rravta EV rruoLv become then the two poles of Paul's apocalyptic strategy, one begins, the other ends, the apocalyptic process in our passage. So v.28, with its culminative event of "all in all", is the end of our pericope.

On the other hand, in v.29: "Otherwise, what will they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why then are they baptized for the dead?" we have the beginning of another argumentation, the other refutatio with the mention of the strange custom of those who baptize themselves for the dead.

It is better to visualize schematically all that we have said here using the aid of the structure proposed by Jean-Noel Aletti:

A = vv.12-19 v.13a - if there is no resurrection of dead v.16a - if the dead are not raised B = vv.20-28 affirmation of resurrection of Christ and of the dead A' = vv.29-32 vv.29b and 32c - if the dead are not raised

Aletti states that vv.20-28 are to be considered the point of unity because they express the conviction about the reality of the resurrection and its positive consequences for all men and all creation, while vv.12-19 and vv.29-32 only speak of unreal hypotheses with their negative consequences. From all this we can say that vv.20-28 is really a unity on its own, where we find the affirmation of the resurrection of Christ and the dead. 10

4. Immediate and Remote Context

To understand better our pericope it is important to see it in its immediate and

10. J-N. ALEITI, "L' Argumentation de Paul et la Position des Corinthiens: I Cor 15: 12-34", in L. DE LORENZI (ed.), Resurrection du Christ et des Chretiells 1 Cor 15, MSB, Rome 1985,64-66. 24 Charles Buttigieg

remote context. By the 'context', here we mean the literary one, as we have already seen the historical context in the introductive part. The immediate context of our pericope is chapter 15, in which it is situated, We had already seen the immediate pericopes and how they are related to our text, when studying the delimitation of the text. The remote context is the literary context of the whole First Letter to the Corinthians and other references especially Old Testament citations which the author uses in the composition of the letter.

First, let us see the immediate context. Chapter 15, as we had seen, is divided into two parts, which we called them by the rhetorical term of the argllll1entatio. The first half, consisting of vv.I-34, deals with the fact of the resurrection, and the second half with the mode of this resurrection. It is worth noting also the following structure of 1 Cor 15 proposed by Aletti: exordiltm ll vv.I-2; narratio l2 vv.3-1l; propositiol 3 (probatio vv.l2-34), (peroratio vv.33-34); propositio v.35; probatio vv.36-58 (peroratio v.58).14 Similarly we can see the classical rhetorical scheme of BUnker: exordium vv.I-3a; narratio vv.3b-ll; argumentatio I (vv.12-28); peroratio I (vv.29-34); argumentatio II (vv.35-49); peroratio II (vv.50-58).15

In the narratio, Paul has established that the resurrection of Christ is at the core of the primitive kerygma, and that this has already been accepted by the Corinthians. When Paul wants to set forth his doctrinal teaching on the resurrection, as one who has witnessed the resurrected Christ and has been transformed and empowered by this encounter. With the resurrection of Christ firmly anchored, Paul can now deal with the issue at hand, the resurrection of the dead. This is the scope of chapter 15 and hence the immediate literary context of our pericope. Also to note here is that in v.20 the formula: XPL016~ EYrlYfP1aL EK VfKPWV is the antithesis of the Christological negation implied in vv.14.16: OU6E XpLOW~ EYrlYEP1aL Also, this

11. Cf. B. MORTARA GARAVELLI, Malluale di Retorica, Milano 1994, 63-65. The exordium is a brief introduction of the discourse. Its purpose, is to make the audience attentive. receptive and benevolent (attentlllll, docilem. benevolul11). 12. The purpose of the narratio is to mUTate in a persuasive way the facts as they happened or are supposed to have happened so that the listener is informed of the theme or subject of the controversy. These are supposed to be the facts and events that cannot be denied, and they form the foundation upon which the probatio will be built. 13. The propositio is the presentation of a section of the issue under consideration. 14. J-N. ALETTI, "L' Argumentation de Paul et la Position des Corinthiens", 63-81. 15. M. BUNKER, BrieJformular und Rlzetorisclze Disposition im I. Korintlzerbrief, Gottingen 1984, 48-76. First Christ, Then Those of Christ 25

triumphant affirmation in v.20 that Christ has been raised from the dead takes us back to vv.3-8.

Let us now turn to the remote context of our pericope, that is, the whole letter of 16 1 Cor, of which a clear structure is given by Mitchell :

address and initial salute (1,1-3) exordium (1,4-9) body of the letter (1,10-15,58) partitio l7 (l ,1-10) - propositio generalis of 1 Cor narratio (1,11-17) probatio (1,18-15,57) 1. warning against the disagreement (1,18-4,21) 2. warning against the divisions in relation to the unbelievers (5,1-11,1) 3. warning against the divisions in cult (11,2-14,40) 4. warning against the divisions because of the eschatology (15,1- 57) peroratio (15,58) final greetings (16,1-24)

As we can see Paul in this letter deals with a number of ethical issues; matTiage and sexuality in chapters 5-7; sacrificial meat in 8,1-11,1; worship 11,2-14,40; and alms-giving 16,1-4. Paul presents these ethical values and re-enforces them with an important goal that is the resurrection of the body in chapter 15. Hence for Paul, the reality of the resurrection of the body is indispensable for the validity of the good conduct in life. In our pericope we can see Paul's further use of his OT literary context, explicitly with reference to Psalms 110 and 8 and other references.

5. Conclusion

In 1 Cor 15,20-28, Paul shows that the glory of the resurrection of Christ entails the glory of the resurrection of all the just dead, as Christ is the 'first fruits of them

16. Cf. M.M. MrTcHELL, Palll and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation. All exegetical inl'estigation of the langllage and composition of 1 Corilllizians, Tlibingen 1991. 17. The partitio is the principal thesis and announces the plan of the anthor. Aletti prefers the term of propositio here. 26 Charles Buttigieg

who have fallen asleep' (v.20). Above all it shows God's reconquest of the universe.

Paul composes this passage carrying in the context of his Jewish background and the OT literature. He made his argument using the analogy from Adam. Just as death came from Adam, eternal life comes from Christ. Christ is the first one, then follow those who belong to him. A very simple logic of succession. At the end, Christ will hand over the kingdom of God to the Father, after he has destroyed every evil power.

It is important to note in this conclusion that for Paul resurrection and salvation are not identical. Resurrection is for all humanity as also salvation is open to all humanity. But the latter is under the free choice of the individual person. Sinners will also rise, if only to be judged and punished. Above all, we see in our passage the important link between the resurrection of Christ and the general resurrection. Christ will continue to reign until the conquest is complete and perfect. This is the significance of "First Christ, then those of Christ ... so that God may be all in all".

Bibliography

ALETII, 1.-N., "L' Argumentation de Paul et la Position des Corinthiens: I Cor 15: 12- 34", in L. DE LORENZI (ed.), Resurrection du Christ et des Chretiens (1 Cor 15), MSB, Rome 1985, 63-8l. BARBAGLIO, G., La Prima Lettera ai Corinzi, Bologna 1995. Biblia Sacra utriusque testamenti editio Hebraica et Graeca, Nestle-Aland, Stuttgart 271993. BUNKER, M., Briefformular und rhetorische Disposition im 1. Korintherbrief, Gottingen 1984. CONZELMANN, H., 1 Corinthians. A Commentary on the first epistle to the Corinthians, Philadelphia 1975. FEE, G.D., The Epistle to the Corinthians, Grand Rapids (MI) 1987. GARAVELLI, B. M., Manuale di Retorica, Milano 1994. KASEMANN, E., New Testament Questions of Today, Philadelphia 1969. LAMBRECHT, 1., "Structure and line of thought in 1 Cor 15:20-28", in NT 32, 2 (1990) 143-5l. LIENHARD, J.T., "The exegesis of 1 Cor 15:24-28 from Marcellus of Ancyra to Theodoret ofCyrus", in VChr 37 (1983) 340-359. First Christ, Then Those of Christ 27

McBRIEN, R., Catholicism, New York 1994. MITCHELL, M.M., Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation. An exegetical investigation of the language and composition of 1 Corinthians, Ttibingen 1991. SEGAL, A.F., "Paul's Thinking about Resurrection in its Jewish context", in NTS 44 (1998) 400-419.

"Buttigieg House", Dalelands Street, Qala, Gozo,

"A New Attuning of the Elements Occurred": A Brief Reflection on the Sacrament of the Eucharist

Sean Edward Kinsella

A new attuning of the elements occurred, as on a harp the !lotes may change their rhythm, though all the while preserving the same tone; and this is just 'I'hat happened ... [Wisdom 19.181

The celebration of the Eucharist [ellclzaristos, "grateful", clwris, "favour", chairein, "to rejoice"] involves an unstinting reception of a great and generous gift, whose fullness exceeds our capacity to entirely receive it. The gift of great favour, the moment of sweet ["How pleasant your promise to my palate, sweeter than honey in my mouth," Psalm 119, 103] rejoicing ["1 have told you this so that my own joy be in you and your joy complete," John 15, 11] that is the Eucharist is simultaneously so exalted and yet so profound a truth that it eludes us both above and below; so fundamental that we overlook it, so transcendent that we cannot comprehend it: "I have dealt with great things that I do not understand: things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know" [Job 42,3].1

The Eucharist is a testament to transformation. The meaning of the sacrament can not be understood primarily as either allegorical [this does not stand for that; which is substitution], or analogical [this is not like that; which is relationship], but as metaphorical [meta, "to change," "to transform" + pherein, "to carry," "to bear"] because the meaning of the Eucharist is neither "this stands for that" or "this is like that" but both, and more. The Eucharist declares, "this is that," which is identity: "I am the living bread which has come down from heaven" [John 6,48].

The definition of Eucharistic transformation is transubstantiation, whereby bread and wine, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, become

I. One is reminded of the observation ofAnaxagoras that "Because of the weakness of our senses we are not able to judge the truth" I Quoted in Philip Wheelwright, ed., The Presocralics Macmillan; New York 1966, 160J. 30 Sean Edward Kinsella

the Body and Blood of Life Himself. 2 Transubstantiation is the material expression ne plus ultra of metaphor. Not limited to substitution or relationship, the meaning carried by the bread and wine is transformed ["Changing them by Your Holy Spirit'3] through identity: "This is my body given for you ... This cup is the new covenant in my blood P0ured out for you" [Luke 22,19-20].

The bread and wine, the staves of life, and the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the life of the world ["God has given to us eternal life, and this life is His Son," 1 John 5,11], are the symbolic poles of Eucharistic transformation. The peace ["Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give to you," John 14,27] and harmony ["Anew attuning of the elements occurred," Wisdom 19,18] proclaimed in Christ, through Him and with Him, reveals the truth of a cosmic [kosmos, "order," "universe"] metanoia: the authentic conversion of the heart of all creation.

The entirety of God's creation, its abundance and plenitude ["the breadth and the length, the height and the depth," Ephesians 3,18], finds its fullest expression and perfection in Christ, the pre-existent pleroma [the fullness of all possible categories of being]; in Whom, through Whom, and for Whom all things were created and are completed: "God wanted all fullness to be found in Him and through Him to reconcile all things, everything in heaven and everything on earth, by making peace through His death on the cross" [Colossians 1, 19-20].4

The Eucharist is the epitome of the perfection of all creation [mineral, vegetable, animal, human, angelic and divine] in the beauty of Christ, through Whom all things have been reconciled, perfected, and transformed. All of creation cries out the beauty of the Lord, for in Him is its joy ["May the Lord find joy in His creatures!" Psalm 104,31]. In the consummation of time that is the kairos [the fitting and proportionate fulfilment], Christ will be "all in all" [1 Corinthians 15,28] and in no sense is this

2. The Fathers of the First Council of Constantinople in 381 in the expositio fidei proclaimed their faith "in the Spirit, the holy, the lordly and life-giving one" [Quoted in Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils Volume I, Washington University Press, Georgetown 1990, 23] and throughout, especially, the Gospel of John, Jesus identifies Himself as the life [e.g. John 14,6]. 3. The epiciesis, the prayer to God the Holy Spirit, in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Allueuia Press, Allendale 1970, 53. 4. This fullness is suggested beautifully in the canon of the Mass in the Roman Rite, immediately before the minor elevation, when our prayers are offered to God through Christ: "Through Whom, o Lord, You always create, sanctify, fill with life, bless, and bestow upon us all good things" [Saint Joseph Daily Missal, Catholic Book Publishing; New York 1959,683]. A Brief Reflection on the Sacrament of the Eucharist 31

more perfectly expressed than in the Eucharist: "I am the food of grown men. Grow, and you shall feed on me. You will not change me into yourself, as you change food into your flesh, but you will be changed into me."5

Christ reveals to us that the new commandment of live ["I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you," John 13,34] is not only the fundamental law of human perfection, but is also the catalyst for the transformation of the world.6 Sorrow, Jesus Christ tells His disciples at the Last Supper, will be turned into joy: "Your hearts will be full of joy, and that joy no one shall take from you ... I have told you all this so that you may find peace in me. In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world" [John 16,20.22.33].

Sorrow is transformed into you; and bread and wine are transformed into Christ's Body and Blood. The peace, which Christ leaves·with us, is the very presence of His own person. The Eucharist, then, is that peace which is given unto us: it is that good cheer, that rejoicing, which is the perfection of love ["Love comes to its perfection in us," 1 John 4,17] because "God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him" [1 John 4,16; cf. Ephesians 3,19, "Know also the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God"].

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5. Augustine, Confessions, VII.IO; in the translation of John K. Ryan (Image; Garden City 1960), 171. If you have received worthily, Augustine writes elsewhere, "you are what you have received" [Sermon 227]. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Mystagogic Catecheses, explains that "by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, you become united in body and blood with Him. For thus we do become Christ-bearers, His Body and Blood being distributed through our members. And thus it is that we become, according to blessed Peter (cf. 2 Peter 1,4), sharers of the divine nature" ["On the Body and Blood of Christ," On the Mysteries, IY.3; in his Cathechetical Lectures, XXII]. 6. Cf. Gaudium et Spes, "The Pastoral Constitution of the Second Vatican Council on the Church in the Modem World," No. 38.

La Filosofia di Pietro Caxaro (+1485)

Mark F. Montebello

Pietro Caxaro e il primo filosofo nota di Malta del quale sono pervenuti a noi alcui frammenti dei suoi scritti. Le sue posizioni filosofiche 10 qulificano ad un posto onorabile nel movimento umanista modievale, COS! come la sua erudite contribuzione rimane come una riflessione matura nel rinascimento sociale e culturale del suo tempo.

La preparazione culturale di Caxaro, il suo carattere umanista, e la sua complessiva filosofia pienamente riflettono la forza peculiare, le funzioni ed I bisogni di un popolo mediterraneo di cui il periodo d'oro era ancorada arrivare, ma di cui la costituzione mentale e il modo d'esprimersi erano gia formati. Lo studio di Caxaro in quanto filosofo e immensamente rilevante per la consapevolezza dell a propria sapienza di una civilta antica.

I - La Preparazione Culturale

/-L'Uomo

Caxaro divento notario pubblico per le isole maltesi a Palermo nel 1438. 1 Probabilmente, aveva studiato a Sicilia per la sua preparazione professionale, indubbiamente incontrando la mentalita umanista che allora riempiva tutta la citta con un vigour non commune.2 Pochi mesi dOpO,3 e diventato giudice, ed esercitava la sua autorita sia nel foro civile4 come in quello ecclesiastico.5 Oltre a questo, per tanti anni Caxaro era un giurato al municipio della sua citta, la vecchia capitale di Malta, Medina. 6

1. O. Wettinger and M. Fsadni, L-Ghanja ta' Pietru Caxaru: Poeiija bil-Malti Medjevali, Malta 1983,21 .67. 2. 1. Peri, Restallrazione e Pacifico Stato in Sicilia. /377-1501, Roma-Bari 1988, 143ff. 3. O. Wettinger and M. Fsadni, L-Ghanja, 22. 4. Ibid., 22, n. 69. 5. Ibid., nn. 70ff. 6. Ibid., n. 73. 34 Mark F. Montebello

Un uomo di grande stima sociale, Caxaro si e spento in agosto del 1485, ed venne sepolto nella chiesa conventuale dei domenicani a Rabato. 7

Nato a Malta da genitori maltesi, Caxaro visse a Medina.s Da grande aveva estese proprieta e pure sei schiavi a1 suo servizio.9 ii - I Frammenti

E pervenuto a noi poco del totale produttivo di Caxaro. La piu completa ed eminente di questi frammenti e la sua COS! detta "Cantilena", scoperta ne11968.IO Sono pure conservate alcune sentenze giudiziari del filosofo, pronunciate ana corte ecclesiastic a, II e, di piu, molti minuti secretriali degl'incontri municipali di Medina nei quail Caxaro prese parte attiva. 12

I frammenti, tranne la Cantilena, che e la nostra maggiore fonte, non riguardano la filosofia di Caxaro direttamente. Ci fomiscono solamente dati per completare il nostro quadro culturale ed intellettuale del filosofo.

Iii - Il Filosofo

Introducendo la Cantilena, il transcrittore medievale, Reverendo Brandano, pure lui Caxaro, dice che l'autore della composizione era un filosofo, poeta ed oratore (Pro!., vv. 3-4). L'autorita di questa fonte biografica singolare non e da dubitare, considerando la statura e la precisione professionale di questo trascrittore. La filosofia di Caxaro, infatti, si trova in forma altamente sintetica nella sua Cantilena, complessivamente riflettendo la sua profonda capacita intellettuale.

Il fatto che la filosofia di Caxaro si deve trarre da un frammento, anche se proprio sostanziale, non fa novita nella storia della filosofia. Si trovano innumerevoli istanze di questo genere, includendo filosofi di una rilevanza gigantesca, come i Miletani, o anche Aristotele stes~o.

7. Archivio dei domenicani di Rabato, Ms. 321, Giuliana Antica, I, f. 83v. 8. G. Wettinger, "Looking back on 'The Cantilena of Peter Caxaro"', Journal of Maltese Studies, 12 (1978) 100-101. 9. Wettinger and Fsadni, L-Glianja, 25, n. 94. 10. G. Wettinger and M. Fsadni, Peter Caxaro's Cantilena, Malta 1968. 11. Museo del Catedrale, Medina, Archivi Originali, Ms. 1, ff.l87vr e 191 vf. 12. G. Wettinger,Acta Juratorulll (in publicazione), vedi, per esempio, nn. 4, 8,10,11,21 ,ecc. La Filosofia di Pietro Caxaro 35

Similmente, la forma poetic a cori cui Caxaro esprime la sua filosofia non ci presenta un'oggezione seria. Abbiamo anche qui filosofi simili di enorme importanza, come, per esempio, gli Eleatici, inc1udendo Parmenide stesso, il "padre" della filosofia occidentale. Pero qui nel nostro caso, l' espressione poetic a non ha da fare con quella abitudine ormai antiquata di un tempo quando la pros a prende la precedenza, come nel caso dei filosofi Greci "naturalistici" (del V' secolo a.c.) che era tremendamente influenzata dalla letteratura c1assica, sia Greca che Romana, particolarmente da Platone ed Aristotele. Piu di altro, qui la forma poetica e una tecnica, una caratteristica espressiva e conoscitiva.

E cosa da discutere la posizione di alcuni studiosi, specialmente quelli formati nella tradizione scolastica, che qualificano un lavoro filosofico dalla sua natura sistematica. Una precisione del genere avra filosofi come Aristotele, Avicenna, Alberto Magno, San Tommaso, e altri simili, che conformano perfettamente a questo modello. Pero, d'altra parte, questa non fu la posizione di Platone stesso, I' archetipo del filosofo di tutti i tempi Platone, infatti, al contario dello scienziato Aristotele, era un artista prima di essere un filosofo.

