ABSTRACT
Inevitably, Marjorie Reeves was rst to have drawn attention to a ‘most interesting book of excerpts’.2 One manuscript witness to this version of the Psalterium decem chordarum was discovered by Ernest Renan and Heinrich Denie in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris,3 while Denie unearthed a second in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan4 and Miss Reeves herself identied a third copy in London.5 e book contains a collection of genuine and spurious writings by Joachim of Fiore, beginning with excerpts from his three main works: Concordia veteris ac novi testamenti, Expositio super Apocalypsim, and Psalterium decem chordarum. In the history of their reception all three have been copied, abridged, and excerpted many times. e Psalterium, for example, exists in three versions: the full version (its manuscripts preserving a vast multitude of parallel versions of numerous parts of it), a longer excerpt version preserved in two late medieval manuscripts, and a short excerpt version, part of the ‘most interesting book of excerpts’. In this essay, I will rst discuss the role of the psaltery in Joachim’s work and in the Short Excerpt Version, then the excerpt set as a whole, and nally present an edition of the Short Excerpt Version of the Psalterium decem chordarum.