Percio, la tradizione al quale Caxaro appartiene puo essere propriamente chiamata "platonica". L'emfasi qui cadra meno sulla natura non-sistematica della sua contribuzione, e piu sulla forma narrativa, 0 meglio, sulla sua filosofia del tipo "mitologico" in sense tecnico. Dal punto di vista formale ed essenziale, siamo nella linea di Platone, Sant' Agostino e dei neo-platonici medievali, specialmente quelli del periodo all 'inizio del Rinascimento di una formazione umanista. Successivamente, questa linea filosofica e stata continuata da filosofi come Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Nietzche, e altri simili. In genere, e una tendenza filosofica cominciata dalla risposta "ideale", tecnicamente parlando, alla concezione Parmediana di essere; qualificati da un'attenzione particolare alle funzioni affettiva del uomo, e a quel sapere 0 conoscenza acquisita per mezzo di un movimento volitivo; e puraltro manifestata con un'apertura alla flessibilia. Mentre la volonta e ragionevolmente stimata, le qualita mentali intrinsici dell'uomo sono considerati come necessarie, anteriori ai sensi, nel processo di scoprire l'oggetto vero della conoscenza, cioe quell'essere che e diverso e superiore ai dati meramente sensuali.

1I La "Cantilena"

Siamo di fronte ad una opera letteraria di conspicuo rilievo, del quale a noi ci interessa l'apporto filosofico. Prima di proseguire sara opportuno presentare un 36 Mark F. Montebello

spechietto idiosincratico del testo, affinche possiamo intraprendere la complessivita sintetica de1lavoro. La peculiarieta conoscitiva di Caxaro, insieme alle sue interessi culturali, costituiscono una posizione filosofica delineata che successivamente esamineremo.

11 Testo: Un analisi idiosincratica della Cantilena implica un esame dettagliato della sua costituzioine, particu1armente delle idee espresse in essa. Nella terminologia filosofica, 10 schema intrinseco sara questo:

A. Vv.I-2: L'Invocazione: Comunicazione

1. Il Soggetto: "Xideu it cada / ... mensab fil gueri uele nisab fo homorcom" ("11 canto della sfortuna / ... senza precedenti nel passato e nella vostro vita", vv.la-2). 2. L'Oggetto: "ve gireni" ("0 vicini miei", v.lb). 3. La Relazione: "tale nichadithicum" ("ventie, vi raccontero, v.lc).

B. Vv.3-6: La Lamentazione: Causalita

1. La Causa (vv. 3_4)

1. L' Agente Attivo (la Causa Primaria): "Qalb mehandihe chakim soltan ui le mule" ("Un cuore senza podesta, re e ne signore", v.3). 2. L' Azione: "Bir imgamic rimitine betiragin mecsule" ("Mi ha gettato in un pozzo profondo con scale rotte', v.4).

II. L'Effetto (vv. 5-6)

1. L' Azione Cooperativa (la Causa Strumentale Secondaria): "Fen hayran al garca nenzel fi tirag minzeli" ("dove smanioso di annegare, scendo una scala ripida", v.S). 2. L' Agente Passivo: "Nitila vy nargia ninzit deyemfil bachar it hali" ("Salgo e scendo continuamente nell'acqua profonda", v.6).

C. Vv.7 (11)-10 (14): La Narrazione: Logica

Il. Una Domanda Implicita: if Predicato [P J e la Copula [CJ senza il Soggetto [Sj. La Filosofia di Pietro Caxaro 37

1. Il fatto F: Huakit ("E crollata") [Cl] hy ("essa", pronome dimostrativo enfatico di PI) mirammiti ("la mia casa") [PI] (v.7 {ll}a). la. Associazione di PI con li sisen ("le fondamenta") [P2]: una relazione necessaria.

Il. Una Soluzione tentativa [STl]

2. F + una apertura progressivaAP [Fatto F2]: Nizlit ("Ha sprofondato") [C2] hi [C2] ("essa", pronome dimostrativo enfatico di PI) li sisen ("le fondamenta") [P2] (v.7 {ll}b). 2a. Associazione di P2 con it mihallimin ("I muratori") [S3]: una relazione necessaria.

Ill. L'Eliminazioine di una Possibilita [S12]

3. F2 + piu AP [F3]: Mectat ... ("La colpa non e") [C3] (negativa) ... ilix (litteramente "per me") [P3] it mihallimin ("I muratori") [S3] (v.S {12}a). 3a. Associazione di P2 con li gebel ("la roccia") [S4]: una relazione necessaria.

IV. AJfirmazione di una Possibilita [ST3]

4. F3 + piu AP [F4]: Ma kitat ... ("Ma mi ha sprofondato') [C4] (positiva) ... ili (litteramente "per me") [P4] it gebel ("la roccia") [S4] (v.S {12}b). 4a. Associazione di P2 con it gebel ("la roccia") [P5}: una relazione necessaria. 5. F4 + piu AP [FS]: Fen ("dove", proposizione) + [S5 intesc] + tumayt illsib ("speravo di trovare') [CS] (positiva) il gebel ("la roccia") [P5] (v.9 {l3}b). Sa. Associazioine di P2 con tajal ("argilla") [P6]: na relazione contingente. 6. FS + piu AP [F6]: [S6 inteso] + Sib ("Ho trovato") [C6] (positive) tajal ("argilla") [P6] morchi ("friabile", un aggettivo qualificando taJal, "argilla") (v. 9 {13}b).

V. Riesponendo la Domanda Implicita di I (che adesso e soltanto retorica)

6a. Ritorno a F (= la Conc1usione del Sillogismo) [FI]: identificazione di PeS (in un' azione riflessa). 7. rienunciando v. 7 (ll)a: v.lO (l4)a. 8. Qualificazione di mirammiti ("la mia casa") [PI): [S8 inteso] + lili zimen nibni ("che costruivo da tanto tempo") [CS] (positiva) + [PS inteso] (v.lO {14}b). 38 Mark F. Montebello

Riesponendo il sillogismo intero, abbiamo il seguente:

1. (Se) [S I ?] - huakit ("e crollata") [Cl] - mirammiti ("la mia casa") [PI]; 2. (E se) Hi ("essa", cioe, mirammiti, "la mia casa") [S2] - nizlit ("ha sprofondato") [C2] -li sisen ("le fondamenta") [P2]; 3. (E) Il mihallimin ("i muratori") [S3] - mectat ... ("non hanno colpa") [C3] - ... ilix (litteralmente "per me") [P3]. 4. (Allora) Li gebel ("la roccia") [S4] - kitat ... ("ha sprofondato") [C3] - ... ili (litteralmente "per me") [P3]. 5. (10) [S5] - tumayt insib ("speravo di trovare") [C5] - il gebel ("la roccia") [P5]; 6. (Ma) (10) [S6] - sib ("ho trovato") [C6] - taJal (morchi) ("argilla friabile") [P6]: 7. [S I?] - huakit ("e crollata') [Cl] - mirammiti ("la mia casa") [PI] (riasserendo n.l); 8. (Che) (10) [S8] - ... ili zimen nibni ("costruivo da tanto tempo") [C8] - (essa) [P8].

La struttura sembra essere costruita su Quattro momenti, cioe, (i) la vera roccia e la roccia apparente (i.e., l'argilla); (ii) sulla quale erano messi i fondamenti; (iii) dai costruttori; (iv) per l'erezione della casa. La colpa della sfortuna e data a nessun momento, salvo all'apparenza di quakosa come reale, cioe, dell'argilla che pareva roccia (pareva quello che non era in verita).

D. Vv.ll (15)-16(20) - Il Rinnovamento: Metafisica.

I Il Momento della Restaurazione (vv. /1-12 {/ 5-16})

1. La Sconfitta: Huec ucakit hi mirammiti ("E cosl e crollata la mia casa", v.ll { 15}a). 2. La Volta: vargia ibnie (e farla ricostruire", v.ll {15}b). 3. La Morale: bibbilihe inte if miken illi yeutihe ("cambiale tu illuogo che l'ha rovinata', v.12 {16}).

I/. La Filosofia del Uomo (vv. 13-16 {/7-20}).

1. La Vulnerabilita dell'Uomo: Min ibidill il miken ibidil il vintura / halex liradi 'al col xebir sura ("Chi cambia il posto cambia la ventura / perche ogni pezzetto La Filosofia di Pietro Caxaro 39

di terra ha la propria conformazione', vv. 13-14 {17-1S}). 2. La Percezione della Verita: Hemme ard bayda v hemme ard suede et hamyra / Hactar min hedaun heme tred minne tamarra CC' e terra Bianca, e c' e terra nera e rossa. / Oltre a queste c'e che occorre lasciare", vv. 15-16 {19-20}).

Ill. La Filosofia di Caxaro

In seguito presentero una sintesi indicativa dei maggiori problematici propri di Caxaro nella sua opera.

(i) La Lingna Comnne: Nel primo luogo, non e mai superfluo insistere sull'uso da Caxaro dell 'idioma volgare (maltese). Questo costituisce un salto qualitativo che risulta da una formazione umanistica. L' opzione sua di esprimersi con magistrale capacita, mentre dava alto valore alIa lingua del popolo, in opposizione agl'idiomi Latino e Siciliano che usava la classe culturale, indica la qualita non comune di Caxaro. Non si tratta solo di una scelta di lingua, percbe questo, piu di ogni altra cosa significa un'adoperazione secondo una mentalita peculiare di un territorio geografico particulare. Dimostra pure il peso dato ad una cultura e patrimonio locale, considerando capace di tenersi da sola, su un livello uguale a quella di altri paesi vicini. L'uso della lingua volgare maltese non ha da fare con qualche richiamo ad una governanza indipendente, pero e un' affermazione chiara di un' identita culturale nativa, caratteristica di un popolo.

(ii) L'Uomo al Centro: 13 pure importante sottolineare il tema e la natura profana dell a composizione del nostro filosofo. Anche questo fatto dimostra il carattere umanista dell' autore. La Cantilena non e un lavoro a-religioso 0 anti-Cristiano. Pero decisamente non puo costituirsi come appartenente ad un genere di letteratura sacra, religiosa 0 biblica. Definitivamente non e irriverente 0 blasfema, ma tipicamente considera la vita, l'uomo e I suoi dintorni da un punto di vista puramente umano.

Il tema, infatti, si nutre da quelle qualita distintive della natura umana; da quelle facolta che affermano le capacita meravigliosi dell 'uomo, e la sua intrinseca forza interiore di trascendere le limitazioni delle sue essenziali caratteristiche che altrimenti 10 fanno disperare. La composizione di Caxaro rivela una fiducia nelle possibilita spirituali, 0 meglio, immateriali del uomo. In altre parole, la Cantilena puo giustamente essere considerate come una professione di fede nell'uomo.

Questo credo ci fa ricordare 1'umanesimo classico dei sofisti e di Socrate stesso, 40 Mark F. Montebello

una scuola che ispiro irnrnensamente la filosofia del Rinascimento. Notiamo qui il superamento della mental ita meramente naturalistica dei classici, mettendo 1'uomo al centro di seria considerazione. La tendenza classica di proporre soluzioni naturali a vecchi problemi, al di sopra delle risposte ateriori e tentative religiosi, non dev'essere ignorata in questo contesto.

(iii) La Sfera dell a Realta: La concretezza della riflessione di Caxaro si emerge immediatamente contro ogni speculazione teoretica. La terminologia e la struttura mentale arida, scolastica e tecnicamente professionale sono completamente messi a lato. La perspettiva pratica ed esistenziale della vita e della realta e preferita. Questo fatto puo di natura essere considerato tipicamente maltese, 0 anche mediterraneo, dove un acuto senso commune e osservabile negli affari quotidiani.

L' inclinazione di Caxaro verso l' azione piuttosto che alla speculazione, subordinando (pero non eliminando) il secondo al primo, 10 dimostra nella luce della scuola platonica, distaccandosi dalle categorie di pensieri aristotelico-scolastiche. Questo e frutto del suo carattere umanista, una posizione molto sentita nel movimento.

(iv) 11 Mito vs. 11 Logos: La narrazione in Caxaro, come altrove, non implica superficialita; neanche un'incapacita di esprimersi altrimenti, particolarmente in termini arbitrariamente professionali e tecnici. La narrazione dev' essere pure considerate come un genere scientifico di esprimersi. Infatti, e una tecnica tradizionale, ricca storicamente, dove la sofisticazione e intenzionalmente ignorata, scegliendo un modo di comunicare che e piu fluido, libero ed incisivo.

La composizione di Caxaro, seguendo la linea delle preferenze professionali di Platone e la sua tradizione, e nascosta sotto un velo linguistico e concettuale purche ci possa incitare ad implicarsi attivamente nel tema. La stessa costruzione narrativa suscita la nostra latente curiosita a scrutinare il significanto nascosto sotto l' apparenza delIa superficie. In opposizione alIa forma tecnica ("aristotelico-scolastica"), intrinsecamente rigida e lineata, pur essendo piu irnrnediata e diretta, la filosofia di Caxaro si esprime sotto il trucco dell a narrazione che ha una realta in se.

Mentre Caxaro sinteticamente prosegue con i suoi concetti, specialmente al riguardo della sua metafisica (accentuando la scomodita ed il disgusto dell' illusione), preferisce esprimersi sotto una veste "delusiva". La natura oggettiva della sua filosofia e cosl messa a guardia dietro un separio attraverso il quale manca di penetrare una percezione meramente sensuale. La Filosofia di Pietro Caxaro 41

(v) L' Allegoria vs. La Parabola: La forma narrativa di Caxaro non basta prenderla come una tipificazione puerile di relazioni morali 0 spirituali. E inutile cercare una stretta corrispondenza tra ogni figura che volle usare e tra circostanze concrete e specifiche dalla vita, sua 0 di altrui. A questo proposito la tradizionale interpretazione in chiave del tentato matrimonio dell' autore non pub tenersi, perche deruba la composizione di Caxaro da ogni ricca qualita intrinseca.

Corrispondenze esistono da vero nella Cantilena tra i varii simbolismi che Caxaro adopera armonicamente. La sua prassi nel dare un' imagine non e meramente per imitare artificialmente la sua forma esterna, ma di nutrirsi dalle ricche qualita analogiche di una teoria del simbolismo, tanto diffusa nel Medio Evo.

L'uso dell'allegoria nella Cantilena di Caxaro, secondo l'uso Medievale, mantiene un tema sotto la sembianza di una narrativa che suggerisce caratteristici paralleli. E tutt' altro probabile che Caxaro non ha in mente, e non vuole trasmettere, un solo caso specifico ma un stato-di-vita or un stato-di-cose in modo generico. Tecnicamente, l'uso dell'allegoria funziona come una stimulazione a riflessioni ulteriori, e pure come un'apertura al mistero e l'enigma dell a vita.

(vi) La Verita vs. L' Apparenza: Con questo importante tema, ci avviciniamo di piu alla sostanza della Cantilena. "Fen tumayt insib il gebel sib taJal morchi" ("Dove speravo di trovare la rocia ho trovato argilla friabile", v.13 {9}) e cruciale per il tema, dando la chiave concettuale ed ermeneutica per tutta la composizione. Abbiamo qui una contraposizione tra la verita apparente (una pseudo-verita) e la verita stessa.

In termini generali, questo e un problema metafisico. Segnala l'incontro del uomo con una realta che e in se nascosta ed abbigliata con la conoscenza el' evidenza imrnediata del sensibile. Evidentemente, Caxaro contrasta la realta fenomenologica con quello numenica, cioe, I' oggetto dei sensi, al quale era attratto in un primo momento, e l'oggetto dell'intelletto, il quale scopriva posterioramente. Caxaro si incalza, pero, e questo costituisce una caratteristica propria di se in questa sfera, meno sulla funzione intuitivo dell'uomo, e piu sull'esperienza subita. I sensi sono il medio con il quale si arriva alIa reaita.

Il tema e un eco della problematica piu fondamentale di Platone. Platone, infatti, avversa l'apparenza alla verita (la reaita), al quale identifica la vita. Con la prima riconosce la mera esistenza. L' apparenza si ferma ad un livello di co se che non sono 42 Mark F. Montebello

di nessuna primaria importanza, se non come un veicolo di conoscenza. Una generale superficialita nella vita in genere risulta in una costante e persistente frivolita in tutti gli aspetti dell'essere umano. L'abilita, invece, di andare al cuore delle cose, alla verita della realta, alIa vita stessa, rende questa apparenza inefficace.

(vii) La Metafisica: La filosofia ontologica ed epistemologica di Caxaro, COS! come la sua psicologia, comincia con l'esperienza concreta della sconfitta e della impotenza (vedi v.11 {IS}). Non si tratta di una despondenza momentaria, ma si di uno stato di essere. E la coscienza umana incapacitatamente soccombendo ad una realta che 10 ombreggia.

Da questa riflessione suI modo umano di esistere, determinato dalla circostanza storiche-spaziali, arriva a Caxaro la molla umanista di strariparsi da una tale condizione urniliante (diametricamente opposta ad una condizione umanizzante) con il recupero della forza intrinseca spirituale che e nell'uomo stesso. "Vargia ibnie" ("E farla ricostruire!", v.11 {IS}) richiama l'appello di Petrarca alla rinascita; un rifiorire dalla terra seccata. Questo segnala un momento essenziale, centrale per la comprensione della Cantilena e del nostro filosofo; un momento di rinfiammazione della fede e la fiducia in se affinche si vince l'incapacita e l'inerzia.

Per consequenza, l'azione prende il primo piano (vedi v.12 {16}). Il posto della perspettiva distorta della reaM, cioe quell'attitudine sbagliata che da rilievo all' apparenza illusoria che rovina il vivere umano, diventa vacante per una rinnovata concezione ed introspezione. Abbiamo qui la decisione (spirituale), fondata sulla conoscenza, di optare, drasticamente e decisivamente, per un livello piu alto di vita; una decisione per aderire instancabilmente alIa verita, pur essendo importuna, invece che alla pseudo-verita (cioe all'essere presunto; la irrealta).

Similarmente, essendo uno stato di vita, questa decisione fondamentale e un'opzione in favore di queUa scienza, religione, Chiesa, Stato, ecc., che costituiscono la vera sostanza delle co se (in opposizione ad una pseudo-scienza, religione, Chiesa, Stato, ecc.). Basicamente, e una scelta di fondo ad una individualita personale che fortemente aderisce all'oggettivita dell'oggetto conosciuto invece che alIa soggettivita del soggetto pensante.

L'uomo, percio, e inteso come un essere debole in quanto umano; capace di essere profondamente ferito perche suscettibile al vaglio della sua esistenza (vedi vv.13-I4 {17-I8}). Pero altrettanto capace spiritualmente (trarnite la sua coscienza) La Filosofia di Pietro Caxaro 43

di assicurarsi nel reale, applicando le sue funzioni di giudizio con la buona misura (vedi vv.lS-16 {19-20}). Di qua prosegue il suo buon senso di direzione.

La metafisica Caxariana, espressa nella parte ultima della sua Cantilena, esamina il mondo incorporeo che sottolinea la realta esistente. Include implicitamente la sua concezione ontological dell' essere inserito nel mondo delle circostanze, insistendo sull' essenza dell a cose, particolarmente dell' essere razionale.

Include pure il suo metodo epistemologico che si fonda sull' esperienza diretta dell' essere umano in una realta che basicamente non e estranea a lui, 0 irrazionale, bensi fu parte integrale del soggetto. In questa realta oggettiva l'uomo si trova, cresce e si matura, applicando la sua coscienza discernente purche si definisce personalmente.

(viii) La Logica: 13 Non sara opportuno esaminare minutamente la logica di Caxaro cosi come presentata nei vv.7-1O 01-14). Dara, invece, alcune segnalazioni essenziali.

La logic a formale di Caxaro sembra essere caratteristica del suo tempo, dimostrando un allontanamento dalla logic a scolastica anteriore. Il suo sillogismo e semplice, evitando composti complicati. E una logic a basata su associazioni mentali di relazioni necessarie e contingenti. Oggettivamente, sembra niente altro che un giuoco linguistico.

Le prime quattro proposizioni costituiscono due pari di affelmazioni condizionali, chiamati "consequenziali" dai medievalisti, i quali hanno un stato di verita sia per gli "antecedenti" sia per i "conseguenti". Le quattro proposizioni che remangono seguono dale prime quattro, e sono costruiti sui primo schema inferenziale della logic a tradizionale.

(ix) La Causalita: Pare che Caxaro abbia in mente nozioni altro che quei concetti aristotelici arcaici di causa. Tutti i due vv.3-4 richiamno uno delle forze motivanti che Empedocle chiama "Lotta", dando cosi un'espressione per la dissoluzione 0 decadenza dell'altra forza motivante, "Amore", il principio di generazione.

13. Vedi 1. Thomas, "Interregnum", Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 4, 534f. 44 Mark F. Montebello

Inoltre, pare anche che abbiamo qui un' altra fonte di pensiero al riguardo di una teoria di causa, cioe quella di Plato ne. Costui propose che i mutamenti nel mondo, di qualunque genere, procedono dalle forme, 0 le cause formali, delle cose. Sembra che Caxaro, specialmente nel v.3, nutre di questa idea che trovava conspicuo esito nei suoi contemporanei.

Infatti, in generale, gli umanisti medievali consistentemente tentarono di abbandonare concetti aristotelici dovunque possible, inclusi, naturalmente, quelli di causalita. Pero la sua influenza non poteva essere cancellata totalmente. Per consequenza, questi hanno studiato e hanno dato rilievo ad altre teorie di causa, particolarmente quelli, come 10 scritto Caxariano dimostra, che non ammettono nessuna semplice conseguenza necessaria, se non con qualche qualificazione in piu.

(x) La Comunicazione: Lo schema a capo della Cantilena fa parte della teoria generale narrativa di linguaggio. Si basa su due piedi, cioe, (i) la vita esaminata del nostro filosofo, una dottrina che procede da Socrate e Platone fino a Petrarca, e, di piu, (ii) sulla trasmissione di quella esperienza subita. Questo e in opposizione a quella forma didattica di linguaggio che si basa sulla comunicazioine di una teoria astratta, confermando la superiorita del soggetto di espressione all' oggetto di comunicazione.

Una narrazione di un'esperienza vissuta e patronizzata consciamente non si fonda, strettamente parlando, sulla capacita che, fino ad un certo punto, e universale in natura. In altre parole, questa forma di linguaggio invita ad una simpatia di sentimenti.

La narrazione formale di Caxaro, nella quale prende una posizione filosofica chiara, sconfessa la forma istruttiva, sia morale che dommatica, e si qualifica come un annuncio di una scoperta personalmente trovata. Si tratta, infatti, del mondo (0 realta) immateriale, al di la delle mere sembianze, del quale Caxaro si accorge.

(xi) 11 Simbolismo: A questo punto, possiamo facilmente comprendere la natura linguistica adoperata da Caxaro. E un modo espressivo che intrinsecamente e in sincronia con la sua perspettiva filosofica generale, che e di una forma sconfinata ed intavolata. Di piu, e fondata su una teoria di correspondenza.

Caxaro non impiega le immagini in un modo irrelatato, ne le relata semplicemente La Filosofia di Pietro Caxaro 45

in un modo estrinseco, appropriando la loro forma esteriore checchessia. Egli abilmente crea un' armonia di sottintesi tra simboli dei quali si serve, approfittandosi delloro mutuo accordamento, e, di pili, presentandoli in una relazione analoga al suo mondo di essere, cioe ad una maniera di essere mondo tale quale ad una unita indissolubile.

I simboli Caxariani, come quelli dei megalitici in Malta e dei posteriori eleatici della Grecia, non sono ne semplici, ne artificiali, bensl complessi perche emergono da una concezione complessa ma unita della realta e del mondo, del quale l'uomo fa una parte integrale. Questo fatto, importante ed essenziale come e, mette Caxaro nella ricca tradizione culturale maltese cosl come in quella filosofica greca. Caxaro non si identifica con l'immagine qua immagine, perche la sua peculiare espressione concettuale evidentemente presuppone prioriamente una cosmica necessaria relazione spirituale tra tutta la realta materiale.

Questa filosofia e propria dei filosofi medievali, specialmente quelli familiari con I' eredita platonica.

Presentemente sara futile esaminare minuitamente ogni simbolo della Cantilena a se ed in relazione con gli altri nel contesto di una teoria generale di corrispondenza simbolica. Mi limitero ad indicare che le qualita simboliche del cuore (calib , v.3), il pozzo (bir, v.4), la scala ( ... tiragin e tirag, vv.4 e 5 rispettivamente), l'acqua (bachar, v.6), la casa (miramm{a} ... , vv.7 {ll}, 10 {14} ell {IS}), i fondamenti (sisen, v.7 {11}), la roccia (gebel, vv.8 {12} e 9 {13}), la terra (miken, vv.12 {16} e 13 {17}; ... rad ... e ard, vv.14 {18} e 15 {19} rispettivamente), e i colori (bayda, il bianco; suede, il nero; hamyra, il rosso; v.I5 {I9}), sono proporzionalmente relatate ed analoghe qual ita nell 'uomo stesso in quanto parte costitutiva di una realta coerente ed interconnessa.

Inoltre, ogni simbol0 di Caxaro e dato una qualifica, COSl che modifica la loro natura assoluta, riconoscendo illoro essere contingente in relazione al uomo stesso. 11 cuore e qualificato con "mehandihe chakim soltan ui le mule" ("senza podesta, re e ne signore", v.3); il pozzo con "imgamic" ("infondo", v.4); la scala con "mecsule" e "mizeli" ("rotte" e "ripida" rispettivamente, v.4); I' acqua con "il ha/i" ("profonda", v.6); e la casa con "lili zimen nibni" ("che costruivo da tanto tempo", v.1O "14}).

I simboli rimanenti seguono una qualificazione indiretta. I fondamenti con "taJal morchi" ("argilla friabile", v.9 {13}; le roccia con "kitatili" ("mi ha sprofondato", 46 Mark F. Montebello

v.8 {12}); la terra con "vintura" e "sura" ("ventura" e "conformazione", vv.13 {17} e 14 {18} rispettivamente); e i colori con "areI' ("la terra", v.I5 {19}).

Naturalmente, le qualificazioni sono essenziali quanto le correspondenze, COS! quanto le associazioni logiche dei vv.9 {U}-lO {I4}, dove il simbolismo ha un molo maggiore.

Conclusione L'appellativo di Pietro Caxaro in quanto filosofo non si pub considerare se non in relazione con evidenza interna, cioe dal suo proprio scritto. E qui abbiamo abbastanza materiale da convincerci che la Cantilena non e uno scritto di un dilettante spensierato poeta innamorato, bensi un lavoro maturo di un uomo di emdita forrnazione culturale che visse la sua vicenda con serio impegno cosciente, sviluppando una perspettiva filosofica della realta in quanto tale ed in relazione all' essere pensante.

11 suo umanesimo, messo in chiara evidenza nella sua opera, e allacciato con la sua posizione metafisica, il quale tema e la piu eminente della Cantilena essendo la chiave ermenuetica del pensiero Caxariano. Egli, infatti, intreccia parecchi elementi del movimento umanista medievale, pur rimanendo nella tradizione concettuale mediterranea e, particolarmente, in quella maltese.

Appendice: La Centilena

La Trascrizione

Xideu il cada ye gireni tale nichadithicum 2 Mensab fil gueri uele nisab fo homorcom Calb mehandihe chakim soltan ui le mule 4 Bir imgamic rimitine betiragin mecsule fen hayran al garca nenzel fi tirag minzeli 6 Nitila vy nargia ninzil dyem fil bachar il hali ( ... )14 Huakit hi mirammiti Nizlit hi li sisen 8 (12) Mectatilix il mihallimin ma kitatili li gebel fen tumayt insib il gebel sib tafal morchi

14. Rintocco al testo originale secondo la critic a testuale di G. Brincat, "Critica testuale", Journal of Maltese Studies, 16 (1986) 11 ff. La Filosofia di Pietro Caxaro 47

9 (14) Huakit thi mirammiti lili zimen nibni Huec ucakit hi mirammiti vargia ibnie 11 (16) biddilihe inte il miken ilIi yeutihe Min ibidill il miken ibiil il vintura 12 (18) halex liradi 'al col xebir sura hemme ard bayda v hemme ard suede et hamyra 14 (20) hactar min hedaun heme tred mine tamarra

La Parafrasi Italiana

Il canto della sfortuna, 0 vicini, venite, vi raccontero 2 Senza precedenti ne1 passato e nella vostra vita. Un cuore senza podesta, re e ne signore 4 Mi ha gettato in un pozzo profondo con scale rotte dove smanioso di annegare, scendo una scala ripida. 6 Salgo e scendo continuamente nell'acqua profonda. ( ... )14 E crollata la mia casa. Ha sprofondato le fondamenta. 8 (12) La colpa non e dei muratori, ma mi ha sprofondato la roccia; dove speravo di trovare la roccia ho trovato argilla friabile. 10(14) E crollata la mia casa che costruivo da tanto tempo. E COS! e crollata la mia casa; e farla ricostruite! 12 (16) cambiale tu illuogo che l'ha rovinata! Chi cambia il posto cambia la ventura 14 (18) perche ogni pezzetto di terra ha la propria conformazione: c'e terra bianca, e c'e terra nera e rossa. 16 (20) Oltre a questa c'e che occorre lasciare.

Bibliografia G. Brincat, "Critica testuale della Cantilena di Pietro Caxaro", Journal of Maltese Studies, 16 (1986) 1-2l. I. Peri, Restaurazione e Pacifico Stato in Sicilia. 1377-1501, Editori Laterza, Roma-Bari 1988. I. Thomas, "Interregnum", Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 4, (ed. By P. Edwards) Macmillan, New York 1972,534-535. G. Wettinger, "Looking back on 'The Cantilena of Peter Caxaro"', Journal of Maltese Studies, 12 (1978) 88-105. G. Wettinger and M. Fsadni, Peter Caxaro's Cantilena, Lux Press, Malta 1968. 48 Mark F. Montebello

L-Gfianja ta' Pietru Caxaru: Poet.ija bil-Malri Medjevali, Printwell, Malta 1983.

Altri Archivio Conventua1e, Padri Domenicani, Rabato, Malta, Ms. 321, Giuliana Antica, 1. Archivi Originali, Museo del Catedrale, Medina, Malta, Ms. 1. G. Wettinger, Acta Juratorum et Consilii Civitatis et Insulae Maltae (in publicazione a Palermo, Sicilia).

University of Malta Department of Philosophy, Msida - Malta. A Historical Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity

Edward Xuereb

1. Status quaestionis Is canon 1095 of the 1983 Latin Code a novelty in Church Law? From a formal viewpoint, the canon, which derives from canonical jurisprudence, certainly represents an innovation, since the former Code presupposed but did not explicitly treat the types of incapacity of the spouses with regards to marriage. Yet, from a substantial perspective, it is interesting to note that classical canon law already tackled the issue of psychical infirmity as a cause of incapacity to contract marriage, even though this was not said in a technical and precise way. For this reason, a brief analysis of certain historical sources, without pretending to be exhaustive, will make it clear that the canon in question is not a radical originality, but a technical precision of a clear awareness present in the marriage system of law since its beginnings. Besides, it will help us to understand the significance and the motives of the incumbent legislation.

The three distinct and at the same time connected I grounds of nullity of canon 1095 regard a consensual incapacity to marriage which the Code does not establish but just recognises.2 It is a question of shortages and defects that of themselves vitiate consent, by altering the natural capacity of the person, who would not be able to intend and will any more,3 thus falling in that situation called by certain authors "moral impotence".4

I. Cf. Coram Fiore, 30.5.1987, in Quaderni Studio Rotale, n, Roma 1987, 18-19. Yet others (e.g. C. Trincerri) retain the three figures of incapacity, considered by can. 1095, as constituting a unique nullity ground. 2. L. CHIAPPETTA,I1 matrimonio nella nuova legislazione canOliica e concordataria. Manuale giuridico­ pastorale, Roma 1990, 198-199. 3. "A true incapacity can be only hypothesised if there is a serious form of anomaly that, however one defines it, must substantially impair the contracting party's capacity to understand and/or to will", JOHN PAUL n, Alloclltion to the Roman Rota, 5.2.1987, no. 7. 4. Cf. Commllnicationes, 7 (1975) 44. SQ Edward Xuereb

In the present study, we will examine how the insight of canon 1095, which was already present in the Church at least since the Middle Ages, developed slowly but surely in canon law until the recognitio codicialis led to the promulgation of the legislative norm in question. An appraisal of the incremental development of this canon, that is of its legislative history, will bring this article to an end. This is a technique used in modern legal systems, which sheds important light on how the legal text came about, what alternatives were considered and why certain formulations were accepted while others were discarded. In canon law, legislative history is a great help in applying the basic interpretative principles enclosed in canon 17, especially in coming to understand the mind of the legislator.

2. Classical canon law

The insight of the present canon 1095 is somehow present in the Con cordia discordatium canonum of Gratian of Bologna, later called the Decretum, as well as in the decretals,5 when the question of the frenzied (juriosi) is treated. There we encounter the general principle according to which such persons are unable to celebrate marriage. Let us see concisely what was understood in the Corpus furis

Canonici by the famous expression: "Neque furiosus neque furiosa contrahere 1/ possunt matrimonium".

(a) The Decretum ofGratian

The Decretum contains a reference to the so-called furiosi in relation to marriage. Gratian presents an auctoritas maintaining that thefuriosi cannot contract marriage. Yet, it does not seem to have been an absolute prohibition, given that after mentioning the ban, he adds that if the parties however had contracted marriage, they should not separate.

"The frenzied man and woman cannot contract marriage. The same Pope Fabianus. Neither the frenzied man or man can contract marriage; but if there will have been the contract, they should not be separated".6

5. The decretals are papal letters that were often rescripts, that is, responses to requests made to the pope about problems of ecclesiastical doctrine, discipline, and governance. In the 4th century, bishops in the Western church began to turn to Rome for answers to questions about discipline and doctrine. 6. "Furiosus et furiosa matrimonium contrahere non possunt. Idem Fabianus Papa. Neque furiosus, neque furiosa matrimonium contrahere possunt; sed si contractum fuerit non separentur" (Causa 32, A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 51

He concludes with a dictum:

"As is therefore inferred from the premises, it is not lawful for this person to take another wife after having sent away his own wife. In fact there remains among them a certain conjugal bond, which is not dissolved by the separation itself'?

This formulation gave rise to contrary positions about the capacity of the mentally sick with regards to marriage. Though it is certain that the text states, "if there will have been the contract, they should not be separated", we must keep in mind the entire matrimonial system of Gratian in order to interpret this source accurately.

As one can observe from an analysis of the texts, the Decretum affirms in various instances that the personal marriage consent, sufficient and free, is not substitutable as the efficient cause of the conjugal bond, which is perfected by the consummation. For Gratian, "it is a sequenced combination of consent and intercourse that creates a complete marriage. [ ... ] What Gratian did also in proposing this answer to the question was to advance the theory, first sprung up in his time, that the object of marital consent, that to which the spouses commit themselves specifically as spouses, is sexual intercourse".8 For Gratian, there is no doubt that the copula without consent does not found the bond.

With this premise, we can overcome the apparent contradiction between this auctoritas and the rest of Gratian' s matrimonial system: if the furiosus is such that he cannot even give the consent, he will not be able to celebrate the marriage, because without consent the copula does not found any bond. If, on the contrary, one contracts marriage, because one was capable at least of giving a sufficient consent, he/she is not to be separated, because there will be a real marriage, and hence indissoluble. This is the interpretation which prevailed up to our days in doctrine, which made a great effort to determine the various degrees and types of mental infirmity and its incidence upon the marriage consent.

quaestio 7, e. 26). Commenting the maxim, "Neque furiosus neque furiosa matrimonium eontrahere possunt", O. FUMAGALLl CARULLl wrote: "Questa massima, attribuita da Bureardo di Worms al pontefice Fabiano (236-250) ma che probabilmente era presa dal giurista romano Paolo, passo con la dubbia attribuzione a papa Fabiano, nel Decreto di Graziano", ID., Matrimonio canonico [capacitii], in Encic/opedia del diritto, XXV, Milano 1975,902. 7. "Ut ergo ex premissis colligitur, non licet huic dimissa uxore sua aliam ducere. Manet enim inter eos quoddam vinculum coniugale, quod nee ipsa separatione dissolvitur" (Causa 32, quaestio 7, c. 26). 52 Edward Xuereb

On the whole, the explanation is not easy. In fact, many decretists did not even mention the Juror while others considered it as a cause of illicit celebration of marriage. Among the decretists, Rufinus, one of the most faithful followers of Gratian's vision of marriage, was the canonist who most clearly spoke ofJuror as an impediment to marriage.9

Cb) The Decretals oJGregory IX

Decretales Gregorii Noni was the name given by canonists to the new codification compiled by Raymond de Pennafort upon the instructions of Gregory IX,IO so as to replace with one volume all the previous collections of decretals. Pope Gregory IX promulgated the new collection in 1234 and called it a Compi/atio. Along with Gratian's Decretum, it became the most important compilation of papal decretals in the schools and courts of Europe. It was also known as the Liber Extra: the book outside Gratian's Decretum.

The Decretals of Gregory IX pick up the affirmation already gathered by the Decretum on the impossibility of marriage by the Juriosi. 11 This tenet comes from Roman Law, in which theJuriosi, who were called with various names, could not engage in contracts nor contract marriage. 12 As we noted, the Decretum has an addition to the romanistic doctrine, which complicates the adequate understanding of the juridical consequences of the Juror upon the capacity to marriage, because it is asserted that "if there will have been the contract, they should not be separated". According to De Le6n-Carreras,

"The silence of the works of the decretists about the Juror or Juria is a paradox. If one takes the abbreviated list of Rufinus this is omitted even though, as we know, it is indeed implicitly contained under the title of

8. T. MACKIN, What is Marriage?, New YorklRamsey 1982, 160. 9. Cf. E. DE LEHN - J. CARRERAS, La glossa "impossibilitas conveniendi" di Rujfino (C.27 pr.). 10. R.W. SOUTHERN notes that "every notable pope from 1159 to 1303 was a lawyer [ ... ] Every circumstance of twelfth century society favoured the rapid growth of papal law, and this growth was given a steady impulse by the great succession of lawyer popes - Alexander III, Innocent III, Gregory IX, Innocent IV, Boniface VIII", Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, New York 1990, 131-132. 11. C.32, q.7, c.26. 12. "furiosi autem voluntas nulla est" (Dig. 29, 2, 47: Africanus 4 quaest.); "nam furiosus nullum negotium contrahere potest" (Dig. 50, 17,5: Paulus 2 ad sab.); "Furiosi [ ... ] nulla voluntas est" (Dig. 50, 17,40: Pomponius 34 ad sab.). A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 53

impossibilitas conveniendi; which is threefold. Conversely, if we take the list of other decretists, either it is not mentioned or, if it is mentioned, it is done as a simple prohibition that does not affect the validity of the bond".13

The Liber Extra, on the other hand, is more explicit. An important factor that might have considerably contributed to this improvement might have been the centrality of personal consent de praesenti as an efficient cause of the marriage bond, around which the entire matrimonial system of the books of the Decretals revolves.

At this point, it is worthwhile opening a short parenthesis about the significance of the concept of 'consent de praesenti'. We should note that the Liber Extra was written after Peter Lombard' s four Libri Sen ten tiarum ,compiled at the University of Paris during the years 1155-1158. 14 In Book 4, Lombard says that the act creating a marriage is the parties' mutual consent. Thus Lombard made the careful distinction that Gratian had not, between the consensus de futuro and the consensus de praesenti. Both are consents to marriage, but the consent de futuro only establishes the betrothal and not the marriage itself, even when it is made under oath. What creates the marriage is the separate consent de praesenti, and it creates it before and separately from intercourse.ls This consent is essential and, if made freely, suffices by itself to create the marriage. The consent de futuro followed by intercourse, with the consent de praesenti omitted, cannot create the marriage. The consent de praesenti by itself and even without the subsequent intercourse makes any other attempt at marriage invalid. What the consent defuturo does is to make fiances of the man and woman (sponsus and sponsa) , while the consent de praesenti makes them spouses (coniuges).16

13. "Es una paradoja el silencio de la decretfstica sobre elfurar ofuria. Si se toma el elenco abreviado de Rufino esta es omitida aunque, como sabemos, sf esta implfcitamente contenida bajo el tftulo de la impossibilitas cOllvelliendi, que es triple. En cambio, si tom am os el elenco de otros decretistas, 0 no es mencionado 0, si se menciona, se hace como una simple prohibici6n que no afecta la validez del vfnculo" (E. DE LElIN - J. CARRERAS, La glossa"impossibilitas cOllveniendi"). 14. "In the language of the Scholastics sentellfiae are the statements, the opinions, the positions of notable teachers in the history of the Church beginning with the apostles and coming down to perhaps a generation before the compiler", T. MACKIN, What is Marriage?, 164. IS. This is also the position of the Angelic Doctor: "ante carnalem copulam post consensum per verba de praesenti expressum, est verum matrimonii sacramentum", S. THOMAS AQUINAS, Scriptum super Selltentiis, lib. 4 d. 27 q. I a. 3 qc. 2 arg. I. 16. PETER LOMBARD, Libri Sententiarum, lib.4, dist. 27, cap. 3; lib. 4, dist. 28, cap. I. 54 Edward Xuereb

There is an unique chapter that refers directly to the jUror in marriage, which picks up the first part of Gratian' s text, while omitting the second part - "Furiosus matrimonium contrahere non potest"17 (Innocent III to the Bishop of Vercelli, 5 January 1205) 18 - that was the cause of the great confusion and which could have led to the impression that the frenzied could marry validly. This is the body of the Decretal:

"The beloved son R., soldier from Alexandria, related to us, that his daughter Rufina came together in marriage with a certain Opizo of Lancavecla, ignoring that Opizo was a frantic person. Hence he humbly requested us to deign to take provisions both for the latter as well as for his daughter. Since however the same woman could not stay with that man who continuously suffered from madness, and since there will not have occurred a legitimate consent because of the incongruity of furor, we enjoin your brotherhood through apostolic letters, to take care to separate the aforementioned persons from each other, while taking away the diffusion of appeal, if after having inquired the truth more fully, you will know that such is the issue."19

This decretal is important both because it clarifies definitively the doubt about the consequence of the jUror upon the capacity to contract marriage, as well as because it says clearly what is the basis for the invalidating force of the jUror: "propter alienationem furoris legitimus non potuerit intervenire consensus", that is, the furiorus is unable to elicit a real consent. Hence, this decretal contains a specification of an exigency of natural law, rather than a limitation of the ius connubii, because consent de praesenti among persons who are juridically capable is the unique efficient cause of the indissoluble marriage bond and nobody can supply this consent, neither fathers nor society or the authority.

17. X 4, 1,24. 18. Cf.Ibid .. 19. Ibid.: "Dilectus filius R. miles Alexandrinus proposuit coram nobis, quod Rufinam filiam suam cuidam Opizoni Lancaveclae matrimonialiter copulavit, ignorans, quod Opizo fuisset furiosus. Unde humiliter postulavit a nobis, ut tarn eidem quam ipsius filiae consulere dignaremuf. Quum autem ,eadem mulier cum ipso viro, qui continuo furore laborat, morari non possit, et propter alienationem furoris legitimus non potuerit intervenire consensus, fratemitati tuae per apostolica scripta mandamus, quatenus, inquisita plenius veritate, si rem noveris ita esse, praefatas personas cures sublato appellationis diffugio ab invicem separare [Dat. Rom. ap, S. Petf. V, Kal. Ian. 1205]". A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 55

This was the significance of the norm and it is also the meaning of the current canon 1095. For this reason, one has to comprehend the nature of consent and of marriage to be able to apply correctly canon 1095.

It is not an instrument to solve marriages that broke up or have little hope of success, but a norm, with all the limitations inherent in every human enterprise, stemming from the reflection upon what the same nature of things requires so that there can be a true marriage consent from the standpoint of the minimal necessary capacity for it. With the aim of understanding this adequately, we shall continue our historical overview of the norm.

3. The benchmark ofpuberty

In classical canon law there was a unitary standard for determining the capacity to marriage in general. This was the criterion of puberty understood as that moment in which one reaches the sufficient and necessary bodily and spiritual development to get to know, evaluate, want and assume marriage, whereas incapacity was retained as an exception.

Certain authors maintain that the criterion of puberty was not used as an objective measure for determining the capacity or otherwise during the epoch of classical canon law. Some opine that if it was affirmed that in puberty one acquires the sufficient psychic and affective maturity for contracting marriage, when coming to determine the incapacity of the furiosus, the measure of puberty was not considered.20 I think that in certain classical authors, such as Rufinus, we find this concrete reference to puberty. It is on the strength of these affirmations that we speak of puberty as a benchmark of capacity.

Among the Decretists,21 Rufinus - Who sometime around 1164 finished his Summa on the Decretum which almost immediately became the most influential commentary on Gratian in Bologna - expresses very clearly the meaning of puberty

20. Cf. A. STANKIEWICZ, L'incapacitii psichica nel matrimonio: terminoiogia, criteri, in Apollinaris, 53 (1980) 48-71. 21. The Decretists were the group of canonists who took as their starting point Gratian's work and issued their own commentaries upon its passages, attempting to expound, explain, and perhaps even to transcend, the work of the great master of Bologna. 56 Edward Xuereb

as a unitary criterion and point of reference of the capacity and thus also of incapacity to marriage. The following are his words in the renown gloss to the decretal Neque Furiosus, in which he distinguishes the incapacity of the juriosi to elicit consent, the incapacity of the impotent to consume marriage and the incapacity ofthose who have not reached puberty to give consent and to consume marriage:

"Likewise [regarding] the impossibility of getting married, [one thing is the impossibility] of coming together with the mind, as in the case of frenzied people; another [is the impossibility] of coming together with the body, as in the case of frigid persons or those hindered by evil deeds; another [is the impossibility of coming together] with mind and body, as in the case of boys and girls."22

Undoubtedly, the criterion of puberty, serves to understand the elements of the capacity for marriage, by identifying them in the harmonic development of the person, considering the inclinatio naturae for marriage, reached both in the soul as well as in the body at the moment of puberty. Interestingly enough, we read in a Rotal decision coram Pinto, dated 2 May 1977, that for a discretion proportionate to marriage, which is required for the validity of the marriage consent, that mental evolution which is normally found in a person who reaches puberty.23

22. "Item impossibilitas conveniendi alia conveniendi animo, ut in furiosis; alia conveniendi corpore, ut in frigidis et maleficiis impeditis; alia animo et corpore, ut in pueris et puellis l ... ]; De impossibilitate conveniendi animo, inter furiosus, in Cs. XXXII. q. VII. cap. Neque furiosus; de impossibilitate conveniendi corpore, in frigidis et maleficiis impeditis, in Cs. XXXIII. q.!.; de impossibilitate conveniendi utroque modo, in pueris et in puellis, in Cs. XXX. q. II", RUFINUS VON BOLOGNA, [Magister RlIfil1l1sj Summa decretorll/I!, ed. H. Singer, Paderborn 1902 = Aalen-Paderborn 1963, 433-434. 23. "Ad discretionem matrimonio proportionatam habendam [which is required for a valid marriage] requiritur et sufficit ilia mentis evolutio quae in pubere normali invenitur vi cuius, sciens matrimonium esse societatem permanentem inter virum et mulierem ad filios procreandos (can. 1082), deliberatam decisionem determinati matrimonii hic et nunc celebrandi exsecutioni mandat, implicite saltem tradens et acceptans ius in corpus, perpetuum et exclusivum, in ordine ad actus per se aptos ad prolis generationem (can. 1081, § 1). Quia haec sufficiunt ius Decretalium puberes ad matrimonium admittebat, et si CIC aetatem auxit, ratio non fuit discretionis defectus (Cfr. Gasparri, op. cit.lDe Matrimollio, 1932], n, p. 292, nota I). Importat igitur capacitatem ad matrimonium intelligendum et libere eligendum, quae perfectam sanitatem mentalem tamen non exigit" (coram Pinto, 2.5.1977, n. 3). A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 57

4. The rupture of the unitary criterion

Once puberty is no longer considered as a unitary criterion for determining the capacity to marriage, we will be short of a clear criterion that identifies the elements of that capacity. This was what numerous canonical authors maintained. They reduced puberty to the moment of reaching the bodily development that is sufficient to be able to consume marriage. Meanwhile, from the viewpoint of the spiritual development necessary for eliciting consent, many authors held that the use of reason, attained at the age of seven, is sufficient. Thus, one can celebrate marriage upon reaching puberty, but only for the fact that one of the elements of the capacity for marriage is the sufficient growth of the body in such a way that the person will be able to consume marriage. We have therefore two diverse moments: the seven years for the mental growth; puberty for the development of the body. The discretion of judgement had little relevance.24

Surely, this twofold criterion proved to be insufficient both in doctrine as well as in jurisprudence. For this reason,jurisprudence always strived to detect the truth about marriage and about the capacity for contracting it in the concrete cases.

5. 1917 Code: amentia and dementia

The Bio-Benedictine Code does contain any express mention of psychic incapacity to contract marriage neither among the impediments nor among the vices of consent. This is logically explained by the fact that psychic incapacity is not a vice of consent, because it hinders in a radical way the formation of consent itself. Nor does it appear among the impediments because these relate to the agere itself, whereas the psychic incapacity concerns the capacitas ad agendum, which is a prerequisite to the age re. In fact, a person who lacks the psychic capacity to marriage is within the ambit of the so-called impotentia moralis.25

24. Regarding the discussion about the necessary age for contracting marriage. see the interesting article of E. TEJERo, La discrecion de juicio para consentir el1matrimonio, in Ius Canonicum, 44 (1982) 403-534, in which he studies the various doctrinal positions ofT. Sanchez and Saint Thomas Aquinas, which have been often object of excessive reductionisms. 25. Cf. A. SABATTANI, L'evolution de la jurisprudence dans le causes de nullite de mariage pour incapacite psyclzique, in Studia canonica, 56 (1967) 146-147; P.A. D' AVACK, Cause di nullita e cli divorzio nel diritto matrimoniale canonico, Firenze 1952,68-69. 58 Edward Xuereb

There was no specific canon on the psychic capacity for the marriage consent in the 1917 Code, but only a generic reference to amentia and dementia. These two situations were considered as conditions in which a person was deprived of the reason in general (amens) or in a specific ambit, such as sexuality or the possibility of establishing a conjugal relation (demens). Nearly all sort of anomalies were encompassed, in the 1917 Code, within the sphere of amentia-dementia and marriage cases before the ecclesiastical tribunals, which referred to psychic problems, were normally studied under the grounds of amentia and dementia.

However, the former Code contained norms which tended to discipline the consent from the standpoint of natural law, in case the person was deprived of the usus mentis. For example, in canon 1089, it stipulated that if before the proxy contracts marriage in the name of the mandator, the latter falls in amentia, marriage is invalid, even if the proxy of the other contracting party would have ignored this. Likewise, canon 1082 enjoined that even in cases of a defect of consent on account of amentia, the vote of experts was required. An analogous reference was made in canon 88 § 3 which established that persons habitually deprived of the use of reason are assimilated to infants. As regards persons of minor age, the Legislator had already pronounced himself for a juridical incapability (can. 1067).

For other persons, affected not by reasons of age but by pathological reasons, certain canonists erroneously referred to canon 2201 26 regarding penal imputation - an issue with principles references that were completely different with respect to contracts and to marriage?7

Back to the criterion of amentia-dementia, we should note that in practise it was a too much vast criterion that required a better juridical determination, also in view of the great development of psychology and psychiatry during the 20th century. This made the jurisprudence, especially of the Roman Rota, confront the necessity of clarifying the contents and ambit of the capacity for marriage from the psychic point of view. The fundamental canon referred to by Rotal jurisprudence

26. "§ 1 Delicti sunt incapaces qui actu carent usu rationis. §2 Habitualiter amentes, licet quandoque lucida intervaIIa habeant, vel inc ertis quibusdam ratiocinationibus vel actibus sani videantur, delicti tamen incapaces praesumuntur" (can. 2201). 27. Cf. Coram Sabattani, 14.2.1961, n. 3; coram De Jorio, 19.6.1967, n. 6; coram Augustoni, 3.5.1974, n.4 .. A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 59

was canon 1081 §§ 1_2.28 This canon enlisted the substantial elements of consent: the consent of the parties (efficient cause), their juridical ability, the essential object of consent which consisted in the act of the will of receiving and accepting the ius in corpus, its ordination to procreation of offspring and the legitimate manifestation of consent. From these presuppositions, one could trace all defects of consent on account of which marriage could be declared null. It suffices to mention the way in which jurisprudence resolved various problems, in particular through the analogy with impotence, which we meet still today at the basis of canon 1095,3°.

6. The due discretion entailed to get married

As we saw, the first and basic discussions of the problem of the capacity to marriage in medieval canon law regarded the more grave hypotheses of psychopathologies (juriosi) in which the health of the mind totally lacks. Later on, throughout the history of canon law, further principles were amply elaborated in medieval doctrine about the contents and elements of the discretio iudicii to marriage.

Ever since the classical period, authors retained as capable to marriage the person who has the use of reason, but then they did not agree about the contents of this decisive factor. In fact, two great scholars, Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1221- 1274) and Tomas Sanchez (1550-1610) gave a different interpretation of the issue. Sanchez29 retained as sufficient the use of reason "which is enough for a mortal fault" ("qui ad culpam lethalem satis est"), with the consequence of affirming that even a seven-year old (considered as having enough use of reason to be able to sin mortally) had the psychic capacity to contract validly. Contrary to this theory there was another conception stemming from the Angelic Doctor who wrote, "A greater discretion of reason is required to provide for something in the future than to consent about one present act; and thus man can sooner sin mortally, than he is able to oblige oneself to something in the future."3o Thus the ability to marriage is anchored to a discretion of judgement that is greater than that of a seven-year old who is even capable of a mortal sin.

28. Cf. 1. GAUDEMET, Il matrimonio in Occidente, Torino 1987, Italian translation, 353. 29. De sancto matrimonii sacramento disputationes, Lugduni 1625, lb. I, disp. VIII, n. 15 & disp. XVI, n. 15-26. 30. "Maior rationis discretio requiritur ad providendum in futurum quam ad consentiendum in unum praesentem actum; et ideo ante potest homo peccare mortaliter, quam possit se obJigare ad aliquid futurum" (S.Th.,Suppiementum, q. 58, art. 5, ad I). 60 Edward Xuereb

The explanation of St. Thomas helped posterior doctrine to distance the concept of discretionary judgement away from the use of reason and to project it toward the sphere of the man-iage duties. More discretion is required for acts generating future obligations than for those which consume their efficacy in the present. The reason is not so much because consent as a psychological act for a present act is more difficult than for a future act. Consent, in fact, for future obligations does not have to be more informed, intense or deliberated, as a human act, than it has to be for present commitments. The real reason is however that a greater psychic attitude is needed to sustain the duties which bindfor the future than to consent "in actum unum praesentem". For the same reason, St. Thomas says in the same text that the discretion required for man-iage consent is less than that necessary to emit the religious votes. Religious life and its obligations are more difficult to undertake because nature does not incline to this type of life as it inclines to man-iage. This entails that the discretio iudicii - which varies according to the type of act to be performed, depending upon whether it is a religious vote or a man-iage contract - is not to be measured only on the basis of the capacity to comprehend the object of the vote or of the contract, but rather it refers exactly to the capacity of undertaking, realising, accomplishing and observing the duties that derive from the vote or from the contract.31

Departing from the consideration that man-iage is a very important contract, indissoluble and oriented to the future, the major part of doctrine32 and jurisprudence33 followed the thomistic approach and required a maturity of judgment which is greater than that entailed for a mortal sin. Along these lines, two criteria were developed in doctrine with the aim of identifying the due discretion required for man-iage.

(a) A static criterion. Canonists arrived at delineating the criterion of the discretion of judgement proportionate to man-iage, by gauging the capacity vis-a­ vis the particular nature of marriage, which implies serious commitments for the future.

31. In a comment on the actual Can. 1095,2°, D. KELLY observed: "The concept of discretion of judgement is concerned, not so much with intellectual or cognitive ability, as with being able to use such intellectual ability in a practical way", The Canon Law. Lleer & Spirit. A practical guide to the Code of Canon Law, (ed. G. Sheehy - R. Brown - D. Kelly- A. McGrath), London 1996,611. 32. Cf. F.M. CAPPELLO, De matrimonio, Romae 1961, n. 579, p. 506. 33. Cf. Coram Mannucci, 8.8.1931, in SRRD, XXIII, 373, about the relation between indissolubility (or servitus totius vitae) and discretio iudicii. A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 61

In due course, Rotaljurisprudence arrived at retaining as incapable of contracting marriage, those who lack gravely of the discretio iudicii in such a way that they cannot evaluate sufficiently the essential rights and duties of marriage whlch have to be mutually given and received. From a formal viewpoint, this is a new cause of incapacity, brought to light for the first time in the Roman Rota by the sentence coram Wynen of 25 February 1941.34 According to that decision - which was a negative one - who is unable to assess and evaluate the ethical, social and juridical values connected with marriage, cannot marry validly. It is not a question of a conceptual appreciation of the institute of marriage, but of the critical faculty, which enables the person to evaluate duly the consequences of such an act for one's own life. The case considered in the Rotal sentence was not of a demens or of a person who had lost temporarily the faculties, nor of somebody with a weak mind. It was the case of a cocaine maniac, presented as affected by a "constitutional immorality", and lacking the critical or evaluative faculty, the discretion of judgement.

In any event, in order to assess the subjective psychological compliance of the person in relation to the nature of marriage and its duties, it is very important to see if one possesses a functioning critical capacity. Yet, it was not easy to identify some general criterion indicating the level of discretionary judgement requested to contract marriage.

(b) A dynamic criterion. This situation induced jurisprudence to propose an integrative dynamic criterion: each time the judge cannot measure the quantum of the discretionary judgement, he must examine the quomodo of consent. According to this position, one is able to consent when the dynamics of the formation of consent are regular, i.e., when the various structures of one's personality are normal. Otherwise, if the process offormation of the will to marry is abnormal, there is a defectus discretion is iudicii which according to the famous Rotal decision coram Sabattani of 24 February 1961, "has more to do with intimate distortions of the formation and arousal of the deliberation than with inadequate or false apprehension of the object of the contract" .35

34. Cr. c. HOLBocK, Traetatus de jurisprudentia Saerae Romanae Rotae juxta deeisiones quas hoc sacrum tribunal edidit ab anno 1909 usque ad annum 1946 et pllblieavit in voluminibus 1-XXXVIll, Graetiae-Vindobonae-Coloniae 1957, 103-104. 35. "magis attingit intimas distorsiones efformationis et excitationis deliberationis quam inadequatam vel falsam apprehensionem obiecti contractus" coram Sabattani, 24.2.1961, in Monitor eeciesiastiells, [1961]633. 62 Edward Xuereb

Obviously both the static criterion, which measures the level of discretionary judgement in relation to the substance of marriage, and the dynamic criterion, which examines the way this discretion is formed and naturally leads the canon lawyer to seek the assistance of psychology, are valuable in their interconnectedness. Thus we read in a decision coram Jullien, dated 16 October 1942 that,

"those entering marriage must be masters of their own consent through reason and will; that is to say they must enjoy the use of reason in such a way that they can understand what marriage is and what its essential properties are [ ... ] and they must consent to that with full deliberation. The intellect is said to deliberate when, moved by the will, it compares with its opposite that about which it is deliberating and then, though it could have turned to one thing, nevertheless definitely decides on the other. Furthermore because the body and soul are intimately joined and because the soul's faculties, i.e. the intellect and will, depend for their functioning on bodily organs, those faculties can, because of physical diseases that affect the brain or the nervous system, be impeded from performing their operations, with the result that deliberation of the intellect and consent of the will, depending on the seriousness of the various pathologies, are either removed entirely or diminished."36

While benefiting from the assistance of the psychological science, the canonist needs a juridical criterion, possibly a general one, to measure the capacity to consent. At present there is a sufficient consensus in doctrine37 and jurisprudence38 on the meaning of the discretion of judgement. It essentially embraces two factors, namely, a minimal and sufficient critical ability and internal liberty.

Hence, the other component of the ability for a due discretion is a minimal internal freedom. As far as 1928, Rotal jurisprudence upheld that,

36. SRRD, 34, n. 2, p. 776. 37. Cf. J. McAREAVEY, The Canon Law of Marriage and the Family, 1997,258; cf. J.1. GARC/A FAILDE, Manual de Pisquiatrfaforellse can61lica, Salamanca 1987,34; M.F. POMPEDDA, Studi di diritto matrimolliaie canonico, Milano 1993,19. 38. Cf. coram Colagiovanni, 20.7.1984, nos. 7-11; coram Doran, 4.1 2.1987 , nos. 6-9; coram Stankiewicz, 26.3.1990, nos. 20-22; coram Pompedda, 14.11.1991, nos. 3-12; coram Burke, 15.10.1992, nos. 2-16. A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 63

"It is clear that there cannot be consent if intemalliberty lacks. In fact for a human act, i.e. which proceeds from a deliberate will, it i.s required that man be the master of the same act through reason and the will. But he would not be master, if he were not immune from intrinsic determination."39

Thus we saw that the theme of the discretion of judgement is not exclusive of the 1983 Code. Rotaljurisprudence, in fact, had already elaborated what was going to be contained in canon 1095 of canon 1095 1° and 2°. It treated the contents of the actual number 1 under the title of amentia, "which we leave to the themes of the total lack of the use of reason."40 Number 2 was treated in Rotal jurisprudence as it is presented in the decision coram Sabattani of24 February 1961,41 which draws on the contents of the coram lullien of 23 February 1935, when it synthesizes the lack of discretion of judgement in the incapacity to evaluate the nature and the value of marriage and the refusal to accept the marital obligations. This doctrine is founded on St. Thomas Aquinas.42

7. Rotaijurisprudence on incapacitas assumendi

The 1917 Code law proved to be insufficient before certain situations in which, on the one hand, it was clear that a person was unable to contract marriage, while at the same time, it did not seem that there was any doubt about the existence of the sufficient use of reason or on the necessary discretion of judgement - in actual fact - about the marriage one wished to contract.

This gave rise, especially as from the 1960s and by analogy with the ratio legis on impotence - "Nemo potest ad impossibile obligari", which is the sixth Rule of the Decretals of Boniface VIII - to the consideration of a new ground of nullity, founded upon the same reality of consent and on marriage, so-called incapacitas

39. "Planum est consensum non dari deficiente libertate intema. Ad actum enim humanum, i. e. ex voluntate deliberata procedentem, requiritur ut homo eiusdem actus dominus sit per rationem et voluntatem. Dominus autem non foret, si immunis non esset ab intrinseca determinatione" (coram Massimi, SRRD, vol. 20,1928, p. 318, n. 2; cf. coram Massimi, SRRD, vol. 23,1931, p. 274, n. 2; coram Wynen, SRRD, vol. 35,1943, p. 273, n. 5; coram Pompedda, 21.1 1 .1983, n. 5). 40. C. LEFEBVRE, Pauli VI verba de Rotali iurisprudentia, in Periodica, (1976) 129. 41. Cf. Nos. 4-5. 42. Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, S.Th., I-U, q. 1, art. 2. 64 Edward Xuereb

assumendi on era coniugalia.43 Yet, the first Rotal sentence that applied in a case of marriage nullity the principle of the incapacity to assume the essential obligations of marriage, seems to have been the coram Teodori of June 1940.44

Rotal jurisprudence prior to the 1983 Code treated the subject under the principle of sexual amentia or dementia (insania in re uxoria). Afterwards it started to treat such cases for lack of the object of consent, since whoever suffers from such anomalies of psychic nature cannot observe conjugal fidelity nor share the intimate conjugal life in a human way nor establish the community of life and love.45

Very important for its juridical contents is the sentence coram Anne of 25 February 1969, hailed in legal language as a landmark decision .46 It treated the case of a man whose presumed wife at seventeen years of age had started a pattern of homosexual conduct with her lesbian lover. Then, she interrupted this during the first years after the wedding, but resumed after their first child was born. The issue was whether her deeply rooted sexual inversion had rendered her unable to perform

43. "Dobbiamo anche ricordare il posto importante assunto dalla nullitii per 'incapacitii di aSSllmere gli obbliglzi essenziali del matrimonio' anzitutto quelli della fedelta e della perennita. Si tratta molto spesso di turbe psichiche gravi, specialmente dell a ninfomania e dell'omosessualita. Questi capi di nullita sono stati ammessi dalla Rota a partire dal 1957", J. OAUDEMET, Il matrimonio in Occidente, 352. 44. Cf. No. 16. 45. Cf. J. R. MONTANES RINCHN, El consentimento matrimonial y el canon 1095 (10.8.2004) in www.tribunaleclesiasticomedellin org.co. See coram Serrano, 5.4.1973, which includes the communitas vitae within the object of marital consent. Yet, the "communion of life" concept of marriage was articulated at least as far back as Pius Xl's encyclical Casti connubii, 31.12.1930: "This mutual inward moulding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense [ ... ] be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending oflife as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof' (n. 84) . . 46. Cf. coram Serrano, 5.4.1973; coram Raad, 14.4.1975; coram Lefebvre, 31.1.1976; L.O. WRENN, Annulments, Washington D.C. 19874,82; W.J. LADuE wrote that this Rotal decision "is not particularly significant for its resolution of the case, but [ ... ] because of its explanation of marriage as a consortium totius vitae and of the juridical implications which flow therefrom" (Conjugal Love and the Juridical Structure of Christian Marriage, in The Jurist, 34 [1974]43-44). A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 65

the marriage consent because it had made her incapable of willing effectively the object of this consent.47

However, the import of Anne' s Rotal decision is not to be exploited by practicing a "pick-and-choose Rota jurisprudence"48 in order to make it easier for tribunals to hand down declarations of marriage nullity. This peril would arise if the canon lawyer tries to complicate the matter by claiming that for marriage to be valid the parties must also be able to exchange a right to a marriage relationship which is understood to mean a successful marriage,49 even if this is never said out loud. Conversely, for the purposes of contracting a valid marriage, the parties' capacity for the fulfilment of the object of consent needs only be minimal and only really grave anomalies invalidate marriage. In point offact, Lucien Anne noted that there are two fundamental psychic deficiencies that render persons incapable of marital consent. One of these deficiencies is a paranoid disorder of affectivity preventing a person's giving himself into union with another in any sense. The other is a serious deflection or perversion of the sexual instinct. He wrote:

"The abnormal conditions of the spouses-to-be that radically obstruct the establishment of any type of community of conjugal life - so that the elements for establishing it are lacking - are either the most grave deflection or perversion of the sexual instinct as, for instance, in cases of full-blown homosexuality if and inasmuch as it extinguishes the activity

47. Anne noted that, "fieri potest ut consensus matrimonialis invalidus sit ob defectum obiecti fonnalis, quo fit ut consensus sit vere matrimonialis. Nam contingere potest ut contrahens sit inhabilis, idque insanabiliter, ad tradendum acceptandumque ipsius consensus obiectum. Tunc [ ... ] defectus obiecti, cum nupturiens incapax sit tradere id quo consensus fit nuptialis, uti iam exposuimus in una Aquen. diei 17 ianuarii a. 1967, in qua retulimus quasdam sententias rotales praecedentes" (no. 3). 48. R.H. VASOL!, What God has joined together. The Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism, New York-Oxford 1998,55. 49. "There exists no canonical jurisprudence in the precise and proper sense [ ... ] according to which valid marriage consent requires the exchange of a right to a successful, conjugal, interpersonal relationship, an exchange of the spouses in whole or in part, or any other exchange which is in fact, even if not in expression, the same as one of these. For, no matter whether one holds that in a sufficient number of decisions of a tribunal of the Roman Curia it has been affirmed that any or all of these exchanges are required for a valid marriage, and affirmed over a sufficiently long period of time, it nevertheless remains an 'existential' reality that such affirmations have always been and still are under challenge by other decisions of the same tribunal", E.M. EOAN, The Nullity of Marriage for Reason ofIncapacity to Fulfil! the Essential Obligation ofMarriage, in Ephelllerides juris canollici, 40 [1984] 28-29. 66 Edward Xuereb

of the natural heterosexual instinct, or the abnormal paranoic perturbation of the mental faculties or an equal perturbation."50

Anne further recognises the difficulty of declaring a marriage null in other cases which lack such gravity.

"With regards to other cases, the incapability of the spouse-to-be to assume the substantial conjugal burdens - except in a case of true amentia or dementia because of which consent itself is already to be regarded invalid - exceeds the ability of judges to define the nullity of a marriage with moral certainty since only God searches hearts and minds. Indeed, the judicial investigation about the intentions of the spouses-to-be, as in cases of the exclusion of some property of marriage, already turns out to be very hard. How far more difficult or even impossible would be the judicial investigation of the disharmony of frames of mind and characters because of which one might contend that the spouses-to-be were unable to establishing a communion of life. The handling of this kind of marriage cases would present the picture of the rescission of a marriage rather than the declaration of its nullity."51

In other words, in this Rotal decision, which was a negative one, Anne insisted that only serious disorders preclude the capacity for the minimal level of 'community of life' required for marital validity. It would be mistaken to shunt aside Anne' s cautions.

The presuppositions that gave rise to this "new" ground of nullity refer especially to the psycho-sexual anomalies, in which the capacity for intending and assuming marriage in a minimal way were gravely compromised (homosexuality, nymphomania, etc.). It was precisely for this reason that psycho-sexual anomalies were mentioned as cause of incapacity. In the 1970s, the incapacitas assumendi onera was mentioned in doctrine and in Rotal jurisprudence, and this same jurisprudence is the principal source of canon 1095 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. According to the Latin edition of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, edited by the

50. No. 19. 51. Ibid. A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 67

Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of the Code,52 the so~rces of canon 1095 are:

Canon 1095, 1°: coram Jullien, 30.7.1932; coram Grazioli, 1.7.1933; coram Wynen, 25.2.1943; coram Heard, 4.12.1943; coram Felici, 22.5.1956; coram Felici, 3.12.1957; coram Sabattani,24.2.1961; coram De Jorio, 19.12.1961; coram Canestri, 16.7.1963; coram Mattioli, 4.4.1966; coram Pompedda, 3.7.1979.

Canon 1095,2°: coram Wynen, 25.2.1941; coram Wynen, 25.2.1943; coram Felici, 3.12.1957; coram Sabattani, 24.2.1961; coram Pinto, 4.1.1974.

Canon 1095,3°: coram Sabattani, 21.6.1957; coram Pinna, 4.4.1963; coram Anne, 17.1.1967; coram Lefebvre, 2.12.1967; coram De Jorio, 20.12.1967; coram Anne, 25.2.1969; coram Serrano, 5.4.1973; coram Raad, 14.4.1975; coram Pinto, 14.4.1975; coram Staffa, 29.11.1975; coram Anne, 4.12.1975; coram Lefebvre, 31.1.1976; coram Serrano, 9.7.1976; coram Pinto, 15.7.1977; coram Masala, 10.5.1978; coram Huot, 7.6.1979; coram Ferraro, 6.2.1979.

8. Genesis of canon 1095

The salient points in the course of the drafting of canon 1095 will prove to be very useful for a deep interpretation, understanding and distinction of its three cases in point.53 In fact, the juridical contents of the notions enclosed in canon 1095 is clearly inferred from a study of the various redactions of the canons in the schemes realised during the redaction of the present Code.54

The first problem faced by the reviewers of the Code regarding the psychic incapacity to marriage was whether it was opportune to establish a positive nO.rm that explicates natural law , given that the marriage consent has to be first of all a human act. Up to that time, doctrine and jurisprudence, despite the absence of a specific canon, did not encounter great difficulties to recall the pertinent general principles. But, to avoid any ambiguity, the Consultors were inclined to codify

52 PONTIFIClA COMMISSIO CODICI IURls CANONICl AUTHENTlcE INTERPERETANDO, Codex iuris canonici allctoritate /oal1nis Pallli PP. II promulgatlls jontillm anl1otatiol1e et indice analytico-alphabetico allctus, Vatican City 1989. 53 Cf. F. FINOCCHIARO, Jl matrimonio ne! diritto cClnonico, Bologna 1989,77. 54 Cf. Communicationes, 3 (1971) 77; 7 (1975) 41-54; 9 (1977) 369-371. 68 Edward Xuereb

the psychic incapacity, so as to give it a more precise determination and shun the occasion for any arbitrary interpretation.55

On 11 May 1970 two distinct canons on incapacity were presented, which followed the canon that defined the object of consent.56

Canon 1081 his: 1. "Those who cannot elicit matrimonial consent due to an illness on account of a defect of discretion are incapable of contracting marriage." 2. "Those who are actually impeded from the use of reason due to some perturbation of the mind, are incapable of contracting marriage, while the pelturbation lasts." Canon 1081 ter: "Those who cannot assume the rights or fulfil the essential duties of marriage, are incapable of contracting."57

During the examination of this draft, it was preferred to distinguish, apropos the defect of the use of reason, between the habitual and the actual lack of the use of reason on the part of the spouse. So the following formula was approved by the consultative organs:

"They are incapable of contracting marriage: 1. Who are affected by an illness of the mind or by a grave perturbation of the mind in such a way that they cannot elicit matrimonial consent, inasmuch as they are deprived."58

55. Cf. "Etsi principia de incapacitate consensum matrimonialem validum eliciendi implicite in iure vigenti continendum, visum fuit expedire eadem distinctius et clarius in novo iure exprimenda esse", PONT. COMM. cre., COETUS STUDIORUM DE rURE MATRIMONIAL!, in Commullicatiolles, 3 [1971)77. 56. PONT. COMM. crc., COETUS STUDIORUM DE rURE MATRIMONIAL!, in Comnzullicatiolles, 7 (1975) 41- 44. 57. Canon 1081 bis: I. "Qui ob morbum vel ob defectum discretionis consensum matrimoniale elicere non valent, incapaces sunt matrimonii contrahendi." 2. "Qui ob aliquam mentis perturbation em ab usu rationis actu impediuntur incapaces sunt, dum perturbatio perdurat, matrimonii contrahendi." Canon 1081 ter: "Qui non valent assumere iura aut implere officia matrimonii essentialia, incapaces sunt contrahendi." 58. "Sunt incapaces matrimonii contrahendi: I. Qui mentis morbo aut gravi perturbatione animi afficiuntur ita ut matrimonialem consensum, utpote carentes, elicere nequeant." A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 69

Regarding the lack of discretionary judgement, it appeared necessary to link up the defect to something that minimally determines the object of the intellect and the will. Hence the defect of discretion was referred directly to the rights and duties of marriage and the following formula was approved:

2. "Those who suffer from a grave defect of discretion of judgement about the rights and duties of marriage to be handed over and accepted."59

As regards the defect concerning the assumption of the essential obligations of marriage, the Consultors attempted to individuate the causes of the incapacity so as to determine in some way the precincts of this invalidating situation. They retraced these causes to psychosexual anomalies: "incapacitas [ ... ] non provenit ex defectu scientiae vel discretionis vel ex morbo mentis sed ex anomaliis quae pertinent ad spheram psycho-sexualem quaeque gignunt quaedam moralem impossibilitatem assumendi onera perpetua."60 It is interesting to note how at an initial stage during the works of revision of the Code, the incapacity that now figures in canon 1095,3° was envisioned as impotentia moralis.61 Anyhow, the defect stemming from grave sexual anomalies was configured as an autonomous case from that of the scientia minima. It was remarked that sexual anomaly, as an impediment to marriage, could be retraced to the canon about impotence, whereas here they only wanted to examine its psychic origin. The following formulation came out:

"They are incapable of contracting marriage who due to grave psychosexual anomaly cannot assume the essential obligations of marriage."62

59. 2. "Qui laborant gravi defectu discretionis iudicii iura et officia matrimonialia mutuo tradenda et acceptanda." 60. PONT. COMM. Cle., COETUS STUDlORUM DE lURE MATRIMONIAL!, in Commllnicationes, 7 (1975) 98. 61. This gave rise to the question of the characteristics that must qualify it, a question that was tackled by way of analogy with the copulative impotence of the present Canon. 1084 § 1. However, it does not make sense to require antecedence and perpetuity, because what really counts is the real presence of the incapacity at the moment of consent. As regards relativity, the majority of Rotal auditors reject it (cf. P. BIANCHI, comment on Can. 1095, in Codice di diritto canonico commentato, a cura della Redazione di Qlladerni di diritto ecclesiale, Milano 2001,884-885), in such a way that "in merito c'e per 10 meno un dubbio di diritto (:j:can. 14) e che quindi non pub utilizzarsi il riferimento alia relativita quale qualifica dell'incapacita psichica al m. =[matrimonioj" (Ibid., 885). 62. "Sunt incapaces matrimonii contrahendi qui ob gravem anomaliam psychosexualem obligationes matrimonii essentiales assumere nequeunt". 70 Edward Xuereb

After the examination of the Consultative Organs (Episcopal Conferences, Dicasteris of the Roman Curia, Pontifical Universities), canon 1081 bis and fer became canon 296 and this became canon 297.

There was certain confusion between the subject and the object, between the incapacity and its effect. It was therefore hoped that in the definitive formulation of the legal text, the three hypotheses be grouped in a single paragraph, whose direct juridical reference was "not so much the psychic cause of incapacity, as much as its effect that impedes the formation of a real marriage consent, given that the spouse is unable to intend and/or to will the marriage duties."63

It was right to differentiate the lack of discretionary judgement from the inabilitas assumendi because as Pompedda observed, "it is one thing to foresee the consequences of a certain act, and yet another thing to evaluate objectively one's own aptness regarding the consequences of that same act."64 In the former case, we must speak of discretio iudicii, in the latter case the validity of the act might be obstructed by the lack of an object about which one might be mistaken. What is important, according to Pompedda, is that the juridical act of consent is considered from two different aspects: that of its sufficiency and that of its efficacy. By the first we mean that there are present in the act all the intrinsic psychological elements that render it apt for the matter to be accomplished. By the second, once this sufficiency is presupposed, we mean that consent is expressed in the modality of circumstances and conditions that are such that make it efficacious. Consent might be vitiated intrinsically due to external and objective circumstances, and thus it is born frustrated.65

Stankiewicz observed that the problem regarding the autonomy of this incapacity (to assume) with respect to the defectus discretion is iudicii, ought to be resolved in the light of its cause. If the incapacitas assumendi on era stems from a psychic state that takes away the use of reason or provokes a grave defect of discretionary

63 "non tanto la causa psichica dell'incapacita, quanta l'effetto di essa di impedire la formazione di un vero consenso matrimoniale, alteso che il nubente e incapace di intendere e/o volere gli obbligi matrimoniali", O. FUMAGALLl CARULLI, L 'incapacita psichica neUa riforma delmatrimonio canonieo, in Ephemeridesjuris eanonici, 32 [1976]107. 64 "altro e prevedere le conseguenze di un determinato alto, ed altro e invece valutare oggettivamente la propria idoneita alle conseguenze di tale medesimo alto", M.F. POMPEDDA, Borderline, Nevrosi e Psicopatie in riferimento al consenso matrimoniale nel diritto canonico, Roma 1981, 60. 65 Cf. Ibid., 63. A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 71

judgement, it cannot be configured as an autonomous ground, but it remains inserted in its original matrix. If however a psychic anomaly does not impinge gravely on the original matrix, while affecting the object of consent, then there can be an autonomous figure. In this case in point, therefore, there must rather be the inability to fulfil the essential duties of marriage, that is, the impossibility to dispose of the formal object.66

Among the various commentators, Navarrete, though inclining toward an autonomy of this incapacity, retained that by this expression, one might cluster so many diverse and autonomous grounds of nullity as there are essential conjugal duties.67

The Consultors embarked upon the formulation of a norm about the incapacity to assume the obligations of marriage, which has its roots in the lack of the object of marriage consent, even if this situation involves a condition that incapacitates the person. Already in the relation to the Commission, Peter Huizing had specified how the lack of the use of reason and the defect of discretion of judgment regard the same subjective act of psychological consent, while the inability to assume the duties of marriage only touches the object of consent.68

Yet certain canonists showed some evident perplexities about the formulated text, which was too much restricted to the individuation of the cause, as this was confined uniquely to the psychosexual sphere, whereas in fact there are a wide variety of cases of inability to assume the essential conjugal duties. It was the strict competence of the expert to bring to light the various causes of this incapacity based on psychiatric, psychosomatic and psychological elements.69

In 1977, the Commission proceeded in a restricted group to examine the observation of the Consultative Organs. After the re-examination by the Consultors,

66 Cf. A. STANKIEWICZ, L 'incapacita psiehiea nel matrimonio: terminologia e eriteri. in Ephemerides juris eanoniei, 36 (1980) 258-259. 67 Cf. U. NAVARRETE, Pertllrbazioni psiehiehe e consenso matrimoniale nel Diritto Canonieo, Rorna 1976,130. 68 Cf. COlllmllnieationes, 3 (1971) 69-81. 69 Cf. C. GULLO, Spllnti critici ill tema di illcapaeita ad assumere gli oneri eonillgali, in Il diritto di famiglia e delle persone, 4 (1975) 1478-1498; ID., Capacita e matllrita eome elelllenti costitutivi del consellso matrimoniale eanollico, in Il db-Wo difamiglia e delle perSOlle, 7 (1978) 823. 72 Edward Xuereb

the fonnula of canon 296 was refined by adding the qualifying adjective "sufficient"70 - a highly relevant element from a substantial viewpoint. Therefore, it is not a matter of just a lack of the use of reason but of the lack of the sufficient use of reason. So, "to induce the incapacity to contract marriage, it is not necessary that one or both spouses be totally deprived of the use of reason, but that they are, or at least one of them is deprived in such a degree to render consent itself inadequate to the gravity of the specific matter in question, that is, marriage."71 This safeguards the right to marriage even of the so-calledfatui, while enhancing the relation between the use of reason of the spouse and the juridical affair in question.

A propos canon 297, after receiving various suggestions ("anomaliam psychicam, anomaliam psycho-sexual em, ob gravem anomaliam praesertim psycho-sexualem, ob gravem anomaliam psychicam") and after examining the various observations, the Consultors selected a formulation that regards only the cause incapacitating the person. In this way, they arrived at an ampler nonn: from the psycho-sexual anomaly to the anomaly of a psychic nature,72 thus accepting all the reserves mentioned regarding the previous one:

"They are unable of contracting marriage who cannot assume the essential obligations of marriage due to a grave psychic anomaly."73

In the definitive formulation, decided during the ultimate revision of the entire Schema of the Code, done by the restricted Commission presided by John Paul II, the expression "gravis anomalia psichica" was substituted by another that is more generic and less exigent, and at the same time more suitable to evaluate the entire personality of the spouse:

70. Cf. PONT. COMM. ClC., COETUS STUDIORUM DE lURE MATRIMONIAL!, sessio 20.10.1977 , "De matrimonii effectibus", in COl1ll1lunicationes, 10 (1978) 104-105. 71. "non e necessario ad indurre l'incapacita a contrarre matrimonio che uno 0 entrambi i coniugi siano privi totalmente dell'uso di ragione, ma che ne siano, 0 ne sia almeno uno, privi in grado tale, da rendere il consenso stesso inadeguato alia gravita del negozio specifico, cioe il matrimonio", M.F. POMPEDDA, Anllotazioni sui diritto l1latril1loniale Ilelnuovo diritto canonico, in Ill1latril1lonio nellluovo Codice di diritto canonico: annotaziolli di diritto sostanziale e processuale, (ed. Z. Grocholewski - M.F. Pompedda - C. Zaggia), Padova 1984,40. 72. Cf. PONT. COMM. CIC., COETUS STUDIORUM DE lURE MATRIMONIAL!, sessio 18.5.1977, "De consensus matrimoniali", ill COl1llllunicatiolles, 9 (1977) 369-371. 73. "Sunt incapaces matrimonii contrahendi qui ob gravem anomaliam psichicam obligationes matrimonii essentiales assumere nequeunt", Ibid., 370-371. ", \ 'I A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 73

"They are unable of contracting marriage [ ... J who due to causes of a psychic nature cannot assume the essential obligations of marriage."74

In this manner, in the first drafting of what later became canon 1095, the expression "psychosexual anomaly" was used. Later on, considering that there are anomalies that are not psychosexual and which can render the person unable to assume, the expression was substituted by "psychic anomaly". This expression still presented a grave inconvenient: it displaced the problem of incapacity from the juridical to the medical ambit, thus confusing the incapacity as a juridical notion with the factual cause of incapacity, which pertains to the medical sphere. Psychic incapacity, in all its manifestations, is a juridical notion, independently of the cause of its origin.75 Hence, the Legislator considered it opportune to employ a more generic term: "cause of psychic nature" , which is what remained in the final redaction of the third number of canon 1095.

At a distance of more than two decades from the promulgation of this canon, we are familiar with the criticism that this canon has led to a wholesale production of decrees of nullity, which could hardly have been intended by its framers .76 Obviously, the caveats of the supreme magisterium about the right interpretation and application of the canon in question in cases of marriage nullity77 are indispensable for a correct administration of justice in the Church. All in all, however, this canon "without precedent in the old Code, is the single canon which most directly allows tribunals to address the canonical impact of mental, emotional, personal, psychological, psychiatric, and even chemical traumas suffered by persons attempting marriage."78 In practice, it is still the best tool for addressing certain cases of drug, alcohol, physical and sexual abuse and a variety of other anomalous conditions?9 As Cormac

74. "Sunt incapaces matrimonii contrahendi [ ... Jqui ob causas naturae psychicae obligationes matrimonii essentiales assumere non valent". 75. Cf. P .-J. VILADRICH, Il consenso matrimoniale. Techniche di qualificazione e di esegesi delle cause canoniche di nullita (cc. 1095-1107 crC), Milano 2001, Chapter One, I, II (l-3),VII (2+3). 76. Cf. R.H. VASOL!, What God Has Joined Together, 73. 77. Cf. JOHN PAUL II,AllocutiollS to the Roman Rota, 5.2.1987, nos. 2-9; 25.1.1988, nos. 2-13; 1.2.2001, no. 6. 78. E.N. PETERS, Annulments in America: Keeping Bad News ill Context, in myweb page s.comca st. netlellpeters!canonlaw.htm. 74 Edward Xuereb

Burke noted, "the real underlying problem, [ ... ] is not the number of declarations of nullity but the number of failed marriages."so

9 An endnote The final drafting of canon 1095, enshrined in the actual Code endeavours to take into account the scientific progress regarding the deficiencies of the will and of reason. Besides, the legal text of the canon does not disregard the paths opened by jurisprudence in the last thirty years, while avoiding extensive formulas that would have led to abuses of laxism.81

In this article, we examined the historical roots of this 'new' norm on marriage consent, namely canon 1095 of the Latin Code.82 Its roots ultimately stem from natural law itself, were recognised by Roman Law and were successively received in Church law and theology during that age, which as its name indicates (i.e. the 'medieval' age), functioned as a 'medium' that conveyed the richness of classical antiquity to our modern and contemporary times. As every productive source of law, canon 1095 only represents the ultimate and external stage of a creative process of law: it represents the arrival, the epilogue of a historical process, the moment in which the concept of productive source coincides with that of cognitive source of law P

79. "the fundamental insight of Canon 1095 is crucial in helping the Church confront accurately the modern crises in marriage: Canon 1095, for all its flaws, is still the best tool for addressing cases in which drug and alcohol abuse, physical or sexual abuse, psychological and psychiatric anomalies, and a variety of other mental and emotional conditions have seriously impacted parties prior to marriage" (Ibid.). 80. A certain anonymous tribunal critic "seems to limit his concern to one point: there are too many declarations of nullity, and the number must be reduced. To my mind, he is missing the real underlying problem, which is not the number of declarations of nullity but the number of failed marriages. Not all failed marriages are entitled to be declared null; but it is fairly evident that if we can reduce the number of marital failures, we are going to have fewer petitions for nullity. I wish [the critic] had sought to investigate the roots of these failures, instead of putting the blame for the problem he sees on the new Code of Canon Law", C. BURKE, Marriage, Annulment, and the Quest for Lasting Commitment, in Catholic World Report, January 1996,54. 81. J. GAUDEMET, 11 matrimonio in Occidellfe, 357. 82. Cf. Can. 818 of the Codex Canonulll Ecclesiarum Orientalium. 83. Cf. F. C. SAVIGNY, Sistema del diritto romano affuale, I, Italian translation, Torino 1886, chap. n, § 6. A Historic Approach to the Question of Psychic Incapacity 75

Yet, the promulgation of canon 1095 did not signal the ending of all the previous progress that led to its textual legislative formulation. Since law is a dynamic reality, now that the mentioned canon pertains to the ius conditum,84 there is still room for further 'development'85 as to how the principles sanctioned by the legislative text ought to be applied to the great number of concrete situations emerging in everyday life.

2, Pjazza S. Salvatur, Ghasri, Gozo, Malta.

84. "Dopo il Codice del 1983 disponiamo di una 1egge universale della Chiesa. che contiene una norma esplicita sull'incapacita consensuale, il celebre canone 1095. Dalla situazione precedente de lege ferenda siamo passati al possesso di una lex condita. da interpretare ed applicare. Cib facilita certamente illavoro della dottrina e della giurisprudenza", C.J. ERRAzURIZ, La capacita matrillloniale vista alia illce dell'essenza del matrimonio, in sociebrasicanon.vilabol.llol.com.brlerrazuriz.htm. 83. "Ma rimangono ancont canoni, di riIeval1le importanza neI diritto matrimoniale, che sono stati necessariamente formulati in modo generico e che attendono una ulteriore determinazione, alia quale potrebbe validamente contribuire innanzitutto la qualificata giurisprudenza rotale. Penso, ad esempio, alIa determinazione del 'defectus gravis discretionis iudicii', agli 'officia matrimonialia essentialia', alle 'obligationes matrimonii essentiales', di cui al can. '1095 [ .. .]", JOHN PAUL n, AlloClltioll to the Roman Rota, 26.1.1984, no. 7.

Issues in Bible Translation, 6

Hannah expresses her strong feelings about her rival and about the Lord in her Hymn of Praise (ISam 2,1-2)

Anthony Abela

Preliminaries

The present study forms part of a wider research project that would comprise the entire text block ISam 1,1-2,21, the story of Samuel's birth and infancy. What helps isolating this textual segment from the rest of its literary contextl are the wayhf clause in 1,1 that introduces the family of Samuel as personages completely unknown with the readers, and the circumstantial clause in 2,22 which ushers in Eli and his family as the participants in the next narratological unit. 2 This essay will focus further on part of what the Masoretic reading tradition identified as Hannah's tephillah (2,1-10), normally formulated as 'poetry' notwithstanding current scholarly misgivings to apply such descriptive terms for identifying literary units within the Hebrew canon.3

I. For the present writer, 1-2 Samuel form part of what he termed 'The Primary History' which would include the textual extension of Genesis-2Kings, cf. Anthony Abela, "Is Genesis the Introduction of the Primary History?" in Andre Wenin (ed.), Studies in the Book of Genesis, Leuven University Press & Peeters, Leuven 2001,397-406. 2. For the use of circumstantial clauses as markers of new beginning in Hebrew Narratives cf. J.c. L. Gibson, Davidson's Introductory Hebrew Grammar-Syntax, T &T Cl ark, Edinburgh 1994,166-167; Lenart de Regt, "Macrosyntactic Functions of Nominal Clauses Referring to Participants," in Cynthia L. Miller(ed.), The Verbless Clause in Biblical Hebrew. Linguistic Approaches, Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic, I; Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Indiana 1999,274-275. 3. Cf. James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical PoetlY, Yale, New Haven 1981. 78 Anthony Abela

4 Regarding the text critical issues which in this pericope are especially complex , the present writer adopts, generally though not completely, the hypothesis developed by Stanley D. Walters5 and Eugene C. Ulrich "that 1 Samuel 1-2 is preserved in one edition in the MT and in another edition in the LXX, and that one of these two editions was intentionally reedited from the other."6 Besides, the textual history of I Samuel includes among others a Qumran fragment labelled 4QSama which is said to be quite close to the Vorlage of the LXX. This textual history is only partially relevant to our current research project, only in so far as it may help rebuild the MT when this results to be corrupt or difficult. According to P.Kyle McCarter, "the received Hebrew text of Samuel in its Masoretic dress is in poor repair. It is a short text, but its shortness is not the wholesome shortness of a text free of expansion and interpolation; rather it is the result of countless copying errors and omissions, some of them extensive scattered throughout the book."?

The narrator's interpretation

The exegete and the interpreter should investigate closely the issue of the relationship of Hannah's Hymn to its literary context. This issue was normally summarily treated, judging the Hymn as a later interpolation within a completely alien literary context since explicit mutual references are scarce and superficial. 8 It is this complex relationship of psalm to narrative that engendered the varied textual situation well described by textual critics. The tradents of the various textual traditions misunderstood also the literary dynamics of the narrative itself. And in this they were not alone.

The segmentation of the narrative in 1 Samuel into three scenes: vv. 4-8.9-18.19-28 that has been proposed in a short paper read by the present author at the 2002

4. Cf. Frank M. Cross, "A New Qumran Biblical Fragment Related to the Original Hebrew Underlying the Septuagint" BASOR 132(1953)15-26; Eugene Charles Ulrich Jr., The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus, Harvard Semitic Monographs, 19; Scholars Press 1978; the two essays by Emanuel Tov, "The Textual Affiliations of 4QSam"" and "Different Editions of the Song of Hannah and of its Narrative Framework" in The Greek and Hebrew Bible. Collected Essays Oil the Septuagillt, Brill, Leiden 1999, pp.273-284 and 433-456 respectively. 5. "Hannah and Anna: The Greek and Hebrew Texts of I Samuel I" JBL 107(1988) 385-412. 6. Eugene C. Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible, William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids & Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden 1999,68. 7. I Samuel, Anchor Bible 8; Doubleday, New York I 980, 5. 8. Cf. McCarter, lSamuel, 75; James W. Watts, Psalm and Story. Inset Hymns in Hebrew Narrative, JSOT Press, Sheffield 1992, 32-40. Hannah's Hymn of Praise (I Sam 2,1-2) 79

Congreso Internacional of the Asociaci6n Biblica Espafiola held in Salamanca and 9 published in the Aetas of the congress , has proved both useful and tricky for exegetical analysis of the text under study,IO It was useful because it facilitated close reading of the text; but it proved also deceptive since the narrator's strategy, and his management of various nalTative aspects is far more complex than the analysis in that paper thought. Scene Three (vv,19-2S) sees Elkanah's family back to Ramatayim after the experience of Hannah with both her family circle (scene One, vvA-S) and with Eli (scene Two, vv, 9-1S). The narrator looses no time to tell of the only event that matters for him, the copulation of Elkanah with Hannah (v.19), and of the sequence of events that followed (v.20). Time is only vaguely computed, and when we meet Elkanah again he is ready to embark on the seasonal or yearlyll pilgrimage to Shiloh. He accepts Hannah's excuses for not accompanying the rest of the family on this pilgrimage (vv.22-23). For how many years or seasons she keeps from taking part in these pilgrimages with the family we are not told by the narrator. It would seem that weaning time in ancient Israel could last up to three years (cf. 2Mac 7, 27),12 This information is taken as known to the prospective reader, and the narrator feels no need to explain the details of the weaning institution.

When we meet Hannah again in v. 24, and we are told that she took the child with her to the Shiloh sanctuary, together with the gifts for the sacrifice, we should keep in mind that the pilgrimage is a different one. The narrator though does not explain that we are reading an account of an experience different from the one initiated at verse 21 when Elkanah leads another pilgrimage to Shiloh in which Hannah does not participate. The narrative is therefore elliptical. The narrator takes for granted that the reader would recognise the ellipsis, that he would bridge the hiatus between the mUTative initiated at verse 21 and that one resumed at verse 24; scene Three actually lumps together two different experiences. Probably, the narrator chooses this strategy in order to shorten the time lapse and to speed the narrative to its climax. But some tradents of textual tradition have not realised the narrator's strategy at this junction.

9. Cf. Anthony Abela "What is Hannah saying about her son in ISamuel 1,28b?" in Jesus Campos Santiago & Victor Pastor Juliiln (eds.), Biblia, Memoria Historica y EnTllcijada de Culturas, Cicero Imprente S.L. Zamora, Salamanca 2004, 518-525 10. On the segmentation of Hebrew narrative discourse into shorter scenic units following the indications of the natTator, cf. Jean Louis Ska, "Our Fathers Have Told Us". Introduction to the Analysis of Hebrew NatTatives, Subsidia Biblica 13, Pontificial Biblical Institute, Rome 1990, 1-3. 1 I . Cf. commentaries. 12. Cr. Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel. Its Life and Institutions, Darton, Longman & Todd, LondonI961,43; Philip J. King & Lawrence E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel, Westminster John Knox Press, Louis & London 2001,40-43. 80 Anthony Abela

This may be seen in how MT wayistal).u in verse 28 has been treated 13 • Some manuscripts of the LXX simply refrained from translating the lexeme. Others versions of the text like 4Q Sama changed the subject of the verb from masculine to feminine referring to Hannah; others still read the cluster as an apocopated third person masculine singular with the verb tentatively referring to Elkanah. Probably the best solution will be exegeting the cluster as an apocopated plural form l4 of the verb hiStal).awah; it is not Elkanah or Hannah who worships the Lord, but the two together, as well as the baby Samuel. It was the whole family who was paying homage to the Lord just as they did at the beginning of the second scene (1,19). Within this cultic moment Hannah indulged in prayer: wattitpallell).annah. Of course, it is not the first time within the narrative that Hannah prays (cf. v.l 0); this prayer Hannah herself later describes as an outpouring of her spirit: wa' espok 'et­ naphsl liphne YHWH (v. IS). Is this second praying intervention in 2,1-10 by Hannah to be read as another pouring out of her spirit? This last intervention of the narrator (2,la) before he hides behind the personage's voice in the hymn offers another piece of his interpretation: this hymn, whatever its genre, was a prayer formulated by the protagonist, who somehow seeks to give the significance of what has just happened to her. When the tradents of the LXX versions leave out the sentence 'and Hannah prayed' , just as they do when they chop off the other expression 'and they worshiped the Lord there' for reasons we have explained above, they demonstrate that they have misunderstood the story with its narrative techniques.

Overview of Ha1l1lah 's hym1l

It is the contention of the present writer that regarding this hymnal composition two hypotheses may be sustained.

First, that though it is encased within the narrative of Samuel's birth and childhood as Hannah's second outpouring of her spirit on offering her son to the Lord(lSam 1,1-2,21), the song follows its own compositional dynamics, those of its genre, and only superficially does it yield to contextual pressures. Meir Sternberg elevates this observation to the level of universal compositionallaw: "Once the tale modulates into or from parable (as with Iotham's sermon from the mount) or poetry (Deborah's

13. For a detailed study one should read Tov, "Different Editions of the Song of Hannah and of its Narrative Framework," 433-440. 14. Cf. Paul Jouon &T. Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, Pontificio Istituto Biblico, Rome 1991, § 79t Hannah's Hymn of Praise (1 Sam 2,1-2) 81

or Hannah's song) or dream (as often in Genesis), divergences from the prose version find their coherence in the laws of the genre: formal constrains, poetic license, stylised expression, the language of symbols or morals. It makes no sense, therefore, to ask why Hannah sings of the barren women bearing seven children while she herself bore only six ... "15 But the relative autonomy of a poetic genre inset within a narrative should not be pushed to reading the poem as a completely independent composition with no reference to the current literary context. This context becomes the 'co-text' a principle in linguistic studies that sanctions that "any sentence other than the first in a fragment of discourse, will have the whole of its interpretation forcibly constrained by the preceding text, not just those phrases which obviously and specifically refer to the preceding text, like the aforementioned ."16 From this there follows that the exegesis of the song may well start with its own dynamics and less with its insertion into the current context, independently of whether its composition was synchronical with it or not. However, we may not ignore that it has been embedded within the narrative of Samuel's infancy (1,1-2,21) which somehow constrains its interpretation since this now constitutes its co-text as well as its literary context.

Second, the analysis of the song's literary dynamics as well its exegesis will establish whether it is meant to fit purely the literary unity within which it is encapsulated, or whether it has a function to play within its wider context, the Primary History. If exegesis will discover elements that point to themes that are situated outside the closer literary context (1,1-2,21), the full understanding of the song itself will have to wait till the whole context is properly studied.

The song is made up of four stanzas 17 of varying length: the first stanza is made up of three strophes: vv.1.2.3; the second stanza is built of two strophes: vvA.5; two strophes make up the third stanza: vv.6-7. 8.a-b while the concluding stanza consists

IS. The Poetics of Biblical Narrative. Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1987,246-247 16. Gillian Brown & Gcorge Yule, Discourse Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1983, 46. 17. For this nomenclature cf. William D. Reyburn, "Anatomy of a Poem: Lamentations 1," in Emst R. Wendland (cd.), Discourse Perspectives Oil Hebrew Poetry ill the Scriptures, UBS Monograph Scries 7; New York 1994, 147-169; Lyncll Zogbo & Ernst R. Wend1and, Hebrew Poetl}' in the Bible. A Guide for Understanding and for Translating, United Bible Societies, New York2000, 57-58. 82 Anthony Abela

of two strophes: vv.Sc-9a. 9b-l O. The first stanza is characterised by verbs in perfect tense and by the shifting of persons; the second stanza offers a reflection on the reversal of fortunes in life; the third stanza makes statements on the Lord as the Lord of history, while the fourth stanza makes it clear that there is no place in man to be proud, for life is in the hand of the Lord who protects his servants as well as his king.

The First Stanza

This stanza (vv.1-3) is particularly dynamic and dramatic. In this study we shall focus on the first two strophes(2, 1-2). The first strophe (v. 1), made up of four cola, we see the singer referring back to her own past though in oblique terms. There are the unidentified participants 'my enemies' whom the reader may choose to mix up with her ~aratah of 1,6; but given that Peninna participated in the cult together with her family, and with Hannah herself, one would exclude her as the only referent of the plural 'ay'gay in 2,lb. And Peninnah's y'lagim do not seem to have participated in their mother's cruel harassment (w'l~:icasattah, 1,6) of Hannah. The reader would not be able to avoid the possibility that the third colon of the first strophe constitutes a flashback upon a moment in the story of Samuel's birth and infancy which the narrator chooses not to narrate's: once the issue of progeny for Hannah is assured, Hannah pays back her rival the many years of unkind harassment. If, on the other hand, Hannah's song is a 'victory song' even though without any 'precise historical reminiscences"9 the phrase 'my enemies' may be referring to more than Hannah's partner in their home troubles. Therefore, even if a third participant is indirectly mentioned by the singer, 'my enemies', the focus is on Hannah herself and her feelings, as well as on the other main character, YHWH. The cluster 'my enemies' therefore may be a pointer to a level oftext which is wider that the immediate literary context of Samuel's infancy narrative though this latter is hermeneutically included.

But the first strophe is more complex than that. In this strophe Hannah articulates her sentiments at this second moment of prayer at Shiloh during the family's ritual of thanksgiving for the birth of infant Samuel. The four cola (henceforth marked by

18. On flashbacks in biblical narratives cf. Shimon Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, Almond Press, Sheffield 1989, 166.175-183; Ska, "Our Fathers Have Told Us", 8.23. 19. Cf. Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes ofYalnveh. Orbis Books, New York1979, 119; Watts, Psalm and Story, 30-32. Hannah's Hymn of Praise (I Sam 2,1-2) 83

the letters a-d) are somehow chiastically disposed in that colon (a) and colon (d) speak of Hannah's feelings in straightforward terms, while cola (b) and (c) employ figurative and even idiomatic language20 as they describe the changes in Hannah's place in social life with the birth of her son. 21

The strophe intensifies as it moves on from colon to colon, The singer opens and closes this first unit in a triumphal manner; the verbal head words in the two cola! clauses, cala~, to exult, and samal)., to rejoice, often appear together in literary contexts( cf. Ps 68,4). The motivation for the sheer exultation and the intense joi2 that transpires through the opening strophe is borne out through the preposition b" in lines (a), (b), and (d). In the first two lines the preposition governs the tetragrammaton while in (d) it rules over the nominal y"suCah that in MT is qualified by the possessive pronoun of the second person singular: 'your salvation'. This shift of participant to the second person without proper discourse preparation is a common feature in Hebrew poetry23 , and often marks the reach of a climatic point within the segment.24 Unfortunately, some have not understood this literary function of such participant shift and suggested parsing the final k" of the noun y"suCah in (d) as causal particle introducing the following statement in the next line (V.2).25 This would explain also the hoti in verse 2 of the LXX. In this case the text would read 'scriptura defectiva' fory'suCati 'my salvation' or 'my victory'. NRSV renders this line: 'because I rejoice in my victory'. But the similarity in the language type in cola (a) and (d) would show that we have here a case of structural Inclusio,

What is Hannah saying about herself in the intervening lines (b) and (c) of the first strophe? McCarter rendered line (b) as 'My horn is raised by my god!' He justifies his textual option in this manner: "Reading b 'thy on the basis of the LXX (en then

20, Cf. Jean-Marc Babut.ldiomatic Expressions of the Hebrew Bible. Their Meaning and Translation through Componential Analysis. Bibal Dissertation Series.5; North Richland Hills. Texasl999. 58-60 21. "Childbearing confen-ed status on the woman. especially in times when the need to produce more children was critical. owing to war. famine. disease. and epidemics." King & Stager. Life ill Biblical Israel. 50. 22. This is expressed through the emphatic ki in (d). On this grammatical feature the reader is referred to T. Muraoka. Emphatic Words alld Structures ill Biblical Hebrew, The Magnes Press. Jerusalem & Brill. Leiden 1985. 158-164 which otfers also a good bibliography. 23. Cf. Ernst R. Wendland. Allaiyzillg the Psalms, Summer Institute of Linguistics. Dallas 1998.159- 160 24. Zogbo & Wendland. Hebrew Poetry ill the Bible. 50-51. 25. Cf. McCarter. I Samuel. 68. 84 Anthony Abela

mall) and OL. MT and 4QSam" (rmh qarni by[hw]h repeat byhwh 'in, by YHWH' which is poetically inferior and textually suspicious."26 This sounds like seeking to set rather than to discover and understand the author's agenda. One should notice: I) the maintenance in (b )of the same subject of (a); 2) how the author/participant keeps in (b) the 'synecdoche principle' employed in (a); 3) how the author/ participants resort to figurative (McCarter) and even idiomatic language(Babut) to describe Hannah's feelings now that her status in society changed radically(one should perhaps read ISaml,4 in this light); 4) McCarter has shown how the metaphor of the 'raised horn' "implies a significant elevation in condition involving some kind of visible distinction; in certain instances it refers specifically to the establishment of the lasting distinction of posterity. It does not follow necessarily that in the present passage the birth of a son was intended by the original composer of the poem, but this is quite possible. At the least the statement is susceptible to such a construction and gives a certain propriety to the placing of the song on Hannah's lips"27; 5) that while the tradents behind the possible Vorlage of the LXX may have thought that the author of the poem could have meant to resort to the stylistic technique of the 'break-up of a composite name'28 and thus wrote 'e16him O instead ofYHWH in (b) governed by the preposition b , he seems to have preferred the tetragrammaton for reasons of content. Within the wider context of Samuel's infancy narrative Hannah is constantly depicted as addressing 'the Lord' (1,ll. 23.26.28); the inferior stylistic choice points to the conscious underlining that Hannah's spiritual exultation(a) and her elevation within society because of her motherhood (b), had their only source in YHWH.29

One should note the use of asyndesis.lO as the first three lines (a), (b), and (c) follow each other in rapid succession. The asyndeton construction was probably meant to evoke speed but also contemporaneity in the sense that the three actions described

26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 72 28. YHWH-'e16hiffi has been considered as one such composite name. Cl'. Mitchell Dahood, Psalms lI/, Anchor Bible l7a; Doubleday, Garden City, New York I 970, XXXVIII-XLI; on the stylistic devise of breaking up names cf. Wilfred G.E. Watson, Traditional Techniques ill Classical Hebrew Verse, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield 1994, 380. 29. " ... .in the sentiments it expresses, (this hymn) is an apt inclusion here. Hannah exults in the Lord and rejoices in his salvation; the Lord is the central figure of her song," Antony F. Campbell, "1- 2 Samuel", The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Raymond E. Brown & loseph A. Fitzmyer & Roland E. Murphy eds.), Chapman, Prentice Hall, New lerseyI968.1990,147. 30. On this feature of Hebrew grammar one may consult A. E. Cowley(ed.), Gesellius'Hebrew Grammar, Clarendon Press, OxfordI91O.1980, § 154; lotion & Muraoka, Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, § 177. Hannah's Hymn of Praise (1 Sam 2,1-2) 85

are taking place together: as soon as the Lord raises Hannah's horn by giving her a son( 1,20), Hannah' s mouth 'widens' against her enemies who in the context cannot but materialise though not exhaust in her 'rival' Peninnah. Unfortunately the literary context is multifunctional in that Hannah's hymn is meant to serve both the characterisation of the protagonist in this episode3J as well as the protagonist of this section of 'the David Narrative' within the Primary History, King David,32 and the interpretation of Israel's history as a victory through the essential intervention of YHWH in particular events. Hannah's hymn has been read also as a victory hymn33 . In the light of what Prof Stanley Fish's insistence on the role of contexts constituting meanings34 , it is possibly this context that allows in the idiomatic expression ral).a1? phi cal in line (c) the semantic value isolated by McCarter35 and accepted by Roger 36 L.Omanson and John E. Ellington , of 'swallowing one's enemies', that is, vanquishing them. However, the meaning of verbal conflict often met with in modern translations: "la bouche grande ouverte contre mes enemis"(TOB); "I gloat over my enemies" (REBINJPS); "je peux rire de ennemis" (PdV); "my mouth boasts over my enemies"(NIV), better fits the context which tells in flashback of verbal conflicts between the two women.

31. Cf. Watts, Psalm and Story, 29-32. 32. One should notice two important instances of Inc1usio: the first one in this hymn: 'my horn is raised high in the Lord'(2,lb) and 'the Lord ... will raise the horn of his anointed'(2,10c). In the previous parallel line 'his anointed' is identified as 'his king'. The reference to the king is generally taken as anachronistic in the sense that within the narrative of Samuel's infancy(I,I-2.21) no king is strictly speaking introduced; however, rather than being a slip by the narrator, we have to read this reference to the multi-level character not merely of the hymn but also on the narrative context within which it is inset. On the other hand, Prof Watts has pointed to the many parallels between this hymn and 2Sam 22, David's hymn, where David's narrative also comes to a close (cf. Ibid. pp. 21-24) . One may speak therefore of a 'proleptic' function of Hannah's hymn in 2,1-10 and an 'analeptic' function of David's hymn in 2Sam 22 in that it refers back to Hannah's hymn. Together, the two hymns form an Inclusio in that they define where David's narrative actually starts and where it closes. The narrative of the monarchy in the Primary History is actually the story of David (1-2 Samuel) and his descendants (1-2 Kings). 33. J.T. Willis, "The Song of Hannah and Psalm 113," CBQ, 34(1973) 142-143; Watts, Psalm and Story, 25-32. 34. Is there a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretative Communities, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusettsl980. 35. I Samuel, 72. 36. A Handbook 011 The First alld Second Books o/Samuel, 1, United Bible Societies, New York200 1, 52. 86 Anthony Abela

The Second Strophe (2,2)

In this second strophe Hannah focuses on her relationship to the Lord although she speaks of him in general religious terms. In the current MT text as we find it in BHS, the strophe is a tricola unit with the first (a) and the third(c) being parallel, while the second (b) being quite different from its adjacent members. Cola (a) and (c) are very similar in structure; they consist of two 'quasi-verbal nominal clauses' 37 starting with the existential adverb 'en [in (c) this is preceded by the conjunction], and the predicate made up of the adjectival qados in (a) and the nominal ~ftr in (c), the comparison marker k' attached to the tetragrammaton in (a) and to the nominal 'ei6hfm in(c); this latter is also qualified by the first person plural suffix, 'our God'. There is no topic in these impersonal constructions, though the virtual subject of both clauses is 'someone' or 'something' encoded within existential adverb 'en. The two cola create no particular difficulty except that the metaphor ~ftr is substituted in the LXX by the adjectival ~addfq, righteous, in Greek, dikaios, which is followed by some modem translations(cf. REB). Although this feature is presumed to have a been present in the Vorlage of both the LXX and 4QSam , and has been included in 38 39 the reconstructions of the latter text by Ulrich and Cross , the Qurnran text is supposed to have come from conflated readings of both LXX and MT, while the adjective in LXX and then the Vetus Latina is due to translation strategies rather 40 thanto reconstruction of a Vorlage • The presence in Ugaritic of the 'word pair' ~ftr and qados41 , with word-pairs being 'one of the prominent features of Hebrew poetry'42, would point rather to the two words as being original, and the change of the term 'mountain' in(c) may have been dictated by the fear that the pairing of 'holy' and 'mountain' may have seemed strange(Dahood).

But it is colon (b) that created the greater problems. Some versions, ancient and modem, simply eliminate this colon as an independent member of the strophe; some scholars drop elements of its constituents as being redactional and as not being part of the Vorlage, and distribute what remains among the two other cola. McCarter for instance translates this text as a two cola strophe:

37. Cf. Gibson, Davidson s Introductory Hebrew Grammar,56-57 38. The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus, 121 39. "New Qumran Biblical Fragment,"20 40. Cf. A. Passioni dell' Acqua, "La metafora biblica di Dio Roccia e la sua soppressione nell'antiche versioni,"Ephemerides Liturgicae 91(1977) 417-453; Tov, The Greek & Hebrew Bible, 441 41. Cf. Mitchell Dahood, "Ugaritic-Hebrew Parallel Pairs" in Loren R. Fisher(ed.), Ras Shamra Parallels, n, Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, Rome 1975,1:49 42. Wendland, Allalyzing the Psalms, 129 Hannah's Hymn of Praise (1 Sam 2,1-2) 87

For there is no holy one like Yahweh And no mountain like our god!

Others allow for a three cola structure but change their order by putting colon (b) at the end of the strophe as its climax (LXX) or as the opening of the strophe: The MBS translation in Il-Bibbja reads as follows:

Ma hemm liadd liliefek, liadd qaddis bliall-Mulej, m 'hemmx Blata blial Alia taglina.

The main difficulty in (b) came from the clause initial ki normally parsed as causal particle; but the clause that the particle introduces is not anaphoric, does not function as an explanation of the previous clause (a); neither is it cataphoric in that it does not lay the ground for the following clause in (C).43 Furthermore, there is in this colon the shift to the second person we meet in the concluding colon of the previous strophe. This may explain the translation strategy in Il-Bibbja, but would leave unexplained the poet's strategy of separating the parallel colon (a) and colon (c) by interlaying colon (b). What is the narrator trying to say in interposing a clause that is completely different in structure from its two outflanking cola?

The poet ensured that with verse 2 starts a new line of thought by opting for a caesura through the asyndeton to open (a). The LXX perceived a formal causal link between the last colon of the first strophe and this first line of the second strophe by explicitation through the particle hoti; McCarter misunderstood this conjunction as a translation of the Hebrew conjunction kf currently present as second person singular pronominal suffix in the cluster bisuCateka in verse l.44 One should note that the LXX itself translates this qualification of the term! concept yasuCa, salvation, by the phrase en soteria sou, literally 'in your salvation' and therefore McCarter's parsing cannot be correct, and actually no major translation follows his lead in this.

43. For these terms cf. Ellen van Wolde, "Linguistic Motivation and Biblical Exegesis" in Ellen van Wolde (ed.), Narrative Syntax & Hebrew Bible, Brill, Leidenl997, 38. 44. ISamuel, 68 88 Anthony Abela

Concerning the exegesis of (a) and (c) some basic questions need to be asked and answered to. Even if we were to follow Sternberg's principle that embedded hymns function more or less autonomously from the context in which they are inset, this would not mean that they were chosen haphazardly by the writer/narrator45 or that they would carry no contribution to the narrative within which they are inset. They are after all acts of interpretation by the narrator. The corollary of this reasoning is that it is exegetically relevant to ask what Hannah the character would have understood when she declared in (a) that the Lord is qad6s and (c) that 'our God' is a ~ur. Does the immediate context which is the narrative of Samuel's birth and infancy in 1,1-2,21 really exercise no influence on the semantics of the text? What have the concept qad6s, intuitively translated 'holy', and the metaphor ~ur that is normally rendered 'Rock' or 'Mountain' in common as to be placed within the poetic structure in parallel positions? Do these two predicates in (a) and (c) denote the 'unreachability' of 'our God' who is 'the Lord'? Are the two cola together with the central colon (b) denoting further Hannah's (and perhaps the narrator's) marvel at God's control of human history? How are we to translate the two terms in order to avoid that a modern reader would fail to understand the word pair as the LXX translator(s) did when they substituted ~ur with ~addlq which is behind the LXX dikaios?

The two syntactically and semantically parallel cola (a) and (c) consist of negative 46 statements introduced by the existential adverb 'en • Jotion distinguished two basic linguistic functions in the use of 'en: it is used to negate the presence of something in a specific place; this function has a subspecies wherein the adverb is used to negate the existence in an absolute manner ( see Ex 2,12); the other function is when one negates the veracity of a statement expressed with a pronominal clause as in Is 1,15. The absolute use of the first function seems to fit our context better. Hannah states that there is no one/no thing (to contrast 'the Lord') who is 'holy' as the Lord and that there is no person who is 'rock/mountain' as 'our God'. The two statements in (a) and (c) are meant to be perfect parallels, joined together by the conjunction waw introducing (c); they are 'semantically equivalent' in the manner

45. In the case of the Bible there exists no real difference between the two figures, cf. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 74-75 46. On this adverb cf. lotion & Muraoka, Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, §§ 102j.k;154k;160g; Muraoka, Emphatic Words and Structures,99-112; Bruce K. Waltke & M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indianal990, § 39.3.3. Hannah's Hymn of Praise (1 Sam 2,1-2) 89

Professor Adele Berlin47 understanos the phrase, though they are not saying the same thing. The perfect parallelism between (a) and (c) would give (c) an anaphoric function in that, notwithstanding the interposition of colon (b), (c) is meant to disambiguate also colon (a)48. And this it does in two ways. Firstly. Through the pronominal suffix qualifying the nominal 'e16him in (c), which is in perfect parallel to the tetragrammaton, a personal name of the God ofIsrael, in (a) as the governing preposition affixed to both demonstrates, shows that the virtual subject in (a) has to be a 'someone' not a 'something'. Secondly. The phrase 'our God' would point to a 'man-centred' function of both statements in (c) and (a). In other words, even if the statement in (a) seems to be strictly theological, what it says remains relevant to the lives of Hannah and her people. The 'holiness' ofYahweh has to do with humans like Hannah just as his being a ~ur has. This brings us to the heart of the matter: the meaning of qados in (a) and ~ur in (c).

The basic idea of the noun q6des from which the adjective qados derives is 'apartness' 'sacredness' .49 The Lord is described in (a) as 'apart' 'separate' and so 'sacred' 'holy'. But this adjective is rarely found alone in the Old Testament if we leave the trisagion of Is 6,3 alone. Normally it is found in relationship with some other epithet. Even the famous title q'dos yisra'el in Isaiah (cf. 1,4; 5,19.24; 10,20;12,6; etc) presents the absolute qados in its close relatedness to the people of Israel. Perhaps H. Seebass was right when he stated that "L' aspetto determinante del sacro nell' AT, se teniamo conto del rapporto con il profano .... non e tanto la potenza divina esterna, quanto piuttosto cia che si determina in particolare luoghi, circostanze e tempi in rapporto relativamente diretto con la potenza divina, la quale pua diventare estranea se non si instaura una relazione appropriata nei suoi confronti (lSam 6,20). L'aspetto primario non e la separazione dal divino, ma il venirne positivamente a contatto, il che causa naturalmente una determinata condotta ... " 50

4 7. "The semantic aspect of parallelism does not refer to the meaning of a line, or even the meaning of the parallelism as a whole. The semantic aspect is the relationship between the meaning of one line and its parallel line .... Equivalence, as I use the term, does not mean identity or synonymity. Two lines do not have to mean the same in order to be semantically equivalent; semantic equivalence does not imply sameness of meaning any more than lexical equivalence does," The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1985, 90. 48. Cf. Ibid., 96. 49. Francis Brown & S. R. Driver & Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew alld English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1907.1974,871. 50. "Santo, sacro" in L.Coenen & E. Beyreuther & H. Bietenhard(eds.), Dizionario dei COllcetti Biblici del Nuol'o Testamento, Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna, Bologna1970, 1653. 90 Anthony Abela

This close relatedness ofYahweh to human reality transpires in this second strophe of Hannah's hymn; the statement about the Lord's holiness (a) has to be read together with the other statement which is its parallel in (c) as the strict parallelism of the two cola, and the initial conjunction in the latter demonstrate. In his long essay on the sacred in the Old Testament, Maurice Gilbert5! has captured this relatedness between the sacred and human reality. On p.222 of his work Gilbert comments briefly on Hannah's hymn with particular attention to our text: "Du parallelisme entre Saint et Rocher, on pourrait tirer une idee de solidite, de 'hors d' atteinte', de suprematie inattaquable et indomptable. Assurement le contexte montre que Yahve est essentiellement secourable pour le faible et le pauvre: c' est le sens meme de l'hymne." The parallelism between cola (a) and (c) hints that the statement about the Lord's 'holiness' is not complete if it is not seen together with the other statement that 'our God' is a ~ur without identifying the beneficiary of God's being ~ur. The genitival suffix affixed to 'ei6him suggests that the beneficiary is 'us' , Hannah and her people.

The nominal ~ur, 'rock' or 'mountain' 52 stands for an ancient metaphor which had its roots in the mythology of the 'cosmic mountain'. "The cosmic mountain is a well-known phenomenon in the history of religions. It is the centre of the universe, the starting-point of creation, highest place in the world, axis mundi, connecting heaven and nether world. It is the victory of cosmos over the chaotic forces of the nether world. 'Rock' is applied to Yahweh, mainly in the Psalter, in a sense closely related to some aspects of the cosmic mountain."53 It would seem that ~ur in the Old Testament was meant to evoke the figure of God or the Lord as Protector: 'ei6hi54 ~Url 'el}eseh b6(2Sam 22, 3).55 In most examples where this metaphor appears56 , it normally appears grammatically or semantically related to some nominal element in its linguistic context. In I Sam 2,2, even if the beneficiary remains unexpressed on the surface level, within the deep structure of the text, the suffix in

51. "Le sacre dans I'Ancien Testament," in J.Ries & H. Sauren & G Kestemont & R. Lebrun & M. Gilbert, L-Expression du Sacni dans les Grandes Religions,I, Proche-Orient Ancien et Traditions Bibliques, Centres d'Histoire des Religions, Louvain-Ia Neuve 1978,205-292. 52. Cf. The Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament,3, Brill, Leiden1996,1016-1017. 53. Nicholas J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World in the Old Testament, Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome1969, 205. 54. Reading with the LXX which translates ho theos mOll 55. Cf. Watts, Psalm and Story, 23 for this latter psalm being in structural parallelism with the Hannah's hymn within the 'David Narrative' in what the present author terms the Primary History. 56. Cf. Gerhard Lisowsky, Konkordanz zum Hebriiischen Alten Testament, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart 1958.1993,1215. Hannah's Hymn of Praise (1 Sam 2,1-2) 91

the phrase ke'16heml, 'like our God', would seem to hint towards the singer and her people as the beneficiaries of the protecting activities of 'our God'. Is this the way colon (c) is disambiguating (Berlin) colon (a) and of course colon (b)? Or is not ~fir used absolutely in this context, and only indirectly57 predicated of 'our God', meant to express another attribute of 'the Lord/our God'? If this is the case, it will constitute a perfect parallel to qad6s in (a): if this latter would be referring to the 'apartness' 'otherness' of the Lord, the metaphor ~fir could be referring to the 'loftiness', the 'transcendence' of 'our God'. There are many gods but none is holy like the Lord, and there are many 'mountains' (~firlm) among the nations (cf. Dt 32, 30; Ps 78, 35) but none is like our God.

In modern translations of the verse we meet three kinds of treatment of colon (c). We find bare literal renderings: " Nor is there any rock like our God"(NKJV); "There is no rock like our God"(NJPS); "il n'y en a pas de rocher come notre Dieu"(NBS); "non c'e rocca come il nostro Dio"(CEI); "there is no rock like our God"(RSV).In these literal translations of ~fir little interpretation is allowed and at times as in the case ofNJPS, NBS, and CEI even the anaphoric nature of (c) expressed through the conjunction that introduces the colon is suppressed together with the particle. We find then translations that recognise ~fir as a divine title58 but without elaborating over its significance in the context; normally the term for 'rock' is capitalised: "Il n'est pas de Rocher pareil a notre Dieu"(TOB); "there is no Rock like our God"(NIV); "point de Rocher comme notre Dieu"(BJ); "there is no Rock like our God"(NRSV). Among this group we have to include MBS which rendered ~fir by 'Blata'. The third group of translations either links the idea of mountain to the other that "the image evokes the idea of God as the source of protection and security for his people"59 or choose to translate the metaphor: "We are safer with you than on a high mountain"(CEV); "Auf nichts ist so felsenfest Verlass wie auf ihn"(GN); "Personne ne nous protege comme notre Dieu"(PdV); "Le Seigneur est sans pareil, notre Dieu seul est un rocher"(BE); " ... no protector like our God"(GNB); "Solo il Signore e rocca sicura"(BLC). One should note that this last group does not translate ~fir as a divine title but simply as a metaphor which needs to be 'unpacked' into its semantic components.

57. Of course only indirectly is it predicated of 'our God'; as in Ca) the subject in (c) is encoded within the impersonal construction introduced by the adverb 'en. 58. Cf. Lorenzo Vigano, Nomi e Titoli di YHWH alia lllce del semitico del Nord-ovest, Biblical Institute Press, Rome1976, 2. 59. Omanson & Ellington, Handbook,54 92 Anthony Abela

In view of what we said in the previous paragraphs, il would seem advisable lO 'translate' both the concept 'holy' as well as the metaphor 'rock/mountain' used in its absolute sense: "There is no one so unique as the Lord(a) .... and no one is so majestic as our God(c)". The adjective 'unique' expresses the semantic component 'apart, separate' underlying the adjective qados, while the adjective 'majestic' which is marked by the adverbial 'so' renders the metaphor 'rock/mountain'.

Colon (b) This is another 'en clause "indicating non-existence or absence"6o that seems to fit none of the twenty five 'en clause formats listed by Muraoka.61 It consists of the existential negative particle 'en, preceded by the conjunction ki that introduces the colon, and followed by the adverb bilti qualified by the suffix of the second person: bilteka, possibly referring to YHWH in colon (a) which is not vocative though. The particle bilt! with the final ( i ) being paragogic62 though at times it can also be a pronominal suffix (Hos 13,4), is a negative adverb functioning in biblical Hebrew in various subtle manners.63 Among its uses we may isolate what Bruce K. Waltke & M. O'Connor64 would call 'clausal restrictive adverb' (perhaps Genesis 43,3 would furnish a good example), and 'item restrictive adverb' for which these grammarians pointed to Num 11,6 as an example. Our text in ISam 2,2 seems to offer an example of the latter type. The adverb commands the suffix -ka which in the context can refer only to YHWH. So what Hannah is saying in colon (b), when we take the adverb bilteka together with the preceding existential adverb 'en, is that 'there is no one except you'. The referent to the suffix in the cluster may easily be picked up from colon (a) as being YHWH notwithstanding the shift from indirect in (a) to direct speech in (b) just as the poet has done in the first strophe (v. I). H. W. Hertzberg65 states that Hannah is here making a major theological statement similar to what we find in the Shema Prayer in Dent 6,4 about YHWH as the unique God. There is no one besides him.

60. Muraoka, Emphatic Words,109 61. Ibid., 102-111. 62. Cf. lotion & Muraoka, §93q 63. Cf. David l.A.Clines(ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, n, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield 1995, 183-184 64. Biblical Hebrew Syntax, §39.3.5e note 103. 65. 1& II Samuel, A Commentary, SCM Press, London1964, 29-30. Hannah's Hymn of Praise (I Sam 2,1-2) 93

But by far, the main problems in (b) for exegesis and translation were caused by the particle ki which introduces the colon. Waltke & O'Connor's brief discussion of this particle shows where the problem lies: "There are two clause-adverbial uses of ki: the emphatic (Isa 1,27. 29,20; Ps 3,8) and the 10gical(Isa 14,29). The second of these overshadows the first through the dominance of the translation 'for' in 'Biblical English'. This translation is often used where it, and the understanding behind it, are simply wrong, that is, where there is no evident logical link of the clause to what precedes ... "66

And this is what happened in our text. Normally it was parsed as carrying out the logical function somehow linking (b) to (a), and thus colon (b) was simply read as an 'expansion' (Hertzberg) or as an 'addition' (Gilbert) to colon (a). But was this expansion original with the author of the hymn or later? Prof Gilbert says only that it must be 'ancienne' since the LXX knew this additionY Today we may concur with him that colon (b) must be ancient because we have 4QSama which, though in fragmentary state, still contains the final k of the cluster bltk as part of the original text of the manuscript.68 We venture to say that colon (b) was written together with the two adjacent cola, though this cannot be proven in an absolute manner. But our parsing of the colon initial ki differs from that of the great majority of versions old and not so old.

The LXX translator has shown that he did not understand the real rhetorical role of colon (b) by lengthening the colon through the term hagios that in (a) renders the Hebrew qad6S, and by transposing the line to the third position within the tricolon(v.2).69 But he maintained the asyndeton of the Hebrew text so that this third colon in his translation looks more like a wooden repetition of the first colon. Unfortunately, this procedure of altering the place of the colon within the tricolon is followed by a number of other translations; this shows also that they misunderstood the parsing of the particle ki. MBS segments the text differently than we do in this study aligning verse 2 to verse 3 to form the second stanza while verse I forms the

66. Biblical Hebrew Syntax, §39.3.4e. 67. "Sacre dans l' Ancien Testament,"222 68. Cf. the reconstruction of the text by Eugene Charles Ulrich, Jr., The Qumrall Text of Samuel alld Josephus, Harvard Semitic Monographs, 19; Scholars Press, Missoula, Montana 1978,121.146 69. For other texts where the LXX shows that its translators actually misunderstood their Hebrew Vorlage cf. Emanuel Tov, "Did the Septuagint Translators always understand their Hebrew Text?" in The Greek & Hebrew Bible. Collected Essays on the Septuagint, Brill, Leiden 1999,203-218. 94 Anthony Abela

first stanza of the poem. Colon (b) in verse 2 is the opening line of this second stanza, possibly because this is the only colon in the stanza where we find the shift to the second person address: Ma hemm liadd liliefek. The same strategy is adopted the REB. The Vulgate puts the line to its original order within the strophe but translates the ki by the causal enim, for. The BJ follows suit, but it also shows unease with the colon as a whole by putting it within brackets: (car if n 'y a personne except toi). The same procedure is employed by Prof Peter Paul Saydon.70 A few translations opt to delete colon (b) probably because they consider it later and secondary7l ; CEI renders the verse in this manner: Non c?~ santa come if Signore!/ non c'e rocca come if nostro Dio. BE instead puts this colon just like the Septuagint in the third position seemingly though as the climax of the strophe demoting colon (c) to a simple parallel line of (a):

Le Seigneur est sanz pareif, notre Dieu seul est un rocher Apart lui, il n 'y a pas de Dieu.

This would not be a bad solution if postposition to the end of the strophe signifies ipso facto emphasis. The greater part of the translations, however, following the traditional parsing of the particle ki as introducing a clause that is explanatory of the previous one, simply choose not to reproduce in the translation. BLC may be taken as representative of this position:

Solo if Signore esanta lui solo eDio. Solo il Signore erocca sicura

But there is another possibility which respects the text as it stands: the solution lies in parsing the ki in (b) as an emphatic particle. This solution has been adopted by at least two leading modern translations, that of JB and NJPS:

NJB: (indeed, there is none but you). NJPS: Truly, there is none besides You.

Two short comments: The NJB maintains the hesitancy of its parent translation

70. The NKJV: "For there is none besides You". 71. Cf. Omanson & Ellington, Handbook, 53-54. Cf. Hertzberg and McCarter ad hoc. Hannah's Hymn of Praise (1 Sam 2,1-2) 95

the Bible de Jerusalem regarding the authenticity of (b), hence it reproduces the brackets; but it parses the kl as emphatic rather than as having a 'logical' function. The NJPS tries to disambiguate the suffix in bilteka by capitalising the 'y' of you, thus making it evident that the referent of the suffix is the Lord. But this is an unnatural use of capitalising in English. Instead it would have been a better solution if they would have inserted a vocative after the 'you' translating the -ka: "Truly, there is none besides you, 0 Lord". It is not a matter of not finding anyone so 'holy' like the Lord, but that there is none but the Lord. This would mean that colon (b) is disambiguating colon (a) in that the Lord is the only Holy One: there is none besides him.72

Department of Holy Scripture Faculty of Theology University of Malta

Bibliography

Siglas for Bible versions that are referred to in this essay:

BE: La Bible Expliquee, Villiers-le-Be12004. BHS: Biblia H ebraica Stuttgartensia, Stuttgart 1987. BJ; La Bible de Jerusalem, Paris 1978. BLC: Parola del Signore. La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente, Torino/Romal985. BS: Bibbja Saydon, Malta 21982. CCB: Christian Community Bible, Manila 1988. CEI: La Bibbia di Gerusalemme,Conferenza Episcopale Italiana 1971. CEV: Into the Light. Contemporary English Version, Swindon1997. GN: Gute Nachricht Bibel, Stuttgart1997.

72. One should note that a few versions mistranslate this text in that they render the 'en clause as a comparative clause even though the comparative preposition k' does not feature in this colon. GNB renders this clause by 'there is none like him' 'domesticating' the text by obliterating the address shift to the second person by changing 'you' ofbilteka to 'him'. CCB maintains the 'foreignization' by maintaining the shift to the second person; but they offer the same mistaken translation: 'no one is like you'. On the concepts of 'domestication' and 'foreignization' of translations cf. Aloo Osotsi Mojola & Emst Wendland, "Scripture Translation in the Era of Translation Studies" in Timothy Wilt (ed.), Bible Translation. Frames of Reference, St Jerome Publishing, Manchester UK-Northampton MA 2003,24-25. 96 Anthony Abela

GNB: Good News Bible, New York 21994. NJB: The New lerusalem Bible, Londonl985. LXX: Septuaginta, Stuttgart 91935 MBS: /l-Bibbja, Malta Bible Society, Malta 32004. NBS: La Nouvelle Bible Segond, Villiers-Ie-Bel 2002. NIV: The Holy Bible. New International Version, Colorado Springs 1984. NJPS: Tanakh. The Holy Scriptures, New Jewish Publication Society, New York1988. NKJV: Holy Bible. The New King lames Version, New York1990. NRSV: The Holy Bible. The New Revised Standard Version, Oxford 1989. PdV: La Bible.Pmvle de Vie, Villiers-Ie-Bel 2000. REB: The Revised English Bible, Oxford/Cambridgel989. RSV: The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version, London 1966. TOB: La Bible. Traduction Oecumenique, Paris 1995. VUL: Biblia Sacra Vulgata, Stuttgart 1994.

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T. Muraoka, Emphatic Words and Structures in Biblical Hebrew, Magnes Press, Jerusalem / Brill, Leiden1985. William D. Reyburn, "Anatomy of a Poem: Lamentations I" in Ernst R. Wendland(ed.), Discourse Perspectives on Hebrew Poetry in the Scriptures, UBS Monograph Series,7;New York1994, 147-169. H. Seebass, "Santo, sacro," in L.Coenen & E.Beyreuther & H.Bietenhard(eds.), Dizionario del Nuovo Testamento, Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna, Bolognal970. Jean Louis Ska, " Our Fathers Have Told Us". Introduction to the Analysis ofHebrew Narratives, Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, Roma1990. Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative. Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1987. Emanuel Tov, "Did the Septuagint Translators Always Understand Their Hebrew Text?" in The Greek and Hebrew Text. Collected Essays on the Septuagint, Brill, LeidenI999,203-218 Emanuel Tov, "The Textual Affiliations of 4QSam'" in The Greek and Hebrew Bible. Collected Essays on the Septuagint, Brill, LeidenI999,273-284. Emanuel Tov, "Different Editions of the Song of Hannah and its Narrative Framework" in The Greek and Hebrew Bible. Collected Essays on the Septuagint, Brill, LeidenI999,433-456. Nicholas J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World in the Old Testament, Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome 1969. Eugene Charles Ulrich Jr., The Qumran Text of Samuel and losephus, Harvard Semitic Monographs, 19; Scholars Press, Missoula Montanal978. Eugene Charles Ulrich Jr., The Dead Sra Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible, Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Michigan Brill, Leiden 1999. Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel. Its Life and Institutions, Darton, Longman & Todd, London 1961. Lorenzo Vigano, Nomi e titoli di YHWH alla luce del semitico del Nord-ovest, Biblical Institute Press, Rome1974. Stanley D. WaIters, "Hannah and Anna: The Greek and Hebrew Texts of 1 Samuel 1,"lBL 107(1988)385-412. Bruce K.Waltke & M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indianal990. Wilfred GE. Watson, Traditional Techniques in Classical Hebrew Verse, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield 1994. James W. Watts, Psalm and Story. Inset Hymns in Hebrew Narrative, JSOT Press, Sheffield 1992. Ernst R. Wendland, Analyzing the Psalms, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Hannah's Hymn of Praise (I Sam 2,1-2) 99

Dallas 1998. J.T.Willis, "The Song of Hannah and PsaIm113," CBQ 34(1973)139-154. Ellen van WoIde, "Linguistic Motivation and Biblical Exegesis" in Ellen van Wolde(ed.), Narrative Syntax & Hebrew Bible,Brill, Leidenl997. Lynell Zogbo & Ernst R. Wendland, Hebrew Poetry in the Bible. A Guide for Understanding and for Translating, United Bible Societies, New York 2000.